Search Results

Search found 18933 results on 758 pages for 'dynamic programming'.

Page 571/758 | < Previous Page | 567 568 569 570 571 572 573 574 575 576 577 578 | Next Page >

Why does Android make good coding so difficult?

- by metacircle

my daily work is writing tools in C#/WPF. After over more than 1 year on the job now, I came to love MVVM, IoC Containers, XAML (and more). It's pure fun to write code, since simple, maintainable and extendable code just comes naturally when you follow a few basic patterns. In my free time I really want to write some apps, mainly for my own personal use. I want to write apps for fun and not to make money or anything, that being said, paying an annual fee to be allowed to use my own apps on my own device is a total no-go for me. So I am not able to code for Windows Phone and am also not able to use Xamarin on Android (which is sad since Visual Studio + Resharper is programmers heaven). So I am stuck with Android "classic" Java development. Everytime I sit down at home to create an app, or improve some of the code I have already written I get annoyed very quick because getting good, decoupled code is just so hard to accomplish. It feels like everything you have to do in Android to create a good architecture is a workaround instead of being the way things are meant to be. Writing the UI in xml is fine, but everything else is one big code mess. Even all the tutorials do all their coding in the code behind. For 'hello world' this is fine, but for anything bigger this gets messy very very quick. This is where the fun for me ends. It's just no fun anymore because I just spend 90% of my time refactoring and thinking of workarounds how to make my code more maintainable with all the restrictions Android puts on me. Am I missing a crucial part or is this just the way Android is meant to be? Do you have any suggestions how to learn 'the fun way' of Android programming.

Read the article
Event handler generation in Visual Studio 2012

- by Jalpesh P. Vadgama

This post will be a part of Visual Studio 2012 feature series There are lots of new features there in visual studio 2012. Event handler generation is one of them. In earlier version of visual studio there was no way to create event handler from source view directly. Now visual studio 2012 have event handler generation functionality. So if you are editing an event view in source view intellisense will display add new event handler template and once you click on it. It will create a new event handler in the cs file. It will also put a eventhandler name against event name so you don’t need to write that. So, let’s take a simple example of button click event so once I write onclick attribute their smart intellisense will pop up . Now once you click on <Create New Event> It will create event handler in .cs file like following. It will also put submitButton_Click on onClick attribute. Hope you liked it. Stay tuned for more. Till then happy programming..

Read the article
When does a programmer know when a new job is not right?

- by Mysterion

I believe that the interview process is a selling of both parties - what can the employee offer the employer and vice versa. Assuming an individual has been careful in selecting their new employer (via thorough questioning in the interview process), however when they arrive at the job they find the employer has not been honest about certain aspects of the job. Examples of this dishonesty could include: The employee making it clear that technical excellence is an important factor, which is promised by the employer, but is not fully delivered or a good technical structure does not exist. The employee states they want to work on well architected and short (lets say less than 1 yr) long projects, yet when they start they find they are placed on a poorly architected older project. The employee being told of a pair programming environment to get him up to speed on the project, but being left to his own devices/questioning on arrival. The employee is promised a culture that encourages innovation and technical excellence but finds that this is not the case (eg. using technology for knowledge retention is laughed at). I know that a lot of famous developers feel that you make the place you work at. Is it realistic for a new employee with limited experience in the industry (say less than 5 years) to be able to join the company and change attitudes or even challenge the employer on the perceived dishonesty? Should they stay in this job or cut their losses?

Read the article
Project Management Software / 1 maybe 2 developers

- by Ominus

I am looking for software that I can use to "manage" multiple projects (5 - 10). Here are the features I would like but any recommendation is welcome. Bug/Feature tracking on a per project basis. Some way to keep all documents, diagrams, specs, requirements, in one place with the project. Better yet a tool where all these things or most of them could be authored. Task management during the development phase with milestones and estimates/actuals. Git integration I have been doing contract work and i have been doing really well for myself as far as getting projects but its becoming VERY hard to manage everything in an efficient manner. I am trying to learn about best practices when it comes to software programming methodologies and the more I read the more i realize that I am just managing these projects poorly. I am getting things done but the more I take on the less "solid" everything is. I am afraid if I don't get some good solid tools/practices in place I am going to do my customers and myself a disservice. The problem is that there are SO many options that its hard to weed through them all. I was at a point today where I had decided that I would just code my own (there is some irony here)! Obviously everyone has their likes dislikes I would love to hear from some of you lone programmers and how you manage everything since our needs aren't exactly the same thing that a large team might need. I also want a solution that can scale to 2 maybe 3 developers if I end up hiring some people to help with my work load. Thanks again for your usual insights!

