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• Google Sky Map Turns Your Android Phone into a Digital Telescope

  - by ETC

  Whether you’re an astronomy buff or just somebody looking for a perfect “look how sweet my smartphone is!’ application, Google’s Sky Map application for Android phones is a must have app. If all the application did was show you detailed views of the night sky it would be pretty awesome based on that alone. Where Sky Map dazzles, however, is in linking together the GPS and tilt-sensors on your phone to turn your phone into a sky-watching window. Whatever you point the phone at, the screen displays. Want to see what stars are directly above you despite it being the middle of the day? Point the phone up. Curious what people on the opposite side of the word are seeing? Point the phone down and take a peek right through the Earth. Check out the video below to see the application in action: Google Sky Map is free and works wherever Android does. Google Sky Map [AppBrain] Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7 How to Use Google Chrome as Your Default PDF Reader (the Easy Way) How To Remove People and Objects From Photographs In Photoshop Ask How-To Geek: How Can I Monitor My Bandwidth Usage? Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Here’s a Super Simple Trick to Defeating Fake Anti-Virus Malware The Citroen GT – An Awesome Video Game Car Brought to Life [Video] Final Man vs. Machine Round of Jeopardy Unfolds; Watson Dominates Give Chromium-Based Browser Desktop Notifications a Native System Look in Ubuntu Chrome Time Track Is a Simple Task Time Tracker Google Sky Map Turns Your Android Phone into a Digital Telescope Walking Through a Seaside Village Wallpaper

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• Resolution Independence in libGDX

  - by ashes999

  How do I make my libGDX game resolution/density independent? Is there a way to specify image sizes as "absolute" regardless of the underlying density? I'm making a very simple kids game; just a bunch of sprites displayed on-screen, and some text for menus (options menu primarily). What I want to know is: how do I make my sprites/fonts resolution independent? (I have wrapped them in my own classes to make things easier.) Since it's a simple kids game, I don't need to worry about the "playable area" of the game; I want to use as much of the screen space as possible. What I'm doing right now, which seems super incorrect, is to simply create images suitable for large resolutions, and then scale down (or rarely, up) to fit the screen size. This seems to work okay (in the desktop version), even with linear mapping on my textures, but the smaller resolutions look ugly. Also, this seems to fly in the face of Android's "device independent pixels" (DPs). Or maybe I'm missing something and libGDX already takes care of this somehow? What's the best way to tackle this? I found this link; is this a good way of solving the problem?: http://www.dandeliongamestudio.com/2011/09/12/android-fragmentation-density-independent-pixel-dip/ It mentions how to control the images, but it doesn't mention how to specify font/image sizes regardless of density.

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• Rasbperry Pi Mod Offers One Button Audiobook Playback

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  How do you design an audiobook player for an elderly book lover who doesn’t want to wrestle with new technology? Simple and with a single button interface is a great place to start. This clever and thoughtful build comes to us courtesy of tinker Michael Clemens. His wife’s grandmother, in her 90s, is visually impaired but still loves to take in books via audiobooks. In an effort to make modern MP3 audiobooks accessible to her, Michael built a dedicated audiobook reader based off Rasbperry Pi and programmed it to use a single button. The system boots, loads the audiobook it finds on the attached USB drive, and loads up its track position from memory. Press the button to resume play or, for a refresher, hold the button for four seconds to start the track over. While you may not be in the market for a one-button audiobook player for an elderly relative, the same simple design could be easily adopted, via new scripts, to another function. Hit up the link below to read more about the build. The One Button Audiobook Player [via Hack A Day] How To Play DVDs on Windows 8 6 Start Menu Replacements for Windows 8 What Is the Purpose of the “Do Not Cover This Hole” Hole on Hard Drives?

