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• Looking for an ultra portable laptop for Ubuntu

  - by prule

  Hi, I'm in the market for a new laptop, and portability is important since I really only use it when I'm travelling to and from work - primarily for programming. I've been searching high and low for something like this: less than 2kg hopefully Intel i5 (but negotiable) NO dvd drive - just don't need it 4G ram either 7200rpm disk or SSD (ssd preferable) 13 inch screen not too pricey (MacBook Air is about $1700 AUD) available in Australia The Dell Inspiron 13z and Lenovo Edge 13 look close, but I've not found anything that says I'm not going to have a fight with compatibility. The MacBook Air 13 looks like the PERFECT hardware, but I'm afraid it will just be easier to run MacOS than Ubuntu. I want to stay with Ubuntu, but the MacBook Air is only $1700 so I'm in danger of becoming another apple fanboi if I can't find anything competitive. Going through all the sites looking for stuff has been a huge waste of time System 76 doesn't deliver to Australia http://www.linux-laptop.net/ and http://www.linlap.com/ are hard work and not confidence inspiring http://www.vgcomputing.com.au/nsintro.html is hard work again, searching for every laptop they say has excellent compatibility on the web to find out what spec it is http://zareason.com/shop/Strata-Pro-13.html (at $1345 USD) looks interesting, but I've got no idea how much I'll get stung by customs importing Dell Inspiron 13z with i5, 4G, 320 7200rpm disk, ATI Mobility Radeon HD5430 - 1GB, Dell Wireless 1501 802.11b/g/n @ $1200 AUD seems like the only competitor but is it compatible? (Dell support offer no opinion - as far as they are concerned they only have 2 models that are certified for ubuntu) Am I worrying too much about the compatibility? Should I just go with Dell? Or switch to MacOS? (It would be good to have a searchable database that had the full machine specs, and compatibility - I'm thinking about building something... but I don't have much time right now...) Thanks. UPDATE I went with a MacBook Air. The price/weight/power was just right. Everything else was either too pricy (i5) or too heavy, or underpowered (SU7300 1.3GHz). Its a pity, because I didn't really want to leave Ubuntu. I'll still run it on my media center and spare (heavy) laptop.

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• C++ and SDL resource management for 2D game

  - by KuruptedMagi

  My first question is about stateManagers. I do not use the singleton pattern (read many random posts with various reasons not to use it), I have gameStateManager which runs the pointer cCurrentGameState-render(), etc. I want to make a transitioning game, this engine should ideally cover both a platformer and a bird's eye RPG (with some recoding, I just mean the base engine), both of which will load different levels and events, such as world map, dungeon, shops, etc. So I then thought, rather then having to store all this data within all the states, I would break the engine into gameStates, and playStates... when gameState reaches gameStatePlay(), gameStatePlay simply runs the usual handleInput, logic, and render for the playStates, just as the low level gameStateManager does. This lets me store all the player data within the base playstate class without storing useless data in the gameStates. Now I have added a seperate mapEditor, which uses editorStates from gameStateEditor. Is this too much usage of the gameState concept? It seems to work pretty well for me, so I was wondering if I am too far off a common implementation of this. My second question is on image resources. I have my sprite class with nothing but static members, mainly loadImage, applySurface, and my screen pointer. I also have a map pairing imageName enums with actual SDL_Surface pointers, and one pairing clipNumber enums with a wrapper class for a vector of clips, so that each reference in the map can have different amounts of clips with different sizes. I thought it would be better to store all these images, and screen within one static body, since 20 different goblins all use the same sprite sheet, and all need to print to the same screen, and of course, this way I do not need to pass my screen reference to every little entity. The imageMap seems to work very well, I can even add the ability to search through the map at creation of entity type to see if a particular image at creation, creating if it doesnt exist, and destroying the image if the last entity that needs it was just destroyed. The vectored clip map however, seems to take too long to initialize, so if i run past the state that initializes them to fast, the game crashes <. Plus, the clip map call is half of this line =P SPRITE::applySurface( cEditorMap.cTiles[x][y].iX, cEditorMap.cTiles[x][y].iY, SPRITE::mImages[ IMAGE_TILEMAP ], SPRITE::screen, SPRITE::mImageClips[IMAGE_TILEMAP]->clips.at( cEditorMap.cTiles[x][y].iTileType ) ); Again, do I have the right idea? I like the imageMap, but am I better off with each entity storing its own clips? My last question is about collision detection. I only grasp the basics, will look at per-pixel and circular soon, but how can I determine which side the collision comes from with just the basic square collision detection, I tried breaking each entity into 4 collision zones, but that just gave me problems with walking through walls and the like <. Also, is per-pixel color collision a good way to decide what collision just occured, or is checking multiple colors for multiple entities too taxing each cycle?

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• Agile Documentation

  - by Nick Harrison

  We all know that one of the premises of the agile manifesto is to value Working Software over Comprehensive Documentation. This is a wonderful idea and it takes a tremendous burden off of project implementations. I have seen as many projects fail because of the maintenance weight of the project documentations as I have for any reason. But this goal as important as it is may not always be practical. Sometimes the client will simply insist on tedious documentation despite the arguments against it. This may be to calm a nervous client. This may be to satisfy an audit / compliance requirement. This may be a non-too subtle attempt at sabotaging the project. Ok, it is probably not an all out attempt to sabotage the project, but it will probably feel that way. So what can we do to keep to the spirit of the Agile Manifesto but still meet the needs of the client wanting the documentation? This is a good question that I have been puzzling over lately! I hope to explore some possible answers more fully here. A common theme that my solutions are likely to follow is the same theme that I often follow with simplifying complex business logic. Make it table driven! My thought is that the sought after documentation could be a report or reports out of a metadata repository. Reports are much easier to maintain than hand written documentation. Here are a few additional advantages that we can explore over time: Reports will take advantage of the fact that different people have different needs and different format requirements Reports and the supporting metadata are more easily validated and the validation can be automated. If the application itself uses this metadata than there never has to be a question as to whether or not the metadata is up to date. It is up to date or the application would not work. In many cases we should be able to automatically gather most of the Meta data that we need using reflection, system tables, etc. I think that this will lower the total cost of ownership for the documentation and may provide something useful beyond having a pretty document to look at.  What are your thoughts?

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• Alternatives to multiple inheritance for my architecture (NPCs in a Realtime Strategy game)?

