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• Profiling Startup Of VS2012 &ndash; Ants Profiler

  - by Alois Kraus

  I just downloaded ANTS Profiler 7.4 to check how fast it is and how deep I can analyze the startup of Visual Studio 2012. The Pro version which is useful does cost 445€ which is ok. To measure a complex system I decided to simply profile VS2012 (Update 1) on my older Intel 6600 2,4GHz with 3 GB RAM and a 32 bit Windows 7. Ants Profiler is really easy to use. So lets try it out. The Ants Profiler does want to start the profiled application by its own which seems to be rather common. I did choose Method Level timing of all managed methods. In the configuration menu I did want to get all call stacks to get full details. Once this is configured you are ready to go.   After that you can select the Method Grid to view Wall Clock Time in ms. I hate percentages which are on by default because I do want to look where absolute time is spent and not something else.   From the Method Grid I can drill down to see where time is spent in a nice and I can look at the decompiled methods where the time is spent. This does really look nice. But did you see the size of the scroll bar in the method grid? Although I wanted all call stacks I do get only about 4 pages of methods to drill down. From the scroll bar count I would guess that the profiler does show me about 150 methods for the complete VS startup. This is nonsense. I will never find a bottleneck in VS when I am presented only a fraction of the methods that were actually executed. I have also tried in the configuration window to also profile the extremely trivial functions but there was no noticeable difference. It seems that the Ants Profiler does filter away way too many details to be useful for bigger systems. If you want to optimize a CPU bound operation inside NUnit then Ants Profiler is with its line level timings a very nice tool to work with. But for bigger stuff it is certainly not usable. I also do not like that I must start the profiled application from the profiler UI. This makes it hard to profile processes which are started by some other process. Next: JetBrains dotTrace

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• How to specialize a c++ variadic template?

  - by Serge

  I'm trying to understand c++ variadic templates. I'm not much aware of the correct language to use to explain what I'd like to achieve, so it might be simpler if I provide a bit of code which illustrate what I'd like to achieve. #include <iostream> #include <string> using namespace std; template<int ...A> class TestTemplate1 { public: string getString() { return "Normal"; } }; template<int T, int ...A> string TestTemplate1<2, A...>::getString() { return "Specialized"; } template<typename ...A> class TestTemplate2 { }; int main() { TestTemplate1<1, 2, 3, 4> t1_1; TestTemplate1<1, 2> t1_2; TestTemplate1<> t1_3; TestTemplate1<2> t1_4; TestTemplate2<> t2_1; TestTemplate2<int, double> t2_2; cout << t1_1.getString() << endl; cout << t1_2.getString() << endl; cout << t1_3.getString() << endl; cout << t1_4.getString() << endl; } This throws several errors. error C2333: 'TestTemplate1<::getString' : error in function declaration; skipping function body error C2333: 'TestTemplate1<1,2,3,4::getString' : error in function declaration; skipping function body error C2333: 'TestTemplate1<1,2::getString' : error in function declaration; skipping function body error C2333: 'TestTemplate1<2::getString' : error in function declaration; skipping function body error C2977: 'TestTemplate1' : too many template arguments error C2995: 'std::string TestTemplate1::getString(void)' : function template has already been defined error C3860: template argument list following class template name must list parameters in the order used in template parameter list How can I have a specialized behavior for every TestTemplate1<2, ...> instances like t1_4?

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• More elegant way to avoid hard coding the format of a a CSV file?

  - by dsollen

  I know this is trivial issue, but I just feel this can be more elegant. So I need to write/read data files for my program, lets say they are CSV for now. I can implement the format as I see fit, but I may have need to change that format later. The simply thing to do is something like out.write(For.getValue()+","+bar.getMinValue()+","+fi.toString()); This is easy to write, but obviously is guilty of hard coding and the general 'magic number' issue. The format is hard-coded, requires parsing of the code to figure out the file format, and changing the format requires changing multiple methods. I could instead have my constants specifying the location that I want each variable to be saved in the CSV file to remove some of the 'magic numbers'; then save/load into the an array at the location specified by the constants: int FOO_LOCATION=0; int BAR_MIN_VAL_LOCATION=1; int FI_LOCATION=2 int NUM_ARGUMENTS=3; String[] outputArguments=new String[NUM_ARGUMENTS]; outputArguments[FOO_LOCATION] = foo.getValue(); outputArgumetns[BAR_MIN_VAL_LOCATION] = bar.getMinValue(); outptArguments[FI_LOCATOIN==fi.toString(); writeAsCSV(outputArguments); But this is...extremely verbose and still a bit ugly. It makes it easy to see the format of existing CSV and to swap the location of variables within the file easily. However, if I decide to add an extra value to the csv I need to not only add a new constant, but also modify the read and write methods to add the logic that actually saves/reads the argument from the array; I still have to hunt down every method using these variables and change them by hand! If I use Java enums I can clean this up slightly, but the real issue is still present. Short of some sort of functional programming (and java's inner classes are too ugly to be considered functional) I still have no obvious way of clearly expressing what variable is associated with each constant short of writing (and maintaining) it in the read/write methods. For instance I still need to write somewhere that the FOO_LOCATION specifies the location of foo.getValue(). It seems as if there should be a prettier, easier to maintain, manner for approaching this? Incidentally, I'm working in java at the moment, however, I am interested conceptually about the design approach regardless of language. Some library in java that does all the work for me is definitely welcome (though it may prove more hassle to get permission to add it to the codebase then to just write something by hand quickly), but what I'm really asking is more about how to write elegant code if you had to do this by hand.

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• How to explain bad software to non-technical people?

