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  • Testing of visualization projects

    - by paxRoman
    We develop small to large visualization projects for different tasks and industries and sometimes while rewriting them a couple of times in the process we hit walls because we discover that we need to add a lot of code to support new requirements. Now we have established a design process that seems to work well (at least we reduced the development time for each new project quite a bit), but we're still left scratching our heads around this question: what exactly should we test when testing visualizations? If everything that we want to explore is on the screen (bounded visualizations)? If the data is ok - if data is valid (that's one of the nice things about visualizations you can spot errors in your datasets)? Usability? User interaction? Code quality? I can tell you for sure that a simple check of the code quality is certainly not enough! Is there a classic paper / book about how to test visualizations? Also do you happen to know about classic design patterns for visualizations (except the obvious ones like Pub-Sub)?

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  • Tech Article: Tired of Null Pointer Exceptions? Use Java SE 8's Optional!

    - by Tori Wieldt
    A wise man once said you are not a real Java programmer until you've dealt with a null pointer exception. The null reference is the source of many problems because it is often used to denote the absence of a value. Java SE 8 introduces a new class called java.util.Optional that can alleviate some of these problems. In the tech article "Tired of Null Pointer Exceptions? Use Java SE 8's Optional!" Java expert Raoul-Gabriel Urma shows you how to make your code more readable and protect it against null pointer exceptions. Urma explains "The purpose of Optional is not to replace every single null reference in your codebase but rather to help design better APIs in which—just by reading the signature of a method—users can tell whether to expect an optional value. In addition, Optional forces you to actively unwrap an Optional to deal with the absence of a value; as a result, you protect your code against unintended null pointer exceptions." Learn how to go from writing painful nested null checks to writing declarative code that is composable, readable, and better protected from null pointer exceptions. Read "Tired of Null Pointer Exceptions? Use Java SE 8's Optional!"

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  • Tomcat + Spring + CI workflow

    - by ex3v
    We're starting our very first project with Spring and java web stack. This project will be mainly about rewriting quite large ERP/CRM from Zend Framework to Java. Important factor in my question is that I come from php territory, where things (in terms of quality) tend to look different than in java world. Fatcs: there will be 2-3 developers, at least one of developers uses Windows, rest uses Linux, there is one remote linux-based machine, which should handle test and production instances, after struggling with buggy legacy code, we want to introduce good programming and development practices (CI, tests, clean code and so on) client: internal, frequent business logic changes, scrum, daily deployments What I want to achieve is good workflow on as many development stages as possible (coding - commiting - testing - deploying). The problem is that I've never done this before, so I don't know what are best practices to do this. What I have so far is: developers code locally, there is vagrant instance on every development machine, managed by puppet. It contains the same linux, jenkins and tomcat versions as production machine, while coding, developer deploys to vagrant machine, after local merge to test branch, jenkins on vagrant handles tests, when everything is fine, developer pushes commits and merges jenkins on remote machine pulls commit from test branch, runs tests and so on, if everything looks green, jenkins deploys to test tomcat instance Deployment to production is manual (altough it can be done using helping scripts) when business logic is tested by other divisions and everything looks fine to client. Now, the real question: does above make any sense? Things that I'm not sure about: Remote machine: won't there be any problems with two (or even three, as jenkins might need one) instances of same app on tomcat? Using vagrant to develop on php environment is just vise. Isn't this overkill while using Tomcat? I mean, is there higher probability that tomcat will act the same on every machine? Is there sense of having local jenkins on vagrant?

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  • How to properly downcast in C# with a SWIG generated interface?

    - by JG
    I've got a very large and mature C++ code base that I'm trying to use SWIG on to generate a C# interface for. I cannot change the actual C++ code itself but we can use whatever SWIG offers in the way of extending/updating it. I'm facing an issue where a function C++ is written as such: A* SomeClass::next(A*) The caller might do something like: A* acurr = 0; while( (acurr = sc->next(acurr)) != 0 ){ if( acurr isoftype B ){ B* b = (B*)a; ...do some stuff with b.. } elseif( acurr isoftype C ) ... } Essentially, iterating through a container elements that depending on their true type, do something different. The SWIG generated C# layer for the "next" function unfortunately does the following: return new A(); So the calling code in C# land cannot determine if the returned object is actually a derived class or not, it actually appears to always be the base class (which does make sense). I've come across several solutions: Use the %extend SWIG keyword to add a method on an object and ultimately call dynamic_cast. The downside to this approach, as I see it, is that this requires you to know the inheritance hierarchy. In my case it is rather huge and I see this is as a maintenance issue. Use the %factory keyword to supply the method and the derived types and have SWIG automatically generate the dynamic_cast code. This appears to be a better solution that the first, however upon a deeper look it still requires you to hunt down all the methods and all the possible derived types it could return. Again, a huge maintenance issue. I wish I had a doc link for this but I can't find one. I found out about this functionality by looking through the example code that comes with SWIG. Create a C# method to create an instance of the derived object and transfer the cPtr to the new instance. While I consider this clumsy, it does work. See an example below. public static object castTo(object fromObj, Type toType) { object retval = null; BaseClass fromObj2 = fromObj as BaseClass; HandleRef hr = BaseClass.getCPtr(fromObj2); IntPtr cPtr = hr.Handle; object toObj = Activator.CreateInstance(toType, cPtr, false); // make sure it actually is what we think it is if (fromObj.GetType().IsInstanceOfType(toObj)) { return toObj; } return retval; } Are these really the options? And if I'm not willing to dig through all the existing functions and class derivations, then I'm left with #3? Any help would be appreciated.

