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• What technologies are used for Game development now days?

  - by Monika Michael

  Whenever I ask a question about game development in an online forum I always get suggestions like learning line drawing algorithms, bit level image manipulation and video decompression etc. However looking at games like God of War 3, I find it hard to believe that these games could be developed using such low level techniques. The sheer awesomeness of such games defy any comprehensible(for me) programming methodology. Besides the gaming hardware is really a monster now days. So it stands to reason that the developers would work at a higher level of abstraction. What is the latest development methodology in the gaming industry? How is it that a team of 30-35 developers (of which most is management and marketing fluff) able to make such mind boggling games?

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• Access functions from user control without events?

  - by BornToCode

  I have an application made with usercontrols and a function on main form that removes the previous user controls and shows the desired usercontrol centered and tweaked: public void DisplayControl(UserControl uControl) I find it much easier to make this function static or access this function by reference from the user control, like this: MainForm mainform_functions = (MainForm)Parent; mainform_functions.DisplayControl(uc_a); You probably think it's a sin to access a function in mainform, from the usercontrol, however, raising an event seems much more complex in such case - I'll give a simple example - let's say I raise an event from usercontrol_A to show usercontrol_B on mainform, so I write this: uc_a.show_uc_b+= (s,e) => { usercontrol_B uc_b = new usercontrol_B(); DisplayControl(uc_b); }; Now what if I want usercontrol_B to also have an event to show usercontrol_C? now it would look like this: uc_a.show_uc_b+= (s,e) => { usercontrol_B uc_b = new usercontrol_B(); DisplayControl(uc_b); uc_b.show_uc_c += (s2,e2) => {usercontrol_C uc_c = new usercontrol_C(); DisplayControl(uc_c);} }; THIS LOOKS AWFUL! The code is much simpler and readable when you actually access the function from the usercontrol itself, therefore I came to the conclusion that in such case it's not so terrible if I break the rules and not use events for such general function, I also think that a readable usercontrol that you need to make small adjustments for another app is preferable than a 100% 'generic' one which makes my code look like a pile of mud. What is your opinion? Am I mistaken?

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• Better solution then simple factory method when concrete implementations have different attributes

  - by danip

  abstract class Animal { function eat() {..} function sleep() {..} function isSmart() } class Dog extends Animal { public $blnCanBark; function isSmart() { return $this->blnCanBark; } } class Cat extends Animal { public $blnCanJumpHigh; function isSmart() { return $this->blnCanJumpHigh; } } .. and so on up to 10-20 animals. Now I created a factory using simple factory method and try to create instances like this: class AnimalFactory { public static function create($strName) { switch($strName) { case 'Dog': return new Dog(); case 'Cat': return new Cat(); default: break; } } } The problem is I can't set the specific attributes like blnCanBark, blnCanJumpHigh in an efficient way. I can send all of them as extra params to create but this will not scale to more then a few classes. Also I can't break the inheritance because a lot of the basic functionality is the same. Is there a better pattern to solve this?

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• Method for spawning enemies according to player score and game time

  - by Sun

  I'm making a top-down shooter and want to scale the difficulty of the game according to what the score is and how much time has Passed. Along with this, I want to spawn enemies in different patterns and increase the intervals at which these enemies are shown. I'm going for a similar effect to Geometry wars. However, I can think of a to do this other than have multiple if-else statments, e.g. : if (score > 1000) { //spawn x amount if enemies } else if (score > 10000) { //spawn x amount of enemy type 1 & 2 } else if (score > 15000) { //spawn x amount of enemy type 1 & 2 & 3 } else if (score > 25000) { //spawn x amount of enemy type 1 & 2 & 3 //create patterns with enemies } ...etc What would be a better method of spawning enemies as I have described?

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• How best to keep bumbling, non-technical managers at bay and still deliver good work?

  - by Curious

  This question may be considered subjective (I got a warning) and be closed, but I will risk it, as I need some good advice/experience on this. I read the following at the 'About' page of Fog Creek Software, the company that Joel Spolsky founded and is CEO of: Back in the year 2000, the founders of Fog Creek, Joel Spolsky and Michael Pryor, were having trouble finding a place to work where programmers had decent working conditions and got an opportunity to do great work, without bumbling, non-technical managers getting in the way. Every high tech company claimed they wanted great programmers, but they wouldn’t put their money where their mouth was. It started with the physical environment (with dozens of cubicles jammed into a noisy, dark room, where the salespeople shouting on the phone make it impossible for developers to concentrate). But it went much deeper than that. Managers, terrified of change, treated any new idea as a bizarre virus to be quarantined. Napoleon-complex junior managers insisted that things be done exactly their way or you’re fired. Corporate Furniture Police writhed in agony when anyone taped up a movie poster in their cubicle. Disorganization was so rampant that even if the ideas were good, it would have been impossible to make a product out of them. Inexperienced managers practiced hit-and-run management, issuing stern orders on exactly how to do things without sticking around to see the farcical results of their fiats. And worst of all, the MBA-types in charge thought that coding was a support function, basically a fancy form of typing. A blunt truth about most of today's big software companies! Unfortunately not every developer is as gutsy (or lucky, may I say?) as Joel Spolsky! So my question is: How best to work with such managers, keep them at bay and still deliver great work?