  - by mtutty

  In discussing software development with non-technical people (customers, business owners, project sponsors, etc.), I often resort to analogies and metaphors. It's relatively easy and effective to use a "house" or other metaphor for describing the size and complexity of new development. However, we often inherit someone else's code or data, and this approach doesn't seem to hold up as well when trying to explain why we're gutting something that already seems to work. Of course we can point to cycle time and cost to be saved in the future but this generally means nothing to business folks. I know doctors can say "just take this pill," but I'm not sure that software devs have the same authority. Ideas? EDIT: Let me add a bit to the discussion. The specific project I'm talking about has customers that don't realize (or care) about specific aspects of the system we're retiring (i.e., they think it was just fine): The system would save a NEW RECORD every time someone updated a field The system contained tables for reference data. These tables had new records added every day, even though they were duplicates of previous records. And there was no way to tie the reference data used for a particular case at the time it was closed. This is like 99% of the data in the old system. The field NAMES also have spaces, apostrophes and other inappropriate characters in them, making everything harder to work with. In addition to the incredible amount of duplicate data, they have around 1000 XLS files with data they want added to the system. Previously, they would do a spreadsheet for each case in the database, IN ADDITION TO what they typed into the database. Getting rid of this old, unneeded information and piping in the XLS data comprises about 80% of the total project effort, and was not something we could accurately predict. I'm trying to find a concrete way to describe how bad this thing was, mostly so that the customer will understand why the migration process has been so time-consuming. The actual coding was done pretty quickly and the new system works fine, but without the old data they won't be happy. Sorry to get into the weeds, but most of the answers I've seen so far are pretty basic scope/schedule/cost things. I've been doing this for 15 years, so this really is more of a reflective, philosophical question - but without some of the details it can be difficult to really appreciate the awful beauty of this problem.

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• Attaching new animations onto skeleton via props, a good idea?

  - by Cardin

  I'm thinking of coding a game with an idea of mine. I've coded 2D games before, but I'm new to 3D programming, so I'd like to ask if this idea of mine is feasible or out of my depth. I'm making a game where there are many different characters for the player to choose from (JRPG style). So to save time, I have an idea of creating many different varied characters using a completely naked body mesh and animation skeleton, standardised across all characters. For example, by placing different hair, boots, armor props on the character mesh, new characters can be formed. Kinda like playing dress-up with a barbie doll. I'm thinking this can be done by having a bone on the prop that I can programmically attach to the main mesh. Also, I plan to have some props add new animations to the base skeleton, so equipping some particular props would give it new attack, damage, idle animations. This is because I can't expect the character to have the same swinging animation if he had a big sword or an axe. I think this might be possible if the prop has its own instance of the animation skeleton with just only the new animations, and parenting the base body mesh to this new skeleton. So all the base body mesh has are just the basic animations, other animations come from the props. My concerns are, 1) the props might not attach to the mesh properly and jitter a lot, 2) since prop and body are animated differently, the props and base mesh will cause visual artefacts, like the naked thighs showing through the pants when the character walks, 3) a custom pipeline have to be developed to export skeletons without mesh, and also to attach the base body mesh to a new skeleton during runtime in the game. So my question: are these features considered 'easy' to code? Or am I trying to do something few have ever succeeded with on their own? It feels like all these can be done given enough time and I know I definitely have to do a bit of bone matrix calculations, but I really don't want to drag out the development timeline unnecessarily from coding mathematically intense things or analyzing how to parse 3D export formats. I'm currently only at the Game Design stage, so if these features aren't a good idea, I can simply change the design of the game. (Unrelated to question) I could always, as last resort, have the characters have predetermined outfit and weapon selections so as to animate everything manually.

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• Switch from back-end to front-end programming: I'm out of my comfort zone, should I switch back?

  - by ripper234

  I've been a backend developer for a long time, and I really swim in that field. C++/C#/Java, databases, NoSql, caching - I feel very much at ease around these platforms/concepts. In the past few years, I started to taste end-to-end web programming, and recently I decided to take a job offer in a front end team developing a large, complex product. I wanted to break out of my comfort zone and become more of an "all around developer". Problem is, I'm getting more and more convinced I don't like it. Things I like about backend programming, and missing in frontend stuff: More interesting problems - When I compare designing a server that handle massive data, to adding another form to a page or changing the validation logic, I find the former a lot more interesting. Refactoring refactoring refactoring - I am addicted to Visual Studio with Resharper, or IntelliJ. I feel very comfortable writing code as it goes without investing too much thought, because I know that with a few clicks I can refactor it into beautiful code. To my knowledge, this doesn't exist at all in javascript. Intellisense and navigation - I hate looking at a bunch of JS code without instantly being able to know what it does. In VS/IntelliJ I can summon the documentation, navigate to the code, climb up inheritance hiererchies ... life is sweet. Auto-completion - Just hit Ctrl-Space on an object to see what you can do with it. Easier to test - With almost any backend feature, I can use TDD to capture the requirements, see a bunch of failing tests, then implement, knowing that if the tests pass I did my job well. With frontend, while tests can help a bit, I find that most of the testing is still manual - fire up that browser and verify the site didn't break. I miss that feeling of "A green CI means everything is well with the world." Now, I've only seriously practiced frontend development for about two months now, so this might seem premature ... but I'm getting a nagging feeling that I should abandon this quest and return to my comfort zone, because, well, it's so comfy and fun. Another point worth mentioning in this context is that while I am learning some frontend tools, a lot of what I'm learning is our company's specific infrastructure, which I'm not sure will be very useful later on in my career. Any suggestions or tips? Do you think I should give frontend programming "a proper chance" of at least six to twelve months before calling it quits? Could all my pains be growing pains, and will they magically disappear as I get more experienced? Or is gaining this perspective is valuable enough, even if plan to do more "backend stuff" later on, that it's worth grinding my teeth and continuing with my learning?

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• What arguments can I use to "sell" the BDD concept to a team reluctant to adopt it?

