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• Can I use a genetic algorithm for balancing character builds?

  - by Renan Malke Stigliani

  I'm starting to build a online PVP (duel like, one-on-one) game, where there is leveling, skill points, special attacks and all the common stuff. Since I have never done anything like this, I'm still thinking about the math behind the levels/skills/specials balance. So I thought a good way of testing the best builds/combos, would be to implement a Genetic Algorithm. It'd be like this: Generate a big group of random characters Make them fight, level them up accordingly to their victories(more XP)/losses(less XP) Mate the winners, crossing their builds, to try and make even better characters Add some more random chars, emulating new players Repeat the process for some time, or util I find some chars who can beat everyone's butt I could then play with the math and try to find better balances to make sure that the top x% of chars would be a mix of various build types. So, is it a good idea, or is there some other, easier method to do the balancing?

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• Predicting advantages of database denormalization

  - by Janus Troelsen

  I was always taught to strive for the highest Normal Form of database normalization, and we were taught Bernstein's Synthesis algorithm to achieve 3NF. This is all very well and it feels nice to normalize your database, knowing that fields can be modified while retaining consistency. However, performance may suffer. That's why I am wondering whether there is any way to predict the speedup/slowdown when denormalizing. That way, you can build your list of FD's featuring 3NF and then denormalize as little as possible. I imagine that denormalizing too much would waste space and time, because e.g. giant blobs are duplicated or it because harder to maintain consistency because you have to update multiple fields using a transaction. Summary: Given a 3NF FD set, and a set of queries, how do I predict the speedup/slowdown of denormalization? Link to papers appreciated too.

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• S#arp Architecture 1.5.2 released

  - by AlecWhittington

  It has been a few weeks since S#arp Architecture 1.5 RTM has been released. While it was a major success a few issues were found that needed to be addressed. These mostly involved the Visual Studio templates. What's new in S#arp Architecture 1.5.2? Merged the SharpArch.* assemblies into a single assembly (SharpArch.dll) Updated both VS 2008 and 2010 templates to reflect the use of the merged assembly Updated SharpArch.build with custom script that allows the merging of the assemblies. Copys new merged...(read more)

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• handling various frame layouts in android

  - by vaibhav

  i'm new to game development and am trying create a Contra or the old tmnt game (but a simple one) like game for android. for the game i decided to divide my main screen in three parts - upper for stats,mid for the game and lower for controls. my main.xml is <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="fill_parent" android:orientation="vertical" > <FrameLayout android:id="@+id/upper_bar" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="fill_parent" android:layout_weight="1" > </FrameLayout> <FrameLayout android:id="@+id/fl" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="fill_parent" android:layout_weight="0.5" > </FrameLayout> <FrameLayout android:id="@+id/low_bar" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="fill_parent" android:layout_weight="0.85" > </FrameLayout> </LinearLayout> so i have created the gameview and gameloopthread classes for the mid surface(which is pretty standard). my problem is that how do i draw in the upper and lower frame layouts? should i make new classes for view and thread for each layout , should i do all this in the gameview class itself or is there any better way to implement this?

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• How to ...set up new Java environment - largely interfaces...

  - by Chris Kimpton

  Hi, Looks like I need to setup a new Java environment for some interfaces we need to build. Say our system is X and we need to interfaces to systems A, B and C. Then we will be writing interfaces X-A, X-B, X-C. Our system has a bus within it, so the publishing on our side will be to the bus and the interface processes will be taking from the bus and mapping to the destination system. Its for a vendor based system - so most of the core code we can't touch. Currently thinking we will have several processes, one per interface we need to do. The question is how to structure things. Several of the APIs we need to work with are Java based. We could go EJB, but prefer to keep it simple, one process per interface, so that we can restart them individually. Similarly SOA seems overkill, although I am probably mixing my thoughts about implementations of it compared to the concepts behind it... Currently thinking that something Spring based is the way to go. In true, "leverage a new tech if possible"-style, I am thinking maybe we can shoe horn some jruby into this, perhaps to make the APIs more readable, perhaps event-machine-like and to make the interface code more business-friendly, perhaps even storing the mapping code in the DB, as ruby snippets that get mixed in... but thats an aside... So, any comments/thoughts on the Spring approach - anything more up-to-date/relevant these days. EDIT: Looking a JRuby further, I am tempted to write it fully in JRuby... in which case do we need any frameworks at all, perhaps some gems to make things clearer... Thanks in advance, Chris