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  • Javascript Global Variables Not Working as expected. Help?

    - by capri corn
    I am new to Javascript. I am facing a problem with global variables. I can't figure out that why the global variables are not working as the code looks ok. Please Help me solve this problem. I will breifly explain the code first.I have some text on a page which changes to text field when clicked. When I define the variables inside the functions body the code starts working fine. When these variables are defined globally as in the following code, the console displays this error: the variable is not defined. Here my code: <!DOCTYPE HTML> <html> <head> <title>Span to Text Box - Demo - DOM</title> <script type="text/javascript" language="javascript"> var textNode = document.getElementById('text'); var textValue = textNode.firstChild.nodeValue; var textboxNode = document.getElementById('textbox'); var doneButton = document.getElementById('done'); function change() { textboxNode.setAttribute('value', textValue); textNode.style.display = 'none'; textboxNode.setAttribute('type','text'); doneButton.setAttribute('type','button'); } function changeBack() { textNode.firstChild.nodeValue = textboxNode.value; textNode.style.display = 'block'; textboxNode.setAttribute('type', 'hidden'); doneButton.setAttribute('type','hidden'); } </script> </head> <body> <p id="text" onClick="change()">Click me!</p> <form onSubmit="return false;"> <input type="hidden" id="textbox" /> <input type="hidden" id="done" onClick="changeBack()" value="Done" /> </form> </body> </html> Please Help! Thanks in Advance.

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  • Cannot figure out how to take in generic parameters for an Enterprise Framework library sql statemen

    - by KallDrexx
    I have written a specialized class to wrap up the enterprise library database functionality for easier usage. The reasoning for using the Enterprise Library is because my applications commonly connect to both oracle and sql server database systems. My wrapper handles both creating connection strings on the fly, connecting, and executing queries allowing my main code to only have to write a few lines of code to do database stuff and deal with error handling. As an example my ExecuteNonQuery method has the following declaration: /// <summary> /// Executes a query that returns no results (e.g. insert or update statements) /// </summary> /// <param name="sqlQuery"></param> /// <param name="parameters">Hashtable containing all the parameters for the query</param> /// <returns>The total number of records modified, -1 if an error occurred </returns> public int ExecuteNonQuery(string sqlQuery, Hashtable parameters) { // Make sure we are connected to the database if (!IsConnected) { ErrorHandler("Attempted to run a query without being connected to a database.", ErrorSeverity.Critical); return -1; } // Form the command DbCommand dbCommand = _database.GetSqlStringCommand(sqlQuery); // Add all the paramters foreach (string key in parameters.Keys) { if (parameters[key] == null) _database.AddInParameter(dbCommand, key, DbType.Object, null); else _database.AddInParameter(dbCommand, key, DbType.Object, parameters[key].ToString()); } return _database.ExecuteNonQuery(dbCommand); } _database is defined as private Database _database;. Hashtable parameters are created via code similar to p.Add("@param", value);. the issue I am having is that it seems that with enterprise library database framework you must declare the dbType of each parameter. This isn't an issue when you are calling the database code directly when forming the paramters but doesn't work for creating a generic abstraction class such as I have. In order to try and get around that I thought I could just use DbType.Object and figure the DB will figure it out based on the columns the sql is working with. Unfortunately, this is not the case as I get the following error: Implicit conversion from data type sql_variant to varchar is not allowed. Use the CONVERT function to run this query Is there any way to use generic parameters in a wrapper class or am I just going to have to move all my DB code into my main classes?