  - by S.Robins

  I am a bit of a vocal proponent of the BDD methodology. I've been applying BDD for a couple of years now, and have adopted StoryQ as my framework of choice when developing DotNet applications. Even though I have been unit testing for many years, and had previously shifted to a test-first approach, I've found that I get much more value out of using a BDD framework, because my tests capture the intent of the requirements in relatively clear English within my code, and because my tests can execute multiple assertions without ending the test halfway through - meaning I can see which specific assertions pass/fail at a glance without debugging to prove it. This has really been the tip of the iceberg for me, as I've also noticed that I am able to debug both test and implementation code in a more targeted manner, with the result that my productivity has grown significantly, and that I can more easily determine where a failure occurs if a problem happens to make it all the way to the integration build due to the output that makes its way into the build logs. Further, the StoryQ api has a lovely fluent syntax that is easy to learn and which can be applied in an extraordinary number of ways, requiring no external dependencies in order to use it. So with all of these benefits, you would think it an easy to introduce the concept to the rest of the team. Unfortunately, the other team members are reluctant to even look at StoryQ to evaluate it properly (let alone entertain the idea of applying BDD), and have convinced each other to try and remove a number of StoryQ elements from our own core testing framework, even though they originally supported the use of StoryQ, and that it doesn't impact on any other part of our testing system. Doing so would end up increasing my workload significantly overall and really goes against the grain, as I am convinced through practical experience that it is a better way to work in a test-first manner in our particular working environment, and can only lead to greater improvements in the quality of our software, given I've found it easier to stick with test first using BDD. So the question really comes down to the following: What arguments can I use to really drive the point home that it would be better to use StoryQ, or at the very least apply the BDD methodology? Can you point me to any anecdotal evidence that I can use to support my argument to adopt BDD as our standard method of choice? What counter arguments can you think of that could suggest that my wish to convert the team efforts to BDD might be in error? Yes, I'm happy to be proven wrong provided the argument is a sound one. NOTE: I am not advocating that we rewrite our tests in their entirety, but rather to simply start working in a different manner for all future testing work.

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• How to apply effects that occur (or change) over time to characters in a game?

  - by Joshua Harris

  So assume that I have a system that applies Effects to Characters like so: public class Character { private Collection<Effect> _effects; public void AddEffect (Effect e) { e.ApplyTo(this); _effects.Add(e); } public void RemoveEffect (Effect e) { e.RemoveFrom(this); _effects.Remove(e); } } public interface Effect { public void ApplyTo (Character character); public void RemoveFrom (Character character); } Example Effect: Armor Buff for 5 seconds. void someFunction() { // Do Stuff ... Timer armorTimer = new Timer(5 seconds); ArmorBuff armorbuff = new ArmorBuff(); character.AddEffect(armorBuff); armorTimer.Start(); // Do more stuff ... } // Some where else in code public void ArmorTimer_Complete() { character.RemoveEffect(armorBuff); } public class ArmorBuff implements Effect { public void applyTo(Character character) { character.changeArmor(20); } public void removeFrom(Character character) { character.changeArmor(-20); } } Ok, so this example would buff the Characters armor for 5 seconds. Easy to get working. But what about effects that change over the duration of the effect being applied. Two examples come to mind: Damage Over Time: 200 damage every second for 3 seconds. I could mimic this by applying an Effect that lasts for 1 second and has a counter set to 3, then when it is removed it could deal 200 damage, clone itself, decrement the counter of the clone, and apply the clone to the character. If it repeats this until the counter is 0, then you got a damage over time ability. I'm not a huge fan of this approach, but it does describe the behavior exactly. Degenerating Speed Boost: Gain a speed boost that degrades over 3 seconds until you return to your normal speed. This is a bit harder. I can basically do the same thing as above except having timers set to some portion of a second, such that they occur fast enough to give the appearance of degenerating smoothly over time (even though they are really just stepping down incrementally). I feel like you could get away with only 12 steps over a second (maybe less, I would have to test it and see), but this doesn't seem very elegant to me. The only other way to implement this effect would be to change the system so that the Character checks the _effects collection for effects that alter any of the properties any time that they are being used. I could handle this in functions like getCurrentSpeed() and getCurrentArmor(), but you can imagine how much of a hassle it would be to have that kind of overhead every time you want to do a calculation with movement speed (which would be every time you move your character). Is there a better way to deal with these kinds of effects or events?

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• problems programmatically creating UIView on iPad App

  - by user3871

  I have been struggling with this problem for a few days. My iPad app is designed to be a portrait game. To satisfy Apple's expection, I also support landscape mode. When it goes into landscape mode, the game goes into a letterbox format with back borders on the sides. My problem is I am creating the UIWindow and UIView programmatically. For some unkown reason, the touch controls are "locked" in to think I'm always in landscape mode. And even though visually in portrait mode everything looks correct, the top and bottom of the screen does not respond to touch. To summarize how I am setting this up, let me provide the skeletal framework of what I'm doing: in main.cpp: int retVal = UIApplicationMain(argc, argv, nil, @"derbyPoker_ipadAppDelegate"); In the delegate, I am doing this: - (BOOL)application:(UIApplication *)application didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:(NSDictionary *)launchOptions { CGRect screenBounds = [[UIScreen mainScreen] bounds]; CGFloat scale = [[ UIScreen mainScreen] scale ]; m_device_width = screenBounds.size.width; m_device_height = screenBounds.size.height; m_device_scale = scale; // Everything is built assuming 640x960 window = [[ UIWindow alloc ] initWithFrame:[[UIScreen mainScreen] bounds]]; viewController = [ glView new ]; [self doStateChange:[blitz class]]; return YES; } The last bit of code sets up the UIView... - (void) doStateChange: (Class) state{ viewController.view = [[state alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0, 0, m_device_width, m_device_height) andManager:self]; viewController.view.contentMode = UIViewContentModeScaleAspectFit; viewController.view.autoresizesSubviews = YES; [window addSubview:viewController.view]; [window makeKeyAndVisible]; } The problem seems to related to the line viewController.view.contentMode = UIViewContentModeScaleAspectFit; If I remove that line, touch works correctly in portrait mode. But the negative is when I'm landscape mode, the game stretches incorrectly. So That's not a option. The frustrating thing is, when I originally had this set up with a NIB file, it worked fine. I have read through the docs about UIWindow, UIViewController and UIView and have tried about everything to no avail. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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• Adding JavaScript to your code dependent upon conditions