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• The Splendiferous Array of Culinary Tools [Infographic]

  - by ETC

  If your geeking out extends from the workbench to the kitchen counter, you’ll love this swanky infographic detailing the families of utensils in your kitchen drawers and cupboards. The poster showcases everything from scissors to strainers in a retro-style poster. If you can find a culinary tool in your kitchen that isn’t on the chart then you’re obviously a culinary wizard of the highest order. You can hit up the link below to check out the poster in full-size and downloadable glory or head over to the design company that created it here (and pre-order a printed copy for your kitchen). A Complete Guide to Your Kitchen Tools [Fast Co. Design via Design Sponge] Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7 How to Use Google Chrome as Your Default PDF Reader (the Easy Way) How To Remove People and Objects From Photographs In Photoshop Ask How-To Geek: How Can I Monitor My Bandwidth Usage? Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Here’s a Super Simple Trick to Defeating Fake Anti-Virus Malware The Splendiferous Array of Culinary Tools [Infographic] Add a Real-Time Earth Wallpaper App to Ubuntu with xplanetFX The Citroen GT – An Awesome Video Game Car Brought to Life [Video] Final Man vs. Machine Round of Jeopardy Unfolds; Watson Dominates Give Chromium-Based Browser Desktop Notifications a Native System Look in Ubuntu Chrome Time Track Is a Simple Task Time Tracker

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• Silverlight Cream for June 22, 2011 -- #1111

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Kunal Chowdhury, Beth Massi, Mike Taulty, Xpert360, and Erno de Weerd. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Silverlight, HTML and the WebBrowser Control for Offline Apps" Mike Taulty WP7: "Windows Phone 7 (Mango) Tutorial - 18 - Know about various Phone Tasks" Kunal Chowdhury LightSwitch: "How to Create a Simple Audit Trail (Change Log) in LightSwitch" Beth Massi From SilverlightCream.com: Windows Phone 7 (Mango) Tutorial - 18 - Know about various Phone Tasks Kunal Chowdhury has number 18 in his Mango series up and is discussing WP7.1 Microsoft.Phone.Tasks namespace classes How to Create a Simple Audit Trail (Change Log) in LightSwitch Beth Massi's latest is a demo of building an audit trail to track changes to records in LightSwitch Silverlight, HTML and the WebBrowser Control for Offline Apps Mike Taulty takes a good hard look at the WebBrowser control ... and all the permutations and gyrations. If you're using or going to use this control, you definitely want to read this article. PivotViewer Shorts Part 5: Invert Facet Category Selections Xpert360 has his 5th tutorial up on PivotViewer, covering the topic of inverting the facet category's selections... per reader request. Windows Phone 7: Drawing graphics for your application with Inkscape – Part III: Backgrounds Erno de Weerd has his 3rd tutorial in his series using Inkscape to draw graphics for your WP7 app... this one is on Background images, and staying within in the Marketplace guidelines of course Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• HTG Projects: Create a Pop Art Sci-Fi Poster with an Inkjet Printer

  - by Eric Z Goodnight

  Looking to decorate your house with some cool artwork? Grab some of your favorite Sci-Fi pics and some surprisingly simple tools, and create a Pop Art style poster in minutes. Through a simple process called “posterization,” you can reduce any graphic into a cool limited graphic with a similar look that Andy Warhol would have used when he created his famous Marylin Monroe image in the sixties. Pick a theme, grab some images, and get ready to decorate your home with a surprisingly easy and surprisingly cool poster any inkjet printer can produce Latest Features How-To Geek ETC HTG Projects: How to Create Your Own Custom Papercraft Toy How to Combine Rescue Disks to Create the Ultimate Windows Repair Disk What is Camera Raw, and Why Would a Professional Prefer it to JPG? The How-To Geek Guide to Audio Editing: The Basics How To Boot 10 Different Live CDs From 1 USB Flash Drive The 20 Best How-To Geek Linux Articles of 2010 Arctic Theme for Windows 7 Gives Your Desktop an Icy Touch Install LibreOffice via PPA and Receive Auto-Updates in Ubuntu Creative Portraits Peek Inside the Guts of Modern Electronics Scenic Winter Lane Wallpaper to Create a Relaxing Mood Access Your Web Apps Directly Using the Context Menu in Chrome The Deep – Awesome Use of Metal Objects as Deep Sea Creatures [Video]