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  • Combining pathfinding with global AI objectives

    - by V_Programmer
    I'm making a turn-based strategy game using Java and LibGDX. Now I want to code the AI. I haven't written the AI code yet. I've simply designed it. The AI will have two components, one focused in tactics and resource management (create troops, determine who have strategical advantage, detect important objectives, etc) and a individual component, focused in assign the work to each unit, examine its possibilites and move the unit. Now I'm facing an important problem. The map where the action take place is a grid-based map. Each terrain has different movement cost. I read about pathfinding and I think A* is a very good option to determine a good route between two points. However, imagine I have an unit with movement = 5 (i.e, it can move 5 tiles of movement cost = 1). My tactical AI has found an objective at a distance d = 20 tiles (Manhattan distance) from my unit. My problem is the following: the unit won't be able to reach the objective in one turn. So the AI will have to store a list of position and execute them in various turns. I don't know how to solve this. PS. In my unit code, I have a list called "selectionMarks" which stores all the possible places where the unit can go in this turn. This places are calculed recursively using a "getSelectionMarks" function. Any help is appreciated :D

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  • Good books or tutorials on building projects without an IDE?

    - by CodexArcanum
    While I'm certainly under no illusions that building software without an IDE is possible, I don't actually know much about doing it well. I've been using graphical tools like Visual Studio or Code::Blocks so long that I'm pretty well lost without them. And that really stinks when I want to change environments or languages. I couldn't really do anything in D until someone made a Visual Studio plugin, and now that I'm trying to do more development on Mac, I can't use D again because the XCode plugins don't work. I'm sick of being lost when I see a .make file and having no idea what I'm supposed to do with a folder full of source files. People can't be compiling them one by one using the console and then linking them one by one. You'd spend more time typing file names than code. So what are the automation and productivity tools of the non-IDE user? How do you manage a project when you're writing all the code in emacs or vim or nano or whatever? I would love it if there was a book or a guide online that spells some of this out.

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  • Windows phone app xaml error

    - by thewarri0r9
    i am developing an app for windows phone 8 and i stuck on this code which visual studio showing invalid xaml. But Code compiles and works well. Invalid xaml Code is : <DataTemplate x:Key="AddrBookItemTemplate"> <StackPanel Margin="0,0,0,2" Orientation="Horizontal"> <StackPanel Width="80" Orientation="Horizontal" Height="80"> <Ellipse Margin="0" Height="70" Width="70" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Stroke="{x:Null}"> <Ellipse.Fill> <ImageBrush Stretch="Fill" ImageSource="{Binding imageBytes, Converter={StaticResource BytesToImageConverter}}"/> </Ellipse.Fill> </Ellipse> </StackPanel> <StackPanel Height="80" Margin="0" Width="380" HorizontalAlignment="Left"> <TextBlock FontWeight="Bold" Text="{Binding FirstName}" FontFamily="Segoe WP Semibold" FontSize="30" VerticalAlignment="Top" Margin="5,0,0,0" HorizontalAlignment="Left" /> <TextBlock Text="{Binding Phone}" FontFamily="Segoe WP" FontSize="24" Foreground="{StaticResource PhoneTextBoxReadOnlyBrush}" Margin="5,0,0,-12" Width="320" HorizontalAlignment="Left" VerticalAlignment="Top"/> </StackPanel> </StackPanel> </DataTemplate> I am serializing image by converting it to byte, it works fine but if image is null it gives an error. code behind: if (e.Results != null) { List<AddressBook> source = new List<AddressBook>(); foreach (var result in e.Results) { if (result.PhoneNumbers.FirstOrDefault() != null && result.GetPicture()!=null) { BitmapImage bmp = new BitmapImage(); BitmapImage nullbmp = new BitmapImage(); if (result.GetPicture() == null) { bmp.UriSource = new Uri(@"/Images/ci2.png", UriKind.RelativeOrAbsolute); } else { bmp.SetSource(result.GetPicture()); } listobj.Add(new AddressBook() { FirstName = result.DisplayName != null ? result.DisplayName : "", imageBytes = AddressBook.imageConvert(bmp), EmailAddress = "", LastName = "", Phone = result.PhoneNumbers.FirstOrDefault() != null ? result.PhoneNumbers.FirstOrDefault().PhoneNumber : "", }); } } Above code show an error "object reference not set to instance of an object". I want to show the default image (or color) in ellipse when image is null.What should I do?