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• Kickstarter "last minute cold feet"

  - by mm24

  today I scheduled the publication of a video on kickstarter requesting approximately 5.000 $ in order to complete the iPhone shooter game I started 1 year ago after quitting my job. I invested more than 20.000$ in the game so far (for artwork, music, legal and accountant expenses) and I am now getting cold feet about my decision of publishing the video. The game is "nearly finished", in other words: the game mechanics are working but I still have some bugs to fix. Once I will have finished this (I hope will take me 1 or 2 weeks) I plan to start working on the actual level balancing (e.g. deciding the order of appearence of enemies for each level and balancing the number of hitpoints and strenght of bullets that the enemies have). Reasons for not publishing the video are: fear that the concept can be copied easily: the game is a shooter game set in a different environment (its a pretty cool one, believe me :)) and I am worried that someone might copy* the idea (I know, its the usual "I am worried story.."). A shooter game is one of the easiest game to implement and hence there will be hundreds game developer able to copy it by just adapting their existing code and changing graphics (not as straightforward). It took me one year to develop this because I was inexperienced plus there are approximately 6/7 months of work from the illustrator and there are 8 unique music tracks composed. The soundtrack of the video is the soundtrack of the game wich is not yet published and has not been deposited to a music society. I did create legally valid timestamps for the tracks and I am considering uploading the album on iTunes before publishing the video so I can have a certain publication date. But overall I am a bit scared and worried because I have never done this before and even the simple act of publishing an album requires me to read a long contract from the "aggregator company") which, even if I do have contracts with the musicians do worry me as I am not a U.S. resident and I am not familiar with the U.S. law system Reasons for publishing the video are: I almost run out of money (but this is not a real reason as I should have enough for one more month of development time) ...I kind of need extra money as, even if I do have money for 1 month of development I do not have money for marketing and for other expenses (e.g. accountant) It will create a fan base I could get some useful feedback from a wider range of beta testers It might create some pre-release buzz in case some blogger or game magazine likes the concept Anyone has had similar experiences? Is there a real risk that someone will copy the concept and implement it in a couple of months? Will the Kickstarter campaing be a good pre-release exposure for the gmae? Any refrences of similar projects/situations? Is it realistic that someone like ROVIO will copy the idea straight away?

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• Why is TDD not working here?

  - by TobiMcNamobi

  I want to write a class A that has a method calculate(<params>). That method should calculate a value using database data. So I wrote a class Test_A for unit testing (TDD). The database access is done using another class which I have mocked with a class, let's call it Accessor_Mockup. Now, the TDD cycle requires me to add a test that fails and make the simplest changes to A so that the test passes. So I add data to Accessor_Mockup and call A.calculate with appropriate parameters. But why should A use the accessor class at all? It would be simpler (!) if the class just "knows" the values it could retrieve from the database. For every test I write I could introduce such a new value (or an if-branch or whatever). But wait ... TDD is more. There is the refactoring part. But that sounds to me like "OK, I can do this all with a big if-elseif construct. I could refactor it using a new class ... but instead I make use of the DB accessor and do this in a totally different way. The code will not necessarily look better afterwards but I know I WANT to use the database".

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• Graphics module: Am I going the right way?

  - by Paul

  I'm trying to write the graphics module of my engine. That is, this part of the code only provides an interface through which to load images, fonts, etc and draw them on the screen. It is also a wrapper for the library I'm using (SDL in this case). Here are the interfaces for my Image, Font and GraphicsRenderer classes. Please tell me if I'm going the right way. Image class Image { public: Image(); Image(const Image& other); Image(const char* file); ~Image(); bool load(const char* file); void free(); bool isLoaded() const; Image& operator=(const Image& other); private: friend class GraphicsRenderer; void* data_; }; Font class Font { public: Font(); Font(const Font& other); Font(const char* file, int ptsize); ~Font(); void load(const char* file, int ptsize); void free(); bool isLoaded() const; Font& operator=(const Font& other); private: friend class GraphicsRenderer; void* data_; }; GrapphicsRenderer class GraphicsRenderer { public: static GraphicsRenderer* Instance(); void blitImage(const Image& img, int x, int y); void blitText(const char* string, const Font& font, int x, int y); void render(); protected: GraphicsRenderer(); GraphicsRenderer(const GraphicsRenderer& other); GraphicsRenderer& operator=(const GraphicsRenderer& other); ~GraphicsRenderer(); private: void* screen_; bool initialize(); void finalize(); };