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• Different methods of ammo resupply

  - by Chris Mantle

  I'm writing a small game at the moment. Presently, I have one or two design elements that aren't locked down yet, and I wanted to ask for input on one of these. For dramatic effect, the player's character in my game is immobilised, alone and has a supposedly limited amount of ammo for their weapons. However, I would like to periodically resupply the player with ammo (for the purpose of balancing the level of difficulty and to allow the player to continue if they're doing well). I'm trying to think of a method of resupply that's different to the more familiar strategies of making ammo magically appear or having the antagonists drop some when they die. I'd like to emphasise the notion of the player's isolation as much as possible, and finding a way of 'sneaking' ammo to the player without removing too much of that emphasis is basically what I'm trying to think of (it's definitely a valid argument that resupplying the player removes it anyway) I have considered a sort of simple in-game 'store', where kills get you points that you can spend on ammo for your favourite weapon. This might work well, and may also be good for supporting a simple micro-transaction business model within the game. However, you'd have to pause the game often to make purchases, which would interrupt the action, and it works against the notion of isolation. Any thoughts?

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• Case Management In-Depth: Cases & Case Activities Part 1 – Activity Scope by Mark Foster

  - by JuergenKress

  In the previous blog entry we looked at stakeholders and permissions, i.e. how we control interaction with the case and its artefacts. In this entry we’ll look at case activities, specifically how we decide their scope, in the next part we’ll look at how these activities relate to the over-arching case and how we can effectively visualize the relationship between the case and its activities. Case Activities As mentioned in an earlier blog entry, case activities can be created from: BPM processes Human Tasks Custom (Java Code) It is pretty obvious that we would use custom case activities when either: we already have existing code that we would like to form part of a case we cannot provide the necessary functionality with a BPM process or simple Human Task However, how do we determine what our BPM process as a case activity contains? What level of granularity? Take the following simple BPM process Read the full article here. SOA & BPM Partner Community For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Facebook Wiki Mix Forum Technorati Tags: ACM,BPM,Mark Foster,SOA Community,Oracle SOA,Oracle BPM,Community,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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• Give Chromium-Based Browser Desktop Notifications a Native System Look in Ubuntu

  - by Asian Angel

  Desktop notifications from Chromium-based browsers are an awesome feature, but they do not blend in well at all with the native system theming in Ubuntu. Now you can fix that small problem using the wonderful Chromify-OSD extension created by Marco Ceppi. Once you get the extension installed you can give it a quick test run using the link and information we have listed below. As you can see in the image above the new notification style looks absolutely wonderful. Chromify-OSD (Chrome Web Store) [via OMG! Ubuntu!] You can test the new look of the notifications for yourself using the following webpage. Keep in mind that the extension needs to be installed first before this will work though. Note: Enter the following image URL into the Icon Blank (http://www.rgraph.net/images/logo.png) or the URL for an appropriate image, otherwise the notification may not work properly during your test. Chromify Sample HTML5 Notification Test Page The wallpaper shown in the screenshot above can be downloaded here: anime sport [DesktopNexus] Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7 How to Use Google Chrome as Your Default PDF Reader (the Easy Way) How To Remove People and Objects From Photographs In Photoshop Ask How-To Geek: How Can I Monitor My Bandwidth Usage? Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Here’s a Super Simple Trick to Defeating Fake Anti-Virus Malware The Citroen GT – An Awesome Video Game Car Brought to Life [Video] Final Man vs. Machine Round of Jeopardy Unfolds; Watson Dominates Give Chromium-Based Browser Desktop Notifications a Native System Look in Ubuntu Chrome Time Track Is a Simple Task Time Tracker Google Sky Map Turns Your Android Phone into a Digital Telescope Walking Through a Seaside Village Wallpaper

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• Windows Live SkyDrive: How To Move or Copy Files Between Folders