  - by DavidMadden

  You might be in an environment where you code is source controlled and where you might have build options to different environments.  I recently encountered this where the same code, built on different configurations, would have the website at a different URL.  If you are working with ASP.NET as I am you will have to do something a bit crazy but worth while.  If someone has a more efficient solution please share. Here is what I came up with to make sure the client side script was placed into the HEAD element for the Google Analytics script.  GA wants to be the last in the HEAD element so if you are doing others in the Page_Load then you should do theirs last. The settings object below is an instance of a class that holds information I collection.  You could read from different sources depending on where you stored your unique ID for Google Analytics. *** This has been formatted to fit this screen. *** if (!IsPostBack) { if (settings.GoogleAnalyticsID != null || settings.GoogleAnalyticsID != string.Empty) { string str = @"//<!CDATA[ var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', '"  + settings.GoogleAnalyticsID + "']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);  (function () {  var ga = document.createElement('script');  ga.type = 'text/javascript';  ga.async = true;  ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol  ? 'https://ssl' :  'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0];  s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);})();"; System.Web.UI.HtmlControls.HtmlGenericControl si =  new System.Web.UI.HtmlControls.HtmlGenericControl(); si.TagName = "script"; si.Attributes.Add("type", @"text/javascript"); si.InnerHtml = sb.ToString(); this.Page.Header.Controls.Add(si); } } The code above will prevent the code from executing if it is a PostBack and then if the ID was not able to be read or something caused the settings to be lost by accident. If you have larger function to declare, you can use a StringBuilder to separate the lines. This is the most compact I wished to go and manage readability.

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• Storing hierarchical template into a database

  - by pduersteler

  If this title is ambiguous, feel free to change it, I don't know how to put this in a one-liner. Example: Let's assume you have a html template which contains some custom tags, like <text_field />. We now create a page based on a template containing more of those custom tags. When a user wants to edit the page, he sees a text field. he can input things and save it. This looks fairly easy to set up. You either have something like a template_positions table which stores the content of those fields. Case: I now have a bit of a blockade keeping things as simple as possible. Assume you have the same tag given in your example, and additionally, <layout> and <repeat> tags. Here's an example how they should be used: <repeat> <layout name="image-left"> <image /> <text_field /> </layout> <layout name="image-right"> <text_field /> <image /> </layout> </repeat> We now have a block which can be repeated, obviously. This means: when creting/editing a page containing such a template block, I can choose between a layout image-left and image-right which then gets inserted as content element (where content for <image /> and <text_field /> gets stored). And because this is inside a <repeat>, content elements from the given layouts can be inserted multiple times. How do you store this? Simply said, this could be stored with the same setup I've wrote in the example above, I just need to add a parent_id or something similiar to maintain a hierarchy. but I think I am missing something. At least the relation between an inserted content element and the origin/insertion point is missing. And what happens when I update the template file? Do I have to give every custom tag that acts as editable part of a template an identifier that matches an identifier in the template to substitue them correctly? Or can you think of a clean solution that might be better?

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• ATI Radeon HD7000 Series (Laptop) - Switch Mode Between ATI & Intel Integrated GPU. Stuck on Boot Screen On Intel GPU Selection Mode

  - by Monkey Drone

  Laptop Specs: HP Pavilion G6-2020SE GPUs 1) ATI HD7000 Series 2) Intel Integrated OS Installed: x) Ubuntu 12.04 (64 bit) i) ATI Graphics Card Drivers Installed From AMD website. Note: Graphics Card Drivers are Working Fine in 3D Mode. It runs a little Hot as it should since its a GPU. Observation) AMD Catalyst Control Centre Lets me Choose If I want to run the system in HIGH-END (ATI GPU) OR Intel Integrated (Better battery life) While I am on High End GPU Choice, Ubuntu works fine. Problem) But when I switch to Intel Mode in the AMD CCC and reboot the Machine. Ubuntu goes into 'Low Graphics Mode'. The problem is not that it goes into low graphics mode, it is completely expected since I am no longer using the ATI GPU but the integrated Intel GPU. Problem starts with the 'Selection' of the options. During that screen, I have no mouse on the screen (even tried plugging in an external USB mouse) & No Keyboard functionality. Thus I am left completely disabled to choose any option and load into Ubuntu. The Only thing I can do is switch to a terminal and enable ATI GPU through command-line and Ubuntu works Fine again. Is it a bug that there is no mouse/keyboard available to me during the startup of Ubuntu when its launched in Low-Graphics Mode? Any suggestions on how to pass through that? My palms are sweating as I write this down because the ATI GPU is really heating up my laptop. I dont want to boot into Windows or keep it around any longer than necessary. Please advise with help and directions. Sincerely, MonkeyD Edit1: The Answer by Celso has helped me switch to Intel, thus giving me sufficient battery power. Kudos to Celso. Now I can at least use my laptop for the time being without having it burn hair off my skin. I am still looking for answer to my original question of, 'why is lightdm not working properly when I switch to Intel GPU using ATI HD7000 series official drivers provided by AMD'.

