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• Why are Javascript for/in loops so verbose?

  - by Matthew Scharley

  I'm trying to understand the reasoning behind why the language designers would make the for (.. in ..) loops so verbose. For example: for (var x in Drupal.settings.module.stuff) { alert("Index: " + x + "\nValue: " + Drupal.settings.module.stuff[x]); } It makes trying to loop over anything semi-complex like the above a real pain as you either have to alias the value locally inside the loop yourself, or deal with long access calls. This is especially painful if you have two to three nested loops. I'm assuming there is a reason why they would do things this way, but I'm struggling with the reasoning.

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• Are there specific legal issues for web developers working on sex dating sites?

  - by YumYumYum

  Say I have created many ordinary websites which are not related to any dating/sexual content. Are the rules and regulations for a developer the same when making a sex-related dating site? I'm talking about a site where people meet together and get to know each other, with the intent of having a sexual relationship (you know what I mean), also featuring webcam sex, but not explicitly a porno site. Do such sites have any special legal issues for developers compared with non-sexual/dating sites?

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• Microkernel architectural pattern and applicability for business applications

  - by Pangea

  We are in the business of building customizable web applications. We have the core team that provides what we call as the core platform (provides services like security, billing etc.) on top of which core products are built. These core products are industry specific solutions like telecom, utility etc. These core products are later used by other teams to build customer specific solutions in a particular industry. Until now we have a loose separation between platform and core product. The customer specific solutions are build by customizing 20-40% of the core offering and re-packaging. The core-platform and core products are released together as monolithic apps (ear). I am looking to improvise the current situation so that there is a cleaner separation on these 3. This allows us to have evolve each of these 3 separately etc. I've read through the Mircokernel architecture and kind of felt that I can take apply the principles in my context. But most of my reading about this pattern is always in the context of operating systems or application servers etc. I am wondering if there are any examples on how that pattern was used for architecting business applications. Or you could provide some insight on how to apply that pattern to my problem.

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• How to Detect Sprites in a SpriteSheet?

  - by IAE

  I'm currently writing a Sprite Sheet Unpacker such as Alferds Spritesheet Unpacker. Now, before this is sent to gamedev, this isn't necessarily about games. I would like to know how to detect a sprite within a spriitesheet, or more abstactly, a shape inside of an image. Given this sprite sheet: I want to detect and extract all individual sprites. I've followed the algorithm detailed in Alferd's Blog Post which goes like: Determine predominant color and dub it the BackgroundColor Iterate over each pixel and check ColorAtXY == BackgroundColor If false, we've found a sprite. Keep going right until we find a BackgroundColor again, backtrack one, go down and repeat until a BackgroundColor is reached. Create a box from location to ending location. Repeat this until all sprites are boxed up. Combined overlapping boxes (or within a very short distance) The resulting non-overlapping boxes should contain the sprite. This implementation is fine, especially for small sprite sheets. However, I find the performance too poor for larger sprite sheets and I would like to know what algorithms or techniques can be leveraged to increase the finding of sprites. A second implementation I considered, but have not tested yet, is to find the first pixel, then use a backtracking algorithm to find every connected pixel. This should find a contiguous sprite (breaks down if the sprite is something like an explosion where particles are no longer part of the main sprite). The cool thing is that I can immediately remove a detected sprite from the sprite sheet. Any other suggestions?

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• What to include in metadata?

  - by shyam

  I'm wondering if there are any general guidelines or best practices regarding when to split data into a metadata format, as oppose to directly embedding it within the data. (Specific example below). My understanding of metadata is that it describes data (without the need to actually look at the data), allowing for data to be quickly search/filtered for easy access. Let's take for example a simple 3D model format. The actual data file itself is a binary file containing vertices and colors. Things like creation date, modified data and author name would be things that describe the binary data, so I would say these belong as metadata (outside of the binary file). But what if the application had no need to search or filter by these fields? Would it be acceptable to embed these fields directly into the binary data itself? Could they be duplicated in both the binary data and the meta data, or would this be considered bad practice? What about more ambiguous fields such as the model name, which could be considered part of the data itself, but also as data describing the binary data?... How do you decide which data to embed in the actual binary file, as opposed to separating into a more flexible metadata format? Thanks!