  - by Gopinath

  Microsoft has very simple and easy to use interface to move files between folders in Windows Operating system. But their own cloud storage service,Windows Live SkyDrive, complicated these simple and daily used operations. We need a guide to figure out how to perform basic copy/move operations. Couple of years ago we wrote about moving files between folders in old version of SkyDrive but the guide does not hold good today as SkyDrive has gone through many user interface changes in the recent past. Today one of our readers asked us how to move/copy files in the latest version of SkyDrive and here are the steps to be followed 1. Login to your Windows Live SkyDrive 2. Select the file you want to Move or Copy by clicking on the information icon (see 2 in below image) 3. After selecting the information icon, expand Information section displayed on the right side panel to access Move and Copy options (see 3 in the below image). 4. To move the selected file to another folder, select Move option and Sky Drive will guide you through folder selection user interface for choosing the target folder. 5. Once you navigate to the target folder where you want to move the file click on “Move this file into <<Target Folder>>”. 6. You are done. Dear Microsoft, SkyDrive provides us tonnes of free storage but please make it’s user interface a bit better so that we don’t need to write guides to perform basic operations. Hope you listen to your customers. This article titled,Windows Live SkyDrive: How To Move or Copy Files Between Folders, was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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• best way to compute vertex normals from a Triangle's list

  - by nkint

  hi i'm a complete newbie in computergraphics so sorry if it's a stupid answer. i'm trying to make a simple 3d engine from scratch, more for educational purpose than for real use. i have a Surface object with inside a Triangle's list. For now i compute normals inside Triangle class, in this way: triangle.computeFaceNormals() { Vec3D u = v1.sub(v3) Vec3D v = v1.sub(v2) Vec3D normal = Vec3D.cross(u,v) normal.normalized() this.n1 = this.n2 = this.n3 = normal } and when building surface: t = new Triangle(v1,v2,v3).computeFaceNormals() surface.addTriangle(t) and i think this is the best way to do that.. isn't it? now.. what about for vertex normals? i've found this simple algorithm: flipcode vertex normal but.. hei this algorithm has.. exponential complexity? (if my memory doesn't fail my computer science background..) (bytheway.. it has 3 nested loops.. i don't think it's the best way to do it..) any suggestion?

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• Add a Real-Time Earth Wallpaper App to Ubuntu with xplanetFX

  - by Asian Angel

  Are you tired of the same old wallpaper on your Ubuntu desktop? Now you can go from blah to literally spacious, real-time styled views of Earth with the xplanetFX Wallpaper App for Linux. You can conveniently access the “file type” downloads, screenshots, and jump-to links all on the front page. For our example we downloaded the .deb setup file on our system. The setup file will need to download three additional files to complete the setup process. After those are downloaded all dependencies will have been met and you can complete the installation process. Once that is done you can find xplanetFX by going to the Accessories Section of your Ubuntu Menu. This is what the main control window looks like when you start xplanetFX for the first time. You should take a few moments to look through the various tabs and tweak the settings for items like location, screen resolution, timing, auto-start, etc. When you are done click on Execute and within a few moments your desktop will have a fresh new look! Note: It took ~30 seconds for the display to activate on our system. Have fun with xplanetFX! xplanetFX Homepage [via OMG! Ubuntu!] Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7 How to Use Google Chrome as Your Default PDF Reader (the Easy Way) How To Remove People and Objects From Photographs In Photoshop Ask How-To Geek: How Can I Monitor My Bandwidth Usage? Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Here’s a Super Simple Trick to Defeating Fake Anti-Virus Malware Add a Real-Time Earth Wallpaper App to Ubuntu with xplanetFX The Citroen GT – An Awesome Video Game Car Brought to Life [Video] Final Man vs. Machine Round of Jeopardy Unfolds; Watson Dominates Give Chromium-Based Browser Desktop Notifications a Native System Look in Ubuntu Chrome Time Track Is a Simple Task Time Tracker Google Sky Map Turns Your Android Phone into a Digital Telescope

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• C#/XNA get hardware mouse position