Read the article
Inactive JSRs looking for Spec Leads

- by heathervc

You may have noticed that some JSRs have a classification of "Inactive" on their JSR page. The introduction of this term in 2009 was part of an effort to enable and encourage more transparency into the development of JSRs. You can read more about Inactive JSRs here and also in the JCP FAQ.The following JSR proposals have been Inactive since at least 2009. If you are a JCP Member and are interested in taking over the Specification Lead role for one of these JSRs, please contact the PMO at [email protected] on or before 23 April 2012. With that message, please include the following: the subject line "Spec Lead for JSR ###," where '###' is the JSR number which JCP Member you represent why you wish to take over the Specification lead role Here is the current list of Inactive JSRs for which Members can request to become Specification Leads: JSR 122, JAIN JCAT JSR 161, JAIN ENUM API Specification JSR 182, JPay - Payment API for the Java Platform JSR 210, OSS Service Quality Management API JSR 241, The Groovy Programming Language JSR 251, Pricing API JSR 278, Resource Management API for Java ME JSR 304, Mobile Telephony API v2 JSR 305, Annotations for Software Defect Detection JSR 320, Services Framework

Read the article
Why is quicksort better than other sorting algorithms in practice?

- by Raphael

This is a repost of a question on cs.SE by Janoma. Full credits and spoils to him or cs.SE. In a standard algorithms course we are taught that quicksort is O(n log n) on average and O(n²) in the worst case. At the same time, other sorting algorithms are studied which are O(n log n) in the worst case (like mergesort and heapsort), and even linear time in the best case (like bubblesort) but with some additional needs of memory. After a quick glance at some more running times it is natural to say that quicksort should not be as efficient as others. Also, consider that students learn in basic programming courses that recursion is not really good in general because it could use too much memory, etc. Therefore (and even though this is not a real argument), this gives the idea that quicksort might not be really good because it is a recursive algorithm. Why, then, does quicksort outperform other sorting algorithms in practice? Does it have to do with the structure of real-world data? Does it have to do with the way memory works in computers? I know that some memories are way faster than others, but I don't know if that's the real reason for this counter-intuitive performance (when compared to theoretical estimates).

Read the article
getting started as a web developer [closed]

- by kmote

I have over 10 years of programming experience building (Windows-based) desktop applications and utilities (VC++, C#, Python). My goal over the next year is to start transitioning to web application development. I want to teach myself the fundamental tools and technologies that would be considered essential for building professional, online, interactive, visually-stunning, data-driven web apps -- the kind described in Google's recently released "Field Guide: Building Great Web Applications". So my question is, what are the primary, most commonly-used technologies that seasoned professionals will need in their tool belt in the coming years? My plan was to start coming up to speed in Javascript, HTML5, & CSS, and then to do a deep dive into ASP.NET and Ajax, along with SQL DBs. (I was surprised to not be able to find a single book at Amazon with a broad, general scope like this, which caused me to start second-guessing this approach.) So, seasoned professionals: am I on the right track? Are there some glaring omissions in my list? Or some unnecessary inclusions? I would welcome any book suggestions along these lines as well.

Read the article
How do you proactively guard against errors of omission?

- by Gabriel

I'll preface this with I don't know if anyone else who's been programming as long as I have actually has this problem, but at the very least, the answer might help someone with less xp. I just stared at this code for 5 minutes, thinking I was losing my mind that it didn't work: var usedNames = new HashSet<string>(); Func<string, string> l = (s) => { for (int i = 0; ; i++) { var next = (s + i).TrimEnd('0'); if (!usedNames.Contains(next)) { return next; } } }; Finally I noticed I forgot to add the used name to the hash set. Similarly, I've spent minutes upon minutes over omitting context.SaveChanges(). I think I get so distracted by the details that I'm thinking about that some really small details become invisible to me - it's almost at the level of mental block. Are there tactics to prevent this? update: a side effect of asking this was fixing the error it would have for i 9 (Thanks!) var usedNames = new HashSet<string>(); Func<string, string> name = (s) => { string result = s; if(usedNames.Contains(s)) for (int i = 1; ; result = s + i++) if (!usedNames.Contains(result)) break; usedNames.Add(result); return result; };

Read the article
Are there design patterns or generalised approaches for particle simulations?