  - by Brettetete

  Coding isn't that hard actually. The hard part is to write code that makes sense, is readable and understandable. So I want to get a better developer and create some solid architecture. So I want to do create an architecture for NPCs in a video-game. It is a Realtime Strategy game like Starcraft, Age of Empires, Command & Conquers, etc etc.. So I'll have different kinds of NPCs. A NPC can have one to many abilities (methods) of these: Build(), Farm() and Attack(). Examples: Worker can Build() and Farm() Warrior can Attack() Citizen can Build(), Farm() and Attack() Fisherman can Farm() and Attack() I hope everything is clear so far. So now I do have my NPC Types and their abilities. But lets come to the technical / programmatical aspect. What would be a good programmatic architecture for my different kinds of NPCs? Okay I could have a base class. Actually I think this is a good way to stick with the DRY principle. So I can have methods like WalkTo(x,y) in my base class since every NPC will be able to move. But now lets come to the real problem. Where do I implement my abilities? (remember: Build(), Farm() and Attack()) Since the abilities will consists of the same logic it would be annoying / break DRY principle to implement them for each NPC (Worker,Warrior, ..). Okay I could implement the abilities within the base class. This would require some kind of logic that verifies if a NPC can use ability X. IsBuilder, CanBuild, .. I think it is clear what I want to express. But I don't feel very well with this idea. This sounds like a bloated base class with too much functionality. I do use C# as programming language. So multiple inheritance isn't an opinion here. Means: Having extra base classes like Fisherman : Farmer, Attacker won't work.

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• Should EICAR be updated to test the revision of Antivirus system?

  - by makerofthings7

  I'm posting this here since programmers write viruses, and AV software. They also have the best knowledge of heuristics and how AV systems work (cloaking etc). The EICAR test file was used to functionally test an antivirus system. As it stands today almost every AV system will flag EICAR as being a "test" virus. For more information on this historic test virus please click here. Currently the EICAR test file is only good for testing the presence of an AV solution, but it doesn't check for engine file or DAT file up-to-dateness. In other words, why do a functional test of a system that could have definition files that are more than 10 years old. With the increase of zero day threats it doesn't make much sense to functionally test your system using EICAR. That being said, I think EICAR needs to be updated/modified to be effective test that works in conjunction with an AV management solution. This question is about real world testing, without using live viruses... which is the intent of the original EICAR. That being said I'm proposing a new EICAR file format with the appendage of an XML blob that will conditionally cause the Antivirus engine to respond. X5O!P%@AP[4\PZX54(P^)7CC)7}$EICAR-EXTENDED-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!$H+H* <?xml version="1.0"?> <engine-valid-from>2010-1-1Z</engine-valid-from> <signature-valid-from>2010-1-1Z</signature-valid-from> <authkey>MyTestKeyHere</authkey> In this sample, the antivirus engine would only alert on the EICAR file if both the signature or engine file is equal to or newer than the valid-from date. Also there is a passcode that will protect the usage of EICAR to the system administrator. If you have a backgound in "Test Driven Design" TDD for software you may get that all I'm doing is applying the principals of TDD to my infrastructure. Based on your experience and contacts how can I make this idea happen?

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• The Birth of SSAS Compare

  - by Red Gate Software BI Tools Team

  Noemi Moreno, Red Gate Business Intelligence Specialist Software vendors – even Microsoft – tend to forget about the needs of business intelligence developers. We are a rare and rather invisible species. For example, BIDS remained in VS 2008 until SQL Server 2012. It took until this release before we got something as simple as an “undo” function. Before I joined Red Gate as a BI specialist, I worked on SQL Development. I’ll never forget the time I discovered Red Gate’s SQL Compare tool and how it reduced the task of preparing a database release from a couple of days to ten minutes. When I moved to SSAS, MDX and cubes, I became frustrated with the deployment process because I couldn’t find a tool that made Cube releases as easy as they are with SQL Compare. This became my quest. I pitched the idea to a few people in Red Gate’s regular Down Tools Week, when everyone puts down their day-to-day tasks and works on their own projects. My task was to reason with a roomful of cynical developers, hardened to the blandishments of project managers, for help to develop a tool that would compare two different SSAS databases and create the script to process only the objects that needed processing, thereby reducing release time to only a few minutes. I walked to the podium and gave them the full story of the distressed BI specialists, doomed to spend tedious hours preparing deployment scripts. A few developers recovered from their torpor to cast a languid eye at my presentation. It wasn’t enough. In a sudden impulse, I blurted out a promise to perform a flamenco dance for just the team if the tool was able to successfully compare two SSAS databases and generate a script by the end of the week. I was lucky enough that some of them believed me and jumped in: David Pond (Dev), Matt Burton (Dev), Tilman Bregler (Dev), Shobana Sekar (Test), Ruchija Raj (Test), Nick Sutherland (Product Manager) and Irma Tanovic (BI). They didn’t know that Irma and I would be away on a conference in Amsterdam and would leave them without our support. But to my surprise, they had a working tool by the time we came back – basic, and with a few bugs, but a working tool nonetheless! Seeing it compare a very basic SSAS database, detect the changes and generate the scripts was amazing! Something that normally takes half a day was done in under a minute. Since then, a few months have passed and a BI Tools team has been created at Red Gate to work full time on BI tools for BI developers, starting with SSAS Compare. How cool is that? So download the free beta and give us your feedback. And the flamenco? I still need to deliver that. Tilman reminds me every day! I need to get the full flamenco costume.

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• How to implement an intelligent enemy in a shoot-em-up?

  - by bummzack

  Imagine a very simple shoot-em-up, something we all know: You're the player (green). Your movement is restricted to the X axis. Our enemy (or enemies) is at the top of the screen, his movement is also restricted to the X axis. The player fires bullets (yellow) at the enemy. I'd like to implement an A.I. for the enemy that should be really good at avoiding the players bullets. My first idea was to divide the screen into discrete sections and assign weights to them: There are two weights: The "bullet-weight" (grey) is the danger imposed by a bullet. The closer the bullet is to the enemy, the higher the "bullet-weight" (0..1, where 1 is highest danger). Lanes without a bullet have a weight of 0. The second weight is the "distance-weight" (lime-green). For every lane I add 0.2 movement cost (this value is kinda arbitrary now and could be tweaked). Then I simply add the weights (white) and go to the lane with the lowest weight (red). But this approach has an obvious flaw, because it can easily miss local minima as the optimal place to go would be simply between two incoming bullets (as denoted with the white arrow). So here's what I'm looking for: Should find a way through bullet-storm, even when there's no place that doesn't impose a threat of a bullet. Enemy can reliably dodge bullets by picking an optimal (or almost optimal) solution. Algorithm should be able to factor in bullet movement speed (as they might move with different velocities). Ways to tweak the algorithm so that different levels of difficulty can be applied (dumb to super-intelligent enemies). Algorithm should allow different goals, as the enemy doesn't only want to evade bullets, he should also be able to shoot the player. That means that positions where the enemy can fire at the player should be preferred when dodging bullets. So how would you tackle this? Contrary to other games of this genre, I'd like to have only a few, but very "skilled" enemies instead of masses of dumb enemies.