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  • user defined Copy ctor, and copy-ctors further down the chain - compiler bug ? programmers brainbug

    - by J.Colmsee
    Hi. i have a little problem, and I am not sure if it's a compiler bug, or stupidity on my side. I have this struct : struct BulletFXData { int time_next_fx_counter; int next_fx_steps; Particle particles[2];//this is the interesting one ParticleManager::ParticleId particle_id[2]; }; The member "Particle particles[2]" has a self-made kind of smart-ptr in it (resource-counted texture-class). this smart-pointer has a default constructor, that initializes to the ptr to 0 (but that is not important) I also have another struct, containing the BulletFXData struct : struct BulletFX { BulletFXData data; BulletFXRenderFunPtr render_fun_ptr; BulletFXUpdateFunPtr update_fun_ptr; BulletFXExplosionFunPtr explode_fun_ptr; BulletFXLifetimeOverFunPtr lifetime_over_fun_ptr; BulletFX( BulletFXData data, BulletFXRenderFunPtr render_fun_ptr, BulletFXUpdateFunPtr update_fun_ptr, BulletFXExplosionFunPtr explode_fun_ptr, BulletFXLifetimeOverFunPtr lifetime_over_fun_ptr) :data(data), render_fun_ptr(render_fun_ptr), update_fun_ptr(update_fun_ptr), explode_fun_ptr(explode_fun_ptr), lifetime_over_fun_ptr(lifetime_over_fun_ptr) { } /* //USER DEFINED copy-ctor. if it's defined things go crazy BulletFX(const BulletFX& rhs) :data(data),//this line of code seems to do a plain memory-copy without calling the right ctors render_fun_ptr(render_fun_ptr), update_fun_ptr(update_fun_ptr), explode_fun_ptr(explode_fun_ptr), lifetime_over_fun_ptr(lifetime_over_fun_ptr) { } */ }; If i use the user-defined copy-ctor my smart-pointer class goes crazy, and it seems that calling the CopyCtor / assignment operator aren't called as they should. So - does this all make sense ? it seems as if my own copy-ctor of struct BulletFX should do exactly what the compiler-generated would, but it seems to forget to call the right constructors down the chain. compiler bug ? me being stupid ? Sorry about the big code, some small example could have illustrated too. but often you guys ask for the real code, so well - here it is :D EDIT : more info : typedef ParticleId unsigned int; Particle has no user defined copyctor, but has a member of type : Particle { .... Resource<Texture> tex_res; ... } Resource is a smart-pointer class, and has all ctor's defined (also asignment operator) and it seems that Resource is copied bitwise. EDIT : henrik solved it... data(data) is stupid of course ! it should of course be rhs.data !!! sorry for huge amount of code, with a very little bug in it !!! (Guess you shouldn't code at 1 in the morning :D )

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  • Programming a callback function within a jQuery plugin

    - by ILMV
    I'm writing a jQuery plug-in so I can reuse this code in many places as it is a very well used piece of code, the code itself adds a new line to a table which has been cloned from a hidden row, it continues to perform a load of manipulations on the new row. I'm currently referencing it like this: $(".abc .grid").grid(); But I want to include a callback so each area the plug-in is called from can do something a bit more unique when the row has been added. I've used the jQuery AJAX plug-in before, so have used the success callback function, but cannot understand how the code works in the background. Here's what I want to achieve: $(".abc .grid").grid({ row_added: function() { // do something a bit more specific here } }); Here's my plug-in code (function($){ $.fn.extend({ //pass the options variable to the function grid: function() { return this.each(function() { grid_table=$(this).find('.grid-table > tbody'); grid_hidden_row=$(this).find('.grid-hidden-row'); //console.debug(grid_hidden_row); $(this).find('.grid-add-row').click(function(event) { /* * clone row takes a hidden dummy row, clones it and appends a unique row * identifier to the id. Clone maintains our jQuery binds */ // get the last id last_row=$(grid_table).find('tr:last').attr('id'); if(last_row===undefined) { new_row=1; } else { new_row=parseInt(last_row.replace('row',''),10)+1; } // append element to target, changes it's id and shows it $(grid_table).append($(grid_hidden_row).clone(true).attr('id','row'+new_row).removeClass('grid-hidden-row').show()); // append unique row identifier on id and name attribute of seledct, input and a $('#row'+new_row).find('select, input, a').each(function(id) { $(this).appendAttr('id','_row'+new_row); $(this).replaceAttr('name','_REPLACE_',new_row); }); // disable all the readonly_if_lines options if this is the first row if(new_row==1) { $('.readonly_if_lines :not(:selected)').attr('disabled','disabled'); } }); $(this).find('.grid-remove-row').click(function(event) { /* * Remove row does what it says on the tin, as well as a few other house * keeping bits and pieces */ // remove the parent tr $(this).parents('tr').remove(); // recalculate the order value5 //calcTotal('.net_value ','#gridform','#gridform_total'); // if we've removed the last row remove readonly locks row_count=grid_table.find('tr').size(); console.info(row_count); if(row_count===0) { $('.readonly_if_lines :disabled').removeAttr('disabled'); } }); }); } }); })(jQuery); I've done the usually searching on elgooG... but I seem to be getting a lot of noise with little result, any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

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  • How to convince a client to switch to a framework *now*; also examples of great, large-scale php applications.