- by romeovs

I'm working on a project (for college) in C++. The goal is to write a program that can more or less simulate a beam of particles flying trough the LHC synchrotron. Not wanting to rush into things, me and my team are thinking about how to implement this and I was wondering if there are general design patterns that are used to solve this kind of problem. The general approach we came up with so far is the following: there is a World that holds all objects you can add objects to this world such as Particle, Dipole and Quadrupole time is cut up into discrete steps, and at each point in time, for each Particle the magnetic and electric forces that each object in the World generates are calculated and summed up (luckily electro-magnetism is linear). each Particle moves accordingly (using a simple estimation approach to solve the differential movement equations) save the Particle positions repeat This seems a good approach but, for instance, it is hard to take into account symmetries that might be present (such as the magnetic field of each Quadrupole) and is this thus suboptimal. To take into account such symmetries as that of the Quadrupole field, it would be much easier to (also) make space discrete and somehow store form of the Quadrupole field somewhere. (Since 2532 or so Quadrupoles are stored this should lead to a massive gain of performance, not having to recalculate each Quadrupole field) So, are there any design patterns? Is the World-approach feasible or is it old-fashioned, bad programming? What about symmetry, how is that generally taken into acount?

Read the article
Series On Embedded Development (Part 3) - Runtime Optionality

- by Darryl Mocek

What is runtime optionality? Runtime optionality means writing and packaging your code in such a way that all of the features are available at runtime, but aren't loaded and used if the feature isn't used. The code is separate, and you can even remove the code to save persistent storage if you know the feature will not be used. In native programming terms, it's splitting your application into separate shared libraries so you only have to load what you're using, which means it only impacts volatile memory when enabled at runtime. All the functionality is there, but if it's not used at runtime, it's not loaded. A good example of this in Java is JVMTI, Java's Virtual Machine Tool Interface. On smaller, embedded platforms, these libraries may not be there. If the libraries are not there, there's no effect on the runtime as long as you don't try to use the JVMTI features. There is a trade-off between size/performance and flexibility here. Putting code in separate libraries means loading that code will take longer and it will typically take up more persistent space. However, if the code is rarely used, you can save volatile memory by including it in a separate library. You can also use this method in Java by putting rarely-used code into one or more separate JAR's. Loading a JAR and parsing it takes CPU cycles and volatile memory. Putting all of your application's code into a single JAR means more processing for that JAR. Consider putting rarely-used code in a separate library/JAR.

Read the article
Matrices: Arrays or separate member variables?

- by bjz

I'm teaching myself 3D maths and in the process building my own rudimentary engine (of sorts). I was wondering what would be the best way to structure my matrix class. There are a few options: Separate member variables: struct Mat4 { float m11, m12, m13, m14, m21, m22, m23, m24, m31, m32, m33, m34, m41, m42, m43, m44; // methods } A multi-dimensional array: struct Mat4 { float[4][4] m; // methods } An array of vectors struct Mat4 { Vec4[4] m; // methods } I'm guessing there would be positives and negatives to each. From 3D Math Primer for Graphics and Game Development, 2nd Edition p.155: Matrices use 1-based indices, so the first row and column are numbered 1. For example, a12 (read “a one two,” not “a twelve”) is the element in the first row, second column. Notice that this is different from programming languages such as C++ and Java, which use 0-based array indices. A matrix does not have a column 0 or row 0. This difference in indexing can cause some confusion if matrices are stored using an actual array data type. For this reason, it’s common for classes that store small, fixed size matrices of the type used for geometric purposes to give each element its own named member variable, such as float a11, instead of using the language’s native array support with something like float elem[3][3]. So that's one vote for method one. Is this really the accepted way to do things? It seems rather unwieldy if the only benefit would be sticking with the conventional math notation.

Read the article
Mobile development, recommended computer configuration?

