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• Non-Obvious Topics to Learn for Game Development

  - by ashes999

  I've been writing games for around 10 years now (from QBasic to C# and everything in-between). I need to start stretching my skills into different areas. What are other, surprising topics I should read up on? Expected topics would include the usual suspects: Programming language of your choice Scripting language Source control Project management (or Agile) Graphics API Maybe some AI (A* path-finding?) Physics (projectile physics) Unit testing (automated testing) I'm looking for more esoteric topics; things that you don't expect to need to know, but if you do know them, they make a difference. This could include things like: Art skills (drawing, lighting, colouring, layout, etc.) Natural language processing The physics of sound (sound-waves, doppler effect, etc.) Personally, I feel that having technical art skills (eg. can make decent art-work if you can only come up with ideas; or, following Photoshop/GIMP tutorials) was the most beneficial for me. This is not intended to be an open-ended question; I'm looking for specific skills that helped you and you expect will continue to benefit you in the short- and long-term.

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• The Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials

  - by The Geek

  The Apple iPad is an amazing tablet, and to help you get the most out of it, we’ve put together a comprehensive list of every tip, trick, and tutorial for you. Read on for more. Note: This article was originally published earlier this year, but we’ve updated it with a real lot more content since then, so we’re republishing it for you. We’ll be keeping this page updated as we find more great articles, so you should bookmark this page for future reference Latest Features How-To Geek ETC The Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials The 50 Best Registry Hacks that Make Windows Better The How-To Geek Holiday Gift Guide (Geeky Stuff We Like) LCD? LED? Plasma? The How-To Geek Guide to HDTV Technology The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 8: Filters Improve Digital Photography by Calibrating Your Monitor The Brothers Mario – Epic Gangland Style Mario Brothers Movie Trailer [Video] Score Awesome Games on the Cheap with the Humble Indie Bundle Add a Colorful Christmas Theme to Your Windows 7 Desktop This Windows Hack Changes the Blue Screen of Death to Red Edit Images Quickly in Firefox with Pixlr Grabber Zoho Writer, Sheet, and Show Now Available in Chrome Web Store

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• Hybrid Graphics Functional won't work with my Asus UL30V anymore

  - by futuress

  The problem is that I am no longer able to boot in compatibility mode for just turning on my Nvidia graphics to install the driver. Because no login screen will appear if Ubuntu is loading. In Ubuntu 11.10 I was able to activate nvidia graphics only' option this way: 1) Change BIOS to 'compatibility mode' which will turn off the Intel card. 2) Install the Nvidia proprietary driver using Ubuntu's driver finder (Additional Drivers) and then reboot. I was not interested using only the Intel graphics, for the sake of battery life. Now I have both cards running and they drain my battery life dramatically. And the main problem of this configuration no OpenGL is available, so I can't play any games any more. At this point, I have a pre-solution. I uninstalled the nvidia drivers and installed bumblebee. Now the Intel card is recognized. I would prefer to run just the nvidia card as in Ubuntu 11.10 but for now this is better than nothing. Does anybody else have the same problem?

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• Farseer tutorial for the absolute beginners