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• Use adapter pattern for coupled classes

  - by kaiseroskilo

  I need (for unit testing purposes) to create adapters for external library classes.ExchangeService and ContactsFolder are Microsoft's implementations in its' EWS library. So I created my adapters that implement my interfaces, but it seems that contactsFolder has a dependency for ExchangeService in its' constructor. The problem is that I cannot instantiate ContactsFolderAdapter without somehow accessing the actual ExchangeService instance (I see only ExchangeServiceAdapter in scope). Is there a better pattern for this that retains the adapter classes? Or should I "infect" ExchangeServiceAdapter with some kind of GetActualObject method?

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• Moving camera, or camera with discrete "screens"?

  - by Jacob Millward

  I'm making a game with a friend, but having trouble deciding on a camera style. The basic idea for the game, is having a randomly generated 2-dimensional world, with settlements in it. These settlements would have access to different resources, and it would be the job of the player to create bridges and ladders and links between these villages so they can trade. The player would advance personally by getting better gear, fighting monsters and looking for materials in the world, in order to craft and trade them at the settlements. My friend wants to use an old-style camera, where the world is split into a discrete number of screens that the player moves between. Similar to early Zelda dungeons, or Knytt Stories. This is opposite to me, as I want a standard camera that follows the player around as I feel the split-screen style camera limits the game. Can anyone argue the case either way? We've hit a massive roadblock here and can't seem to get past it.

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• Is extensive documentation a code smell?

  - by Griffin

  Every library, open-source project, and SDK/API I've ever come across has come packaged with a (usually large) documentation file, and this seems contradictory to the wide-spread belief that good code needs little to no comments. What separates documentation from this programming methodology? a one to two page overview of a package seems reasonable, but elegant code combined with standard intelisense should have theoretically deprecated the practice of documentation by now IMO. I feel like companies only create detailed documentation and tutorials because its what they've always done. Why should developers have to constantly be searching through online documentation in order to learn how to do things when such information should be intrinsic to the classes, methods and namespaces?

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• Solid principles vs YAGNI

  - by KeesDijk

  When do the SOLID principles become YAGNI? As programmers we make trade-offs all the time, between complexity, maintainability, time to build and so forth. Amongst others, two of the smartest guidelines for making choices are in my mind the SOLID principles and YAGNI. If you don't need it; don't build it, and keep it clean. Now for example, when I watch the dimecast series on SOLID, I see it starts out as a fairly simple program, and ends up as a pretty complex one (end yes complexity is also in the eye of the beholder), but it still makes me wonder: when do SOLID principles turn into something you don't need? All solid principles are ways of working that enable use to make changes at a later stage. But what if the problem to solve is a pretty simple one and it's a throwaway application, then what? Or are the SOLID principles something that always apply? As asked in the comments: Solid Principles YAGNI

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• Recommended method towards making custom maps for a 2d game?

  - by Qasim

  I am planning on making a 2D game, however different from my last personal projects I want this one to have enhanced graphics, with custom-designed levels. My previous 2d platformers were tile-based, in which I made a map editor for to create levels. However, I am wondering the best way to implement custom designed maps? For say, some grass is a litter higher than others, flowers here and there, cool drawings and structures along the way, etc. instead of just the same old tiles over and over again. I am thinking but I just can't grasp the idea of how to implement it. I have seen it done in other games and am interested to see how they accomplish it, but can't get my hands on some source code. :(

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• How to approach big developer companies if I have a killer game idea? (for mobile devices)

  - by Balázs Dávid

  I have an idea for a game that has a potential, but I'm not a programmer. How to tell this to development companies without being my idea stolen? All I want from the company is first to watch a 3-minute long video presentation about my idea and if they see fantasy in it then we can talk about the details. I have already sent an e-mail to several big companies that have the expertise needed to code the game, they haven't answer me. Actually the idea is nothing fancy, no 3D, but fun and unique.

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• Is my Document Type Definition Still Up to Date?