  - by Sunder

  I'm using C# and trying to get hardware mouse position. First thing I tryed was simple XNA functionality that is simple to use Vector2 position = new Vector2(Mouse.GetState().X, Mouse.GetState().Y); After that i do the drawing of mouse as well, and comparing to windows hardware mouse, this new mouse with xna provided coordinates is "slacking off". By that i mean, that it is behind by few frames. For example if game is runing at 600 fps, of curse it will be responsive, but at 60 fps software mouse delay is no longer acceptable. Therefore I tried using what I thought was a hardware mouse, [DllImport("user32.dll")] [return: MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.Bool)] public static extern bool GetCursorPos(out POINT lpPoint); but the result was exactly the same. I also tried geting Windows form cursor, and that was a dead end as well - worked, but with the same delay. Messing around with xna functionality: GraphicsDeviceManager.SynchronizeWithVerticalRetrace = true/false Game.IsFixedTimeStep = true/fale did change the delay time for somewhat obvious reasons, but the bottom line is that regardless it still was behind default Windows mouse. I'v seen in some games, that they provide option for hardware acelerated mouse, and in others(I think) it is already by default. Can anyone give some lead on how to achieve that.

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• 2D non-tile based map editor

  - by user5468

  I am currently developing a relatively simple 2D, topdown oriented adventure game for the iPhone and was wondering what would be the easiest way to create the maps for my game. I figured I would need some kind of visual editor that would give me immediate feedback and would allow me to place all objects in the world exactly where I want them. I could then load the saved representation of the world I create in the editor in my game. So, I am looking for a simple map editor that allows me to do this. All the objects in my game are simply textured rectangles build up from two triangles. All I need to be able to do is position different rectangles/objects in the map, and give them a texture. I am using texture atlases, so it would be useful to be able to assign portions of textures to the objects. I then need to be able to extract all the objects from the saved representation of my maps, together with the name/identifier of the texture(atlas) they use, and the area of the texture atlas. I have looked at some tile-based map editors like Tiled and Ogmo, but they don't seem to be able to do what I want. Any suggestions? EDIT: a more concrete example: something like the GameMaker level editor, but then with added export functionality in a handy format.

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• Creating packages in code - Workflow

  This is just a quick one prompted by a question on the SSIS Forum, how to programmatically add a precedence constraint (aka workflow) between two tasks. To keep the code simple I’ve actually used two Sequence containers which are often used as anchor points for a constraint. Very often this is when you have task that you wish to conditionally execute based on an expression. If it the first or only task in the package you need somewhere to anchor the constraint too, so you can then set the expression on it and control the flow of execution. Anyway, back to my code sample, here’s a quick screenshot of the finished article: Now for the code, which is actually pretty simple and hopefully the comments should explain exactly what is going on. Package package = new Package(); package.Name = "SequenceWorkflow"; // Add the two sequence containers to provide anchor points for the constraint // If you use tasks, it follows exactly the same pattern, they all derive from Executable Sequence sequence1 = package.Executables.Add("STOCK:Sequence") as Sequence; sequence1.Name = "SEQ Start"; Sequence sequence2 = package.Executables.Add("STOCK:Sequence") as Sequence; sequence2.Name = "SEQ End"; // Add the precedence constraint, here we use the package's constraint collection // as it hosts the two objects we want to constrain (link) // The default constraint is a basic On Success constraint just like in the designer PrecedenceConstraint constraint = package.PrecedenceConstraints.Add(sequence1, sequence2); // Change the settings to use a (dummy) expression only constraint.EvalOp = DTSPrecedenceEvalOp.Expression; constraint.Expression = "1 == 1";   The complete code file is available to download below. SequenceWorkflow.cs

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• Unity scaling instantiated GameObject at Start() doesn't "keep"