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• Draw images with warped triangles on a web server [migrated]

  - by epologee

  The scenario The Flash front end of my current project produces images that a web server needs to combine into a video. Both frame-rate and frame-resolution are sizeable enough that sending an image sequence to the back end is not feasible (in both time and client bandwidth). Instead, we're trying to recreate the image drawing on the back end as well. Correct and slow, or incorrect and fast The problem is that this involves quite a bit of drawing textured triangles, and two solutions we found in Python (here and there) are so inefficient, that the drawing takes about 60 seconds per frame, resulting in a whopping 7,5 hours of processing time for a 30 second clip. Unacceptable. When using a PHP-module to send commands to ImageMagick for image manipulation, the whole process is super fast (tenths of a second per frame), but ImageMagick seems to be unable to draw triangles the way we do it in the front end, so the final results do not match. Unacceptable. What I'm asking here, is if there's someone who would know a way to solve this issue, by any means necessary that would run on a web server. Warping an image Let me explain the process of the front end: Perform a Delaunay calculation on points in an image to get an evenly distributed mesh of triangles. Offset the points/vertices in the mesh, distorting or warping the image. Draw the warped triangles on a new bitmap. We can send the results (coordinates) of steps 1 and 2 to the back end, to then draw the warped triangles and save it to an image on disk (or append as a frame to the video). But that last step is what I need help with. The Question Is there an alternative to ImageMagick that can draw triangles in a bitmap? Is there some other library, like a C library, that would allow us to do this? Or could we achieve this effect more easily by switching back end technologies, like Ruby? (.Net and Java are, unfortunately, not really options right now) Many thanks. EP. P.S. I'd appreciate re-tagging efforts, I don't quite know what labels to put on this question. Thanks!

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• Is there a factory pattern to prevent multiple instances for same object (instance that is Equal) good design?

  - by dsollen

  I have a number of objects storing state. There are essentially two types of fields. The ones that uniquely define what the object is (what node, what edge etc), and the others that store state describing how these things are connected (this node is connected to these edges, this edge is part of these paths) etc. My model is updating the state variables using package methods, so all these objects act as immutable to anyone not in Model scope. All Objects extend one base type. I've toyed with the idea of a Factory approach which accepts a Builder object and constructs the applicable object. However, if an instance of the object already exists (ie would return true if I created the object defined by the builder and passed it to the equal method for the existing instance) the factory returns the current object instead of creating a new instance. Because the Equal method would only compare what uniquely defines the type of object (this is node A to node B) but won't check the dynamic state stuff (node A is currently connected to nodes C and E) this would be a way of ensuring anyone that wants my Node A automatically knows its state connections. More importantly it would prevent aliasing nightmares of someone trying to pass an instance of node A with different state then the node A in my model has. I've never heard of this pattern before, and it's a bit odd. I would have to do some overriding of serialization methods to make it work (ensure that when I read in a serilized object I add it to my facotry list of known instances, and/or return an existing factory in its place), as well as using a weakHashMap as if it was a weakHashSet to know whether an instance exists without worrying about a quasi-memory leak occuring. I don't know if this is too confusing or prone to its own obscure bugs. One thing I know is that plugins interface with lowest level hardware. The plugins have to be able to return state that is different than my memory; to tell my memory when its own state is inconsistent. I believe this is possible despite their fetching objects that exist in my memory; we allow building of objects without checking their consistency with the model until the addToModel is called anyways; and the existing plugins design was written before all this extra state existed and worked fine without ever being aware of it. Should I just be using some other design to avoid this crazyness? (I have another question to that affect that I'm posting).

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• My First 5K, the recap.

  - by Chris Williams

  It was a nice day to be outside (and trust me, those aren't words you'll hear from me often.) I got to the site around 7:45, hit the pre-reg table and got my number along with a goody bag full of coupons for racing gear, a water bottle and a tshirt. Oh and a map. Stashed all that stuff in the jeep, emptied my pockets of everything but my iPhone and my jeep key, and proceeded to walk around for a bit as people started showing up and signing in. It was fairly breezy, and there was definitely a storm coming... but it was anyone's guess on when it would actually arrive. It was interesting to see everyone who was participating. If I had to guess, I would say the event was 60-70% women, with a pretty broad distribution of age... as young as 13 to well over 60 (in both genders.) I don't know exactly how many folks were there, but it was well over 300. Eventually it was time to kick things off, and everyone made their way to the start line. All of the 5k and 10k runners were mixed together, starting at the same time. All the walkers and the people with strollers or dogs were in the back. It was pretty chaotic at first, once things started, but it thinned out fairly quickly. The 10k people and the hardcore runners sped ahead of everyone else and the walkers gradually lagged behind. The 5K course was pretty nice, winding around a lake down in Eden Prairie. The 10K course overlapped most of ours, but branched off a couple times too. I didn't run the whole time, but I started the race running and I ended it running, and did a mix of walking and running along the way. I met my goals, which were a) don't ever stop and b) don't be last. The weather managed to hold out for the entire race. It never got too hot, there was a nice breeze and it was mostly overcast. Pretty much perfect in my book. About 20-30 minutes after I left, the rain came down pretty hard. I had a good time, and will most likely do more of them. We'll see.

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• How do I create weapon attachments?