  - by Sam

  Hi folks, currently all my php generated rich html webpages start with this line, which I have been adding to my tempaltes YEARS ago... <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> Am I still up to date and 2011-proof? or Should I be changing this into something fasterloaden/more agile/more flexible? I have heard of XHTML 1.1. When I remove this line all still works fine. Is it very much needed still? What are my alternatives? Thanks very much for your suggestions.

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• Will a polled event system cause lag for a server?

  - by Milo

  I'm using a library called ENet. It is a reliable UDP library. The way it works is a polled event system like this: ENetEvent event; /* Wait up to 1000 milliseconds for an event. */ while (enet_host_service (client, & event, 1000) > 0) { switch (event.type) { case ENET_EVENT_TYPE_CONNECT: printf ("A new client connected from %x:%u.\n", event.peer -> address.host, event.peer -> address.port); /* Store any relevant client information here. */ event.peer -> data = "Client information"; break; case ENET_EVENT_TYPE_RECEIVE: printf ("A packet of length %u containing %s was received from %s on channel %u.\n", event.packet -> dataLength, event.packet -> data, event.peer -> data, event.channelID); /* Clean up the packet now that we're done using it. */ enet_packet_destroy (event.packet); break; case ENET_EVENT_TYPE_DISCONNECT: printf ("%s disconected.\n", event.peer -> data); /* Reset the peer's client information. */ event.peer -> data = NULL; } } It waits up to 1000 milliseconds for an event. If I'm hosting say 75 event driven card games and a lobby on the same thread as this code, will it cause any problems. If my understanding is correct, the process will simply sleep until there is an event, when there is one, it will process the event then come back here where potentially 5 or so events have queued up since so enet_host_services would return right away and not cause lag. I have been advised not to use multiple threads, will that be alright like this? Thanks

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• Code and Slides: Techniques, Strategies, and Patterns for Structuring JavaScript Code

  - by dwahlin

  This presentation was given at the spring 2012 DevConnections conference in Las Vegas and is based on my Structuring JavaScript Code course from Pluralsight. The goal of the presentation is to show how closures combined with code patterns can be used to provide structure to JavaScript code and make it more re-useable, maintainable, and less susceptible to naming conflicts.  Topics covered include: Closures Using Object literals Namespaces The Prototype Pattern The Revealing Module Pattern The Revealing Prototype Pattern View more of my presentations here. Sample code from the presentation can be found here. Check out the full-length course on the topic at Pluralsight.com.

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• What makes game sound effects "good"?

  - by you786

  I'm making a small game, and I've found some free sound effects that I'd like to use. The issue is that I can't get the sound effects to sound like they "belong" in my game. I don't know what to look for that can make sound effects match the rest of my game style. I have some ideas on what affects the meshing of audio with graphics. For example, I have a feeling that the current SFX I may be too "realistic" for my graphical style, which is pretty cartoon-like. Also, is there a golden standard for what volume various SFX should be at? (for example, I am thinking that footsteps or other common sounds should be at barely audible volumes, while enemy deaths or something that is a "big deal" should be louder). I found a similar question about graphics, I'm looking for a similar response with sound effects.

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• How to manage own bots at the server?

  - by Nikolay Kuznetsov

  There is a game server and people can play in game rooms of 2, 3 or 4. When a client connects to server he can send a request specifying a number of people or range he wants to play with. One of this value is valid: {2-4, 2-3, 3-4, 2, 3, 4} So the server maintains 3 separate queues for game room with 2, 3 and 4 people. So we can denote queues as #2, #3 and #4. It work the following way. If a client sends request, 3-4, then two separate request are added to queues #3 and #4. If queue #3 now have 3 requests from different people then game room with 3 players is created, and all other requests from those players are removed from all queues. Right now not many people are online simultaneously, so they apply for a game wait for some time and quit because game does not start in a reasonable time. That's a simple bot for beginning has been developed. So there is a need to patch server code to run a bot, if some one requests a game, but humans are not online. Input: request from human {2-4, 2-3, 3-4, 2, 3, 4} Output: number of bots to run and time to wait for each before connecting, depending on queues state. The problem is that I don't know how to manage bots properly at the server? Example: #3 has 1 request and #4 has 1 request Request from user is {3,4} then server can add one bot to play game with 3 people or two bots to play game of 4. Example: #3 has 1 request and #4 has 2 requests Request from user is {3,4} then in each case just one bot is needed so game with 4 players is more preferrable.