- by MikaelW

Hi, For the last 4 weeks, I have been trying to get into mobile development. Done a couple of tutorials, read some books, developed a couple of dummy Android apps. The thing is my computer is a 5 years old laptop, it is slow and time has come to replace it and I’m looking at different offers online. Have you got any recommendations? Is there any must-have that should make my developer life easier in the future? Is there anything specific that may be useful at a more advanced stage of development that I just can’t think of right now on the hardware side? (I mean apart from good proc, lots of RAM, many USB ports...) One thing I can think of is to have three OS on the same workstation: Windows, Unix and MacOS (so far I focused on android/java/eclipse but am interested in Iphone/objC/xcode as well) but that’s more on the software side. Anyway, would be grateful for any recommendations. Thanks in advance! Mikael PS: I’m quite free on the budget side of things PPS: I'm aware it's not really a programming question but will still be of interest to some programmers here.

Read the article
Find possible variations of one item out of multiple baskets.

- by tugberk

I have three baskets of balls and each of them has 10 balls which have the following numbers: Basket 1: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 Basket 2: 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 Basket 3: 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 What would be the possible variations If I were to pick one ball from each basket? I guess this is called as Probability in Mathematics but not sure. How would you write this code in C# (or any other programming language) to get the correct results? Edit: Based on @Kilian Foth's comment, here is the solution in C#: class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { IEnumerable<string> basket1 = new List<string> { "1", "2", "3", "4", "5", "6", "7", "8", "9", "10" }; IEnumerable<string> basket2 = new List<string> { "11", "12", "13", "14", "15", "16", "17", "18", "19", "20" }; IEnumerable<string> basket3 = new List<string> { "21", "22", "23", "24", "25", "26", "27", "28", "29", "30" }; foreach (var item1 in basket1) foreach (var item2 in basket2) foreach (var item3 in basket3) { Console.WriteLine("{0}, {1}, {2}", item1, item2, item3); } Console.ReadLine(); } }

Read the article
Basic Mouse Features in Silverlight

- by Sayre Collado

Hi Guys, I have basic sample on how to use some features of mouse events in Silverlight. The picture. The Mouse Activity Log is to record the all activity done on the projects. My simple snippets on how to add on the textbox is: protected void MessageLog(string msg) { txtMouseLog.Text += msg; } For the Mouse Wheel sample this is the snippets: private void chkMouseWheel_Checked(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { image1.MouseWheel += new MouseWheelEventHandler(image1_MouseWheel); } void image1_MouseWheel(object sender, MouseWheelEventArgs e) { ImgScale.ScaleX = e.Delta > 0 ? ImgScale.ScaleX * 1.5 : ImgScale.ScaleX * 0.8; ImgScale.ScaleY = e.Delta > 0 ? ImgScale.ScaleY * 1.5 : ImgScale.ScaleY * 0.8; e.Handled = true; } And the XAML: <Image Height="139" Name="image1" Stretch="Fill" Width="178" Source="/GBLOgs1;component/Images/Sunset.jpg"> <Image.RenderTransform> <ScaleTransform x:Name="ImgScale"></ScaleTransform> </Image.RenderTransform> </Image I have also the showing of mouse position: private void Mouse_MouseMove(object sender, MouseEventArgs e) { Point point = e.GetPosition(this); lblMouseLocation.Content = "X: " + point.X + "and Y: " + point.Y; } private void checkBox1_Checked(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { lblMouseLocation.Visibility = Visibility.Visible; MessageLog("Mouse Location Visible\n"); } private void checkBox1_Unchecked(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { lblMouseLocation.Visibility = Visibility.Collapsed; MessageLog("Mouse Location Collapsed\n"); And even the counting of clicked event: int clicked = 0; private void LayoutRoot_MouseLeftButtonDown(object sender, MouseButtonEventArgs e) { Point point = e.GetPosition(this); clicked++; string msg = "Mouse Clicked " + clicked.ToString() + " time(s) " + "Mouse Location X and Y: " + point.X + " " + point.Y + "\n"; MessageLog(msg); } And now the result of above snippets. Happy Programming.

Read the article
Using a random string to authenticate HMAC?