  - by Tron86

  My question is; I am developing a game for XNA and I am trying to create a weapon attachment for my player model. My player model loads the .md3 format and reads tags for attachment points. I am able to get the tag of my model's hand. And I am also able to get the tag of my weapon's handle. Each tag I am able to get the rotation and position of and this is how I am calculating it: Model.worldMatrix = Matrix.CreateScale(Model.scale) * Matrix.CreateRotationX(-MathHelper.PiOver2) * Matrix.CreateRotationY(MathHelper.PiOver2); Pretty simple, the player model has a scale and its orientation(it loads on its side so I just use a 90 degree X axis rotation, and a Y axis rotation to face away from the camera). I then calculate the torso tag on the lower body, which gives me a local coordinate at the waist. Then I take that matrix and calculate the tag_weapon in the upper body. This gives me the hand position in local space. I also get the rotation matrix from that tag that I store for later use. All this seems to work fine. Now I move onto my weapon: Matrix weaponWorld = Matrix.CreateScale(CurrentWeapon.scale) * Matrix.CreateRotationX(-MathHelper.PiOver2) * TagRotationMatrix * Matrix.CreateTranslation(HandTag.Position) * Matrix.CreateRotationY(PlayerRotation) * Matrix.CreateTranslation(CollisionBody.Position) * You may notice the weapon matrix gets rotated by 90 degress on the X axis as well. This is because they load in on their sides. Once again this seems pretty simple and follows the SRT order I keep reading about. My TagRotation matrix is the hand's rotation. HandTag.Position is its position in local space. CreateRotationY(PlayerRotation) is the player's rotation in world space, and the CollisionBody.Position is the player's world location. Everything seems to be in order, and almost works in game. However when the gun spawns and follows the player's hand it seems to be flipped on an axis every couple frames. Almost like the X or Y axis is being inversed then put right back. Its hard to explain and I am totally stumped. Even removing all my X axis fixes does nothing to solve the problem. Hopefully I explained everything enough as I am a bit new to this! Thanks!

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• Java @Contented annotation to help reduce false sharing

  - by Dave

  See this posting by Aleksey Shipilev for details -- @Contended is something we've wanted for a long time. The JVM provides automatic layout and placement of fields. Usually it'll (a) sort fields by descending size to improve footprint, and (b) pack reference fields so the garbage collector can process a contiguous run of reference fields when tracing. @Contended gives the program a way to provide more explicit guidance with respect to concurrency and false sharing. Using this facility we can sequester hot frequently written shared fields away from other mostly read-only or cold fields. The simple rule is that read-sharing is cheap, and write-sharing is very expensive. We can also pack fields together that tend to be written together by the same thread at about the same time. More generally, we're trying to influence relative field placement to minimize coherency misses. Fields that are accessed closely together in time should be placed proximally in space to promote cache locality. That is, temporal locality should condition spatial locality. Fields accessed together in time should be nearby in space. That having been said, we have to be careful to avoid false sharing and excessive invalidation from coherence traffic. As such, we try to cluster or otherwise sequester fields that tend to written at approximately the same time by the same thread onto the same cache line. Note that there's a tension at play: if we try too hard to minimize single-threaded capacity misses then we can end up with excessive coherency misses running in a parallel environment. Theres no single optimal layout for both single-thread and multithreaded environments. And the ideal layout problem itself is NP-hard. Ideally, a JVM would employ hardware monitoring facilities to detect sharing behavior and change the layout on the fly. That's a bit difficult as we don't yet have the right plumbing to provide efficient and expedient information to the JVM. Hint: we need to disintermediate the OS and hypervisor. Another challenge is that raw field offsets are used in the unsafe facility, so we'd need to address that issue, possibly with an extra level of indirection. Finally, I'd like to be able to pack final fields together as well, as those are known to be read-only.

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• Criteria for a programming language to be considered "mature"

  - by Giorgio

  I was recently reading an answer to this question, and I was struck by the statement "The language is mature". So I was wondering what we actually mean when we say that "A programming language is mature"? Normally, a programming language is initially developed out of a need, e.g. Try out / implement a new programming paradigm or a new combination of features that cannot be found in existing languages. Try to solve a problem or overcome a limitation of an existing language. Create a language for teaching programming. Create a language that solves a particular class of problems (e.g. concurrency). Create a language and an API for a special application field, e.g. the web (in this case the language might reuse a well-known paradigm, but the whole API must be new). Create a language to push your competitor out of the market (in this case the creator might want the new language to be very similar to an existing one, in order to attract developers to the new programming language and platform). Regardless of what the original motivation and scenario in which a language has been created, eventually some languages are considered mature. In my intuition, this means that the language has achieved (at least one of) its goals, e.g. "We can now use language X as a reliable tool for writing web applications." This is however a bit vague, so I wanted to ask what you consider the most important criteria (if any) that are applied when saying that a language is mature. IMPORTANT NOTE This question is (on purpose) language-agnostic because I am only interested in general criteria. Please write only language-agnostic answers and comments! I am not asking whether any specific "language X is mature" or "which programming languages can be considered mature", or whether "language X is more mature than language Y": please avoid posting any opinions or reference about any specific languages because these are out of the scope of this question. EDIT To make the question more precise, by criteria I mean such things as "tool support", "adoption by the industry", "stability", "rich API", "large user community", "successful application record", "standardization", "clean and uniform semantics", and so on.

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• I didn't mean to become a database developer, but now I am. Should I stop or try to get better?

  - by pretlow majette

  20 years ago I couldn't afford even a cheap POS program when I opened my first surf shop in the Virgin Islands. I bought a copy of Paradox (remember that?) in 1990 and spent months in a back room scratching out a POS application. Over many iterations, including a switch to Access (2000)/SQL Server (2003), I built a POS and backoffice solution that runs four stores with multiple cash registers, a warehouse and office. Until recently, all my stores were connected to the same LAN (in a small shopping center) and performance wasn't an issue. Now that we've opened a location in the States that's changed. Connecting to my local server via the internet has slowed that locations application to a crawl. This is partly due to the slow and crappy dsl service we have in the Virgin Islands, and partly due to my less-than-professional code and sql. With other far-away stores in the works, I need a better solution. I like my application. My staff knows it well, and I'm not inclined to take on the expense of a proper commercial solution. So where does that leave me? I should probably host my sql online to sidestep the slow dsl here. I think I can handle cleaning up my SQL querries to speed that up a bit. What about Access? My version seems so old, but I don't like the newer versions with the 'ribbon'. There are so many options... Should I be learning Visual Studio with an eye on moving completely to the web? Will my VBA skills help me at all there? I don't have the luxury of a year at the keyboard to figure it out anymore. What about dotnetnuke, sharepoint, or lightswitch? They all seem like possibilities, but even understanding their capabilities is daunting. I'm pretty deep into it, but maybe I should bail and hire a consultant or programmer. That sounds expensive tho, and there's no guarantee there either... Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Or, if anybody is interested in buying a small chain of surf shops...

