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  • Do you keep your ideas secret? and why?

    - by MainMa
    I believe any programmer has several ideas that she/he considers as innovative or at least valuable. It may be an idea of a new product which will make this world better or a new development approach, etc. But a great idea must be implemented and promoted/advertised. This requires a lot of work (proofs of concept, prototypes, technology previews, etc.) and a lot of money (appropriate advertisement, marketing, etc.). So months later, the idea stays in our heads, but nothing else is done, because it's difficult, long and expensive, sometimes even impossible for a single developer. On the other hand, it would be painful to share our ideas, and see a medium-size company which has enough resources making something useful from it and having success and money. So what do you do with your ideas you can hardly implement or patent? Do you talk freely about them in discussion boards and with other developers? Do you keep them like a precious thing without never talking about them to anybody? If you keep your ideas, why are you doing so? Is it just because you hope that one day, you will be able to implement them and have a huge success, while you know very well by experience that it's an utopia?

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  • Flash Player for IPTV

    - by Le Mystique
    Hi All, We have to design a flash player for three video sources of IPTV. Educational videos on the system that can be played on demand. (VOD or Video on Demand local) Streaming videos available on different websites that can be played on demand (VOD or Video on Demand remote) IPTV live streaming video feed Videos from three sources have to be played within single flash player that we need to design. There are 2 basic requirements: For the two VOD types, we have to provide the pause and play functionality. For IPTV, pause and play is not required, However, channel switching time is critically important here. The user should get the program behaviour as close to TV experience as possible. This means channel switching should be fast. To provide this, buffering of video is required for multiple channels. Now the questions is, is this possible? If yes, how? Secondly, what skill set (e.g. action script 3.0 , flash 10) should the flash programmer have to be able to design this? Thirdly is it as simple as making a normal FLV player? Or is it a more complex job?

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  • Multiplayer online game engine/pipeline

    - by Slav
    I am implementing online multiplayer game where client must be written in AS3 (Flash) to embed game into browser and server in C++ (abstract part of which is already written and used with other games). Networking models may differ from each other, but currently I'm looking toward game's logic run on both client and server parts but they're written on different languages while it's not the main problem. My previous game (pretty big one - was implemented with efforts of ~5 programmers in 1.5 years) was mainly "written" within electronic tables as structured objects with implemented inheritance: was written standalone tool which generated AS3 and C++ (languages of platforms to which the game was published) using specified electronic tables file (.xls or .ods). That file contained ~50 tables with ~50 rows and ~50 columns each and was mainly written by game designers which do not know any programming languages. But that game was single-player. Having declared problem with my currently implementing MMO, I'm looking toward some vast pipeline, where will be resolved such problems like: game objects descriptions (which starships exist within game, how much HP they have, how fast move, what damage deal...) actions descriptions (what players or NPCs can do: attack each other, collect resources, build structures, move, teleport, cast spells) - actions are transmitted through server between clients influences (what happens when specified action applied on specified object, e.i "Ship A attacked Ship B: field "HP" of Ship B reduced by amount of field "damage" of Ship A" Influences can be much more difficult, yes, e.i. "damage is twice it's size when Ship has =5 allies around him in a 200 units range during night" and so on. If to be able to write such logic within some "design document" it will be easily possible to: let designers to do their job without programmer's intervention or any bug-prone programming validate described logic transfer (transform, convert) to any programming language where it will be executed Did somebody worked on something like that? Is there some tools/engines/pipelines which concernes with it? How to handle all of this problems simultaneously in a best way or do I properly imagine my tasks and problems to myself?

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  • As a developer, how do I learn sales? [closed]

    - by Dan Abramov
    I quit the company I was working for to pursuit an opportunity as a startup, and I believe in our product. I'm sure it's going to be great if we attract some customers first to keep going. (I don't want funding.) Our product is targeted at private schools and courses, and helps organize the mess other LMSs introduce. The problem is, our team is basically just me and I have very little idea about sales and marketing. I can do reasonably good copywriting but I'm sure I can do better—and being nervous or too techy in a real world conversation with the client doesn't help. I want to get better, in fact, a lot better at negotiating with clients and pitching my product. I did look for some “sales articles” on the web, and a lot of what I found is plain bullshit on SEO-engineered websites promoting books or $5000 courses. What I need instead is a developer's perspective on how to sale a product you think is great. What are typical programmer's mistakes and misconceptions about sales, and how to avoid them? How do you evolve into a reasonably great salesman? I can't believe it's in the mindset and unlearnable. Your own experience, combined with great articles available on the web is most welcome. To Future Readers The question got closed because it is not a good fit for this site. I found some helpful tips in a similar question asked on a sister StackExchange site about startups: I'm a terrible salesperson. What can I do about it?

