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• Writing a Master's Thesis on evaluating visual scripting systems

  - by user1107412

  I am thinking to write my Master's thesis around theorizing, and then implementing a PlayMaker or Kismet-like (building game logic by visually arranging FSMs) tool in Unity. The only thing I am still concerned about is the actual research question that I should pose. I was kinda hoping that the more experienced game designers out there might know. Update: What about reducing the use of visual programming to graphically designing FSM-Action-Transition flows, which can then be attached to game entities (very much like http://playmaker.com does it)?

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• Game ideas for a platformer

  - by user5925

  I have created a platformer which currently has the features listed below. I would greatly appreciate any further ideas which I could implement! (I don't play a lot of games which is why I require help) -- Walking/jumping/movement -- player can shoot lasers -- enemies also walk, fly, and shoot lasers -- water (you can swim in this) -- mud (slows you down on contact, and stops you from jumping) -- ladders -- damage when falling from a large height, unless falling into water -- moving platforms -- springboards (jumping on them shoot you into the air) -- growing platforms (allow you to reach new places) -- key and door system -- gem and coin collection system

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• Which is a better practice - helper methods as instance or static?

  - by Ilian Pinzon

  This question is subjective but I was just curious how most programmers approach this. The sample below is in pseudo-C# but this should apply to Java, C++, and other OOP languages as well. Anyway, when writing helper methods in my classes, I tend to declare them as static and just pass the fields if the helper method needs them. For example, given the code below, I prefer to use Method Call #2. class Foo { Bar _bar; public void DoSomethingWithBar() { // Method Call #1. DoSomethingWithBarImpl(); // Method Call #2. DoSomethingWithBarImpl(_bar); } private void DoSomethingWithBarImpl() { _bar.DoSomething(); } private static void DoSomethingWithBarImpl(Bar bar) { bar.DoSomething(); } } My reason for doing this is that it makes it clear (to my eyes at least) that the helper method has a possible side-effect on other objects - even without reading its implementation. I find that I can quickly grok methods that use this practice and thus help me in debugging things. Which do you prefer to do in your own code and what are your reasons for doing so?

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• The danger of changing the domain of your portfolio

  - by Mervin

  So I have a online portfolio that is available at mervin-ux-portfolio.com but I am planning to change hosts since the current host I am hosting it with is hitting me with a very high yearly renewal rate. When I was inquiring about domain transfers ,,they told me that since I had not initiated the domain transfer within 14 days of the expiry of the domain ,they cannot do it immediately and it would take about two weeks to to release the domain name. Since I dont like the idea of my site being down for like 2 weeks ,I was wondering if I should start afresh with a new domain on a new host and what were the potential dangers of that ( I have the entire site backup,so creating a replica of the site on the new host wont be hard) I also wont be losing any business or work since I work full time currently but I was just wondering about the challenges in terms of getting my domain name back to the top of search results and basically getting it out there assuming I go the new domain name approach. I know this is strictly not an UX question but I was hoping people could give some suggestions on what I should do

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• What are some general guidelines for setting up an iOS project I will want to personally publish but sell in the future?

  - by RLH

  I have an idea for a personal iOS project that I would like to write and release to the iOS store. I'm the type of developer who enjoys developing and publishing. I want to write quality software and take care of my customers. Assuming that I wrote an application that had reasonable success, there is a fair chance that I would want to sell the ownership rights of the app to another party and I'd use the proceeds to develop my next personal project which, in turn, I'd probably want to sell in the future. With that said, what are some general guidelines for creating, making and publishing an iOS project that I will eventually want to transfer to another company/developer? I know this is a bit of a broad question, but I request that the given advice be a general list of tips, suggestions and pitfalls to avoid. If any particular bullet point on your list needs more explanation, I'll either search for the answer or post a new question specific to that requirement. Thank you! Note Regarding this Question I am posting this question on Programmers.SO because I think that this is an issue of software architecting, seeking advice for setting a new application project and publishing a project to the Apple iOS store-- all within the requirements for questions on this site.

