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• How far do I take Composition?

  - by whiterook6

  (Although I'm sure this is a common problem I really don't know what to search for. Composition is the only thing I could come up with.) I've read over and over that multiple inheritance and subclassing is really, really bad, especially for game entities. If I have three types of motions, five types of guns, and three types of armoring, I don't want to have to make 45 different classes to get all the possible combinations; I'm going to add a motion behavior, gun behavior, and armor behavior to a single generic object. That makes sense. But how far do I take this? I can have as many different types of behaviors as I can imagine: DamageBehavior, MotionBehavior, TargetableBehavior, etc. If I add a new class of behaviors then I need to update all the other classes that use them. But what happens when I have functionality that doesn't really fit into one class of behaviors? For example, my armor needs to be damageable but also updateable. And should I be able to have use more than one type of behavior on an entity at a time, such as two motion behaviors? Can anyone offer any wisdom or point me in the direction of some useful articles? Thanks!

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• Learning how to design knowledge and data flow [closed]

  - by max

  In designing software, I spend a lot of time deciding how the knowledge (algorithms / business logic) and data should be allocated between different entities; that is, which object should know what. I am asking for advice about books, articles, presentations, classes, or other resources that would help me learn how to do it better. I code primarily in Python, but my question is not really language-specific; even if some of the insights I learn don't work in Python, that's fine. I'll give a couple examples to clarify what I mean. Example 1 I want to perform some computation. As a user, I will need to provide parameters to do the computation. I can have all those parameters sent to the "main" object, which then uses them to create other objects as needed. Or I can create one "main" object, as well as several additional objects; the additional objects would then be sent to the "main" object as parameters. What factors should I consider to make this choice? Example 2 Let's say I have a few objects of type A that can perform a certain computation. The main computation often involves using an object of type B that performs some interim computation. I can either "teach" A instances what exact parameters to pass to B instances (i.e., make B "dumb"); or I can "teach" B instances to figure out what needs to be done when looking at an A instance (i.e., make B "smart"). What should I think about when I'm making this choice?

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• Creating an Interface To a Language's Standard Library?

  - by Nathan Arthur

  In the process of learning test-driven development, I've been introduced to dependency injection and the use of interfaces, and have started using these concepts in my own PHP code in order to make it more testable. There have been times when I've needed to test code that was doing things like calling the PHP time() function. In order to make these tests predictable, it seemed logical to create an interface to the standard PHP functions I use so that I can mock them out in my tests. Is this good software design? What are the pros and cons of doing this? I've found myself groaning at how quickly my PHP interface can stick its fingers into everything I do. Is there a better way to make code that relies on PHP-accessed state and functions more testable?

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• How to implement a component based system for items in a web game.

  - by Landstander

  Reading several other questions and answers on using a component based system to define items I want to use one for the items and spells in a web game written in PHP. I'm just stuck on the implementation. I'm going to use a DB schema suggested in this series (part 5 describes the schema); http://t-machine.org/index.php/2007/09/03/entity-systems-are-the-future-of-mmog-development-part-1/ This means I'll have an items table with generic item properties, a table listing all of the components for an item and finally records in each component table used to make up the item. Assuming I can select the first two together in a single query, I'm still going to do N queries for each component type. I'm kind of fine with this because I can cache the data into memcache and check there first before doing any queries. I'll need to build up the items on every request they are used in so the implementation needs to be on the lean side even if they're pulled from memcache. But right there is where I feel confident about implementing a component system for my items ends. I figure I'd need to bring attributes and behaviors into the container from each component it uses. I'm just not sure how to do that effectively and not end up writing a lot of specialized code to deal with each component. For example an AttackComponent might need to know how to filter targets inside of a battle context and also maybe provide an attack behavior. That same item might also have a UsableComponent which allows the item to be used and apply some effect onto a different set of targets filtered differently from the same battle context. Then not every part of an item is an active part, an AttributeBonusComponent might need to only kick in when the item is in an equipped state or when displaying the item details page. Ultimately, how should I bring all of the components together into the container so when I use an item as a weapon I get the correct list of targets? Know when a weapon can also be used as an item? Or to apply the bonuses the item provides to a character object? I feel like I've gone too far down the rabbit hole and I can't grasp onto the simple solution in front of me. (If that makes any sense at all.) Likewise if I were to implement the best answer from here I feel like I'd have a lot of the same questions. How to model multiple "uses" (e.g. weapon) for usable-inventory/object/items (e.g. katana) within a relational database.