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  • Making money from a custom built interpreter?

    - by annoying_squid
    I have been making considerable progress lately on building an interpreter. I am building it from NASM assembly code (for the core engine) and C (cl.exe the Microsoft compiler for the parser). I really don't have a lot of time but I have a lot of good ideas on how to build this so it appeals to a certain niche market. I'd love to finish this but I need to face reality here ... unless I can make some good monetary return on my investment, there is not a lot of time for me to invest. So I ask the following questions to anyone out there, especially those who have experience in monetizing their programs: 1) How easy is it for a programmer to make good money from one design? (I know this is vague but it will be interesting to hear from those who have experience or know of others' experiences). 2) What are the biggest obstacles to making money from a programming design? 3) For the parser, I am using the Microsoft compiler (no IDE) I got from visual express, so will this be an issue? Will I have to pay royalties or a license fee? 4) As far as I know NASM is a 2-clause BSD licensed application. So this should allow me to use NASM for commericial development unless I am missing something? It's good to know these things before launching into the meat and potatoes of the project.

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  • What's a way to implement a flexible buff/debuff system?

    - by gkimsey
    Overview: Lots of games which RPG-like statistics allow for character "buffs", ranging from simple "Deal 25% extra damage" to more complicated things like "Deal 15 damage back to attackers when hit." The specifics of each type of buff aren't really relevant. I'm looking for a (presumably object-oriented) way to handle arbitrary buffs. Details: In my particular case, I have multiple characters in a turn-based battle environment, so I envisioned buffs being tied to events like "OnTurnStart", "OnReceiveDamage", etc. Perhaps each buff is a subclass of a main Buff abstract class, where only the relevant events are overloaded. Then each character could have a vector of buffs currently applied. Does this solution make sense? I can certainly see dozens of event types being necessary, it feels like making a new subclass for each buff is overkill, and it doesn't seem to allow for any buff "interactions". That is, if I wanted to implement a cap on damage boosts so that even if you had 10 different buffs which all give 25% extra damage, you only do 100% extra instead of 250% extra. And there's more complicated situations that ideally I could control. I'm sure everyone can come up with examples of how more sophisticated buffs can potentially interact with each other in a way that as a game developer I may not want. As a relatively inexperienced C++ programmer (I generally have used C in embedded systems), I feel like my solution is simplistic and probably doesn't take full advantage of the object-oriented language. Thoughts? Has anyone here designed a fairly robust buff system before?

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  • December 2012 OTN Member Offers

    - by Cassandra Clark - OTN
    Our partners have answered the special offer call just in time for you to either shop for the tech professional in your life or share the list below with someone who keeps asking you what you want for the holidays.  Go right to the Oracle Technology Network Member Discount Page or read on for more details. Oracle  Store has extended their 10% Savings through December 31st 2012.Oracle Press - Oracle Technology Network members get 40% off the latest Oracle Press book by Oracle ACE Directors Ben Prusinski and Gustavo Gonzalez, Oracle E-Business Suite Financials Handbook, Third Edition in print and ebook format. CRC Press - Has added 3 NEW titles!  Get 20% off the below title at checkout. Secure Java: For Web Application Development Open Source Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence Developing Essbase Applications: Advanced Techniques for Finance and IT Professional Oracle Embedded Programming and Application Development Packt Publishing - Get 25% off the print books and get 35% off the eBooks listed below. You will need to be logged in for the discounts to apply at checkout and codes expire December 31st 2012. Getting Started with Oracle Data Integrator 11g: A Hands-On Tutorial Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g: A Hands-On Tutorial Oracle Certified Associate, Java SE 7 Programmer Study Guide Safari Online-  Give the Gift of Knowledge This Holiday SeasonGive your friends and colleagues the gift of Safari Books Online! With an ever-expanding library of books and videos from more than 100 publishers (including Oracle Press), a subscription to Safari Books Online is the gift that always fits, helping your friends learn new skills and stay current. Starting at $42.99, gift subscriptions are available for 1, 3, 6 and 12 months. Get all of this and more at the Oracle Technology Network Member Discount Page!