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• Why is Python slower than Java but faster than PHP

  - by good_computer

  I have many times seen various benchmarks that show how a bunch of languages perform on a given task. Always these benchmarks reveal that Python is slower then Java and faster than PHP. And I wonder why is that the case. Java, Python, and PHP run inside a virtual machine All three languages convert their programs into their custom byte codes that run on top of OS -- so none is running natively Both Java and Python can be "complied" (.pyc for Python) but the __main__ module for Python is not compiled Python and PHP are dynamically typed and Java statically -- is this the reason Java is faster, and if so, please explain how that affects speed. And, even if the dynamic-vs-static argument is correct, this does not explain why PHP is slower than Python -- because both are dynamic languages. You can see some benchmarks here and here, and here

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• Alternative to Game State System?

  - by Ricket

  As far as I can tell, most games have some sort of "game state system" which switches between the different game states; these might be things like "Intro", "MainMenu", "CharacterSelect", "Loading", and "Game". On the one hand, it totally makes sense to separate these into a state system. After all, they are disparate and would otherwise need to be in a large switch statement, which is obviously messy; and they certainly are well represented by a state system. But at the same time, I look at the "Game" state and wonder if there's something wrong about this state system approach. Because it's like the elephant in the room; it's HUGE and obvious but nobody questions the game state system approach. It seems silly to me that "Game" is put on the same level as "Main Menu". Yet there isn't a way to break up the "Game" state. Is a game state system the best way to go? Is there some different, better technique to managing, well, the "game state"? Is it okay to have an intro state which draws a movie and listens for enter, and then a loading state which loops on the resource manager, and then the game state which does practically everything? Doesn't this seem sort of unbalanced to you, too? Am I missing something?

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• Edge Detection on Screen

  - by user2056745

  I have a edge collision problem with a simple game that i am developing. Its about throwing a coin across the screen. I am using the code below to detect edge collisions so i can make the coin bounce from the edges of the screen. Everything works as i want except one case. When the coin hits left edge and goes to right edge the system doesnt detect the collision. The rest cases are working perfectly, like hitting the right edge first and then the left edge. Can someone suggest a solution for it? public void onMove(float dx, float dy) { coinX += dx; coinY += dy; if (coinX > rightBorder) { coinX = ((rightBorder - coinX) / 3) + rightBorder; } if (coinX < leftBorder) { coinX = -(coinX) / 3; } if (coinY > bottomBorder) { coinY = ((bottomBorder - coinY) / 3) + bottomBorder; } invalidate(); }

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• Issue with distinguishing levels in isometric game

  - by Konrad

  I'm working on an isometric game however I am having trouble visually distinguishing between levels in the game. Take the example below, the first image shows concrete blocks at ground level and the following images show an attempt to build a few blocks a level above. As you can see the level above is visually swallowed the one below. I've tried shading to make lower levels darker with respect to camera, but this doesn't work that well.. any ideas?

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• Android in-game pause screen

  - by Max

  Right now Im calling a new activity with an xml-view when I pause my game, but Since I do this I need to use context in my real-time code, and this is causing a memory leak. Is there any preffered way to pause the game? By pause I mean if game is over, if I die, or if I press pause-button. Would a custom dialog work just aswell? this would mean I wont have to leave my main-activity while im in-game.

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• Is it reasonable to expect knowing the whole stack bottom up?