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• How do I implement input and movement with characters that get into vehicles?

  - by Xkynar

  I'm making a game similar to GTA2. When the player enters the vehicle, what happens in terms of logic? Does the player becomes the vehicle? Does the vehicle override the player movement? The main question is how should it look at a vehicle? I want to understand if the player becomes the car or if the player has a "motion state" like "driving, walking, flying" depending on what he is doing in a moment, I know there are tons of ways to implement vehicles in a game.

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• Include in service layer all the application's functions or only the reusable ones?

  - by BornToCode

  Background: I need to build a main application with some operations (CRUD and more) (-in winforms), I need to make another application which will re-use some of the functions of the main application (-in webforms). I understood that using service layer is the best approach here. If I understood correctly the service should be calling the function on the BL layer (correct me if I'm wrong) The dilemma: In my main winform UI - should I call the functions from the BL, or from the service? (please explain why) Should I create a service for every single function on the BL even if I need some of the functions only in one UI? for example - should I create services for all the CRUD operations, even though I need to re-use only update operation in the webform? YOUR HELP IS MUCH APPRECIATED

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• Getting into the details of game engine programming

  - by Darkslash

  I am interested in learning game programming, but I really have an interest in the lower level engineering in games. I have OpenGL experience, and I am really interested in learning more about implementing AI, Physics, etc. I have a computer science degree, so I really like getting into technical stuff. Many times when I ask about this sort of thing, I get a lot of "Use an engine", "Use Unity3d", "Why waste your time writing code that already exists", etc, etc. My idea was to use simpler libraries such as SFML or XNA so that I could learn how to implement the more complex systems. The thing is, although I do want to write games, I want to learn things that using something like Unity simply doesn't teach you. My goal is not to make a current generation quality 3D game to sell, I just want to make some cool smaller games and learn all I can about the programming side of game development. Is this something that people just do not do anymore? It seems like everywhere I turn people are using Unity or UDK or GameMaker. I fully understand why you would use a tool like these, but I cant see how they would suit my purposes. So where does someone like myself turn? Am I trying to learn something that people just do not bother doing anymore? Is the innovation in this area gone and just all about gameplay now? I'm sorry if this question seems silly, but I am genuinely interested in knowing more about this and meeting more people who are interested in this sort of thing.

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• Two components offering the same functionality, required by different dependencies

  - by kander

  I'm building an application in PHP, using Zend Framework 1 and Doctrine2 as the ORM layer. All is going well. Now, I happened to notice that both ZF1 and Doctrine2 come with, and rely on, their own caching implementation. I've evaluated both, and while each has its own pro's and cons, neither of them stand out as superior to the other for my simple needs. Both libraries also seem to be written against their respective interfaces, not their implementations. Reasons why I feel this is an issue is that during the bootstrapping of my application, I have to configure two caching drivers - each with its own syntax. A mismatch is easily created this way, and it feels inefficient to set up two connections to the caching backend because of this. I'm trying to determine what the best way forward is, and would welcome any insights you may be able to offer. What I've thought up so far are four options: Do nothing, accept that two classes offering caching functionality are present. Create a Facade class to stick Zend's interface onto Doctrine's caching implementation. Option 2, the other way around - create a Facade to map Doctrine's interface on a Zend Framework backend. Use multiple-interface-inheritance to create one interface to rule them all, and pray that there aren't any overlaps (ie: if both have a "save" method, they'll need to accept params in the same order due to PHP's lack of proper polymorphism). What option is best, or is there a "None of the above" variant that I'm not aware of?