    - by cbrandolino
    Hi everybody. I'm about to start working on a very ambitious project that, in my opinion, has some great potential for what concerns the basic concept and the implementation ideas (implementation as in how this ideas will be implemented, not as in programming). The state of the code right now is unluckily subpar. It's vanilla php, no framework, no separation between application and visualization logic. It's been done mostly by amateur students (I know great amateur/student programmers, don't get me wrong: this was not the case though). The clients are really great, and they know the system won't scale and needs a redesign. The problem is, they would like to launch a beta ASAP and then think of rebuilding. Since just the basic functionalities are present now, I suggested it would be a great idea if we (we're a three-people shop, all very proficient) ported that code to some framework (we like CodeIgniter) before launching. We would reasonably be able to do that in < 10 days. Problem is, they don't think php would be a valid long-term solution anyway, so they would prefer to just let it be and fix the bugs for now (there's quite a bit) and then directly switch to some ruby/python based system. Porting to CI now will make future improvements incredibly easier, the current code more secure, changing the style - still being discussed with the designers - a breeze (reminder: there are database calls in template files right now); the biggest obstacle is the lack of trust in php as a valid, scalable technology. So well, I need some examples of great php applications (apart from facebook) and some suggestions on how to try to convince them to port soon. Again, they're great people - it's not like they would like ruby cause it's so hot right now; they just don't trust php since us cool programmers like bashing it, I suppose, but I'm sure going on like this for even one more day would be a mistake. Also, we have some weight in the decision process.

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  • X Error of failed request: BadMatch [migrated]

    - by Andrew Grabko
    I'm trying to execute some "hello world" opengl code: #include <GL/freeglut.h> void displayCall() { glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT | GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT); glEnable(GL_DEPTH_TEST); ... Some more code here glutSwapBuffers(); } int main(int argc, char *argv[]) { glutInit(&argc, argv); glutInitDisplayMode(GLUT_RGB | GLUT_DOUBLE | GLUT_DEPTH); glutInitWindowSize(500, 500); glutInitWindowPosition(300, 200); glutInitContextVersion(4, 2); glutInitContextFlags(GLUT_FORWARD_COMPATIBLE); glutCreateWindow("Hello World!"); glutDisplayFunc(displayCall); glutMainLoop(); return 0; } As a result I get: X Error of failed request: BadMatch (invalid parameter attributes) Major opcode of failed request: 128 (GLX) Minor opcode of failed request: 34 () Serial number of failed request: 39 Current serial number in output stream: 40 Here is the stack trace: fghCreateNewContext() at freeglut_window.c:737 0x7ffff7bbaa81 fgOpenWindow() at freeglut_window.c:878 0x7ffff7bbb2fb fgCreateWindow() at freeglut_structure.c:106 0x7ffff7bb9d86 glutCreateWindow() at freeglut_window.c:1,183 0x7ffff7bbb4f2 main() at AlphaTest.cpp:51 0x4007df Here is the last piece of code, after witch the program crashes: createContextAttribs = (CreateContextAttribsProc) fghGetProcAddress("glXCreateContextAttribsARB" ); if ( createContextAttribs == NULL ) { fgError( "glXCreateContextAttribsARB not found" ); } context = createContextAttribs( dpy, config, share_list, direct, attributes ); "glXCreateContextAttribsARB" address is obtained successfully, but the program crashes on its invocation. If I specify OpenGL version less than 4.2 in "glutInitContextVersion()" program runs without errors. Here is my glxinfo's OpelGL version: OpenGL version string: 4.2.0 NVIDIA 285.05.09 I would be very appreciate any further ideas.

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  • Designs for outputting to a spreadsheet

    - by Austin Moore
    I'm working on a project where we are tasked to gather and output various data to a spreadsheet. We are having tons of problems with the file that holds the code to write the spreadsheet. The cell that the data belongs to is hardcoded, so anytime you need to add anything to the middle of the spreadsheet, you have to increment the location for all the fields after that in the code. There are random blank rows, to add padding between sections, and subsections within the sections, so there's no real pattern that we can replicate. Essentially, anytime we have to add or change anything to the spreadsheet it requires a many long and tedious hours. The code is all in this one large file, hacked together overtime in Perl. I've come up with a few OO solutions, but I'm not too familiar with OO programming in Perl and all my attempts at it haven't been great, so I've shied away from it so far. I've suggested we handle this section of the program with a more OO friendly language, but we can't apparently. I've also suggested that we scrap the entire spreadsheet idea, and just move to a webpage, but we can't do that either. We've been working on this project for a few months, and every time we have to change that file, we all dread it. I'm thinking it's time to start some refactoring. However, I don't even know what could make this file easier to work with. The way the output is formatted makes it so that it has to be somewhat hardcoded. I'm wondering if anyone has insight on any design patterns or techniques they have used to tackle a similar problem. I'm open to any ideas. Perl specific answers are welcome, but I am also interested in language-agnostic solutions.