  - by Vaibhav Garg

  I am an Sr. developer/architect/Product Manager for embedded systems. The systems that I have had experience with have typically been small to medium size codebases - typically close to 25-30K LOC in C, using 8-16 and 32 bit low end microcontrollers. The systems have been entirely bootstrapped by our team - meaning right from the start-up code to the end application code has either been written by the team, or at the very least, is thoroughly understood and maintained by us. Now, if we were to start developing more complex systems with complex peripherals, such as USB OTG et al. (think, low end cell phones), there are libraries and stacks available commercially and from chip vendors that reduce the task to just calling the right APIs and being able to use those peripherals. Now, from a habit point of view, this does not give me and the team a comfortable feeling, not being able to comprehend the entire code tree, with virtual black boxes at the lower layers. Is it reasonable to devote, and reserve, time getting into the details of how the APIs are implemented, assuming that the same would also entail getting into details of relevant standards (again, for USB as an example)? Or, alternatively, should a thorough understanding of the top level usage of the APIs be sufficient? This of course assumes that the source codes to all libraries are available, which they are, in almost all cases. Edit: In partial response to @Abhi Beckert, the documentation is refreshingly very comprehensive and meticulously maintained, AFAIK and been able to judge. I have not had a long experience with the same.

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• Best approach for a database of long strings

  - by gsingh2011

  I need to store questions and answers in a database. The questions will be one to two sentences, but the answers will be long, at least a paragraph, likely more. The only way I know about to do this right now is an SQL database. However, I don't feel like this is a good solution because as far as I've seen, these databases aren't used for data of this type or size. Is this the correct way to go or is there a better way to store this data? Is there a better way than storing raw strings?

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• What is the best practice to move sprites using mouse order in Tile games?

  - by Robin-Hood

  I am trying to make my first Tile-game using XNA. I have no problem drawing the map layers using TiledLib from codeplex, but, now I want to give sprite an (order) to move to a specific position on map, by selecting the sprite (left mouse click) and then right mouse click somewhere on the map to specify the target position. I don’t know what is the best practice to move sprite this way, considering that there may be collision objects in the direct path. what is the best practice to do this? Is there any demo covering this issue? thanks. BTW: I couldn’t upload snapshot because of my low score :(

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• How to name an subclass that add a minor, detailed thing?

  - by Louis Rhys

  What is the most concise (yet descriptive) way of naming a subclass that only add a specific minor thing to the parent? I encountered this case a lot in WPF, where sometime I have to add a small functionality to an out-of-the-box control for specific cases. Example: TreeView doesn't change the SelectedItem on right-click, but I have to make one that does in my application. Some possible names are TreeViewThatChangesSelectedItemOnRightClick (way too wordy and maybe difficult to read because there is so many words concantenated together) TreeView_SelectedItemChangesOnRightClick (slightly more readable, but still too wordy and the underscore also breaks the normal convention for class names) TreeViewThatChangesSIOnRC (non-obvious acronym), ExtendedTreeView (more concise, but doesn't describe what it is doing. Besides, I already found a class called this in the library, that I don't want to use/modify in my application). LouisTreeView, MyTreeView, etc. (doesn't describe what it is doing). It seems that I can't find a name which sounds right. What do you do in situation like this?

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• What's the term for re-implementing an old API in terms of a newer API

  - by dodgy_coder

  The reason for doing it is to solve the case when a newer API is no longer backwards compatible with an older API. To explain, just say that there is an old API v1.0. The maker of this API decides it is broken and works on a new API v1.1 that intentionally breaks compatibility with the old API v1.0. Now, any programs written against the old API cannot be recompiled as-is with the new API. Then lets say there is a large app written against the old API and the developer doesn't have access to the source code. A solution would be to re-implement a "custom" old API v1.0 in terms of the new API v1.1 calls. So the "custom" v1.0 API is actually keeping the same interface/methods as the v1.0 API but inside its implementation it is actually making calls to the new API v1.1 methods. So the large app can be then compiled and linked against the "custom" v1.0 API and the new v1.1 API without any major source code changes. Is there a term for this practice? There's a recent example of this happening in Jamie Zawinski's port of XScreenSaver to the iPhone - he re-implemented the OpenGL 1.3 API in terms of the OpenGL ES 1.1 API. In this case, OpenGL 1.3 represents the "old" API and OpenGL ES 1.1 represents the "new" API.