  - by Shivan Dragon

  I have a very simple scenario: A box-like Prefab which is imported from Blender automatically (I have the .blend file in the Assets folder). A script that has two public GameObject fields. In one I place the above prefab, and in the other I place a terrain object (which I've created in Unity's graphical view): public Collider terrain; public GameObject aStarCellHighlightPrefab; This script is attached to the camera. The idea is to have the Blender prefab instantiated, have the terrain set as its parent, and then scale said prefab instance up. I first did it like this, in the Start() method: void Start () { cursorPositionOnTerrain = new RaycastHit(); aStarCellHighlight = (GameObject)Instantiate(aStarCellHighlightPrefab, new Vector3(300,300,300), terrain.transform.rotation); aStarCellHighlight.name = "cellHighlight"; aStarCellHighlight.transform.parent = terrain.transform; aStarCellHighlight.transform.localScale = new Vector3(100,100,100); } and first thought it didn't work. However later I noticed that it did in fact work, in the sense where the scale was applied right at the start, but then right after the prefab instance came back to its initial scale. Putting the scale code in the Update() methods fixes it in the sense where now it stays scaled all the time: void Update () { aStarCellHighlight.transform.localScale = new Vector3(100,100,100); //... } However I've noticed that when I run this code, the object is first displayed without the scale being applied, and it takes about 5-10 seconds for the scale to happen. During this time everything works fine (like input and logging, etc). The scene is very simple, it's not like it has a lot of stuff to load or anything (there's a Ray cast from the camera on to the terrain, but that seems to happen without such delays). My (2 part) question is: Why doesn't it take the scale transform when I do it at the beginning in the Start() method. Why do I have to keep scaling it in the Update() method? Why does it take so long for the scale to "apply/show up".

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• Advice for programming a lobby for a network multiplayer game?

  - by Milo

  I'm working on learning network programming. I'm working on a simple card game. The basic idea is: Players enter the lobby Players see tables Players sit at an empty seat Once they sit, they do not need any information from the lobby, they see the card table and the data about the other players and so forth. I've programmed the server portion for the game itself. The clients connect to my server object and the server then receives and sends messages; quite simple. The tricky concepts for me are: What's a good way to run many tables at the same time? What's a good way to keep the lobby consistently updated for each person in the lobby (eg: MSG_TABLE_FILLED, 22) Ideally I'd like to have 1 server exe for all of this and to have to deal with multithreading as little as possible. I'm going to use the enet library. I was thinking that each time a game session starts, I push a new Game and I map the client IPs to that table, then I just route messages from those clients to that Game. Since enet supports channels I was thinking of using 2 channels per table, one for the game messages and one for in game chat. Would something like this work? Does anyone have any advice / design ideas for a game with a lobby and many tables? Is there a usual way this is done that I'm overlooking? Any conceptual ideas or even c/c++ code examples would be very helpful. Thanks

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• SQL SERVER – A Cool Trick – Restoring the Default SQL Server Management Studio – SSMS

  - by pinaldave

  “I do not know where my windows went!” “I just closed my object explorer and now I cannot find it.” “How do I get my original windows layout back in SQL Server Management Studio?” “How do I get the window which was there in left side back again?” Since last 2-3 years, every single day I receive more than 5 emails on SSMS and its layout. For the beginners it is very common to get confused when they attempt to change SQL Server Management Studio’s windows layout. They often change the layout and are not able to get the original layout back. Often people do not change the layout whole of their life, leading to uncomfortable feeling when they go to another’s computer where the windows are differently placed. Today’s blog post is dedicated all the beginners in SQL Server. It is extremely simple to reset the SSMS layout to default layout. The default layout involves 2 major things 1) Object Explorer on left side 2) Query Windows on right side (80% screen estate). Personally I am so used to this as well that if there is any other changes in the same, I do not enjoy working on the environment. Well, the solution to rest the SSMS layout is very simple. One can do it in split seconds.  To restore the default configuration, on the Window menu, click Reset Window Layout. Have you ever used this feature? Do you feel uncomfortable when SSMS layout is not in default state? How do you address this situation? Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Server Management Studio, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Need help understanding XNA 4.0 BoundingBox vs BoundingSphere Intersection