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  • Any mates have same plan as me. Focust on tech whole life, no wife, no kids [closed]

    - by Anders Lind
    I am about 30 years old, c++ programmer. Kernel hacker. Living in east coast US. Day by day, night by night. I am in front of my monitor, typing code on my hhkb, scratching idea on my notebook. In my spare time, I play piano sometimes. Go to some classical concert once a month. Basically having a happy life. One concern is I dont have gf. I dont have wife nor kids. My parents start to worry about this. Occasionally they will ask my status. they wont tell me to do anything. But I can see their worries. So, my question is, is my life normal? How many mates think same as me? (I only know rms is single, has no kids, and having a happy life. But I am way worse than him. compare to him, I am nothing. If I am as successful as him. I won;t ask this question here.)

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  • Developing wheel reinventing tendencies into a skill as opposed to reluctantly learning wheel-finding skills? [duplicate]

    - by Korey Hinton
    This question already has an answer here: Is reinventing the wheel really all that bad? 20 answers I am more of a high-level wheel reinventor. I definitely prefer to make use of existing API features built into a language and popular third-party frameworks that I know can solve the problem, however when I have a particular problem that I feel capable of solving within a reasonable time I am very reluctant to find someone else's solution. Here are a few reasons why I reinvent: It takes time to learn a new API API restrictions might exist that I don't know about Avoiding re-work of unfamiliar code I am conflicted between doing what I know and shifting to a new technique I don't feel comfortable with. On one hand I feel like following my instincts and getting really good at solving problems, especially ones that I would never challenge myself with if all I did was try to find answers. And on the other hand I feel like I might be missing out on important skills like saving time by finding the right framework and expanding my knowledge by learning how to use a new framework. I guess my question comes down to this: My current attitude is to stick to the built-in API and APIs I know well* and to not spend my time searching github for a solution to a problem I know I can solve myself within a reasonable amount of time. Is that a reasonable balance for a successful programmer? *Obviously I will still look around for new frameworks that save time and solve/simplify difficult problems.

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  • Abstract Factory Method and Polymorphism

    - by Scotty C.
    Being a PHP programmer for the last couple of years, I'm just starting to get into advanced programming styles and using polymorphic patterns. I was watching a video on polymorphism the other day, and the guy giving the lecture said that if at all possible, you should get rid of if statements in your code, and that a switch is almost always a sign that polymorphism is needed. At this point I was quite inspired and immediately went off to try out these new concepts, so I decided to make a small caching module using a factory method. Of course the very first thing I have to do is create a switch to decide what file encoding to choose. DANG! class Main { public static function methodA($parameter='') { switch ($parameter) { case 'a': $object = new \name\space\object1(); break; case 'b': $object = new \name\space\object2(); break; case 'c': $object = new \name\space\object3(); break; default: $object = new \name\space\object1(); } return (sekretInterface $object); } } At this point I'm not really sure what to do. As far as I can tell, I either have to use a different pattern and have separate methods for each object instance, or accept that a switch is necessary to "switch" between them. What do you guys think?

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  • Advanced PHP book [closed]

    - by Aaditi Sharma
    I've gone and stumbled across a lot of recommendations for PHP books, including on SO, however could not find a reasonable & convincible answer for this. Is there a really good advanced book for PHP. Background: I've done almost 8 months in PHP. I know the basics. I go through php.net very often. I've played around with Codeigniter, amongst other frameworks. I've been doing JavaScript for almost 2 years, and specifically thank Douglas Crockford for this, I completely changed the way I code JavaScript. I spend a lot of time travelling, and would love to read a book about PHP, that includes the awesome parts and even when something doesn't quite work in PHP. (As a note a lot of previous answers on SO and programmers give varied results.) I have to place an order through a library which has it's limitations. One book that some of experienced PHP programmers could recommend would be helpful. I have gone through http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1711/what-is-the-single-most-influential-book-every-programmer-should-read and http://stackoverflow.com/questions/194812/list-of-freely-available-programming-books, which do NOT have books related to PHP.

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  • Am I an idealist?