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• 'Other' Features in a programming language

  - by user12960

  Online (i cant remember where) i saw someone mention he wishes programming language has more built in features for tools like documentation and source control. Now i dont understand what needs to be built in for source control since tools like git (sorry but i dont have much experience with others) has everything i need and is very easy to use. Documentation i can understand, perhaps the ability to generate remote procedures calls from source to some kind of IDL would be cool. But really i dont understand what features a programming language can/should have that isnt tied with code generation and syntax (except the two i mention when it comes to libraries). What ideas do you guys have? What is your wishlist?

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• Other games that employ mechanics like the game "Diplomacy"

  - by Kevin Peno

  I'm doing a little bit of research and I'm hoping you can help me track down any games, other than Diplomacy (online version here), that employ all or some of the mechanics in Diplomacy (rules, short form). Examples I'm looking for: Simultaneous orders given prior to execution of orders In Diplomacy, players "write down" their moves and execute them "at the same time" Support, in terms of supporting an attacker or defender "take" a territory. In Diplomacy, no one unit is stronger than another you need to combine the strength of multiple units to attack other territories. Rules for how move conflicts are resolved Example, 2 units move into a space, but only one is allowed, what happens. I may add to this list later, but these are the primary things I'm looking for. If you need clarification on anything just let me know. Note: I tried asking this on GamingSE, but it was shot down. So, I am unsure where else I could post this. Since I am researching this for game development purposes, I assume this post is on topic. Please let me know if this is not the case. Please also feel free to re-categorize this. Thanks!

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• SQL in the City (Charlotte) Wrap Up

  - by drsql

  Ok, it has been quite a while since the event, two weeks and a day to be exact, but I needed a rest before hitting Windows Live Writer again. Speaking is exhausting, traveling is exhausting, and well, I replaced my laptop and had to get all of my software back together. (Between Windows 8.1 sync features, Dropbox and Skydrive, it has never been easier…but I digress.) There are plenty of great vendors out there, but one of my favorites has always been Red-Gate. I have written half of a book with them,...(read more)

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• Strategies for browser compatibility on web applications in a corporate environment

  - by TiagoBrenck

  With the new CSS 3 and HTML 5 technology, web applications have gained a lot of new tools for a better UI (user interface) interaction, beautiful templates and even responsive layout to fit into tablets and smartphones. Within a corporate environment, those new technologies are required so the company can "follow" the IT evolution and their concurrent, but they also want that those new web applications supports old browsers. How should I deal with this situation? By one side we are asked to follow the the evolution of technology, create responsive layouts and use a lot of cool jQuery plugins. On the other hand, we are asked to support old browsers that do not support those new responsive features, plugins or components. I would like advice and strategies on how to create "modern" web applications that are also supported on old browsers. How does your company deal with this situation? Is it possible to have the same web application run well and beautifully on old browsers, and be responsive and interactive on newer browsers?

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• A talk about observer pattern

  - by Martin

  As part of a university course I'm taking, I have to hold a 10 minute talk about the observer pattern. So far these are my points: What is it? (defenition) Polling is an alternative Polling VS Observer When Observer is better When Polling is better (taken from here) A statement that Mediator pattern is worth checking out. (I won't have time to cover it in 10 minutes) I would be happy to hear about: Any suggestions to add something? Another alternative (if exists)

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• SharePoint 2010 Workflow for Multiple Items (Architecture)

  - by erobillard

  I had the question today of whether SharePoint 2010 supports workflow on multiple items, since Groove's workflow apparently supported multiple items and that model disappeared when Groove Workspaces were amalgamated into SharePoint Sites and SharePoint Workspace (the client utility). It's a great question, the short answer is that yes, it's possible. You could brute-force it in 2007 and that strategy should still carry over to 2010, and 3 new features (that I can think of) support multi-item scenarios...(read more)

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• How could RDBMSes be considered a fad?

  - by StuperUser

  Completing my Computing A-level in 2003 and getting a degree in Computing in 2007, and learning my trade in a company with a lot of SQL usage, I was brought up on the idea of Relational Databases being used for storage. So, despite being relatively new to development, I was taken-aback to read a comment (on Is LinqPad site quote "Tired of querying in antiquated SQL?" accurate? ) that said: [Some devs] despise [SQL] and think that it and RDBMS are a fad Obviously, a competent dev will use the right tool for the right job and won't create a relational database when e.g. flat file or another solution for storage is appropriate, but RDBMs are useful in a massive number of circumstances, so how could they be considered a fad?

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