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• Java game design question (graphical objects)

  - by vemalsar

  Hello Guys, I'm beginner in game development, in Java and here on this site too and I have a game design question. Please comment my idea: I have a main loop which call update and draw method. I want to use an ArrayList which store graphical objects, they have coordinate and image or text to draw and my game objects extends this class. In update, I can choose which objects should be put in the array and in draw method I'll display the elements of array on the screen. I'm using a buffer and draw first there, but it is not important now I guess...Here is a simple (not full) code, only the logic: public class GamePanel extends JPanel implements KeyListener { ArrayList<graphicalObjects> graphArray = new ArrayList<graphicalObjects>(); public void update() { //change the game scene, update the graphArray, process input etc. } public void draw() { //draws every element of graphArray to a JPanel } public static main(String[] args) { while(true) { update(); draw(); } } } My questions: Should have I use interface or abstract class for graphicalObjects? graphicalObjects class and the ArrayList really needs or there is some better solution? How to draw objects? They draw themself with their own method or in the draw method I have to draw manually based on graphicalObjects variables (x,y coordinates, image etc.)? If this conception is wrong, please suggest another one! All comments are welcome and sorry if this is dumb question, thanks!

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• Where can I find good (well organized) examples of game code?

  - by smasher

  Where can I find good (well organized) examples of game code? I'm hoping that I can pick up some organizational tips. Most examples in books are too short and leave out lots of detail for the sake of brevity. I'm particularly interested on how to group your variables and methods so that another programmer would know where to look in the code. For example initializers at the top, then methods that take input, then methods that update views. I don't care about a particular language, as long as its OOP. I looked at the Quake 2 and 3 sources, but they're straight C and not much help for getting tips on organizing your objects. So, have you seen some good source? Any pointers to code that makes you say "wow, that's well organized" would be great.

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• What do you do when the code isn't complicated enough?

  - by Chris

  After six months of development on a project, our stakeholders have had a "gut check" and have decided that the path that we've been walking (a custom designed application framework and data access layer) is holding us (the developers) back from quickly developing the features they would like to see. After several days of debate management and the development team have decided to scrap the current incarnation and start over using ASP.net MVC, with Entity Framework as the bases of the a 'quick and dirty', lets just get it done project. In days following, our senior developer who has never worked with MVC or Entity Framework has finally gotten into a sample project and done some work. His take on ASP.net MVC, "this is not software engineering". So my question is this; what do you do, when one doesn't think the code is complicated enough?

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• SDL - Getting a single keypress event instead of a keystate?

  - by MrKatSwordfish

  Right now I'm working on a simple SDL project, but I've hit an issue when trying to get a single keypress event to skip past a splash screen. Right now, there are 4 start-up splash screens that I would like to be able to skip with a single keypress (of any key). My issue is that, as of now, if I hold down a key, it skips through each splash screen to the very last one immediately. The splash screens are stored as an array of SDL surfaces which are all loaded at the initialization of the state. I have an variable called currentSplashImage that controls which element of the array is being rendered on the screen. I've set it up so that whenever there's a SDL_KEYDOWN event, it triggers a single incrementation of the currentSplashImage variable. So, I'm really not sure why my code isn't working correctly. For some reason, when I hold down a button, it seems to be treating the held button as a new key press event every time it ticks through the code. Does anyone know how I can go about fixing this issue? [Here's a snippet of code that I've been using...] void SplashScreenState::handleEvents() { SDL_PollEvent( &localEvent ); if ( localEvent.type == SDL_KEYDOWN ) { if ( currentSplashImage < 3 && currentSplashImage >= 0) { currentSplashImage++; } } else if ( localEvent.type == SDL_QUIT ) { smgaEngine.setRunning(false); } } I should also mention that the SDL_Event 'localEvent' is part of the GameState parent class, while this event handling code is part of a SplashScreenState subclass. If anyone knows why this is happening, or if there is any way to improve my code, It'd be helpful to me! :D I'm still a very new programmer, trying to learn. UPDATE: I added a std::cout line to that the code runs multiple times with a single KEYDOWN event. I also tried disabling SDL_EnableKeyRepeat, but it didn't fix the issue. void SplashScreenState::handleEvents() { SDL_PollEvent( &localEvent ); if ( localEvent.type == SDL_KEYDOWN ) { if ( currentSplashImage < 3 && currentSplashImage >= 0) { currentSplashImage++; std::cout << "KEYDOWN.."; //<---- test cout line } } else if ( localEvent.type == SDL_QUIT ) { smgaEngine.setRunning(false); } } This prints out "KEYDOWN..KEYDOWN..KEYDOWN.." in the cout stream when a button is held.