- by mrwooster

I am designing a simple webservice and want to use HMAC for authentication to the service. For the purpose of this question we have: a web service at example.com a secret key shared between a user and the server [K] a consumer ID which is known to the user and the server (but is not necessarily secret) [D] a message which we wish to send to the server [M] The standard HMAC implementation would involve using the secret key [K] and the message [M] to create the hash [H], but I am running into issues with this. The message [M] can be quite long and tends to be read from a file. I have found its very difficult to produce a correct hash consistently across multiple operating systems and programming languages because of hidden characters which make it into various file formats. This is of course bad implementation on the client side (100%), but I would like this webservice to be easily accessible and not have trouble with different file formats. I was thinking of an alternative, which would allow the use a short (5-10 char) random string [R] rather than the message for autentication, e.g. H = HMAC(K,R) The user then passes the random string to the server and the server checks the HMAC server side (using random string + shared secret). As far as I can see, this produces the following issues: There is no message integrity - this is ok message integrity is not important for this service A user could re-use the hash with a different message - I can see 2 ways around this Combine the random string with a timestamp so the hash is only valid for a set period of time Only allow each random string to be used once Since the client is in control of the random string, it is easier to look for collisions I should point out that the principle reason for authentication is to implement rate limiting on the API service. There is zero need for message integrity, and its not a big deal if someone can forge a single request (but it is if they can forge a very large number very quickly). I know that the correct answer is to make sure the message [M] is the same on all platforms/languages before hashing it. But, taking that out of the equation, is the above proposal an acceptable 2nd best?

Read the article
How to factorize code in Unreal Kismet (i.e. "Material Function"s for Kismet)

- by Georges Dupéron

In the Unreal Development Kit, when using the Material Editor, one can factorize frequently-used groups of nodes by creating a Material Function (content Browser ? right-click ? new matrial function, IIRC). When defining the behaviour of some actor in Kismet, one can easily have a dozen nodes involved. If I have many actors that share the same behaviour, then I'll copy-paste these nodes, and change the variables so they point to the other actors. This leads to inconsistencies (a modification in the behaviour of an actor isn't propagated in the copy-pasted nodes), complexity (you end up with hundreds of nodes), and generally useless effort. My question is : Can I create a "kismet function", just like a material function ? Note: I'd rather avoid using UnrealScript. I don't even know where to type UnrealScripts, don't know where the documentation is and more generally don't have enough time to invest in learning UnrealScript. This "kismet function" feature must be usable by graphists (with little programming knowledge). If a (simple) script suffices to add this feature in the Kismet editor, so that one can create several "functions" without using UnrealScript, then fine, but I don't really want to have to write a script each time I want to factorize a few nodes. Thanks for any information !

Read the article
Add copyright notice to a website

- by PeeHaa

Not really a programming question, but I find it related. If not (or you find this question too subjective), please tell me, yell at me, swear at me, kick me in the nuts, or just vote to close :) I've read some questions and answers here on SO about adding copyright notices, but not the specific ones I am looking for. I want to add a copyright notice to a website I created. Something like (c) Me 2010. All rights reserved. I am aware that everything written by someone is automatically copyrighted (if I'm not mistaken and perhaps depending on country laws). I see some sites use the following format for this (c) Me 2009-2010. However for me that makes no sense to add an 'end-date' to the notice. I am aware I can code to update the notice every year, but I just find it strange. Or is it just me? Another question is: I also use copyrighted code from others (they are all mentioned in the credits incl. links to their licenses ofc) on my site. Would it still be OK to add the copyright notice to the site with only Me in it? So to sum it up I have 2 questions: What is THE RIGHT WAYTM of adding a copyright notice on a website (or code or whatever)? If there is one. Is it allowed to copyright code with other copyrighted code within it?

Read the article
Web dev/programmer with 4.5 yrs experience. Better for career: self-study or master's degree? [closed]

- by Anonymous Programmer

I'm a 28 year-old web developer/programmer with 4.5 years of experience, and I'm looking to jump-start my career. I'm trying to decide between self-study and a 1-year master's program in CS at a top school. I'm currently making 65K in a high cost-of-living area that is NOT a hot spot for technology firms. I code almost exclusively in Ruby/Rails, PHP/CodeIgniter, SQL, and JavaScript. I've slowly gained proficiency with Git. Roughly half the time I am architecting/coding, and half the time I am pounding out HTML/CSS for static brochureware sites. I'd like to make more more money while doing more challenging/interesting work, but I don't know where to start. I have an excellent academic record (math major with many CS credits, 3.9+ GPA), GRE scores, and recommendations, so I am confident that I could be admitted to a great CS master's program. On the other hand, there is the tuition and opportunity cost to consider. I feel like there are a number of practical languages/tools/skills worth knowing that I could teach myself - shell scripting, .NET, Python, Node.js, MongoDB, natural language processing techniques, etc. That said, it's one thing to read about a subject and another thing to have experience with it, which structured coursework provides. So, on to the concrete questions: What programming skills/knowledge should I develop to increase my earning potential and make me competitive for more interesting jobs? Will a master's degree in CS from a top school help me develop the above skills/knowledge, and if so, is it preferable to self-study (possibly for other reasons, e.g., the degree's value as a credential)?