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• What is the best way to diagrammatically represent a system threading architecture?

  - by thegreendroid

  I am yet to find the perfect way to diagrammatically represent the overall threading architecture for a system (using UML or otherwise). I am after a diagramming technique that would show all the threads in a given system and how they interact with each other. There are a few similar questions - Drawing Thread Interaction, UML Diagrams of Multithreaded Applications and Intuitive UML Approach to Depict Threads but they don't fully answer my question. What are some of the techniques that you've found useful to depict the overall threading architecture for a system?

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• Comparison of languages by usage type?

  - by Tom

  Does anyone know of a good place to go find comparisons of programming languages by the intended platform/usage? Basically, what I want to know, is of the more popular languages, which ones are meant for high level application development, low level system development, mobile development, web, etc. If there's a good listing out there already, I'm not finding it so far. Does anyone know of a place that would have this? Thanks.

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• Release/Change management - best aproach

  - by Bob Rivers

  I asked this question an year ago in StackOverflow and never got a good answer. Since Programmers seems to be a better place to ask it, I'll give it a try... What is the better way to work with release management? More specifically what would be the best way to release packages? For example, assuming that you have a relatively stable system, a good quality assurance process (QA), etc. How do you prefer to release new versions? Let's assume that we are talking about a mid to large "centralized" web system (no clients), in-house development. This system can be considered "vital" for a corporate operations. I have a tendency to prefer to do this by releasing packets at regular intervals, not greater than 1 to 3 months. During this period, I will include into the package,fixes and improvements and make the implementation in production environment only once. But I've seen some people who prefer to place small changes in production, but with a greater frequency. The claim of these people is that by doing so, it is easier to identify bugs that have gone through the process of QA: in a package with 10 changes and another with only 1, it is much easier to know what caused the problem in the package with just one change... What is the opinion came from you?

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• Write own messaging system vs. utilize existing ones

  - by A.Rashad

  We are trying to have our own startup, with a middleware application to glue small applications with enterprise legacy systems. for such middle-ware to function properly, we will need some sort of messaging system to make different components talk to each other in a reliable way. the alternatives are: use an existing messaging system, such as 0MQ, jBOSS, WebSphere MQ, etc. build our own messaging system the way we see the problem I am more biased towards the later option for the following reasons: to have more control over our final product to avoid any licensing problems later on to learn about messaging while writing the code to invent something new, that might cost us lots of $$$ if reused an existing system What would you do if in my shoes?

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• Great Example of a Simple Cost-Benefit Analysis

  - by BuckWoody

  I saw a post the other day that you should definitely go check out. It’s a cost/benefit decision, and although the author gives it a quick treatment and doesn’t take all points in the decision into account, you should focus on the process he follows. It’s a quick and simple example of the kind of thought process we should have as data professionals when we pick a server, a process, or application and even platform software. The key is to include more than just the price of a piece of software or hardware. You need to think about the “other” costs in the decision, and then make the right one. Sometimes the cheapest option is the cheapest, and other times, well, it isn’t. I’ve seen this played out not only in the decision to go with a certain selection, but in the options or editions it comes in. You have to put all of the decision points in the analysis to come up with the right answer, and you have to be able to explain your logic to your team and your company. This is the way you become a data professional, not just a DBA. You can check out the post here – it deals with Azure, but the point is the process, not Azure itself: http://blogs.msdn.com/eugeniop/archive/2010/03/19/windows-azure-guidance-a-simplistic-economic-analysis-of-a-expense-migration.aspx Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• What are good reasons to use explicit interface implementation for the sole purpose of hiding members?

  - by Nathanus

  During one of my studies into the intricacies of C#, I came across an interesting passage concerning explicit interface implementation. While this syntax is quite helpful when you need to resolve name clashes, you can use explicit interface implementation simply to hide more "advanced" members from the object level. The difference between allowing the use of object.method() or requiring the casting of ((Interface)object).method() seems like mean-spirited obfuscation to my inexperienced eyes. The text noted that this will hide the method from Intellisense at the object level, but why would you want to do that if it was not necessary to avoid name conflicts?