    - by ereOn
    This is not only a question, this is also a call for help. Since I started my career as a programmer, I always tried to learn from my mistakes. I worked hard to learn best-practices and while I don't consider myself a C++ expert, I still believe I'm not a beginner either. I was recently hired into a company for C++ development. There I was told that my way to work was "against the rules" and that I would have to change my mind. Here are the topics I disagree with my hierarchy (their words): "You should not use separate header files for your different classes. One big header file is both easier to read and faster to compile." "Trying to use different headers is counter-productive : use the same super-set of headers everywhere, and enforce the use #pragma hdrstop to hasten compilation" "You may not use Boost or any other library that uses nested directories to organize its files. Our build-machine doesn't work with nested directories. Moreover, you don't need Boost to create great software." One might think I'm somehow exaggerated things, but the sad truth is that I didn't. That's their actual words. I believe that having separate files enhance maintainability and code-correctness and can fasten compilation time by the use of the proper includes. Have you been in a similar situation? What should I do? I feel like it's actually impossible for me to work that way and day after day, my frustration grows.

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  • Dynamic model interactions

    - by Richard
    I am just curious as to how in many games (namely games like arkham asylum/city, manhunt, hitman) do they make it so that your character can "grab" a character in front of you and do stuff to them. I know this may sound very confusing but for an example go to youtube and search "hitman executions", and the first video is an example of what i'm asking. Basically I'm wondering how they make your model dynamically interact with whatever other model you come across, so in hitman when you come up behind some one with the fibre wire you strangle the other character or if you have the anesthetic you come up behind some person and put your hand over there mouth while they struggle and slowly go to the floor where you lay them down. I am confused as to whether it was animated to use two models using specific bone/skeletal identifiers, if it is just two completely separate animations that are played at the correct time to make it look like they are actually interacting or something else all together. I am not an animator so i assume most of what i just said is not right but i hope that some one can understand what i mean and provide an answer. PS) I am a programmer and I am in the process of building a hitmanesque game, just because i love that style of game and I want to increase my skills on something fun, so if you do know what i'm talking about have some examples with involving both models and programming (i use c++ and mainly Ogre3D at the moment but i am getting into unity and XNA) i would greatly appreciate it. Thanks.

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  • How do I (quickly) let people know that software I am providing for free is not abandon-ware?

    - by blueberryfields
    As an independent, individual programmer: How do I let people very quickly know that I have not abandoned the software I've written and given away for free? That I am putting in the effort required to maintain and support my software to a professional level? When software written by one or two developers is available for free, or marked as open-source, usually the default assumption is that it's abandon-ware. This is usually a safe assumption - check out the answers to this question if you doubt it: Why do programmers write applications and then make them free?. There are lots of programmers who provide free and/or open-source tools which are not abandon-ware, though. If we're talking about large companies, ie Google, there's no real problem telling the difference between supported, live tools and software, and those which are abandoned or discontinued. A lively git repository isn't quick - users will have to be savvy enough to understand the repository and know where to look for it. Consistent marketing and community management take more time and effort than I can put in on my own. Also, if my software becomes popular/successful, I assume those will grow on their own, and be supported by power users in the community.

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  • How to deal with the need to know multiple programming languages? When to stop learning new languages?

    - by Raphael
    I am a relatively young programmer. I am 23 and I have been programming professionally for about 5 years. As most programmers I started with C, learned some x86 assembly for fun and then I found C++ which turned out to be my greatest passion in the programming world. Programming with C and C++ forces you to learn platform specific APIs, libs and frameworks all of each requires constant study and experimentation. After some time I had to move on to Java and C# as the demand on my region is basically for these languages. With these languages I entered the world of web development and then I had to learn javascript. Developing for the .NET Framework was exciting at first but I constantly felt as I was getting tied up by Microsoft (and of course the .NET Framework was driving me away from Linux). For desktop development I could do pretty much everything I did with .NET using C++ with Qt but for web development I had to look for an alternative. Quickly I found Django and then I proceeded to learn Python so I could use Django. Nowadays I am learning iOS development with Objective-C. So far it was pretty much easy to learn all these languages (C++ trained me well) but I am worried that someday I won't be able to keep track of them all. Just to clarify. The only languages I learned cause I had to were C# and Java. All of the others I learned for fun, because I love programming and learning new things. Also I like to keep my skills sharp on desktop, web and mobile development. My question is: How do you keep track of multiple programming languages? (I mean, keep track of changes to these languages and keep your skills sharp) and: Is there such a thing as enough programming languages?