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• If I am developing a hosted payments page, what should the infrastructure look like?

  - by marcamillion

  If I am not storing credit card info, do I have to be concerned with PCI-compliance? I will be using a payment processor with a bank in my country. Literally just taking the credit card info and passing it to the gateway and processor. I would love to get an idea of the various technologies I might need to consider from an software architectural point of view. What are the best practices in terms of accepting credit cards and reducing fraud risk on my end? I will be creating the app in Rails.

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• Stop myself from over-complicating applications

  - by stuartmclark

  Recently I worked on a fairly large project involving C# and MVVM. This application had around 160 projects in the solutions each seprarated into their own layers. As I have been working on this application for almost a year, building it from scratch as part of a team, I am now coming off that project and onto smaller more trivial projects. As I was beginning to develop a small in-house tool I found myself trying to mimic the larger applications structure and layering but in the end I just had a simple application with several DLLs which I know I wouldn't have done if I had not worked on that larger application before. I am just wondering if there are any techniques I can utilise to stop myself from turning a "code-behind" style trivial application into a full blown MVVM application? Or should I continue developing as I am and try to keep the unnecessary fluff out of the project?

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• Entity communication: Message queue vs Publish/Subscribe vs Signal/Slots

  - by deft_code

  How do game engine entities communicate? Two use cases: How would entity_A send a take-damage message to entity_B? How would entity_A query entity_B's HP? Here's what I've encountered so far: Message queue entity_A creates a take-damage message and posts it to entity_B's message queue. entity_A creates a query-hp message and posts it to entity_B. entity_B in return creates an response-hp message and posts it to entity_A. Publish/Subscribe entity_B subscribes to take-damage messages (possibly with some preemptive filtering so only relevant message are delivered). entity_A produces take-damage message that references entity_B. entity_A subscribes to update-hp messages (possibly filtered). Every frame entity_B broadcasts update-hp messages. Signal/Slots ??? entity_A connects an update-hp slot to entity_B's update-hp signal. Something better? Do I have a correct understanding of how these communication schemes would tie into a game engine's entity system? How do entities in commercial game engines communicate?

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• Could I be going crazy with Event Handlers? Am I going the "wrong way" with my design?

  - by sensae

  I guess I've decided that I really like event handlers. I may be suffering a bit from analysis paralysis, but I'm concerned about making my design unwieldy or running into some other unforeseen consequence to my design decisions. My game engine currently does basic sprite-based rendering with a panning overhead camera. My design looks a bit like this: SceneHandler Contains a list of classes that implement the SceneListener interface (currently only Sprites). Calls render() once per tick, and sends onCameraUpdate(); messages to SceneListeners. InputHandler Polls the input once per tick, and sends a simple "onKeyPressed" message to InputListeners. I have a Camera InputListener which holds a SceneHandler instance and triggers updateCamera(); events based on what the input is. AgentHandler Calls default actions on any Agents (AI) once per tick, and will check a stack for any new events that are registered, dispatching them to specific Agents as needed. So I have basic sprite objects that can move around a scene and use rudimentary steering behaviors to travel. I've gotten onto collision detection, and this is where I'm not sure the direction my design is going is good. Is it a good practice to have many, small event handlers? I imagine going the way I am that I'd have to implement some kind of CollisionHandler. Would I be better off with a more consolidated EntityHandler which handles AI, collision updates, and other entity interactions in one class? Or will I be fine just implementing many different event handling subsystems which pass messages to each other based on what kind of event it is? Should I write an EntityHandler which is simply responsible for coordinating all these sub event handlers? I realize in some cases, such as my InputHandler and SceneHandler, those are very specific types of events. A large portion of my game code won't care about input, and a large portion won't care about updates that happen purely in the rendering of the scene. Thus I feel my isolation of those systems is justified. However, I'm asking this question specifically approaching game logic type events.