  - by nerdherd

  I am new to both game programming and XNA, so I apologize if I'm missing a simple concept or something. I have created a simple 3D game with a player and a crate and I'm working on getting my collision detection working properly. Right now I am using a BoundingSphere for my player, and a BoundingBox for the crate. For some reason, XNA only detects a collision when my player's sphere touches the front face of the crate. I'm rendering all the BoundingSpheres and BoundingBoxes as wire frames so I can see what's going on, and everything visually appears to be correct, but I can't figure out this behavior. I have tried these checks: playerSphere.Intersects(crate.getBoundingBox()) playerSphere.Contains(crate.getBoundingBox(), ContainmentType.Intersects) playerSphere.Contains(crate.getBoundingBox()) != ContainmentType.Disjoint But they all seem to produce the same behavior (in other words, they are only true when I hit the front face of the crate). The interesting thing is that when I use a BoundingSphere for my crate the collision is detected as I would expect, but of course this makes the edges less accurate. Any thoughts or ideas? Have I missed something about how BoundingSpheres and BoundingBoxes compute their intersections? I'd be happy to post more code or screenshots to clarify if needed. Thanks!

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• Making a C# w/ WPF multiple frame text / pseudo-calendar GUI application [closed]

  - by Gregor Samsa

  I am editing a recently asked question and making it specific, taking the advice of some people here. I would like to program of the following simple form: The user can produce X number of resizable frames (analogous to HTML frames). Each frame serves as a simple text editor, which you can type into and save the whole configuration including resized windows and text. The user should be able alternately "freeze" and present the information, and "unfreeze" and edit frames. I want to use C## with WPF, in Microsoft's Visual C#. I do not yet know this language. I am sure I can pick up the syntax, but I would like to ask about some general advice for how to structure such a program. I have never made a GUI program, let alone one that interfaces with a notepad or some basic text editor. Can someone either direct me to a good resource that will teach me how to do the above? Or outline the basic ingredients that such a program will require, keeping in mind that though I know some C and Python, I have no experience with GUIs or advanced programming generally? In particular I don't know how to incorporate this "text editor" aspect of the program, as well as the resizable frames I would greatly appreciate any help.

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• Bot strategy in an arena

  - by joulesm

  I am writing the player's behavior for an arena game, and I'm wondering if you could offer some strategies. I'm writing it in Python, but I'm just interested in the high level game play. Here are the game aspects: Arena is a circle of a given size. The arena's size shrinks every round to help break any ties. Players are much smaller circles, and can be on teams of 1 or 2 players. Players attack by colliding with other players, and based on the physics of the collision (speed of both players, angle), one could force another player out of the arena. Once a player is out of the arena, they are out of the game (for that round). The goal is to be on the only team with players left in the arena. All other players have been pushed (through collisions or mistakes) out of the arena. It is possible for there to be no winner if the last two players exit the arena at the same time. Once the player has been programmed, the game just runs. There is no human intervention in the game. I'm thinking it's easiest to implement a few simple programmatic rules for my player to follow. For example, stay close to center of the arena, attack opponents from the inner side of the arena, etc. Are there any good simple game strategies? Would adding a random aspect to the game help? For example, to avoid predictability by the other team or something. Thanks in advance.

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• Why doesn't Python have a "flatten" function for lists?

  - by Hubro

  Erlang and Ruby both come with functions for flattening arrays. It seems like such a simple and useful tool to add to a language. One could do this: >>> mess = [[1, [2]], 3, [[[4, 5]], 6]] >>> mess.flatten() [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6] Or even: >>> import itertools >>> mess = [[1, [2]], 3, [[[4, 5]], 6]] >>> list(itertools.flatten(mess)) [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6] Instead, in Python, one has to go through the trouble of writing a function for flattening arrays from scratch. This seems silly to me, flattening arrays is such a common thing to do. It's like having to write a custom function for concatenating two arrays. I have Googled this fruitlessly, so I'm asking here; is there a particular reason why a mature language like Python 3, which comes with a hundred thousand various batteries included, doesn't provide a simple method of flattening arrays? Has the idea of including such a function been discussed and rejected at some point?