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• Architecture Best Practice (MVC): Repository Returns Object & Object Member Accessed Directly or Repository Returns Object Member

  - by coderabbi

  Architecturally speaking, which is the preferable approach (and why)? $validation_date = $users_repository->getUser($user_id)->validation_date; Seems to violate Law of Demeter by accessing member of object returned by method call Seems to violate Encapsulation by accessing object member directly $validation_date = $users_repository->getUserValidationDate($user_id); Seems to violate Single Responsibility Principle as $users_repository no longer just returns User objects

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• What is the difference between all-static-methods and applying a singleton pattern?

  - by shahensha

  I am making a database to store information about the users of my website (I am using stuts2 and hence Java EE technology). For the database I'll be making a DBManager. Should I apply singleton pattern here or rather make all it's methods static? I will be using this DBManager for basic things like adding, deleting and updating User profiles. Along with it, I'll use for all other querying purposes, for instance to find out whether a username already exists and to get all users for administrative purposes and stuff like that. My questions What is the benefit of singleton pattern? Which thing is most apt here? All static methods or a singleton pattern? Please compare both of them. regards shahensha P.S. The database is bigger than this. Here I am talking only about the tables which I'll be using for storing User Information.

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• Techniques for separating game model from presentation

  - by liortal

  I am creating a simple 2D game using XNA. The elements that make up the game world are what i refer to as the "model". For instance, in a board game, i would have a GameBoard class that stores information about the board. This information could be things such as: Location Size Details about cells on the board (occupied/not occupied) etc This object should either know how to draw itself, or describe how to draw itself to some other entity (renderer) in order to be displayed. I believe that since the board only contains the data+logic for things regarding it or cells on it, it should not provide the logic of how to draw things (separation of concerns). How can i achieve a good partitioning and easily allow some other entity to draw it properly? My motivations for doing so are: Allow multiple "implementations" of presentation for a single game entity Easier porting to other environments where the presentation code is not available (for example - porting my code to Unity or other game technology that does not rely on XNA).

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• Dealing with bad/incomplete/unclear specifications?

  - by eagerMoose

  I'm working on a project where our dev team gets the specifications from the business part of the company. Both the business management and the IT management require estimates and deadline projections, as they should. The good thing is that estimates are mostly made by the actual developers who get to do the required features. The bad thing is that the specifications are usually either too simple (it turns out you're left with a lot of question marks over your head because a lot of information seems to be missing) or too complex(up to the point that you can't even visualize where everything would "fit" in the app). More often than not, the business part of the specs are either incomplete or unaware of what can and can't be done (given the previously implemented business logic). Dev team is given about a day per new spec to give an estimate and we do try to clear uncertainties, usually by meeting up with whoever did the spec. Most of the times it turns out that spec writers haven't really thought everything through, and it's usually only when we start designing and developing that we end up in trouble, as a lot of the spec seems to have holes. How do you deal with this? Are you generous on estimates in advance?

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• Where should the database and mail parameters be stored in a Symfony2 app?

  - by Songo

  In the default folder structure for a Symfony2 project the database and mail server credentials are stored in parameters.yml file inside ProjectRoot/app/config/parameters.yml with these default values: parameters: database_driver: pdo_mysql database_host: 127.0.0.1 database_port: null database_name: symfony database_user: root database_password: null mailer_transport: smtp mailer_host: 127.0.0.1 mailer_user: null mailer_password: null locale: en secret: ThisTokenIsNotSoSecretChangeIt During development we change these parameters to the development database and mail servers. This file is checked into the source code repository. The problem is when we want to deploy to the production server. We are thinking about automating the deployment process by checking out the project from git and deploy it to the production server. The thing is that our project manager has to manually update these parameters after each update. The production database and mail servers parameters are confidential and only our project manager knows them. I need a way to automate this step and suggestion on where to store the production parameters until they are applied?

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• Use Case Diagrams - should I create a diagram just for a view business rule?

  - by Periback

  I'm modeling a UCD where I have two actors ( a content producer and a developer).. the content producer is going to create and specify details of a storyboard functionality, and the other actor (developer) will only be able to view this storyboard ( he'll log in the application and read the storyboard to start developing what it says, outside the application..) I'm working on the specification of this storyboard functionality and I'd like to know it would be like a best-practice if I describe something like " actor- developer", "UCD - read scenes of storyboard" . This is the specification of an application I developed for my thesis and they asked me to add some specification...