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• Is there a name for the Builder Pattern where the Builder is implemented via interfaces so certain parameters are required?

  - by Zipper

  So we implemented the builder pattern for most of our domain to help in understandability of what actually being passed to a constructor, and for the normal advantages that a builder gives. The one twist was that we exposed the builder through interfaces so we could chain required functions and unrequired functions to make sure that the correct parameters were passed. I was curious if there was an existing pattern like this. Example below: public class Foo { private int someThing; private int someThing2; private DateTime someThing3; private Foo(Builder builder) { this.someThing = builder.someThing; this.someThing2 = builder.someThing2; this.someThing3 = builder.someThing3; } public static RequiredSomething getBuilder() { return new Builder(); } public interface RequiredSomething { public RequiredDateTime withSomething (int value); } public interface RequiredDateTime { public OptionalParamters withDateTime (DateTime value); } public interface OptionalParamters { public OptionalParamters withSeomthing2 (int value); public Foo Build ();} public static class Builder implements RequiredSomething, RequiredDateTime, OptionalParamters { private int someThing; private int someThing2; private DateTime someThing3; public RequiredDateTime withSomething (int value) {someThing = value; return this;} public OptionalParamters withDateTime (int value) {someThing = value; return this;} public OptionalParamters withSeomthing2 (int value) {someThing = value; return this;} public Foo build(){return new Foo(this);} } } Example of how it's called: Foo foo = Foo.getBuilder().withSomething(1).withDateTime(DateTime.now()).build(); Foo foo2 = Foo.getBuilder().withSomething(1).withDateTime(DateTime.now()).withSomething2(3).build();

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• Breakout ball collision detection, bouncing against the walls

  - by Sri Harsha Chilakapati

  I'm currently trying to program a breakout game to distribute it as an example game for my own game engine. http://game-engine-for-java.googlecode.com/ But the problem here is that I can't get the bouncing condition working properly. Here's what I'm using. public void collision(GObject other){ if (other instanceof Bat || other instanceof Block){ bounce(); } else if (other instanceof Stone){ other.destroy(); bounce(); } //Breakout.HIT.play(); } And here's by bounce() method public void bounce(){ boolean left = false; boolean right = false; boolean up = false; boolean down = false; if (dx < 0) { left = true; } else if (dx > 0) { right = true; } if (dy < 0) { up = true; } else if (dy > 0) { down = true; } if (left && up) { dx = -dx; } if (left && down) { dy = -dy; } if (right && up) { dx = -dx; } if (right && down) { dy = -dy; } } The ball bounces the bat and blocks but when the block is on top of the ball, it won't bounce and moves upwards out of the game. What I'm missing? Is there anything to implement? Please help me.. Thanks

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• Confusion with Libgdx UI

  - by BrotherJack

  I've started with Libgdx and am currently stumbling about trying to understand how to set up the interface. I have generated the base projects in Eclipse ( < proj-name ,< proj-name -android, < proj-name -desktop, < proj-name -html), and can get the program to display a simple background, play a looping sound file, and draw a tank. I have been having some problems implementing the UI though. I want to make a collapsible interface bar at the bottom of the screen that would contain buttons for movement, and selecting weapons. I'm confused since there appears to be several ways of doing this and the documentation (or tutorials explaining it) tend to be obsolete. How would one go about this? Use a stage for the bar and actors for the widgets? I'm a little lost on this.

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• Real life example of an agile game development process outputs

  - by Ken

  I'm trying to learn about applying agile methodologies to game development. But seems to be impossible to find real life examples. There seems to be plenty of material discussing how 'in principle' agile is applied to a game. But that is NOT what I am looking for. I have the Keith book. What I AMlooking for are real EXAMPLES of things like; Initial user stories Final user stories (complete, covering the entire game requirements) Acceptance criteria Task list Sprint backlogs (before and after each sprint) The agile books seem to have some limited examples, many of which seem contrived or limited. In this era of open source software, there must be a publicly available documented example of the process applied to a real game. I am asking specifically about games because they are so different from normal applications. Regular applications are built to all users to complete specific tasks in order to get stuff done(book a room, print a report etc). People play games for much less tangible reasons, so I think the process is significantly different. [it doesn't have to be scrum, it could be any process, just needs to be a real life example game and be reasonably complete]

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• How do I explain the importance of NUNIT Test cases to my Colleagues [duplicate]

  - by JNL

  This question already has an answer here: How to explain the value of unit testing 6 answers I am currently working in Software Development for applications including lot of Mathematical Calculations. As a result there are lot of test cases that we need to consider. We donot have any NUNIT Test case system, I am wonderring how should I get the advantages of implementing the NUNIT testing in front of my colleagues and my boss. I am pretty sure, it would be of great help for our team. Any help regarding the same, will be higly appreciated.