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• Real-Time Multi-User Gaming Platform

  - by Victor Engel

  I asked this question at Stack Overflow but was told it's more appropriate here, so I'm posting it again here. I'm considering developing a real-time multi-user game, and I want to gather some information about possibilities before I do some real development. I've thought about how best to ask the question, and for simplicity, the best way that occurred to me was to make an analogy to the field (or playground) game darebase. In the field game of darebase, there are two or more bases. To start, there is one team on each base. The game is a fancy game of tag. When two people meet out in the field, the person who left his base most recently timewise captures the other person. They then return to that person's base. Play continues until everyone is part of the same team. So, analogizing this to an online computer game, let's suppose there are an indefinite number of bases. When a person starts up the game, he has a team that is located at, for example, his current GPS coordinates. It could be a virtual world, but for sake of argument, let's suppose the virtual world corresponds to the player's actual GPS coordinates. The game software then consults the database to see where the closest other base is that is online, and the two teams play their game of virtual tag. Note that the user of the other base could have a different base than the one run by the current user as the closest base to him, in which case, he would be in two simultaneous battles, one with each base. When they go offline, the state of their players is saved on a server somewhere. Game logic calls for the players to have some automaton-logic of some sort, so they can fend for themselves in a limited way using basic rules, until their user goes online again. The user doesn't control the players' movements directly, but issues general directives that influence the players' movement logic. I think this analogy is good enough to frame my question. What sort of platforms are available to develop this sort of game? I've been looking at smartfoxserver, but I'm not convinced yet that it is the best option or even that it will work at all. One possibility, of course, would be to roll out my own web server, but I'd rather not do that if there is an existing service out there already that I could tap into. I will be developing for iOS devices at first. So any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I think I need to establish the architecture first before proceeding with this project. Note that darbase is not the game I intend to implement, but, upon reflection, that might not be a bad idea either.

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• design a model for a system of dependent variables

  - by dbaseman

  I'm dealing with a modeling system (financial) that has dozens of variables. Some of the variables are independent, and function as inputs to the system; most of them are calculated from other variables (independent and calculated) in the system. What I'm looking for is a clean, elegant way to: define the function of each dependent variable in the system trigger a re-calculation, whenever a variable changes, of the variables that depend on it A naive way to do this would be to write a single class that implements INotifyPropertyChanged, and uses a massive case statement that lists out all the variable names x1, x2, ... xn on which others depend, and, whenever a variable xi changes, triggers a recalculation of each of that variable's dependencies. I feel that this naive approach is flawed, and that there must be a cleaner way. I started down the path of defining a CalculationManager<TModel> class, which would be used (in a simple example) something like as follows: public class Model : INotifyPropertyChanged { private CalculationManager<Model> _calculationManager = new CalculationManager<Model>(); // each setter triggers a "PropertyChanged" event public double? Height { get; set; } public double? Weight { get; set; } public double? BMI { get; set; } public Model() { _calculationManager.DefineDependency<double?>( forProperty: model => model.BMI, usingCalculation: (height, weight) => weight / Math.Pow(height, 2), withInputs: model => model.Height, model.Weight); } // INotifyPropertyChanged implementation here } I won't reproduce CalculationManager<TModel> here, but the basic idea is that it sets up a dependency map, listens for PropertyChanged events, and updates dependent properties as needed. I still feel that I'm missing something major here, and that this isn't the right approach: the (mis)use of INotifyPropertyChanged seems to me like a code smell the withInputs parameter is defined as params Expression<Func<TModel, T>>[] args, which means that the argument list of usingCalculation is not checked at compile time the argument list (weight, height) is redundantly defined in both usingCalculation and withInputs I am sure that this kind of system of dependent variables must be common in computational mathematics, physics, finance, and other fields. Does someone know of an established set of ideas that deal with what I'm grasping at here? Would this be a suitable application for a functional language like F#? Edit More context: The model currently exists in an Excel spreadsheet, and is being migrated to a C# application. It is run on-demand, and the variables can be modified by the user from the application's UI. Its purpose is to retrieve variables that the business is interested in, given current inputs from the markets, and model parameters set by the business.

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• Is it okay to have people with multiple roles in a Scrum team?

  - by Wayne M

  I'm evaluating some Agile-style methodologies for possible introduction to my team. With Scrum, is it allowable to have the same person perform multiple roles? We have a small team of four developers and a web designer; we don't really have a lead (I fulfill this role), QA testers or business analysts, and all of our development tasks come from the CIO. Automated testing is seen as a total waste of time, and everything focuses on speed and not quality. What will happen is the CIO will come up with a development task (whether a feature or a bug) and give it to a developer (not to the whole team, to an individual, often in private or out of the blue) who is then expected to get it completed. The CIO doesn't gather requirements beyond the initial idea (and this has bitten us before as we'll implement something only to find out that none of the end users can use the feature, because they weren't consulted or even informed about it before we developed it, and in a panic we'll be told to revert the change) but requires say in/approval of everything that we do. First things first, is a Scrum style something to consider to introduce some standards and practices? From reading, Scrum seems to rely on a bit more trust and communication and focuses more on project management than on development, which is something we are completely devoid of as we don't have any semblance of project management at present. Second, if it can work is it unreasonable for someone, let's say myself, to act as both ScrumMaster and a developer? Or for a developer to also be the Product Owner (although chances are this will be the CIO, who isn't a developer)? I realize the Scrum Master and the Product Owner should be different people but at the same time I don't think we have anyone who has the qualities of a Product Owner (chances are it would turn into a "I need all these stories, I don't care how but get it done" type of deal and/or any freeze would be unfrozen on a whim). It seems to me that I might need to pick and choose pieces of Scrum/XP/Lean to compensate for how things are done currently, as it's highly unlikely that the mentality can be changed; for instance Pair Programming would never fly (seen as a waste, you get half the tasks done if you need two people for everything), TDD would be a hard sell, but short cycles would be welcomed.