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• Overloading interface buttons, what are the best practices?

  - by XMLforDummies

  Imagine you'll have always a button labeled "Continue" in the same position in your app's GUI. Would you rather make a single button instance that takes different actions depending on the current state? private State currentState = State.Step1; private ContinueButton_Click() { switch(currentState) { case State.Step1: DoThis(); currentState = State.Step2; break; case State.Step2: DoThat(); break; } } Or would you rather have something like this? public Form() { this.ContinueStep2Button.Visible = false; } private ContinueStep1Button_Click() { DoThis(); this.ContinueStep1Button.Visible = false; this.ContinueStep2Button.Visible = true; } private ContinueStep2Button_Click() { DoThat(); }

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• Reusable skill class structure

  - by Martino Wullems

  Hello, Pretty new to the whole game development scene, but I have experience in other branches of programming. Anyway, I was wondering what methods are used to implement a skill structure. I imagine a skill in itself would a class. I'm using actionscript 3 for this project btw. public class Skill { public var power:int; public var delay:int; public var cooldown:int; public function Attack(user:Mob, target:Mob) { } } } Each skill would extend the Skill class and add it's own functionality. public class Tackle extends Skill { public function Tackle(user:Mob, target:Mob) { super(user, target); executeAttack(); } private function executeAttack():void { //multiply user.strength with power etc //play attack animation } } } This where I get stuck. How do I termine which mobs has which skills? And which skill will they later be able to retrieve (by reaching a certain level etc). How does the player actually execute the skill and how is it determine if it hits. It's all very new to me so I have no idea where to begin. Any links would also be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

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• Best practices for using namespaces in C++.

  - by Dima

  I have read Uncle Bob's Clean Code a few months ago, and it has had a profound impact on the way I write code. Even if it seemed like he was repeating things that every programmer should know, putting them all together and putting them into practice does result in much cleaner code. In particular, I found breaking up large functions into many tiny functions, and breaking up large classes into many tiny classes to be incredibly useful. Now for the question. The book's examples are all in Java, while I have been working in C++ for the past several years. How would the ideas in Clean Code extend to the use of namespaces, which do not exist in Java? (Yes, I know about the Java packages, but it is not really the same.) Does it make sense to apply the idea of creating many tiny entities, each with a clearly define responsibility, to namespaces? Should a small group of related classes always be wrapped in a namespace? Is this the way to manage the complexity of having lots of tiny classes, or would the cost of managing lots of namespaces be prohibitive?

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• Naming a predicate: "precondition" or "precondition_is_met"?

  - by RexE

  In my web app framework, each page can have a precondition that needs to be satisfied before it can be displayed to the user. For example, if user 1 and user 2 are playing a back-and-forth role-playing game, user 2 needs to wait for user 1 to finish his turn before he can take his turn. Otherwise, the user is displayed a waiting page. This is implemented with a predicate: def precondition(self): return user_1.completed_turn The simplest name for this API is precondition, but this leads to code like if precondition(): ..., which is not really obvious. Seems to me like it is more accurate to call it precondition_is_met(), but not sure about that either. Is there a best practice for naming methods like this?

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• Which Game Engine to Use for an Angry Bird style game? [JAVA] [on hold]

  - by Arch1tect

  Our team is building an Angry Bird Style game, and we have only about ten days. The game is a little more complex than Angry Bird because there are two players, they each have a castle with pigs to protect(not destroy:)). And the goal is to destroy the other player's pigs. I wonder what Game Engine would help us finish this game most efficiently. We at least need a physics engine but I guess game engine is more helpful since it usually includes physics engine. Correct me if I'm wrong. (So I'm wondering which game engine I should use, if it's just physics engine, I'll use box2d) Networking may or may not be added later depend on time we have. Thanks in advance for any advice! EDIT: image looks small, I'll add one:

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• Can someone recommend an appriopriate drawing tablet that fits my needs?