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  • Why do I have an error when adding states in slick?

    - by SystemNetworks
    When I was going to create another state I had an error. This is my code: public static final int play2 = 3; and public Game(String gamename){ this.addState(new mission(play2)); } and public void initStatesList(GameContainer gc) throws SlickException{ this.getState(play2).init(gc, this); } I have an error in the addState. above the above code. I don't know where is the problem. But if you want the whole code it is here: package javagame; import org.newdawn.slick.*; import org.newdawn.slick.state.*; public class Game extends StateBasedGame{ public static final String gamename = "NET FRONT"; public static final int menu = 0; public static final int play = 1; public static final int train = 2; public static final int play2 = 3; public Game(String gamename){ super(gamename); this.addState(new Menu(menu)); this.addState(new Play(play)); this.addState(new train(train)); this.addState(new mission(play2)); } public void initStatesList(GameContainer gc) throws SlickException{ this.getState(menu).init(gc, this); this.getState(play).init(gc, this); this.getState(train).init(gc, this); this.enterState(menu); this.getState(play2).init(gc, this); } public static void main(String[] args) { try{ AppGameContainer app =new AppGameContainer(new Game(gamename)); app.setDisplayMode(1500, 1000, false); app.start(); }catch(SlickException e){ e.printStackTrace(); } } } //SYSTEM NETWORKS(C) 2012 NET FRONT

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  • How to manage Areas/Levels in an RPG?

    - by Hexlan
    I'm working on an RPG and I'm trying to figure out how to manage the different levels/areas in the game. Currently I create a new state (source file) for every area, defining its unique aspects. My concern is that as the game grows the number of class files will become unmanageable with all the towns, houses, shops, dungeons, etc. that I need to keep track of. I would also prefer to separate my levels from the source code because non-programmer members of the team will be creating levels, and I would like the engine to be as free from game specific code as possible. I'm thinking of creating a class that provides all the functions that will be the same between all the levels/areas with a unique member variable that can be used to look up level specifics from data. This way I only need to define level/area once in the code, but can create multiple instances each with its own unique aspects provided by data. Is this a good way to go about solving the issue? Is there a better way to handle a growing number of levels?

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  • What is a 'good number' of exceptions to implement for my library?

    - by Fuzz
    I've always wondered how many different exception classes I should implement and throw for various pieces of my software. My particular development is usually C++/C#/Java related, but I believe this is a question for all languages. I want to understand what is a good number of different exceptions to throw, and what the developer community expect of a good library. The trade-offs I see include: More exception classes can allow very fine grain levels of error handling for API users (prone to user configuration or data errors, or files not being found) More exception classes allows error specific information to be embedded in the exception, rather than just a string message or error code More exception classes can mean more code maintenance More exception classes can mean the API is less approachable to users The scenarios I wish to understand exception usage in include: During 'configuration' stage, which might include loading files or setting parameters During an 'operation' type phase where the library might be running tasks and doing some work, perhaps in another thread Other patterns of error reporting without using exceptions, or less exceptions (as a comparison) might include: Less exceptions, but embedding an error code that can be used as a lookup Returning error codes and flags directly from functions (sometimes not possible from threads) Implemented an event or callback system upon error (avoids stack unwinding) As developers, what do you prefer to see? If there are MANY exceptions, do you bother error handling them separately anyway? Do you have a preference for error handling types depending on the stage of operation?

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  • Reformatting and version control

    - by l0b0
    Code formatting matters. Even indentation matters. And consistency is more important than minor improvements. But projects usually don't have a clear, complete, verifiable and enforced style guide from day 1, and major improvements may arrive any day. Maybe you find that SELECT id, name, address FROM persons JOIN addresses ON persons.id = addresses.person_id; could be better written as / is better written than SELECT persons.id, persons.name, addresses.address FROM persons JOIN addresses ON persons.id = addresses.person_id; while working on adding more columns to the query. Maybe this is the most complex of all four queries in your code, or a trivial query among thousands. No matter how difficult the transition, you decide it's worth it. But how do you track code changes across major formatting changes? You could just give up and say "this is the point where we start again", or you could reformat all queries in the entire repository history. If you're using a distributed version control system like Git you can revert to the first commit ever, and reformat your way from there to the current state. But it's a lot of work, and everyone else would have to pause work (or be prepared for the mother of all merges) while it's going on. Is there a better way to change history which gives the best of all results: Same style in all commits Minimal merge work ? To clarify, this is not about best practices when starting the project, but rather what should be done when a large refactoring has been deemed a Good Thing™ but you still want a traceable history? Never rewriting history is great if it's the only way to ensure that your versions always work the same, but what about the developer benefits of a clean rewrite? Especially if you have ways (tests, syntax definitions or an identical binary after compilation) to ensure that the rewritten version works exactly the same way as the original?