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• Best Creational Pattern for loggers in a multi-threaded system?

  - by Dipan Mehta

  This is a follow up question on my past questions : Concurrency pattern of logger in multithreaded application As suggested by others, I am putting this question separately. As the learning from the last question. In a multi-threaded environment, the logger should be made thread safe and probably asynchronous (where in messages are queued while a background thread does writing releasing the requesting object thread). The logger could be signleton or it can be a per-group logger which is a generalization of the above. Now, the question that arise is how does logger should be assigned to the object? There are two options I can think of: 1. Object requesting for the logger: Should each of the object call some global API such as get_logger()? Such an API returns "the" singleton or the group logger. However, I feel this involves assumption about the Application environment to implement the logger -which I think is some kind of coupling. If the same object needs to be used by other application - this new application also need to implement such a method. 2. Assign logger through some known API The other alternative approach is to create a kind of virtual class which is implemented by application based on App's own structure and assign the object sometime in the constructor. This is more generalized method. Unfortunately, when there are so many objects - and rather a tree of objects passing on the logger objects to each level is quite messy. My question is there a better way to do this? If you need to pick any one of the above, which approach is would you pick and why? Other questions remain open about how to configure them: How do objects' names or ID are assigned so that will be used for printing on the log messages (as the module names) How do these objects find the appropriate properties (such as log levels, and other such parameters) In the first approach, the central API needs to deal with all this varieties. In the second approach - there needs to be additional work. Hence, I want to understand from the real experience of people, as to how to write logger effectively in such an environment.

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• What makes puzzle games addictive?

  - by Bryan Denny

  I'm currently developing a puzzle game for Android that is sort of along the lines of Alchemy. I was wondering what makes games like Alchemy or Bejeweled so addicting? How do I keep players interested in the game to want to play it over and over? Is it the scores? Level advancement? The challenges? What should I be doing to try and keep a player engaged with a puzzle game since they are often quite repetitive?

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• How to effectively gather info about how players play my HTML5 game?

  - by Bane

  I'm finishing another HTML5 game, and this time I'd like to do some spying business on the players... Mostly just basic stuff: when they are playing, for how long, what upgrades they are buying the most and so on. Now, my first idea was just to collect this information during the gameplay, and then have a Javascript function fire when they close the tab/browser, and said function would send it to my server via Socket.io. This, of course, wouldn't work, because anyone who takes a look at the code would realize it and could start sending a tonne of false info which would mess up my statistics. Questions: Is there a way to effectively do this? If yes, what kind of info should I be looking for, aside from stuff I already mentioned?

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• Infrastructure to effectively set up experiements and learn from them

  - by David

  Open-org.com is in the early stages of creating our first product, a place on the web, where one can ask lawyers questions at a fraction of their normal costs. An early stage front page can be found here. I got inspired by this video, which is recommended by Jeff Atwood, which talks about getting feedback faster, which is the reason for this question. The problem Needless to say, we want our conversion rates to be as high as possible. Therefore, we want to be able to rapidly set up a new experiment where we change something on the site (like moving an image slightly, rewriting a sentence etc.). We then want to present the modified page to a random subset of the users. After that we will compare the conversion rates of the experiment with another version. I could very well imagine that we want to run 10-100 experiments simultaneously and it would be nice to have features, where experiments that obviously have worse results will be ended before schedule. My question Does infrastructure to support the whole process exist? A short description of our infrastructure... We use EC2 and PHP and have a script to automatically start up new instances with all needed software. Still, starting up a new server for every experiment, seems like a bit of overkill, so I am wondering what other options exist. Btw. If you feel like working for Open-org.com, you can pick a task, and start working, or suggest a new task. All profits are given out to the contributors.

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• Easiest turn-base games you can think of?