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• How to properly URL/domain forward

  - by NRGdallas

  No clue on a title for this, someone feel free to suggest an edit. I have a client that has a website. He owns around 200 domains, and wants each domain to contain content from the main website. The header, footer, and navigation bars will remain the same for each domain, but the actual page content will vary (obviously duplicate content issues, open to suggestions) He wants each individual page to be its own separate domain, rather than a url within the main domain. (page1.com page2.com etc - NOT site.com/page1.html, however the file is actually hosted at site.com/page1.html - all links will direct to site.com/whatever accordingly) What would be the best place to start reading / learning on how to do this, and what concerns/considerations should be taken into mind?

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• How to structure my GUI agnostic project?

  - by Nezreli

  I have a project which loads from database a XML file which defines a form for some user. XML is transformed into a collection of objects whose classes derive from single parent. Something like Control - EditControl - TextBox Control - ContainterControl - Panel Those classes are responsible for creation of GUI controls for three different enviroments: WinForms, DevExpress XtraReports and WebForms. All three frameworks share mostly the same control tree and have a common single parent (Windows.Forms.Control, XrControl and WebControl). So, how to do it? Solution a) Control class has abstract methods Control CreateWinControl(); XrControl CreateXtraControl(); WebControl CreateWebControl(); This could work but the project has to reference all three frameworks and the classes are going to be fat with methods which would support all three implementations. Solution b) Each framework implementation is done in separate projects and have the exact class tree like the Core project. All three implementations are connected using a interface to the Core class. This seems clean but I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around it. Does anyone have a simpler solution or a suggestion how should I approach this task?

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• DOT implementation

  - by Denis Ermolin

  I have some DOT(damage over time) implementation problems. My game runs on 30 FPS speed. Current implementation is: let's say hero cast spell which make 1 damage per second. So on every frame i do (pseudo code): damage_done = getRandomDamage() * delta_time; I accumulate damage and when it becomes more then 0 then subtract rounded damage from current health and so on. With 30 FPS and 1 DPS it will be 1/33 = 0.05... We know that floats a not precise enough to sum 30 circulating decimals and have exact 1 in the end. But HP is discrete value and that's why 1 DPS will not have 1 damage after 1 second because value will be 0.9999..... It's not so big deal when you have 100000 DPS - +/- 1 damage will not be noticeable. But if i have 1, 5 DPS? How modern RPG's implemented DOT's?

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• Any technical references for game-oriented icons and symbols?

  - by willc2

  To make localizing easier, I'm using icons to show in-game information like achievements and bonuses. Coming up with good designs isn't easy, especially when it has to be integrated into the rest of the game's art style. Can I do better than looking at some random selection of existing games? Are there any reference books or sites that cover game graphics specifically? I'm looking for more theory and best-practices rather than pre-made graphics.

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• Making Modular, Reusable and Loosely Coupled MVC Components

  - by Dusan

  I am building MVC3 application and need some general guidelines on how to manage complex client side interaction between my components. Here is my definition of one component in general way: Component which has it's own controller, model and view. All of the component's logic is placed inside these three parts and component is sort of "standalone", it contains it's own form, data needed for interaction, updates itself with Ajax and so on. Beside this internal logic and behavior of the component, it needs to be able to "Talk" to the outside world. By this I mean it should provide data and events (sort of) so when this component gets embedded in pages can notify other components which then can update based on the current state and data. I have an idea to use client ViewModel (in java-script) which would hookup all relevant components on page and control interaction between them. This would make components reusable, modular - independent of the context in which they are used. How would you do this, I am a bit stuck as I do not know if this is a good approach and there is a technical possibility to achieve this using java-script/jquery. The confusing part is about update via Ajax, how to ensure that component is properly linked to ViewModel when component is Ajax updated (or even worse removed or dynamically added). Also, how should this ViewModel be constructed and which technicalities to use here and in components to work as synergy??? On the web, I have found the various examples of the similar approach, but they are oversimplified (even for dummies) or over specific and do not provide valuable resource or general solution for this kind of implementation. If you have some serious examples it would be, also, very helpful. Note: My aim is to make interactions between many components on the same page simpler and more robust and elegant.

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• What are the common character animation techniques used in tile based hack&slash games?