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• 3 Reasons You Need To Know Something About Every Technology

  - by Tim Murphy

  I make my living as a consultant and a general technologist.  I credit my success to the fact that I have never been afraid to pick up any product, language or platform needed to get the job done.  While Microsoft technologies I my mainstay, I have done work on mainframe and UNIX platforms and have worked with a wide variety of database engines.  Each one has it’s use and most times it is less expensive to find a way to communicate with an existing system than to replace it. So what are the main benefits of expending the effort to learn a new technology? New ways to solve problems Accelerate development Advise clients and get new business opportunities By new technology I mean ones that you haven’t had experience with before.  They don’t have to be the the one that just came out yesterday.  As they say, those who do not learn from history are bound to repeat it.  If you can learn something from an older technology it can be just as valuable as the shiny new one.  Either way, when you add another tool to your kit you get a new view on each problem you face.  This makes it easier to create a sound solution. The next thing you can learn from working with different products and techniques is how to more efficiently develop solve problems.  Many times if you are working with a new language you will find that there are specific design patterns that are used with it in normal use.  These can usually be applied with most languages.  You just needed to be exposed to them. The last point is about helping your clients and helping yourself.  If you can get in on technologies early you will have advantage over your competition in the market.  You will also be able to honestly advise you client on why they should or should not go with a new product.  Being able to compare products and their features is always an ability that stake holders appreciate. You don’t need to learn every detail of a product.  Learn enough to function and get an idea of how to use the technology.  Keep eating those technology Wheaties and you will be ready to go the distance in any project. del.icio.us Tags: Technology,technologists,technology generalist,Software Architecture

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• SEO effects of intermix of WP blog, custom PHP site and FB app game

  - by melbournetechlover

  We're a melbourne tech company in the process of building a custom site in PHP. We plan to launch a "pre-launch" page which is also custom coded (CSS3 on twitter bootstrap framework + HTML5 front end and PHP back end). On that site will be a link to a blog - the idea behind this is to build up ranking for a variety of relevant keywords prior to the full site going live (given the majority of the site is a member only community anyway so the blog is really the main way we'll be able to execute on-site SEO. Ideally, we would like to install wordpress in a subdirectory on our servers and just customise the header to look the same as the landing page of the website. But some questions and concerns... Is there any detrimental effect on SEO efforts in having two separate systems (one custom PHP, the other an installation of wordpress) to manage the blog vs the rest of the site? Are there any benefits or detriments to installing on a sub domain such as blog.sitename.com vs. sitename.com/blog. My preference would be sitename.com/blog as it feels neater - but open to suggestions based on knowledge of Google preferences. Separately, we are building a Facebook app which is under another site name. Again because we are launching this app first, from an SEO perspective, would it actually be better to run it from a sub domain on the main site - e.g. gamename.mainsitename.com instead of on app.gamename.com? Currently we have it on app.gamename.com, but if there are SEO benefits to moving it to the other domain and server then we'll do it. Basically we don't want to have our SEO efforts divided - will Google algorithms prefer two sites heavily referring traffic, or is it better to focus our efforts on one. I guess that's the crux of the issue. But the other one is - does Google care about traffic accessing a page built for the Facebook app iFrame - does that count toward rankings? Sorry I hope these questions aren't too complex - but we're in the tech world every day and still can't seem to find a good answer to these ones...hence I'm taking to the forums!! Free beer for whoever can give me a solid answer!

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• Once installed geos library (C++, and C), and then trying to install rgeos package (R), it reports geos-config missing!

  - by user1873888

  Knowing that the package rgeos, from the R language, requieres a prior installation of geos libraries, I installed, both, libgeos and libgeos-c1 (3.2.2), using the synaptic installer in my Ubuntu 12.04 (32 bit) machine. Then I tried to install rgeos directly from the R console, and it issued a message in the sense that geos-config was not found. The output is as follows: > install.packages("rgeos") Installing package(s) into ‘/home/checo/R/i486-pc-linux-gnu-library/2.15’ (as ‘lib’ is unspecified) also installing the dependency ‘sp’ probando la URL 'http://cran.rstudio.com/src/contrib/sp_1.0-9.tar.gz' Content type 'application/x-gzip' length 882102 bytes (861 Kb) URL abierta ================================================== downloaded 861 Kb probando la URL 'http://cran.rstudio.com/src/contrib/rgeos_0.2-19.tar.gz' Content type 'application/x-gzip' length 221471 bytes (216 Kb) URL abierta ================================================== downloaded 216 Kb * installing *source* package ‘sp’ ... ** package ‘sp’ successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked ** libs gcc -std=gnu99 -I/usr/share/R/include -DNDEBUG -fpic -O3 -pipe -g -c R centroid.c -o Rcentroid.o gcc -std=gnu99 -I/usr/share/R/include -DNDEBUG -fpic -O3 -pipe -g -c gcdist.c -o gcdist.o gcc -std=gnu99 -I/usr/share/R/include -DNDEBUG -fpic -O3 -pipe -g -c init.c -o init.o gcc -std=gnu99 -I/usr/share/R/include -DNDEBUG -fpic -O3 -pipe -g -c pip.c -o pip.o gcc -std=gnu99 -I/usr/share/R/include -DNDEBUG -fpic -O3 -pipe -g -c pip2.c -o pip2.o gcc -std=gnu99 -I/usr/share/R/include -DNDEBUG -fpic -O3 -pipe -g -c sp_xports.c -o sp_xports.o gcc -std=gnu99 -I/usr/share/R/include -DNDEBUG -fpic -O3 -pipe -g -c surfaceArea.c -o surfaceArea.o gcc -std=gnu99 -I/usr/share/R/include -DNDEBUG -fpic -O3 -pipe -g -c zerodist.c -o zerodist.o gcc -std=gnu99 -shared -o sp.so Rcentroid.o gcdist.o init.o pip.o pip2.o sp_xports.o surfaceArea.o zerodist.o -L/usr/lib/R/lib -lR installing to /home/checo/R/i486-pc-linux-gnu-library/2.15/sp/libs ** R ** data ** demo ** inst ** preparing package for lazy loading ** help *** installing help indices ** building package indices ** installing vignettes ‘intro_sp.Rnw’ ‘over.Rnw’ ** testing if installed package can be loaded * DONE (sp) * installing *source* package ‘rgeos’ ... ** package ‘rgeos’ successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked configure: CC: gcc -std=gnu99 configure: CXX: g++ configure: rgeos: 0.2-17 checking for /usr/bin/svnversion... no configure: svn revision: 394 checking geos-config usability... ./configure: line 1385: geos-config: command not found no configure: error: geos-config not usable ERROR: configuration failed for package ‘rgeos’ * removing ‘/home/checo/R/i486-pc-linux-gnu-library/2.15/rgeos’ Warning in install.packages : installation of package ‘rgeos’ had non-zero exit status Forgive my ignorance, but I don't know where this file, "geos-config", comes from: should it be generated by the gcc compilations above, or should it be previously installed when the libgeos libraries were intalled? I learnt, from another machine, that "geos-config" is an executable and that it should be installed in /usr/bin. Do you have any idea on what's wrong with my procedure? Thanks, -Sergio.