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  • Graduating soon with a computer science degree, but have unique circumstances [closed]

    - by Donnie
    I joined the Navy in 1998, and was admitted into Nuclear Power Training. I got my electrician's mate certificate, but was put on medical hold when I was in Nuclear Power Training. I was sent to the Naval Hospital, and received a medical (honorable) discharge in the middle of 2000. I decided to stay at home and raise my son, and my girlfriend worked. a few years ago, I decided that I want to work as a programmer, so I went to college and will soon be graduating with a degree in computer science. I hope to finish with a relatively high GPA, 3.8 or 3.9. My question is this: How much, if any, of my Navy experience should I put on my resume? And how do I explain my nine year gap as a stay at home dad? Do I even try to explain it? I know recent college graduates typically have no experience, but obviously I'm not the typical college graduate. Will my long absence from working, or my relatively short duration in the Navy hurt my chances? Should I just put the college on my resume, and hope that HR thinks I'm younger than I am? Obviously, then, my age would show at the interview and there would be questions. Any help is appreciated.

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  • How to cut the line between quality and time?

    - by m3th0dman
    On one hand, I have been taught by various software engineering books ([1] as example) that my job as a programmer is to make the best possible software: great design, flexibility, to be easily maintained etc. One the other hand although I realize that I actually write software for money and not for entertainment, although is very nice to write good code and plan ahead and refactor after writing and ... I wonder if it is always best for the business (after all we should be responsible). Is the business always benefiting from a best code? Maybe I'm over-engineering something, and it's not always useful? So how should I know when to stop in the process to achieving the best possible code? I am sure that experience is something that makes a difference here, but I believe this cannot be the only answer. [1] Uncle Bob's in Clean Code says at page 6 about the fact that: They [managers] may defend the schedule and requirements with passion; but that’s their job. It’s your job to defend the code with equal passion.

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  • I've been told that Exceptions should only be used in exceptional cases. How do I know if my case is exceptional?

    - by tieTYT
    My specific case here is that the user can pass in a string into the application, the application parses it and assigns it to structured objects. Sometimes the user may type in something invalid. For example, their input may describe a person but they may say their age is "apple". Correct behavior in that case is roll back the transaction and to tell the user an error occurred and they'll have to try again. There may be a requirement to report on every error we can find in the input, not just the first. In this case, I argued we should throw an exception. He disagreed, saying, "Exceptions should be exceptional: It's expected that the user may input invalid data, so this isn't an exceptional case" I didn't really know how to argue that point, because by definition of the word, he seems to be right. But, it's my understanding that this is why Exceptions were invented in the first place. It used to be you had to inspect the result to see if an error occurred. If you failed to check, bad things could happen without you noticing. Without exceptions every level of the stack needs to check the result of the methods they call and if a programmer forgets to check in one of these levels, the code could accidentally proceed and save invalid data (for example). Seems more error prone that way. Anyway, feel free to correct anything I've said here. My main question is if someone says Exceptions should be exceptional, how do I know if my case is exceptional?

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  • General List of Common Programming Errors

    - by javamonkey79
    As one journey's from apprentice to journeyman to master I've noticed that one accumulates a list of best practices for things they've been bitten by. Personally, I write most of my stuff in java & SQL so my list tends to be slated towards them. I've accumulated the following: When doing list removal, always reverse iterate Avoid adding items to a list you are currently iterating on Watch out for NullPointerExceptions Now, I know there are language specific "common errors" links out there like this one. And I'm also aware of the pragmatic programmer tips, Martin Fowler's "code smells". Does anyone know of any good lists out there of things like I've listed above (re: list removal, adding items, etc). My guess is that there are some good QA folks out there that can probably throw me a bone here. I'm not looking for things the compiler can catch - I'm looking for common things that cause bugs. In the event that there isn't a list out there already then I welcome posting your own findings here. Thanks in advance!