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• Several classes need to access the same data, where should the data be declared?

  - by Juicy

  I have a basic 2D tower defense game in C++. Each map is a separate class which inherits from GameState. The map delegates the logic and drawing code to each object in the game and sets data such as the map path. In pseudo-code the logic section might look something like this: update(): for each creep in creeps: creep.update() for each tower in towers: tower.update() for each missile in missiles: missile.update() The objects (creeps, towers and missiles) are stored in vector-of-pointers. The towers must have access to the vector-of-creeps and the vector-of-missiles to create new missiles and identify targets. The question is: where do I declare the vectors? Should they be members of the Map class, and passed as arguments to the tower.update() function? Or declared globally? Or are there other solutions I'm missing entirely?

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• What are the benefits of NoSQL?

  - by geekbrit

  I'm struggling to see how NoSQL brings any advantages to a system, so I'm interested in hearing from people who have chosen to use it, both the reasons they chose NoSQL, and positive and negative experiences in implementation and use. My first impressions are that NoSQL is a product of the availability of very large, very cheap storage; it seems that a million record database could easily have a 100MByte overhead in field labels embedded in the records. This goes against one of my software design instincts - remove redundancy in code and data whenever practical. However, NoSQL is being used with success in large high-traffic systems, so I must be missing something, looking forward to your responses.

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• When to unload graphics object from main memory?

  - by piotrek

  I writing my resource mangaer, and I consider about how it can work for graphics objects (like textures, meshes). I think about this : I want to load texture (in pseudocode): Texture t = resMgr.GetTex("image.png"); and GetTex make something like this: load texture from disk to main memory create texture object (load it to gpu memory) unload texture from main memory I consider about 3 step, does game engines that you know unload meshes/textures after load them into gpu memory ?

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• Layers - Logical seperation vs physical

  - by P.Brian.Mackey

  Some programmers recommend logical seperation of layers over physical. For example, given a DL, this means we create a DL namespace not a DL assembly. Benefits include: faster compilation time simpler deployment Faster startup time for your program Less assemblies to reference Im on a small team of 5 devs. We have over 50 assemblies to maintain. IMO this ratio is far from ideal. I prefer an extreme programming approach. Where if 100 assemblies are easier to maintain than 10,000...then 1 assembly must be easier than 100. Given technical limits, we should strive for < 5 assemblies. New assemblies are created out of technical need not layer requirements. Developers are worried for a few reasons. A. People like to work in their own environment so they dont step on eachothers toes. B. Microsoft tends to create new assemblies. E.G. Asp.net has its own DLL, so does winforms. Etc. C. Devs view this drive for a common assembly as a threat. Some team members Have a tendency to change the common layer without regard for how it will impact dependencies. My personal view: I view A. as silos, aka cowboy programming and suggest we implement branching to create isolation. C. First, that is a human problem and we shouldnt create technical work arounds for human behavior. Second, my goal is not to put everything in common. Rather, I want partitions to be made in namespaces not assemblies. Having a shared assembly doesnt make everything common. I want the community to chime in and tell me if Ive gone off my rocker. Is a drive for a single assembly or my viewpoint illogical or otherwise a bad idea?

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• What's the right/standard way of achieving separation of concerns?

  - by Ghanima

  Some background: I want to start developing games, and taking some of the advice given in this site, I've started with something simple and familiar, such as pong, tetris, etc. I want to take as much time as needed to make sure that I have the basics right before moving on to something bigger. I have medium programming experience but I realize making games is a different thing. I find myself wondering many things like should this be in a separate class? Should this module handle this stuff or is it better to let other modules have that kind of functionality? For example, the bouncing of a ball in pong, right now is handled in the ball module, but maybe it's better that some other module did it. Right now I have different modules: one for the graphics, one for the game logic, and others for the objects (depending on the kind of movement required, not all the objects are alike). I know I am asking a lot, any tips you have will be very much appreciated. Short question: What's the right or standard way of separating the modules? What have you found most effective? Is it enough to just keep the drawing (graphics) and the logic separate? Is it necessary to have a lot of classes? (for example for the objects in the game, to handle the movement, etc)

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• Motivation for service layer (instead of just copying dlls)?