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• Complete Beginner to Game Programming and Unreal Engine 4, Looking For Advice [on hold]

  - by onemic

  I am currently a 2nd year programming student(Just finished my first year so I will be starting my second year in September) and have mainly learned C and C++ in my classes. In terms of what I know of C++, I know about general inheritance, polymorphism, overloading operators, iterators, a little bit about templates(only class and function templates) etc. but not of the more advanced topics like linked lists and other sequential containers(containers in general I guess), enumerations, most of the standard library(other than like strings and vectors), and probably a bunch of other stuff I dont even know about yet. I subscribed to Unreal Engine 4 as I was very intrigued by their Unreal Tournament announcement earlier this month, especially after hearing that UE4 is going completely C++. Of course my end goal in doing this programming program is to eventually go into game/graphics programming. Since it's my summer off, I thought what better way then to actually apply some of my skills to a personal project so I actually have a firmer understanding of C++ past what my professors tell me. My questions are this: What would be the best way to start off making a small personal game in UE4 as a project for the summer? What should I be aiming for, especially for someone that is still learning C++? Should I focus on making a simple 2D game rather than a 3D one to get started? Seeing the Flappy Chicken showcase intrigued me because before I thought the UE engine was pretty much pigeonholed into being for FPS games What should my expectations be going into UE4 and a game engine for the first time?(UE4 will be my first foray into making a game) What can I expect to gain from making things in UE4, in terms of making games and in terms of further fleshing out my knowledge of C++? Would you recommend I start off 100% using C++ for scripting or using the visual blueprints? Since I'm not a designer, how would I be able to add objects and designs to my game? For someone at my level is retaining the UE4 subscription worth it or is it better to cancel and resub when I learn enough about UE4 and C++? Lastly is there anything to be gained in terms of knowledge/insight through me looking at the source code for UE4? I opened it in VS2013, but noticed that most of the files were C# files and not cpp's. Thanks in advance for taking the time to answer.

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• How far should an entity take care of its properties values by itself?

  - by Kharlos Dominguez

  Let's consider the following example of a class, which is an entity that I'm using through Entity Framework. - InvoiceHeader - BilledAmount (property, decimal) - PaidAmount (property, decimal) - Balance (property, decimal) I'm trying to find the best approach to keep Balance updated, based on the values of the two other properties (BilledAmount and PaidAmount). I'm torn between two practices here: Updating the balance amount every time BilledAmount and PaidAmount are updated (through their setters) Having a UpdateBalance() method that the callers would run on the object when appropriate. I am aware that I can just calculate the Balance in its getter. However, it isn't really possible because this is an entity field that needs to be saved back to the database, where it has an actual column, and where the calculated amount should be persisted to. My other worry about the automatically updating approach is that the calculated values might be a little bit different from what was originally saved to the database, due to rounding values (an older version of the software, was using floats, but now decimals). So, loading, let's say 2000 entities from the database could change their status and make the ORM believe that they have changed and be persisted back to the database the next time the SaveChanges() method is called on the context. It would trigger a mass of updates that I am not really interested in, or could cause problems, if the calculation methods changed (the entities fetched would lose their old values to be replaced by freshly recalculated ones, simply by being loaded). Then, let's take the example even further. Each invoice has some related invoice details, which also have BilledAmount, PaidAmount and Balance (I'm simplifying my actual business case for the sake of the example, so let's assume the customer can pay each item of the invoice separately rather than as a whole). If we consider the entity should take care of itself, any change of the child details should cause the Invoice totals to change as well. In a fully automated approach, a simple implementation would be looping through each detail of the invoice to recalculate the header totals, every time one the property changes. It probably would be fine for just a record, but if a lot of entities were fetched at once, it could create a significant overhead, as it would perform this process every time a new invoice detail record is fetched. Possibly worse, if the details are not already loaded, it could cause the ORM to lazy-load them, just to recalculate the balances. So far, I went with the Update() method-way, mainly for the reasons I explained above, but I wonder if it was right. I'm noticing I have to keep calling these methods quite often and at different places in my code and it is potential source of bugs. It also has a detrimental effect on data-binding because when the properties of the detail or header changes, the other properties are left out of date and the method has no way to be called. What is the recommended approach in this case?

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• Yet another frustum culling question

  - by Christian Frantz

  This one is kinda specific. If I'm to implement frustum culling in my game, that means each one of my cubes would need a bounding sphere. My first question is can I make the sphere so close to the edge of the cube that its still easily clickable for destroying and building? Frustum culling is easily done in XNA as I've recently learned, I just need to figure out where to place the code for the culling. I'm guessing in my method that draws all my cubes but I could be wrong. My camera class currently implements a bounding frustum which is in the update method like so frustum.Matrix = (view * proj); Simple enough, as I can call that when I have a camera object in my class. This works for now, as I only have a camera in my main game class. The problem comes when I decide to move my camera to my player class, but I can worry about that later. ContainmentType CurrentContainmentType = ContainmentType.Disjoint; CurrentContainmentType = CamerasFrustrum.Contains(cubes.CollisionSphere); Can it really be as easy as adding those two lines to my foreach loop in my draw method? Or am I missing something bigger here? UPDATE: I have added the lines to my draw methods and it works great!! So great infact that just moving a little bit removes the whole map. Many factors could of caused this, so I'll try to break it down. cubeBoundingSphere = new BoundingSphere(cubePosition, 0.5f); This is in my cube constructor. cubePosition is stored in an array, The vertices that define my cube are factors of 1 ie: (1,0,1) so the radius should be .5. I least I think it should. The spheres are created every time a cube is created of course. ContainmentType CurrentContainmentType = ContainmentType.Disjoint; foreach (Cube block in cube.cubes) { CurrentContainmentType = cam.frustum.Contains(cube.cubeBoundingSphere); ///more code here if (CurrentContainmentType != ContainmentType.Disjoint) { cube.Draw(effect); } Within my draw method. Now I know this works because the map disappears, its just working wrong. Any idea on what I'm doing wrong?