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  • Should I use a config file or database for storing business rules?

    - by foiseworth
    I have recently been reading The Pragmatic Programmer which states that: Details mess up our pristine code—especially if they change frequently. Every time we have to go in and change the code to accommodate some change in business logic, or in the law, or in management's personal tastes of the day, we run the risk of breaking the system—of introducing a new bug. Hunt, Andrew; Thomas, David (1999-10-20). The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master (Kindle Locations 2651-2653). Pearson Education (USA). Kindle Edition. I am currently programming a web app that has some models that have properties that can only be from a set of values, e.g. (not actual example as the web app data confidential): light-type = sphere / cube / cylinder The light type can only be the above three values but according to TPP I should always code as if they could change and place their values in a config file. As there are several incidents of this throughout the app, my question is: Should I store possibly values like these in: a config file: 'light-types' = array(sphere, cube, cylinder), 'other-type' = value, 'etc = etc-value a single table in a database with one line for each config item a database with a table for each config item (e.g. table: light_types; columns: id, name) some other way? Many thanks for any assistance / expertise offered.

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  • How do you track existing requirements over time?

    - by CaptainAwesomePants
    I'm a software engineer working on a complex, ongoing website. It has a lot of moving parts and a small team of UI designers and business folks adding new features and tweaking old ones. Over the last year or so, we've added hundreds of interesting little edge cases. Planning, implementing, and testing them is not a problem. The problem comes later, when we want to refactor or add another new feature. Nobody remembers half of the old features and edge cases from a year ago. When we want to add a new change, we notice that code does all sorts of things in there, and we're not entirely sure which things are intentional requirements and which are meaningless side effects. Did someone last year request that the login token was supposed to only be valid for 30 minutes, or did some programmers just pick a sensible default? Can we change it? Back when the product was first envisioned, we created some documentation describing how the site worked. Since then we created a few additional documents describing new features, but nobody ever goes back and updates those documents when new features are requested, so the only authoritative documentation is the code itself. But the code provides no justification, no reason for its actions: only the how, never the why. What do other long-running teams do to keep track of what the requirements were and why?

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  • ASP.NET MVC 3 (C#) Software Architecture

    - by ryanzec
    I am starting on a relatively large and ambitious ASP.NET MVC 3 project and just thinking about the best way to organize my code. The project is basically going to be a general management system that will be capable of supporting any type management system whether it be a blogging system, cms, reservation system, wikis, forums, project management system, etc…, each of them being just a separate 'module'. You can read more about it on my blog posted here : http://www.ryanzec.com/index.php/blog/details/8 (forgive me, the style of the site kinda sucks). For those who don't want to read the long blog post the basic idea is that the core system itself is nothing more than a users system with an admin interface to manage the users system. Then you just add on module as you need them and the module I will be creating is a simple blog post to test it out before I move on to the big module which is a project management system. Now I am just trying to think of the best way to structure this so that it is easy for users to add in there own modules but easy for me to update to core system without worrying about the user modifying the core code. I think the ideal way would be to have a number of core projects that user is specifically told not to modify otherwise the system may become unstable and future updates would not work. When the user wants to add in there own modules, they would just add in a new project (or multiple projects). The thing is I am not sure that it is even possible to use multiple projects all with their own controllers, razor view template, css, javascript, etc... in one web application. Ideally each module would have some of it own razor view templates, css, javascript, image files and also need access to some of the core razor view templates, css, javascript, image files which would is in a separate project. It is possible to have 1 web application run off of controllers, razor view templates, css, javascript, image files that are store in multiple projects? Is there a better was to structure this to allow the user to easily add in module with having to modify the core code?

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  • Migrating My GWB Blog Over To WordPress