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• Introducing NFakeMail

  - by João Angelo

  Ever had to resort to custom code to control emails sent by an application during integration and/or system testing? If you answered yes then you should definitely continue reading. NFakeMail makes it easier for developers to do integration/system testing on software that sends emails by providing a fake SMTP server. You’ll no longer have to manually validate the email sending process. It’s developed in C# and IronPython and targets the .NET 4.0 framework. With NFakeMail you can easily automate the testing of components that rely on sending mails while doing its job. Let’s take a look at some sample code, we start with a simple class containing a method that sends emails. class Notifier { public void Notify() { using (var smtpClient = new SmtpClient("localhost", 10025)) { smtpClient.Send("[email protected]", "[email protected]", "S1", "."); smtpClient.Send("[email protected]", "[email protected]", "S2", ".."); } } } Then to automate the tests for this method we only need to the following: [Test] public void Notify_T001() { using (var server = new FakeSmtpServer(10025)) { new Notifier().Notify(); // Verifies two messages are received in the next five seconds var messages = server.WaitForMessages(count: 2, timeout: 5000); // Verifies the message sender Debug.Assert(messages.All(m => m.From.Address == "[email protected]")); } } The created FakeSmtpServer instance will act as a simple SMTP server and intercept the messages sent by the Notifier class. It’s even possible to verify some fields of each intercepted message and by default all intercepted messages are saved to the file system in MIME format.

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• Should I be using Lua for game logic on mobile devices?

  - by Rob Ashton

  As above really, I'm writing an android based game in my spare time (android because it's free and I've no real aspirations to do anything commercial). The game logic comes from a very typical component based model whereby entities exist and have components attached to them and messages are sent to and fro in order to make things happen. Obviously the layer for actually performing that is thin, and if I were to write an iPhone version of this app, I'd have to re-write the renderer and core driver (of this component based system) in Objective C. The entities are just flat files determining the names of the components to be added, and the components themselves are simple, single-purpose objects containing the logic for the entity. Now, if I write all the logic for those components in Java, then I'd have to re-write them on Objective C if I decided to do an iPhone port. As the bulk of the application logic is contained within these components, they would, in an ideal world, be written in some platform-agnostic language/script/DSL which could then just be loaded into the app on whatever platform. I've been led to believe however that this is not an ideal world though, and that Lua performance etc on mobile devices still isn't up to scratch, that the overhead is too much and that I'd run into troubles later if I went down that route? Is this actually the case? Obviously this is just a hypothetical question, I'm happy writing them all in Java as it's simple and easy get things off the ground, but say I actually enjoy making this game (unlikely, given how much I'm currently disliking having to deal with all those different mobile devices) and I wanted to make a commercially viable game - would I use Lua or would I just take the hit when it came to porting and just re-write all the code?

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• Styles of games that work at low-resolution

  - by Brendan Long

  I'm taking a class on compilers, and the goal is to write a compiler for Meggy Jr devices (Arduino). The goal is just to make a simple compilers with loops and variables and stuff. Obviously, that's lame, so the "real goal" is to make an impressive game on the device. The problem is that it only has 64 pixels to work with (technically 72, but the top 8 are single-color and not part of the main display, so they're really only useful for displaying things like money). My problem is thinking of something to do on a device that small. It doesn't really matter if it's original, but it can't be something that's already available. My first idea was "snake", but that comes with the SDK. Same with a side-scrolling shooter. Remaining ideas include a tower defense game (hard to write, hard to control), an RPG (same), tetris (lame).. The problem is that all of the games I like require a high-resolution screen because they have a lot of text. Even a really simple game like nethack would be hard because each creature would be a single color. tl;dr What styles of games require a. No text; and b. Few enough objects that representing them each with a single color is acceptable? EDIT: To clarify, the display is 8x8 for a total of 64 pixels, not 64x64.

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