  - by Gorky

  I wonder what kind of animation techniques are used for creature and character animation in modern hack&slash type tile based games? Keyframing for different actions may be one option. Skeletal framing may be another. But how about the physics? Or do they use a totally hybrid system of inverse kinematics supported with a skeleton,physics and mixed with interpolated keyframing for more realistic animations? If so, how and for what reasons? I can think of many different solutions for the issues below but I wonder what's used and best suited for issues like: Walking or moving on an uneven terrain Combat interaction, combat physics and collisions Attaching rigid items to character and their iteractions ih physics world Soft body dynamics like hair, vegetation, clothes and fabric in line with animations and iteractions.

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• Is this an acceptable approach to undo/redo in Python?

  - by Codemonkey

  I'm making an application (wxPython) to process some data from Excel documents. I want the user to be able to undo and redo actions, even gigantic actions like processing the contents of 10 000 cells simultaneously. I Googled the topic, and all the solutions I could find involves a lot of black magic or is overly complicated. Here is how I imagine my simple undo/redo scheme. I write two classes - one called ActionStack and an abstract one called Action. Every "undoable" operation must be a subclass of Action and define the methods do and undo. The Action subclass is passed the instance of the "document", or data model, and is responsible for committing the operation and remembering how to undo the change. Now, every document is associated with an instance of the ActionStack. The ActionStack maintains a stack of actions (surprise!). Every time actions are undone and new actions are performed, all undone actions are removed for ever. The ActionStack will also automatically remove the oldest Action when the stack reaches the configurable maximum amount. I imagine the workflow would produce code looking something like this: class TableDocument(object): def __init__(self, table): self.table = table self.action_stack = ActionStack(history_limit=50) # ... def delete_cells(self, cells): self.action_stack.push( DeleteAction(self, cells) ) def add_column(self, index, name=''): self.action_stack.push( AddColumnAction(self, index, name) ) # ... def undo(self, count=1): self.action_stack.undo(count) def redo(self, count=1): self.action_stack.redo(count) Given that none of the methods I've found are this simple, I thought I'd get the experts' opinion before I go ahead with this plan. More specifically, what I'm wondering about is - are there any glaring holes in this plan that I'm not seeing?

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• What browser do you build in? [closed]

  - by Ryan

  Lately I have been using Chrome, but I am starting to think I should use FF. What are the advantages and disadvantages of the various mainstream browsers (with an emphasis on Chrome and FF) when doing web development? Is it easier to start with clean code for a relatively conforming browser, and later add hacks/workarounds for acceptable display with less conforming browsers, or is it easier to work with a variety of browsers from the beginning, so we never have a page that's completely unacceptable with, for example, IE 6?

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• Are there any concerns with using a static read-only unit of work so that it behaves like a cache?

  - by Rowan Freeman

  Related question: How do I cache data that rarely changes? I'm making an ASP.NET MVC4 application. On every request the security details about the user will need to be checked with the area/controller/action that they are accessing to see if they are allowed to view it. The security information is stored in the database. For example: User Permission UserPermission Action ActionPermission A "Permission" is a token that is applied to an MVC action to indicate that the token is required in order to access the action. Once a user is given the permission (via the UserPermission table) then they have the token and can therefore access the action. I've been looking in to how to cache this data (since it rarely changes) so that I'm only querying in-memory data and not hitting a database (which is a considerable performance hit at the moment). I've tried storing things in lists, using a caching provider but I either run in to problems or performance doesn't improve. One problem that I constantly run in to is that I'm using lazy loading and dynamic proxies with EntityFramework. This means that even if I ToList() everything and store them somewhere static, the relationships are never populated. For example, User.Permissions is an ICollection but it's always null. I don't want to Include() everything because I'm trying to keep things simple and generic (and easy to modify). One thing I know is that an EntityFramework DbContext is a unit of work that acts with 1st-level caching. That is, for the duration of the unit of work, everything that is accessed is cached in memory. I want to create a read-only DbContext that will exist indefinitely and will only be used to read about permission data. Upon testing this it worked perfectly; my page load times went from 200ms+ to 20ms. I can easily force the data to refresh at certain intervals or simply leave it to refresh when the application pool is recycled. Basically it will behave like a cache. Note that the rest of the application will interact with other contexts that exist per request as normal. Is there any disadvantage to this approach? Could I be doing something different?