  - by Syg

  I'm looking for something that can help me to easily create small hand drawn graphics and mock-ups digitalize technical drawings I would normally draw on a whiteboard. I'm a developer, not a designer, so it doesn't have to be high-end I guess. Just something to help make it easier, more fun and more productive to quickly draw mockups etc. After a quick search I landed on the wacom site, but it's hard for me to tell the difference between the offerings never having used something like this. Is small too small? is it annoying? Other suggestion are also welcome ofcourse. Thanx for any help you can give me

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• what making a good soundtrack for social game

  - by Maged

  there are many successful social games in Facebook and other social sites like brain buddies, who has the biggest brain and word challenge.both of them have a great soundtrack while playing and in the beginning of the game . my question is how to find a good soundtrack or what's i should look for to find a good soundtrack like this that's help to attract the user specially for games that need concentration ?

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• Map Library: Client-side or Server-side?

  - by Mahdi

  As I have already asked here, I have to implement a Multi-Platform Map application. Now I have Mapstraction as an option which uses Javascript to implement the desired functionality. My question is, "Is there any reason/benefit to implement such a library (let say, Adapters) in Server-side (in my case, PHP)?" As these maps are all based on Javascript, there is a big reason to use Javascript again to make the adapter also, so it would not be dependent to PHP, Java, or .NET for example. But is that all? I wish to hear your ideas and comments also. :)

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• Help with this optimization

  - by Milo

  Here is what I do: I have bitmaps which I draw into another bitmap. The coordinates are from the center of the bitmap, thus on a 256 by 256 bitmap, an object at 0.0,0.0 would be drawn at 128,128 on the bitmap. I also found the furthest extent and made the bitmap size 2 times the extent. So if the furthest extent is 200,200 pixels, then the bitmap's size is 400,400. Unfortunately this is a bit inefficient. If a bitmap needs to be drawn at 500,500 and the other one at 300,300, then the target bitmap only needs to be 200,200 in size. I cannot seem to find a correct way to draw in the components correctly with a reduced size. I figure out the target bitmap size like this: float AvatarComposite::getFloatWidth(float& remainder) const { float widest = 0.0f; float widestNeg = 0.0f; for(size_t i = 0; i < m_components.size(); ++i) { if(m_components[i].getSprite() == NULL) { continue; } float w = m_components[i].getX() + ( ((m_components[i].getSprite()->getWidth() / 2.0f) * m_components[i].getScale()) / getWidthToFloat()); float wn = m_components[i].getX() - ( ((m_components[i].getSprite()->getWidth() / 2.0f) * m_components[i].getScale()) / getWidthToFloat()); if(w > widest) { widest = w; } if(wn > widest) { widest = wn; } if(w < widestNeg) { widestNeg = w; } if(wn < widestNeg) { widestNeg = wn; } } remainder = (2 * widest) - (widest - widestNeg); return widest - widestNeg; } And here is how I position and draw the bitmaps: int dw = m_components[i].getSprite()->getWidth() * m_components[i].getScale(); int dh = m_components[i].getSprite()->getHeight() * m_components[i].getScale(); int cx = (getWidth() + (m_remainderX * getWidthToFloat())) / 2; int cy = (getHeight() + (m_remainderY * getHeightToFloat())) / 2; cx -= m_remainderX * getWidthToFloat(); cy -= m_remainderY * getHeightToFloat(); int dx = cx + (m_components[i].getX() * getWidthToFloat()) - (dw / 2); int dy = cy + (m_components[i].getY() * getHeightToFloat()) - (dh / 2); g->drawScaledSprite(m_components[i].getSprite(),0.0f,0.0f, m_components[i].getSprite()->getWidth(),m_components[i].getSprite()->getHeight(),dx,dy, dw,dh,0); I basically store the difference between the original 2 * longest extent bitmap and the new optimized one, then I translate by that much which I would think would cause me to draw correctly but then some of the components look cut off. Any insight would help. Thanks

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