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• Need help on a problemset in a programming contest

  - by topher

  I've attended a local programming contest on my country. The name of the contest is "ACM-ICPC Indonesia National Contest 2013". The contest has ended on 2013-10-13 15:00:00 (GMT +7) and I am still curious about one of the problems. You can find the original version of the problem here. Brief Problem Explanation: There are a set of "jobs" (tasks) that should be performed on several "servers" (computers). Each job should be executed strictly from start time Si to end time Ei Each server can only perform one task at a time. (The complicated thing goes here) It takes some time for a server to switch from one job to another. If a server finishes job Jx, then to start job Jy it will need an intermission time Tx,y after job Jx completes. This is the time required by the server to clean up job Jx and load job Jy. In other word, job Jy can be run after job Jx if and only if Ex + Tx,y = Sy. The problem is to compute the minimum number of servers needed to do all jobs. Example: For example, let there be 3 jobs S(1) = 3 and E(1) = 6 S(2) = 10 and E(2) = 15 S(3) = 16 and E(3) = 20 T(1,2) = 2, T(1,3) = 5 T(2,1) = 0, T(2,3) = 3 T(3,1) = 0, T(3,2) = 0 In this example, we need 2 servers: Server 1: J(1), J(2) Server 2: J(3) Sample Input: Short explanation: The first 3 is the number of test cases, following by number of jobs (the second 3 means that there are 3 jobs for case 1), then followed by Ei and Si, then the T matrix (sized equal with number of jobs). 3 3 3 6 10 15 16 20 0 2 5 0 0 3 0 0 0 4 8 10 4 7 12 15 1 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 4 8 10 4 7 12 15 1 4 0 50 50 50 50 0 50 50 50 50 0 50 50 50 50 0 Sample Output: Case #1: 2 Case #2: 1 Case #3: 4 Personal Comments: The time required can be represented as a graph matrix, so I'm supposing this as a directed acyclic graph problem. Methods I tried so far is brute force and greedy, but got Wrong Answer. (Unfortunately I don't have my code anymore) Could probably solved by dynamic programming too, but I'm not sure. I really have no clear idea on how to solve this problem. So a simple hint or insight will be very helpful to me.

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• How to send multiple MVP matrices to a vertex shader in OpenGL ES 2.0

  - by Carbon Crystal

  I'm working my way through optimizing the rendering of sprites in a 2D game using OpenGL ES and I've hit the limit of my knowledge when it comes to GLSL and vertex shaders. I have two large float buffers containing my vertex coordinates and texture coordinates (eventually this will be one buffer) for multiple sprites in order to perform a single glDrawArrays call. This works but I've hit a snag when it comes to passing the transformation matrix into the vertex shader. My shader code is: uniform mat4 u_MVPMatrix; attribute vec4 a_Position; attribute vec2 a_TexCoordinate; varying vec2 v_TexCoordinate; void main() { v_TexCoordinate = a_TexCoordinate; gl_Position = u_MVPMatrix * a_Position; } In Java (Android) I am using a FloatBuffer to store the vertex/texture data and this is provided to the shader like so: mGlEs20.glVertexAttribPointer(mVertexHandle, Globals.GL_POSITION_VERTEX_COUNT, GLES20.GL_FLOAT, false, 0, mVertexCoordinates); mGlEs20.glVertexAttribPointer(mTextureCoordinateHandle, Globals.GL_TEXTURE_VERTEX_COUNT, GLES20.GL_FLOAT, false, 0, mTextureCoordinates); (The Globals.GL_POSITION_VERTEX_COUNT etc are just integers with the value of 2 right now) And I'm passing the MVP (Model/View/Projection) matrix buffer like this: GLES20.glUniformMatrix4fv(mMVPMatrixHandle, 1, false, mModelCoordinates); (mModelCoordinates is a FloatBuffer containing 16-float sequences representing the MVP matrix for each sprite) This renders my scene but all the sprites share the same transformation, so it's obviously only picking the first 16 elements from the buffer which makes sense since I am passing in "1" as the second parameter. The documentation for this method says: "This should be 1 if the targeted uniform variable is not an array of matrices, and 1 or more if it is an array of matrices." So I tried modifying the shader with a fixed size array large enough to accomodate most of my scenarios: uniform mat4 u_MVPMatrix[1000]; But this lead to an error in the shader: cannot convert from 'uniform array of 4X4 matrix of float' to 'Position 4-component vector of float' This just seems wrong anyway as it's not clear to me how the shader would know when to transition to the next matrix anyway. Anyone have an idea how I can get my shader to pick up a different MVP matrix (i.e. the NEXT 16 floats) from my MVP buffer for every 4 vertices it encounters? (I am using GL_TRIANGLE_STRIP so each sprite has 4 vertices). Thanks!

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• Which programming language to get into?

  - by user602479

  I'm ending my third term in a few weeks so I have some spare time coming up. I'd like to spend it seriously digging into programming. My problem: I'm not sure which language to begin with. Just to be clear, I don't want to start a language-y-compared-to-language-z discussion. There are a some other issues that play a major role. In my 5th term I'm going to be participating in a major practical course which will include either Java or C programming. It will take a lot of time and energy, as I found out while talking to a few students who passed the final exams (only 15% pass on their first try). Which practical course I will take is randomly decided. My skills so far are the absolute basics of Java and C programming. I know the different data types and how to handle them, objects, pointers, thread programming, etc. All of that is on a very low level, though. My question now is, what language should I start seriously practicing? Java: I did my first GUIs with this language. I'm familiar with Eclipse but I need a project to work on (which I don't have) to really keep me pushing. Besides that, I don't think it would help me if I have to do C in a year. C: As with Java, I can't think of a personal project to keep me working and keep me interested in programming. If I get assigned to Java in a year, this wouldn't give me any advantages either, would it? (No objects, etc.) Objective-C: I recently came up with this idea. I have a Mac; I'm not really familiar with Xcode but I have one or two personal projects I'd like to work on. Further, I would be working with objects (as in Java) and C language constructs which would both be great for this practical course in a year. What do you think I should begin with? Should I just stick to Java and hope for the best, force myself through C or start (nearly) completely from the beginning with Objective C? Maybe you folks could give me some good advice that would stop me from switching from one language to the next?