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• Should Item Grouping/Filter be in the ViewModel or View layer?

  - by ronag

  I'm in a situation where I have a list of items that need to be displayed depending on their properties. What I'm unsure of is where is the best place to put the filtering/grouping logic of the viewmodel state? Currently I have it in my view using converters, but I'm unsure whether I should have the logic in the viewmodel? e.g. ViewModel Layer: class ItemViewModel { DateTime LastAccessed { get; set; } bool IsActive { get; set; } } class ContainerViewModel { ObservableCollection<Item> Items {get; set;} } View Layer: <TextView Text="Active Items"/> <List ItemsSource={Binding Items, Converter=GroupActiveItemsByDay}/> <TextView Text="Active Items"/> <List ItemsSource={Binding Items, Converter=GroupInActiveItemsByDay}/> or should I build it like this? ViewModel Layer: class ContainerViewModel { ObservableCollection<IGrouping<string, Item>> ActiveItemsByGroup {get; set;} ObservableCollection<IGrouping<string, Item>> InActiveItemsByGroup {get; set;} } View Layer: <TextView Text="Active Items"/> <List ItemsSource={Binding ActiveItemsGroupByDate }/> <TextView Text="Active Items"/> <List ItemsSource={Binding InActiveItemsGroupByDate }/> Or maybe something in between? ViewModel Layer: class ContainerViewModel { ObservableCollection<IGrouping<string, Item>> ActiveItems {get; set;} ObservableCollection<IGrouping<string, Item>> InActiveItems {get; set;} } View Layer: <TextView Text="Active Items"/> <List ItemsSource={Binding ActiveItems, Converter=GroupByDate }/> <TextView Text="Active Items"/> <List ItemsSource={Binding InActiveItems, Converter=GroupByDate }/> I guess my question is what is good practice in terms as to what logic to put into the ViewModel and what logic to put into the Binding in the View, as they seem to overlap a bit?

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• PASS Summit 2011: Save Money Now

  - by Bill Graziano

  Register by March 31st and save $200.  On April 1st we increase the price.  On July 1st we increase it again.  We have regular price bumps all the way through to the Summit.  You can save yourself $200 if you register by Thursday. In two years of marketing for PASS and a year of finance I’ve learned a fair bit about our pricing, why we do this and how you react to it.  Let me help you save some money! Price bumps drive registrations.  We see big spikes in the two weeks prior to a price increase.  Having a deadline with a cost attached is a great motivator to get people to take action. Registering early helps you and it helps PASS.  You get the exact same Summit at a cheaper rate.  PASS gets smoother cash flow and a better idea of how many people to expect.  We also get people that are already registered that will tell their friends about the conference. This tiered pricing lets us serve those that are very price conscious.  They can register early and take advantage of these discounts.  I know there are people that pay for this conference out of their own pockets.  This is a great way for those people to reduce the cost of the conference.  (And remember for next year that our cheapest pricing starts right after the Summit and usually goes up around the first of the year.) We also get big price bumps after we announce the program and the pre-conference sessions.  If you wrote down the 50 or so best known speakers in the SQL Server community I’m guessing we’ll have nearly all of them at the conference.  We did last year.  I expect we will this year too.  We’re going to have good sessions.  Why wait?  Register today. If you want to attend a pre-conference session you can always add it to your registration later.  Pre-con prices don’t change.  It’s very easy to update your registration and add a pre-conference session later. I want as many people as possible to attend the Summit.  It’s been a great experience for me and I hope it will be for you.  And if you are going to go, do yourself a favor and save some money.  Register today!

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• Android Array Lag?

  - by Mike

  I am making a platform game for Android. It is sort of a tile based game. I added bullets and enemies with AI and a bunch of tile types. I created a simple map with no Enemies. Everything was running well and smooth until I shot a bunch of bullets randomly everywhere. A couple of hundreds of bullets later, the FPS lowered. I made a test to find out if the bullets were the problem so I made another simple map with just a tile to stand on and left it for a while. Minutes later, I played around with it a bit to check if the FPS changed and it didnt. I reloaded the same map and shot a lot of bullets. Minutes later, the FPS was visibly lower even after the number of bullets were zero. Points to note: Programmed FPS is 30 Tested on a Samsung Galaxy Y and Samsung Galaxy W Any tile, enemy, bullet that is off screen is not drawn to prevent lag Bullets collide with Tiles (if they dont collide with in 450 frames, they are removed from the array) I used List bullets = new ListArray(); I used bullets.add(new Bullet(x, y, params...)); I used for(...){ if(...){ bullets.remove(i); } } Code for bullet: private void drawBullets(Canvas canvas) { for (int i = 0; i < bullets.size(); i++) { Bullet b = bullets.get(i); b.update(canvas); //updates physics if (b.t > blm) { //if the bullet is past its expiry bullets.remove(i); i--; } else { if (svx((b.x)) > 0 && svx(b.x) < width && svy((b.y)) > 0 && svy(b.y) < height) { // if bullet is not off screen b.draw(canvas); // draw the bullet } } } } I tried searching for solutions and references but I have no luck. I'm guessing that the lag has something to do with the Array and the Bullets or Classes that I've loaded? I'm not sure! Someone please help! Thanks in advance! :)

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