Read the article
How much information can you mine out of a name?

- by Finglas Fjorn

While not directly related to programming, I figured that the programmers on here would be just as curious as I was about this question. Feel free to close the question if it does not meet with the guidelines. A name: first, possibly a middle, and surname. I'm curious about how much information you can mine out of a name, using publicly available datasets. I know that you can get the following with anywhere between a low-high probability (depending on the input) using US census data: 1) Gender. 2) Race. Facebook for instance, used exactly that to find out, with a decent level of accuracy, the racial distribution of users of their site (https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=205925658858). What else can be mined? I'm not looking for anything specific, this is a very open-ended question to assuage my curiousity. My examples are US specific, so we'll assume that the name is the name of someone located in the US; but, if someone knows of publicly available datasets for other countries, I'm more than open to them too. I hope this is an interesting question!

Read the article
Should I be learning Linq, Direct SQL Commands (in .net), EF or other?

- by Wil

Basically, I have a very good knowledge of plain old SQL coming from Classic ASP programming. Over the past couple of months, I have been learning C# and today was my first full day at MVC 3 (Razor) which I am loving! I need to get back in to Databases and I know that writing SqlCommand everywhere is obviously outdated (although it is nice I can still do it!). I used to go to a great usergroup as an IT Pro and the developer stuff went completely over my head, however I do remember a few things which kept coming up such as LINQ... However, that was some time ago and now the same people on Twitter are saying how out dated it is. I have tried to do research on both and I am clueless as to what direction I should go in, or when to use one over another (if learning both is a good thing). I am more so confused as I thought EF was a part of the .Net Framework, however, reading through the quick start guide, I had to download a component using Nuget. ... Basically I am out of my depth here and just need some honest advice of where to go!

Read the article
issues with ASUS S301L ultrabooks

- by Wuerze

I just like to tell you what still is a Problem in Ubuntu 14.04 and should be solved for a nice experience of this distribution. Unfortunately I do not have any hints to tell you, because I am just a user and know not much about programming. Anyway, I hope it helps. 1) Intel open source Graphics issues (proprietary) -when attaching HDMI-cable the screen switches to the external monitor and it's fine, but there is no switching back unless restart with HDMI deattached -black screen appears for like 2 seconds as if I would change screen in the settings; frequency increases with intensity of driver use (i.e. videos or video games) 2) hotkeys (commonly recognised) -there is no possibility to adjust brightness with the hotkeys (Fn+F5 and Fn+F6) 3) touchscreen (commonly recognised) -the touchscreen is behaving like a mouse -configuring gestures for the multi touch screen seems to always end in disabling touch pad gestures 4) panel symbols -battery symbol has got a low accuracy while it determines accurately the energy left; only 5 steps of energy are shown by the symbol Thank you all for participating in the solution of these problems! I will stay tuned and edit this list if something has been solved.

Read the article
Use a SQL Database for a Desktop Game

- by sharethis

Developing a Game Engine I am planning a computer game and its engine. There will be a 3 dimensional world with first person view and it will be single player for now. The programming language is C++ and it uses OpenGL. Data Centered Design Decision My design decision is to use a data centered architecture where there is a global event manager and a global data manager. There are many components like physics, input, sound, renderer, ai, ... Each component can trigger and listen to events. Moreover, each component can read, edit, create and remove data. The question is about the data manager. Whether to Use a Relational Database Should I use a SQL Database, e.g. SQLite or MySQL, to store the game data? This contains virtually all game content like items, characters, inventories, ... Except of meshes and textures which are even more performance related, so I will keep them in memory. Is a SQL database fast enough to use it for realtime reading and writing game informations, like the position of a moving character? I also need to care about cross-platform compatibility. Aside from keeping everything in memory, what alternatives do I have? Advantages Would Be The advantages of using a relational database like MySQL would be the data orientated structure which allows fast computation. I would not need objects for representing entities. I could easily query data of objects near the player needed for rendering. And I don't have to take care about data of objects far away. Moreover there would be no need for savegames since the hole game state is saved in the database. Last but not least, expanding the game to an online game would be relative easy because there already is a place where the hole game state is stored.