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• Parallel Port Problem in 12.04

  - by Frank Oberle

  I have a “dumb” printer attached to a parallel port in my machine which works fine under the “other” resident operating system (from Redmond) on the same machine. I recently added Ubuntu 12.04 as a dual boot on the machine, but Ubuntu doesn't seem to recognize the parallel port at all. All I need to set up a printer is a really plain-vanilla fixed pitch text-only generic driver, which is present, but no parallel ports show up. (The other printers, all on USB ports, seem to work just fine). Following what appeared to me to be the most reasonable of the many conflicting pieces of advice on the web, here's what I did: I added the following lines to /etc/modules parport_pc ppdev parport Then, after rebooting, I checked to see that the lines were still present, and they were. I ran dmesg | grep par and got the following references in the output that seemed like they might have to do with the parallel port: [ 14.169511] parport_pc 0000:03:07.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 21 (level, low) -> IRQ 21 [ 14.169516] PCI parallel port detected: 9710:9805, I/O at 0xce00(0xcd00), IRQ 21 [ 14.169577] parport0: PC-style at 0xce00 (0xcd00), irq 21, using FIFO [PCSPP,TRISTATE,COMPAT,ECP] [ 14.354254] lp0: using parport0 (interrupt-driven). [ 14.571358] ppdev: user-space parallel port driver [ 16.588304] type=1400 audit(1347226670.386:5): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/usr/lib/cups/backend/cups-pdf" pid=964 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 16.588756] type=1400 audit(1347226670.386:6): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/usr/sbin/cupsd" pid=964 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 16.673679] type=1400 audit(1347226670.470:7): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/usr/lib/lightdm/lightdm/lightdm-guest-session-wrapper" pid=1010 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 16.675252] type=1400 audit(1347226670.470:8): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/usr/lib/telepathy/mission-control-5" pid=1014 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 16.675716] type=1400 audit(1347226670.470:9): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/usr/lib/telepathy/telepathy-*" pid=1014 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 16.676636] type=1400 audit(1347226670.474:10): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" name="/usr/lib/cups/backend/cups-pdf" pid=1015 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 16.677124] type=1400 audit(1347226670.474:11): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" name="/usr/sbin/cupsd" pid=1015 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 1545.725328] parport0: ppdev0 forgot to release port I have no idea what any of that means, but the line “parport0: ppdev0 forgot to release port ” seems unusual. I was still unable to add a printer for my old clunker, so I tried the direct approach, typing echo “Hello” > /dev/lp0 and received a Permission denied message. I then tried echo “Hello” > /dev/parport0 which didn't give me any message at all, but still didn't print anything. Running the command sudo /usr/lib/cups/backend/parallel gives the following: direct parallel:/dev/lp0 "unknown" "LPT #1" "" "" Checking the permissions for /dev/parport0, Owner, Group, and Other are all set to read and write. crw-rw---- 1 root lp 6, 0 Sep 9 16:37 /dev/lp0 crw-rw-rw- 1 root lp 99, 0 Sep 9 16:37 /dev/parport0 The output of the command lpinfo -v includes the following line: direct parallel:/dev/lp0 I've read several web postings that seem to suggest this has been a problem for several years, but the bug reports were closed because there wasn't enough information to address the issue (shades of Microsoft!). Any suggestions as to what I might be missing here?

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• Halloween: Season for Java Embedded Internet of Spooky Things (IoST) (Part 4)

  - by hinkmond

  And now here's the Java code that you'll need to read your ghost sensor on your Raspberry Pi The general idea is that you are using Java code to access the GPIO pin on your Raspberry Pi where the ghost sensor (JFET trasistor) detects minute changes in the electromagnetic field near the Raspberry Pi and will change the GPIO pin to high (+3 volts) when something is detected, otherwise there is no value (ground). Here's that Java code: try { /*** Init GPIO port(s) for input ***/ // Open file handles to GPIO port unexport and export controls FileWriter unexportFile = new FileWriter("/sys/class/gpio/unexport"); FileWriter exportFile = new FileWriter("/sys/class/gpio/export"); for (String gpioChannel : GpioChannels) { System.out.println(gpioChannel); // Reset the port File exportFileCheck = new File("/sys/class/gpio/gpio"+gpioChannel); if (exportFileCheck.exists()) { unexportFile.write(gpioChannel); unexportFile.flush(); } // Set the port for use exportFile.write(gpioChannel); exportFile.flush(); // Open file handle to input/output direction control of port FileWriter directionFile = new FileWriter("/sys/class/gpio/gpio" + gpioChannel + "/direction"); // Set port for input directionFile.write(GPIO_IN); } /*** Read data from each GPIO port ***/ RandomAccessFile[] raf = new RandomAccessFile[GpioChannels.length]; int sleepPeriod = 10; final int MAXBUF = 256; byte[] inBytes = new byte[MAXBUF]; String inLine; int zeroCounter = 0; // Get current timestamp with Calendar() Calendar cal; DateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy/MM/dd HH:mm:ss.SSS"); String dateStr; // Open RandomAccessFile handle to each GPIO port for (int channum=0; channum And, then we just load up our Java SE Embedded app, place each Raspberry Pi with a ghost sensor attached in strategic locations around our Santa Clara office (which apparently is very haunted by ghosts from the Agnews Insane Asylum 1906 earthquake), and watch our analytics for any ghosts. Easy peazy. See the previous posts for the full series on the steps to this cool demo: Halloween: Season for Java Embedded Internet of Spooky Things (IoST) (Part 1) Halloween: Season for Java Embedded Internet of Spooky Things (IoST) (Part 2) Halloween: Season for Java Embedded Internet of Spooky Things (IoST) (Part 3) Halloween: Season for Java Embedded Internet of Spooky Things (IoST) (Part 4) Hinkmond

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• Many sources of movement in an entity system

  - by Sticky

  I'm fairly new to the idea of entity systems, having read a bunch of stuff (most usefully, this great blog and this answer). Though I'm having a little trouble understanding how something as simple as being able to manipualate the position of an object by an undefined number of sources. That is, I have my entity, which has a position component. I then have some event in the game which tells this entity to move a given distance, in a given time. These events can happen at any time, and will have different values for position and time. The result is that they'd be compounded together. In a traditional OO solution, I'd have some sort of MoveBy class, that contains the distance/time, and an array of those inside my game object class. Each frame, I'd iterate through all the MoveBy, and apply it to the position. If a MoveBy has reached its finish time, remove it from the array. With the entity system, I'm a little confused as how I should replicate this sort of behavior. If there were just one of these at a time, instead of being able to compound them together, it'd be fairly straightforward (I believe) and look something like this: PositionComponent containing x, y MoveByComponent containing x, y, time Entity which has both a PositionComponent and a MoveByComponent MoveBySystem that looks for an entity with both these components, and adds the value of MoveByComponent to the PositionComponent. When the time is reached, it removes the component from that entity. I'm a bit confused as to how I'd do the same thing with many move by's. My initial thoughts are that I would have: PositionComponent, MoveByComponent the same as above MoveByCollectionComponent which contains an array of MoveByComponents MoveByCollectionSystem that looks for an entity with a PositionComponent and a MoveByCollectionComponent, iterating through the MoveByComponents inside it, applying/removing as necessary. I guess this is a more general problem, of having many of the same component, and wanting a corresponding system to act on each one. My entities contain their components inside a hash of component type - component, so strictly have only 1 component of a particular type per entity. Is this the right way to be looking at this? Should an entity only ever have one component of a given type at all times?