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  • listing my programming experience on my resume

    - by Bigbio2002
    On my resume, I list myself as having "7 years of hands-on experience programming in C++". To clarify, I am a self-taught C++ programmer with some college courses thrown in the mix. I've worked on some small personal projects, and I consider myself to be more competent than a CS grad with no actual real-world experience, though by no means am I anywhere near being an expert. The issue is this... I keep getting calls and emails from recruiters that see my resume on job sites, inquiring about my interest in senior developer positions, contracts, etc., of which I feel that I am completely under-qualified for. My resume only has 3 years of work experience listed (which is all IT stuff), so when they ask about my prior experience in C++, I have to clarify that it was personal work, not professional work. I'd really like a job as a developer, but I don't want to get hired for something that I can't handle, nor do I want to misrepresent myself while trying to show off my strengths. I deliberately chose the phrasing "hands-on" to imply that it wasn't professional. How should I phrase my C++ experience on my resume to clarify it better?

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  • Windows Physical Direct Memory Mapping

    - by chrisjleaf
    I'm a bit disappointed there is almost no discussion of this no matter where I look so I guess I'll have to ask. I'm writing a cross platform memory bench marking application which requires direct physical address mapping rather than virtual addressing. EDIT The solution would look something like the Linux/Unix system calls: int fd = open("/dev/mem", O_RDONLY); mmap(NULL, len, PROT_READ, MAP_SHARED, fd, PHYSICAL_ADDRESS_OFFSET); which will require the kernel to either give you a virtual page mapping to the desired physical address or return that it failed. This does require supervisor privileges but that is ok. I have seen a lot of information about shared memory and memory mapped files but all of these reside on disc and are thus not really useful when I'm trying to make a system dependent read. It is very similar to writing an IO driver although I do no need write permissions to the physical address. This site gives an example of how to do it on a driver level using the Windows Driver Kit: NT Insider: Sharing Memory between drivers and applications This solution would probably require Visual Studio which currently I do not have access to. (I have downloaded the WDK api but it complained about my use of GCC for Windows). I'm traditionally a Linux programmer so I'm hoping there might be something really simple I'm missing. Thanks in advance if you know something I don't!

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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 are some good resources for creating a game engine in XNA?

    - by Glasser
    I'm currently a student game programmer working on an indie project. We have a team of eleven people (five programmers, four artists, and two audio designers) aboard, all working hard to help design this game. We've been meeting for months now and so far we have a pretty buffed out Game Design Document as well as much audio/visual concept art. Our programmers are itching to progress on our own end. Each person in our programming team is well versed in C++, but is very familiar with C#. We have enough experience and skill that we're confident that we will be successful with our game, and we're looking to build our own game engine in XNA as it seems like it would be worth our time and effort in the end. The game itself will be a 2D beat 'em up style game to be released over xbox live and the PC. It's play style will be similar to that of Castle Crashers or Scott Pilgrim vs The World. We want to design the game engine to allow us to better implement our assets into the game as well as to simplify the creation of design elements/mechanics. Currently between our programmers, we have books such as "XNA 4.0" and "Game Coding Complete, Third Edition," but we'd still like more information on both XNA and (especially) building a game engine from scratch. What are any other good books, websites, or resources we could use to further map out and program our game engine?

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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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  • I've inherited 200K lines of spaghetti code -- what now?

    - by kmote
    I hope this isn't too general of a question; I could really use some seasoned advice. I am newly employed as the sole "SW Engineer" in a fairly small shop of scientists who have spent the last 10-20 years cobbling together a vast code base. (It was written in a virtually obsolete language: G2 -- think Pascal with graphics). The program itself is a physical model of a complex chemical processing plant; the team that wrote it have incredibly deep domain knowledge but little or no formal training in programming fundamentals. They've recently learned some hard lessons about the consequences of non-existant configuration management. Their maintenance efforts are also greatly hampered by the vast accumulation of undocumented "sludge" in the code itself. I will spare you the "politics" of the situation (there's always politics!), but suffice to say, there is not a consensus of opinion about what is needed for the path ahead. They have asked me to begin presenting to the team some of the principles of modern software development. They want me to introduce some of the industry-standard practices and strategies regarding coding conventions, lifecycle management, high-level design patterns, and source control. Frankly, it's a fairly daunting task and I'm not sure where to begin. Initially, I'm inclined to tutor them in some of the central concepts of The Pragmatic Programmer, or Fowler's Refactoring ("Code Smells", etc). I also hope to introduce a number of Agile methodologies. But ultimately, to be effective, I think I'm going to need to hone in on 5-7 core fundamentals; in other words, what are the most important principles or practices that they can realistically start implementing that will give them the most "bang for the buck". So that's my question: What would you include in your list of the most effective strategies to help straighten out the spaghetti (and prevent it in the future)?

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