Read the article
Persisting high score table in flash game without a network. (Featuring: HttpListenerException)

- by bearcdp

Hi everyone, this question is very programming-centric, but it's for a game so I figured I might as well post it here. I'm doing polishing work on a GGJ '11 game because it will be shown at an indie arcade tomorrow afternoon, and they're expecting our final build in the morning. We'd like to have a high score table that displays during attract mode, but since it's Flash (Flixel) it would require some networking, Mochi, or something to keep a record of these scores. Only problem is the machine we'd be running on probably won't have network access. As a quick solution, I thought I'd just write up a dinky little high score server in C#/.NET that could take basic GET requests for submitting scores and getting the score list. We're talking REAL basic, like blocking while waiting for an incoming request, run & forget console app, etc. There's no guarantee that our .swf won't get reloaded, and we'd like the scores to persist, so this server would pretty much exists to keep a safe copy of the scores that the game can add to and request, and occasionally the server will write the scores to a flat text file. But, HttpListener is giving me Error Code 87 'The parameter is incorrect.' Have any idea what I'm doing wrong? Or better yet, am I barking up the wrong tree and missing an obviously simpler solution? This is all I've got so far in my Main(): HttpListener listener = new HttpListener(); listener.Prefixes.Add("http://localhost:66666/"); listener.Start(); The exception happens at listener.Start(); and the stack trace is: at System.Net.HttpListener.AddAllPrefixes() at System.Net.HttpListener.Start() at WOSEBCE_ScoreServer.Program.Main(String[] args) in C:\Users\Michael\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\VS2010 Projects\WOSEBCE_ScoreServer\WOSEBCE_ScoreServer\Program.cs:line 24 at System.AppDomain._nExecuteAssembly(RuntimeAssembly assembly, String[] args) at System.AppDomain.ExecuteAssembly(String assemblyFile, Evidence assemblySecurity, String[] args) at Microsoft.VisualStudio.HostingProcess.HostProc.RunUsersAssembly() at System.Threading.ThreadHelper.ThreadStart_Context(Object state) at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run(ExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state, Boolean ignoreSyncCtx) at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run(ExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state) at System.Threading.ThreadHelper.ThreadStart()

Read the article
Boundary conditions for testing

- by Loggie

Ok so in a programming test I was given the following question. Question 1 (1 mark) Spot the potential bug in this section of code: void Class::Update( float dt ) { totalTime += dt; if( totalTime == 3.0f ) { // Do state change m_State++; } } The multiple choice answers for this question were. a) It has a constant floating point number where it should have a named constant variable b) It may not change state with only an equality test c) You don't know what state you are changing to d) The class is named poorly I wrongly answered this with answer C. I eventually received feedback on the answers and the feedback for this question was Correct answer is a. This is about understanding correct boundary conditions for tests. The other answers are arguably valid points, but do not indicate a potential bug in the code. My question here is, what does this have to do with boundary conditions? My understanding of boundary conditions is checking that a value is within a certain range, which isn't the case here. Upon looking over the question, in my opinion, B should be the correct answer when considering the accuracy issues of using floating point values.

Read the article
Headphones not working in ubuntu 12.04LTS

- by mursalat

So after a million warnings about not supported ubuntu OS, last night I finally upgraded to 12.04 - went somewhat smoothly (sadly) After my installation I got all excited with the exciting new look when I login, and all the new shebang, gently I installed chrome and went to youtube to check out some of my music and test flash in the process, now the sound worked awesomely, however when I plugged in my headphones, I could hear only a buzz-like sound when the base drops or there is a loud noise, maybe I didn't hear it from the headphones, but some other source. However sadly my headphones are not working, and I am a noob at fixing these stuff on Ubuntu. I've done loads of programming but when it comes to linux drivers and settings I seem to get frustrated. So I would really appreciate any help people! IN SUMMARY: My headphones are not working, my laptop's internal speakers are working awesome. To be as helpful as I can I have pasted the output from lspci -v to http://pastebin.com/VQNzDkZs I have also checked the volume levels from alsamixer and none are on mute. If you need any more information, please just ask, and I will be checking this post every 3 to 4 hours! Cheers!

Read the article

< Previous Page | 567 568 569 570 571 572 573 574 575 576 577 578 | Next Page >