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• What are these errors when I try to "make" the driver of my wireless network?

  - by Tom Brito

  I got got a wireless to usb adapter, and I'm having some trouble to install the drivers on Ubuntu. First of all, the readme file say to use the "make" command, and I already got errors: $ make make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.35-22-generic' CC [M] /home/wellington/Desktop/rtl8192su_linux_2.4_2.6.0003.0301.2010/HAL/rtl8192u/r8192U_core.o /home/wellington/Desktop/rtl8192su_linux_2.4_2.6.0003.0301.2010/HAL/rtl8192u/r8192U_core.c: In function ‘rtl8192_usb_probe’: /home/wellington/Desktop/rtl8192su_linux_2.4_2.6.0003.0301.2010/HAL/rtl8192u/r8192U_core.c:12325: error: ‘struct net_device’ has no member named ‘open’ /home/wellington/Desktop/rtl8192su_linux_2.4_2.6.0003.0301.2010/HAL/rtl8192u/r8192U_core.c:12326: error: ‘struct net_device’ has no member named ‘stop’ /home/wellington/Desktop/rtl8192su_linux_2.4_2.6.0003.0301.2010/HAL/rtl8192u/r8192U_core.c:12327: error: ‘struct net_device’ has no member named ‘tx_timeout’ /home/wellington/Desktop/rtl8192su_linux_2.4_2.6.0003.0301.2010/HAL/rtl8192u/r8192U_core.c:12328: error: ‘struct net_device’ has no member named ‘do_ioctl’ /home/wellington/Desktop/rtl8192su_linux_2.4_2.6.0003.0301.2010/HAL/rtl8192u/r8192U_core.c:12329: error: ‘struct net_device’ has no member named ‘set_multicast_list’ /home/wellington/Desktop/rtl8192su_linux_2.4_2.6.0003.0301.2010/HAL/rtl8192u/r8192U_core.c:12330: error: ‘struct net_device’ has no member named ‘set_mac_address’ /home/wellington/Desktop/rtl8192su_linux_2.4_2.6.0003.0301.2010/HAL/rtl8192u/r8192U_core.c:12331: error: ‘struct net_device’ has no member named ‘get_stats’ /home/wellington/Desktop/rtl8192su_linux_2.4_2.6.0003.0301.2010/HAL/rtl8192u/r8192U_core.c:12332: error: ‘struct net_device’ has no member named ‘hard_start_xmit’ make[2]: *** [/home/wellington/Desktop/rtl8192su_linux_2.4_2.6.0003.0301.2010/HAL/rtl8192u/r8192U_core.o] Error 1 make[1]: *** [_module_/home/wellington/Desktop/rtl8192su_linux_2.4_2.6.0003.0301.2010/HAL/rtl8192u] Error 2 make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.35-22-generic' make: *** [all] Error 2 /home/wellington/Desktop/rtl8192su_linux_2.4_2.6.0003.0301.2010/ is the path where I copied the drivers on my computer. Any idea how to solve this? (I don't even know what the error is...) update: sudo lshw -class network *-network description: Ethernet interface product: RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller vendor: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0 logical name: eth0 version: 03 serial: 78:e3:b5:e7:5f:6e size: 10MB/s capacity: 1GB/s width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress msix vpd bus_master cap_list rom ethernet physical tp mii 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt 1000bt-fd autonegotiation configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=r8169 driverversion=2.3LK-NAPI duplex=half latency=0 link=no multicast=yes port=MII speed=10MB/s resources: irq:42 ioport:d800(size=256) memory:fbeff000-fbefffff memory:faffc000-faffffff memory:fbec0000-fbedffff *-network DISABLED description: Wireless interface physical id: 2 logical name: wlan0 serial: 00:26:18:a1:ae:64 capabilities: ethernet physical wireless configuration: broadcast=yes multicast=yes wireless=802.11b/g

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• Collision in PyGame for spinning rectangular object.touching circles

  - by OverAchiever

  I'm creating a variation of Pong. One of the differences is that I use a rectangular structure as the object which is being bounced around, and I use circles as paddles. So far, all the collision handling I've worked with was using simple math (I wasn't using the collision "feature" in PyGame). The game is contained within a 2-dimensional continuous space. The idea is that the rectangular structure will spin at different speed depending on how far from the center you touch it with the circle. Also, any extremity of the rectangular structure should be able to touch any extremity of the circle. So I need to keep track of where it has been touched on both the circle and the rectangle to figure out the direction it will be bounced to. I intend to have basically 8 possible directions (Up, down, left, right and the half points between each one of those). I can work out the calculation of how the objected will be dislocated once I get the direction it will be dislocated to based on where it has been touch. I also need to keep track of where it has been touched to decide if the rectangular structure will spin clockwise or counter-clockwise after it collided. Before I started coding, I read the resources available at the PyGame website on the collision class they have (And its respective functions). I tried to work out the logic of what I was trying to achieve based on those resources and how the game will function. The only thing I could figure out that I could do was to make each one of these objects as a group of rectangular objects, and depending on which rectangle was touched the other would behave accordingly and give the illusion it is a single object. However, not only I don't know if this will work, but I also don't know if it is gonna look convincing based on how PyGame redraws the objects. Is there a way I can use PyGame to handle these collision detections by still having a single object? Can I figure out the point of collision on both objects using functions within PyGame precisely enough to achieve what I'm looking for? P.s: I hope the question was specific and clear enough. I apologize if there were any grammar mistakes, English is not my native language.

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• Create a kind of Interface c++ [migrated]

  - by Liuka

  I'm writing a little 2d rendering framework with managers for input and resources like textures and meshes (for 2d geometry models, like quads) and they are all contained in a class "engine" that interacts with them and with a directX class. So each class have some public methods like init or update. They are called by the engine class to render the resources, create them, but a lot of them should not be called by the user: //in pseudo c++ //the textures manager class class TManager { private: vector textures; .... public: init(); update(); renderTexture(); //called by the "engine class" loadtexture(); gettexture(); //called by the user } class Engine { private: Tmanager texManager; public: Init() { //initialize all the managers } Render(){...} Update(){...} Tmanager* GetTManager(){return &texManager;} //to get a pointer to the manager //if i want to create or get textures } In this way the user, calling Engine::GetTmanager will have access to all the public methods of Tmanager, including init update and rendertexture, that must be called only by Engine inside its init, render and update functions. So, is it a good idea to implement a user interface in the following way? //in pseudo c++ //the textures manager class class TManager { private: vector textures; .... public: init(); update(); renderTexture(); //called by the "engine class" friend class Tmanager_UserInterface; operator Tmanager_UserInterface*(){return reinterpret_cast<Tmanager_UserInterface*>(this)} } class Tmanager_UserInterface : private Tmanager { //delete constructor //in this class there will be only methods like: loadtexture(); gettexture(); } class Engine { private: Tmanager texManager; public: Init() Render() Update() Tmanager_UserInterface* GetTManager(){return texManager;} } //in main function //i need to load a texture //i always have access to Engine class engine-GetTmanger()-LoadTexture(...) //i can just access load and get texture; In this way i can implement several interface for each object, keeping visible only the functions i (and the user) will need. There are better ways to do the same?? Or is it just useless(i dont hide the "framework private functions" and the user will learn to dont call them)? Before i have used this method: class manager { public: //engine functions userfunction(); } class engine { private: manager m; public: init(){//call manager init function} manageruserfunciton() { //call manager::userfunction() } } in this way i have no access to the manager class but it's a bad way because if i add a new feature to the manager i need to add a new method in the engine class and it takes a lot of time. sorry for the bad english.