  - by Edgar Miranda

  I'm planning to get into the process of programming multiplayer turn-base games. I would like to start off by making some of the simplest (yet fun) multiplayer turn-base games out there. What are some that you can provide? For example... Tic-Tac-Toe Rock-Paper-Scissors Checkers Some not so easy games... 4 in a row chess poker In terms of "ease" of implementation I'm mainly looking at logic. For example, Rock-Paper-Scissors has very simple logic, while chess has logic that is more complicated. So far I have the following: Hexagon Heroes of Might and Magic Nine Men's Morris Connect 4 21 (card game) Pen the Pig (The Dot game) Memory Match

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• How can I keep directories in sync

  - by Guillaume Boudreau

  I have a directory, dirA, that users can work in: they can create, modify, rename and delete files & sub-directores in dirA. I want to keep another directory, dirB, in sync with dirA. What I'd like, is a discussion on finding a working algorithm that would achieve the above, with the limitations listed below. Requirements: 1. Something asynchronous - I don't want to stop file operations in dirA while I work in dirB. 2. I can't assume that I can just blindly rsync dirA to dirB on regular interval - dirA could contain millions of files & directories, and terrabytes of data. Completely walking the dirA tree could take hours. Those two requirements makes this really difficult. Having it asynchronous means that when I start working on a specific file from dirA, it might have moved a lot since it appeared. And the second limitation means that I really need to watch dirA, and work on atomic file operations that I notice. Current (broken) implementation: 1. Log all file & directory operations in dirA. 2. Using a separate process, read that log, and 'repeat' all the logged operations in dirB. Why is it broken: echo 1 > dirA/file1 # Allow the 'log reader' process to create dirB/file1: log = "write dirA/file1"; action = cp dirA/file1 dirB/file1; result = OK echo 1 > dirA/file2 mv dirA/file1 dirA/file3 mv dirA/file2 dirA/file1 rm dirA/file3 # End result: file1 contains '1' # 'log reader' process starts working on the 4 above file operations: log = "write file2"; action = cp dirA/file2 dirB/file2; result = failed: there is no dirA/file2 log = "rename file1 file3"; action = mv dirB/file1 dirB/file3; result = OK log = "rename file2 file1"; action = mv dirB/file2 dirB/file1; result = failed: there is no dirB/file2 log = "delete file3"; action = rm dirB/file3; result = OK # End result in dirB: no more files! Another broken example: echo 1 > dirA/dir1/file1 mv dirA/dir1 dirA/dir2 # 'log reader' process starts working on the 2 above file operations: log = "write file1"; action = cp dirA/dir1/file1 dirB/dir1/file1; result = failed: there is no dirA/dir1/file1 log = "rename dir1 dir2"; action = mv dirB/dir1 dirB/dir2; result = failed: there is no dirA/dir1 # End result if dirB: nothing!

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• How can I reduce the amount of time it takes to fully regression test an application ready for release?

  - by DrLazer

  An app I work on is being developed with a modified version of scrum. If you are not familiar with scrum, it's just an alternative approach to a more traditional watefall model, where a series of features are worked on for a set amount of time known as a sprint. The app is written in C# and makes use of WPF. We use Visual C# 2010 Express edition as an IDE. If we work on a sprint and add in a few new features, but do not plan to release until a further sprint is complete, then regression testing is not an issue as such. We just test the new features and give the app a good once over. However, if a release is planned that our customers can download - a full regression test is factored in. In the past this wasn't a big deal, it took 3 or 4 days and the devs simply fix up any bugs found in the regression phase, but now, as the app is getting larger and larger and incorporating more and more features, the regression is spanning out for weeks. I am interested in any methods that people know of or use that can decrease this time. At the moment the only ideas I have are to either start writing Unit Tests, which I have never fully tried out in a commercial environment, or to research the possibilty of any UI Automation API's or tools that would allow me to write a program to perform a series of batch tests. I know literally nothing about the possibilities of UI automation so any information would be valuable. I don't know that much about Unit testing either, how complicated can the tests be? Is it possible to get Unit tests to use the UI? Are there any other methods I should consider? Thanks for reading, and for any advice in advance. Edit: Thanks for the information. Does anybody know of any alternatives to what has been mentioned so far (NUnit, RhinoMocks and CodedUI)?

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• Objected oriented approach to structure inside structure

  - by RishiD

  This is for C++ but should apply to any OO language. Trying to figure out the correct object oriented apporach to do the following (this is what I do in C). struct Container { enum type; union { TypeA a; TypeB b; }; } The type field determines if it TypeA or TypeB object. I am using this to handle responses coming back from a connection, they get parsed and get put into this structure and then based on the message type the appropriate fields get filled in. e.g. struct Container parseResponse(bufferIn, bufferLength); Is there an OO approach for doing this?

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• What Type of Options should be on the Game Settings Menu?

  - by A13X

  I have seen a post about the main menu options here: UI: Main Menu options for mobile games. What options should be listed? What do users want to see? But I want to know what kind of options should/need to be available on the settings screen. I am making a rather simple 2D game for Android, but really I haven't found many aspects that warrant an options button or a check box besides turning the sound and music on/off. I was thinking graphics settings but then again, how many apps really need graphics settings besides immersive 3D ones?

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