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• Share Mulitple Classes as one dll or a lib with Mulitple Projects

  - by JNL

  Currently I have some shared class files(.cpp and .h) which I include them in around 20 Projects. Currently I have to include them in all of the projects. So if I get some business requirments and I change some of the shared(.cpp or .h) files I have to include them in all the 20 Projects which is kind of tedious. Is there a way where I can create a shared dll or library and include it all of my Projects. So if I have to change it, I just have to change it once and then just Add Reference to include that dll or library which contains all the shared(.cpp, .h) files. Any help/recommendations regarding the same, will be highly appreciated. I am using VS2012 for VC++.

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• Designing a simple snake A.I

  - by DillPixel

  I've looked at some stuff online regarding this specific topic, and a lot of the info that I read involved graphs and path finding. I really don't want to get involved in something too complex & out of my level, and also I don't need my snake to be that intelligent (it will be a large board with the snake not growing in size on every munch). How could you structure a simpler AI for the snake that gets the job done relatively well? I would be able to get the snake to move towards the food item correctly, but my issue is that I'm not sure how to deal with the snake colliding with itself. Say the snake has a look ahead, and it finds that its tail is in the way, it could change direction, but what happens next? Any ideas on how to tackle this? Should the snake build an instruction set from every square, or should it think on the go?

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• High resolution graphical representation of the Earth's surface

  - by Simon

  I've got a library, which I inherited, which presents a zoomable representation of the Earth. It's a Mercator projection and is constructed from triangles, the properties of which are stored in binary files. The surface is built up, for any given view port, by drawing these triangles in an overlapping fashion to produce the image. The definition of each triangle is the lat/long of the vertices. It looks OK at low values of zoom but looks progressively more ragged as the user zooms in. The view ports are primarily referenced though a rectangle of lat/long co-ordinates. I'd like to replace it with a better quality approach. The problem is, I don't know where to begin researching the options as I am not familiar either with the projections needed nor the graphics techniques used to render them. For example, I imagine that I could acquire high resolution images, say Mercator projections although I'm open to anything, break them into tiles and somehow wrap them onto a graphical representation of a sphere. I'm not asking for "how do I", more where should I begin to understand what might be involved and the techniques I will need to learn. I am most grateful for any "Earth rendering 101" pointers folks might have.

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• Programming Language vs. Game Engine [on hold]

  - by hunteroatway17

  I understand that this question has been asked multiple times before. I am just asking this quick and simple question. I have been learning programming in C#, Java and C++ for the past 6 months; Just experimenting with each. I think that C++ is the one that I like most. What I would like to know and am wondering about is should I learn a programming language and use a 2D framework like Allegro; Or should I learn Unity and make 2D games in that because it is probably faster and easier. I want to learn something that I can get pretty good at, seeing as I am pursuing a career in indie game development. I also have a programmer's mind set and I am a left brain thinker so learning a language is not a issue. I just want to best and most future proof choice. Thanks.

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• How should I structure my database to gain maximum efficiently in this scenario?

  - by Bob Jansen

  I'm developing a PHP script that analyzes the web traffic of my clients websites. By placing a link to a javascript on the clients website (think of Google Analyses), my script harvests information like: the visitors IP address, reference link, current page link, user agent, etc. Now my clients can view these statistics via a control panel that I have build. These clients can also adjust profile settings, set firewall rules, create support tickets and pay invoices. Currently all the the traffic is stored in one table. You can imagine that this tabel would become very large as some my clients receive thousands of pageviews per day. Furthermore, all the traffic data of each client would be stored in the same table, creating a mess. This is the same for the firewall rules currently, and the invoice and support system. I'm looking for way to structure my database in a more organized way to hold large amounts of data of multiple users. This is the first project that I'm developing that deals with so much data, and would like to hear suggestions and tips. I was thinking of using multiple databases to structure the data. The main database will store users data (email,pass,id,etc) admin/website settings. Than each client will have an unique database labeled prefix_userid, which carry tables holding their traffic, invoice, and support ticket data. Would this be a solution, and would it slow down or speed up overall performances (that is spreading the data over muliple databases). I have a solid VPS, but would like to safe and be as effient as possible.

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