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• Help with Strategy-game AI

  - by f20k

  Hi, I am developing a strategy-game AI (think: Final Fantasy Tactics), and I am having trouble coming up for the design of the AI. My main problem is determining which is the optimal thing for it to do. First let me describe the priority of what action I would like the AI to take: Kill nearest player unit Fulfill primary directive (kill all player units, kill target unit, survive for x turns) Heal ally unit / cast buffer Now the AI can do the following in its turn: Move - {Attack / Ability / Item} (either attack or ability or item) {Attack / Ability / Item} - Move Move closer (if targets not in range) {Attack / Ability / Item} (if move not available) Notes Abilities have various ranges / effects / costs / effects. Each ai unit has maybe 5-10 abilities to choose from. The AI will prioritize killing over safety unless its directive is to survive for x turns. It also doesn't care about ability cost much. While a player may want to save a big spell for later, the AI will most likely use it asap. Movement is on a (hex) grid num of player units: 3-6 num of ai units: 3-7 or more. Probably max 10. AI and player take turns controlling ONE unit, instead of all at the same time. Platform is Android (if program doesnt respond after some time, there will be a popup saying to Force Quit or Wait - which looks really bad!). Now comes the questions: The best ability to use would obviously be the one that hits the most targets for the most damage. But since each ability has different ranges, I won't know if they are in range without exploring each possible place I can move to. One solution would be to go through each possible places to move to, determine the optimal attack at that location - which gives me a list of optimal moves for each location. Then choose the optimal out of the list and execute it. But this will take a lot of CPU time. Is there a better solution? My current idea is to move as close as possible towards the closest, largest group of people, and determine the optimal attack/ability from there. I think this would be a lot less work for the CPU and still allow for wide-range attacks. Its sub-optimal but the AI will still seem 'smart'. Other notes/questions: Am I over-thinking/over-complicating it? Better solution? I am open to all sorts of suggestions I have taken a look at the spell-casting question, but it doesn't take into account the movement - so perhaps use that algo for each possible move location? The top answer mentioned it wasn't great for area-of-effect and group fights - so maybe requires more tweaking? Please, if you mention a graph/tree, let me know basically how to use it. E.g. Node means ability, level corresponds to damage, then search for the deepest node.

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• How should I structure my turn based engine to allow flexibility for players/AI and observation?

  - by Reefpirate

  I've just started making a Turn Based Strategy engine in GameMaker's GML language... And I was cruising along nicely until it came time to handle the turn cycle, and determining who is controlling what player, and also how to handle the camera and what is displayed on screen. Here's an outline of the main switch happening in my main game loop at the moment: switch (GameState) { case BEGIN_TURN: // Start of turn operations/routines break; case MID_TURN: switch (PControlledBy[Turn]) { case HUMAN: switch (MidTurnState) { case MT_SELECT: // No units selected, 'idle' UI state break; case MT_MOVE: // Unit selected and attempting to move break; case MT_ATTACK: break; } break; case COMPUTER: // AI ROUTINES GO HERE break; case OBSERVER: // OBSERVER ROUTINES GO HERE break; } break; case END_TURN: // End of turn routines/operations, and move Turn to next player break; } Now, I can see a couple of problems with this set-up already... But I don't have any idea how to go about making it 'right'. Turn is a global variable that stores which player's turn it is, and the BEGIN_TURN and END_TURN states make perfect sense to me... But the MID_TURN state is baffling me because of the things I want to happen here: If there are players controlled by humans, I want the AI to do it's thing on its turn here, but I want to be able to have the camera follow the AI as it makes moves in the human player's vision. If there are no human controlled player's, I'd like to be able to watch two or more AI's battle it out on the map with god-like 'observer' vision. So basically I'm wondering if there are any resources for how to structure a Turn Based Strategy engine? I've found lots of writing about pathfinding and AI, and those are all great... But when it comes to handling the turn structure and the game states I am having trouble finding any resources at all. How should the states be divided to allow flexibility between the players and the controllers (HUMAN, COMPUTER, OBSERVER)? Also, maybe if I'm on the right track I just need some reassurance before I lay down another few hundred lines of code...

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• Think Before You Leap - Life is Dangerous for Change Agents

  - by technodrone

  So you want to introduce agile methods to your team... The following are some "lessons learned" when from someone who advocated agile/scrum to a group that was not ready for it. "Change agents, in my experience, face negative consequences. Sometimes, most of the time at the beginning, it's painful. This is the question you might have to ask yourself. Do you want to be a developer in scrum project or do you want be a scrum master managing the process? I think with proper mentoring/training, you can become good scrum master. But is that what you want? if yes, you can go ahead, take the training. if you want to be a developer, you may not need to be certified  as scrum master. You can just pick up from a book such as Mike Cohn new book Succeeding with Agile, I am reading it now. It's good. In my experience, I did waste my resources by trying to change the culture. It cost me lot. Instead, I should have focused on technical practices that are core to agile. Then look for teams that are good at agile. I would have saved lot of energy, and time. Try baby steps first yourself in the company, and next with the team, starting with technical practices like writing unit tests, SOLID principles, patterns, refactoring, continuous integration, pairing, and peer code reviews. These have inherent pull that can bring collaboration from a team.  Once you see team adaption in core practices, then you can introduce scrum concepts like user stories/task board etc.  This idea of Leading by example seems to be working for most of the agile folks. You can pitch core practices to the manager, and the team, and start showing them how you are doing.  You can put a road map for agile adaption and you can pitch to your manager. I would include need for scrum master training as part of the road map. " I thought about his advice for a couple of weeks and read about the pitfalls of technical debt and the team not having prior awareness of agile methods. The more I read and think about it the more I think he was right.  What do you think?

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