    - by deadlydog
    Geeks With Blogs has been good to me, but there are too many tempting things about Word Press for me to stay with GWB.  Particularly their statistics features, and also I like that I can apply specific tags to my posts to make them easier to find in Google (and I never was able to get categories working on GWB). The one thing I don’t like about WordPress is I can’t seem to find a theme that stretches the Content area to take up the rest of the space on wide resolutions…..hopefully I’ll be able to overcome that obstacle soon though. For those who are curious as to how I actually moved all of my posts across, I ended up just using Live Writer to open my GWB posts, and then just changed it to publish to my WordPress blog.  This was fairly painless, but with my 27 posts it took probably about 2 hours of manual effort to do.  Most of the time WordPress was automatically able to copy the images over, but sometimes I had to save the pics from my GWB posts and then re-add them in Live Writer to my WordPress post.  I found another developers automated solution (in alpha mode), but opted to do it manually since I wanted to manually specify Categories and Tags on each post anyways.  The one thing I still have left to do is move the worthwhile comments across from the GWB posts to the new WordPress posts. The largest pain point was that with GWB I was using the Code Snippet Plugin for Live Writer for my source code snippets, and when they got transferred over to WordPress they looked horrible.  So I ended up finding a new Live Writer plugin called SyntaxHighlighter that looks even nicer on my posts If anybody knows of a nice WordPress theme that stretches the content area to fit the width of the screen, please let me know.  All of the themes I’ve found seem to have a max width set on them, so I end up with much wasted space on the left and right sides.  Since I post lots of code snippets, the more horizontal space the better! So if you want to continue to follow me, my blog's new home is now at https://deadlydog.wordpress.com

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  • Best practices in versioning

    - by Gerenuk
    I develop some scripts for data analysis in a small team. For the moment we use SVN, but not in a very structured way. We haven't even looked how to use branches even though we need this functionality. What do you suggest as the best practice to setup the following system: two code bases (core and plugins) versions can be incompatible to previous scripts sometimes individual features are being developed and not yet finished, while other fixes have to be done urgently to the code In the end we don't deliver the code as a package, but rather place the Python scripts in some directory (with version names?). Some other python script which serves as a configuration choses the desired version, sets the path to these libraries and then starts to import the modules. I saw stable releases to be named "trunk" so I did the same. However, no version numbers yet. Core and plugins are different repositories, however we have to match versions for compatibility. Can you suggest some best practices or reference to ease development and reduce chaos? :) Some suggested GIT. I haven't heard about it, but I'm free to change.

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  • How should I create a mutable, varied jtree with arbitrary/generic category nodes?

    - by Pureferret
    Please note: I don't want coding help here, I'm on Programmers for a reason. I want to improve my program planning/writing skills not (just) my understanding of Java. I'm trying to figure out how to make a tree which has an arbitrary category system, based on the skills listed for this LARP game here. My previous attempt had a bool for whether a skill was also a category. Trying to code around that was messy. Drawing out my tree I noticed that only my 'leaves' were skills and I'd labeled the others as categories. Explanation of tree: The Tree is 'born' with a set of hard coded highest level categories (Weapons, Physical and Mental, Medical etc.). Fro mthis the user needs to be able to add a skill. Ultimately they want to add 'One-handed Sword Specialisation' for instance. To do so you'd ideally click 'add' with Weapons selected and then select One-handed from a combobox, then click add again and enter a name in a text field. Then click add again to add a 'level' or 'tier' first proficiency, then specialisation. Of course if you want to buy a different skill it's completely different, which is what I'm having trouble getting my head around let alone programming in. What is a good system for describing this sort of tree in code? All the other JTree examples I've seen have some predictable pattern, and I don't want to have to code this all in 'literals'. Should I be using abstract classes? Interfaces? How can I make this sort of cluster of objects extensible when I add in other skills not listed above that behave differently? If there is not a good system to use, if there a good process for working out how to do this sort of thing?

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  • How to access a named element of a derived user control in silverlight ?

    - by Mrt
    Hello, I have a custom base user control in silverlight. <UserControl x:Class="Problemo.MyBaseControl" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008" xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006" mc:Ignorable="d" d:DesignHeight="300" d:DesignWidth="400"> <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White"> <Border Name="HeaderControl" Background="Red" /> </Grid> </UserControl> With the following code behind public partial class MyBaseControl : UserControl { public UIElement Header { get; set; } public MyBaseControl() { InitializeComponent(); Loaded += MyBaseControl_Loaded; } void MyBaseControl_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { HeaderControl.Child = Header; } } I have a derived control. <me:MyBaseControl x:Class="Problemo.MyControl" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008" xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006" mc:Ignorable="d" xmlns:me="clr-namespace:Problemo" d:DesignHeight="300" d:DesignWidth="400"> <me:MyBaseControl.Header> <TextBlock Name="header" Text="{Binding Text}" /> </me:MyBaseControl.Header> </me:MyBaseControl> With the following code behind. public partial class MyControl : MyBaseControl { public string Text { get; set; } public MyControl(string text) { InitializeComponent(); Text = text; } } I'm trying to set the text value of the header textblock in the derived control. It would be nice to be able to set both ways, i.e. with databinding or in the derived control code behind, but neither work. With the data binding, it doesn't work. If I try in the code behind I get a null reference to 'header'. This is silverlight 4 (not sure if that makes a difference) Any suggestions on how to do with with both databinding and in code ? Cheers

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