  - by BornToCode

  I'm creating an application which has 2 different UIs so I'm making it with a service layer which I understood is appropriate for such case. However I found myself just creating web methods for every single method I have in the BL layer, so the services basically built from methods that looks like this: return customers_bl.Get_Customer_Prices(customer_id); I understood that a main point of the service layer is to prevent duplication of code so I asked myself - well, why not just import the BL.dll (and the DAL.dll) to the other UI, and whenever making a change re-copy the dll files, it might not be so 'neat', but is the all purpose of the service layer to prevent this? {I know something is wrong in my approach, I'm probably missing the importance of service layer, I'd like to get more motivation to create another layer, especially because as it is I found that many of my BL functions ALREADY looks like: return customers_dal.Get_Customer_Prices(cust_id) which led me to ask: was it really necessary to create the BL just because on several functions I actually have LOGIC inside the BL?} so I'm looking for more motivation to creating ONE MORE layer, I'm sure it's not just to make it more convenient that I won't have to re-copy the dlls on changes? Am I grasping it wrong? Any simple guidelines on how to design service layer (corresponding to all the BL layer functions or not? any simple example?) any enlightenment on the subject?

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• How is it possible to write the compiler of a programming language with that language itself [closed]

  - by tugberk

  Possible Duplicate: How could the first C++ compiler be written in C++? You probably heard that Microsoft released a new language called TypeScript which is a the typed superset of JavaScript. The most interesting thing that makes me wonder is the fact that its compiler writen in TypeScript itself. Call me ignorant but I really couldn't figure out in my head how that is possible. This is just like chicken and egg problem in my head because there is no compiler to compile TypeScript's compiler in the first place. How is it possible to write a compiler of the compiler of a programming language with that language?

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• What do you do when one think the code isn't complicated enough?

  - by Chris

  After six months of development on a project, our stakeholders have had a "gut check" and have decided that the path that we've been walking (a custom designed application framework and data access layer) is holding us (the developers) back from quickly developing the features they would like to see. After several days of debate management and the development team have decided to scrap the current incarnation and start over using ASP.net MVC, with Entity Framework as the bases of the a 'quick and dirty', lets just get it done project. In days following, our senior developer who has never worked with MVC or Entity Framework has finally gotten into a sample project and done some work. His take on ASP.net MVC, "this is not software engineering". So my question is this; what do you do, when one doesn't think the code is complicated enough?

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• Is there such thing like a "refactoring/maintainability group" role in software companies?

  - by dukeofgaming

  So, I work in a company that does embedded software development, other groups focus in the core development of different products' software and my department (which is in another geographical location) which is located at the factory has to deal with software development as well, but across all products, so that we can also fix things quicker when the lines go down due to software problems with the product. In other words, we are generalists while other groups specialize on each product. Thing is, it is kind of hard to get involved in core development when you are distributed geographically (well, I know it really isn't that hard, but there might be unintended cultural/political barriers when it comes to the discipline of collaborating remotely). So I figured that, since we are currently just putting fires out and somewhat being idle/sub-utilized (even though we are a new department, or maybe that is the reason), I thought that a good role for us could be detecting areas of opportunity of refactoring and rearchitecting code and all other implementations that might have to do with stewarding maintainability and modularity. Other groups aren't focused on this because they don't have the time and they have aggressive deadlines, which damage the quality of the code (eternal story of software projects) The thing is that I want my group/department to be recognized by management and other groups with this role officially, and I'm having trouble to come up with a good definition/identity of our group for this matter. So my question is: is this role something that already exists?, or am I the first one to make something like this up?

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