  - by Bil Simser

  This post is inspired (and somewhat a direct copy) of a couple of posts Emanuele Feronato wrote back in 2009 about Box2D (his tutorial was ActionScript 3 based for Box2D, this is C# XNA for the Farseer Physics Engine). Here’s what we’re building: What is Farseer The Farseer Physics Engine is a collision detection system with realistic physics responses to help you easily create simple hobby games or complex simulation systems. Farseer was built as a .NET version of Box2D (based on the Box2D.XNA port of Box2D). While the constructs and syntax has changed over the years, the principles remain the same. This tutorial will walk you through exactly what Emanuele create for Flash but we’ll be doing it using C#, XNA and the Windows Phone platform. The first step is to download the library from its home on CodePlex. If you have NuGet installed, you can install the library itself using the NuGet package that but we’ll also be using some code from the Samples source that can only be obtained by downloading the library. Once you download and unpacked the zip file into a folder and open the solution, this is what you will get: The Samples XNA WP7 project (and content) have all the demos for Farseer. There’s a wealth of info here and great examples to look at to learn. The Farseer Physics XNA WP7 project contains the core libraries that do all the work. DebugView XNA contains an XNA-ready class to let you view debug data and information in the game draw loop (which you can copy into your project or build the source and reference the assembly). The downloaded version has to be compiled as it’s only available in source format so you can do that now if you want (open the solution file and rebuild everything). If you’re using the NuGet package you can just install that. We only need the core library and we’ll be copying in some code from the samples later. Your first Farseer experiment Start Visual Studio and create a new project using the Windows Phone template can call it whatever you want. It’s time to edit Game1.cs 1 public class Game1 : Game 2 { 3 private readonly GraphicsDeviceManager _graphics; 4 private DebugViewXNA _debugView; 5 private Body _floor; 6 private SpriteBatch _spriteBatch; 7 private float _timer; 8 private World _world; 9 10 public Game1() 11 { 12 _graphics = new GraphicsDeviceManager(this) 13 { 14 PreferredBackBufferHeight = 800, 15 PreferredBackBufferWidth = 480, 16 IsFullScreen = true 17 }; 18 19 Content.RootDirectory = "Content"; 20 21 // Frame rate is 30 fps by default for Windows Phone. 22 TargetElapsedTime = TimeSpan.FromTicks(333333); 23 24 // Extend battery life under lock. 25 InactiveSleepTime = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(1); 26 } 27 28 protected override void LoadContent() 29 { 30 // Create a new SpriteBatch, which can be used to draw textures. 31 _spriteBatch = new SpriteBatch(_graphics.GraphicsDevice); 32 33 // Load our font (DebugViewXNA needs it for the DebugPanel) 34 Content.Load<SpriteFont>("font"); 35 36 // Create our World with a gravity of 10 vertical units 37 if (_world == null) 38 { 39 _world = new World(Vector2.UnitY*10); 40 } 41 else 42 { 43 _world.Clear(); 44 } 45 46 if (_debugView == null) 47 { 48 _debugView = new DebugViewXNA(_world); 49 50 // default is shape, controller, joints 51 // we just want shapes to display 52 _debugView.RemoveFlags(DebugViewFlags.Controllers); 53 _debugView.RemoveFlags(DebugViewFlags.Joint); 54 55 _debugView.LoadContent(GraphicsDevice, Content); 56 } 57 58 // Create and position our floor 59 _floor = BodyFactory.CreateRectangle( 60 _world, 61 ConvertUnits.ToSimUnits(480), 62 ConvertUnits.ToSimUnits(50), 63 10f); 64 _floor.Position = ConvertUnits.ToSimUnits(240, 775); 65 _floor.IsStatic = true; 66 _floor.Restitution = 0.2f; 67 _floor.Friction = 0.2f; 68 } 69 70 protected override void Update(GameTime gameTime) 71 { 72 // Allows the game to exit 73 if (GamePad.GetState(PlayerIndex.One).Buttons.Back == ButtonState.Pressed) 74 Exit(); 75 76 // Create a random box every second 77 _timer += (float) gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds; 78 if (_timer >= 1.0f) 79 { 80 // Reset our timer 81 _timer = 0f; 82 83 // Determine a random size for each box 84 var random = new Random(); 85 var width = random.Next(20, 100); 86 var height = random.Next(20, 100); 87 88 // Create it and store the size in the user data 89 var box = BodyFactory.CreateRectangle( 90 _world, 91 ConvertUnits.ToSimUnits(width), 92 ConvertUnits.ToSimUnits(height), 93 10f, 94 new Point(width, height)); 95 96 box.BodyType = BodyType.Dynamic; 97 box.Restitution = 0.2f; 98 box.Friction = 0.2f; 99 100 // Randomly pick a location along the top to drop it from 101 box.Position = ConvertUnits.ToSimUnits(random.Next(50, 400), 0); 102 } 103 104 // Advance all the elements in the world 105 _world.Step(Math.Min((float) gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalMilliseconds*0.001f, (1f/30f))); 106 107 // Clean up any boxes that have fallen offscreen 108 foreach (var box in from box in _world.BodyList 109 let pos = ConvertUnits.ToDisplayUnits(box.Position) 110 where pos.Y > _graphics.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Height 111 select box) 112 { 113 _world.RemoveBody(box); 114 } 115 116 base.Update(gameTime); 117 } 118 119 protected override void Draw(GameTime gameTime) 120 { 121 GraphicsDevice.Clear(Color.FromNonPremultiplied(51, 51, 51, 255)); 122 123 _spriteBatch.Begin(); 124 125 var projection = Matrix.CreateOrthographicOffCenter( 126 0f, 127 ConvertUnits.ToSimUnits(_graphics.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Width), 128 ConvertUnits.ToSimUnits(_graphics.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Height), 0f, 0f, 129 1f); 130 _debugView.RenderDebugData(ref projection); 131 132 _spriteBatch.End(); 133 134 base.Draw(gameTime); 135 } 136 } 137 Lines 4: Declare the debug view we’ll use for rendering (more on that later). Lines 8: Declare _world variable of type class World. World is the main object to interact with the Farseer engine. It stores all the joints and bodies, and is responsible for stepping through the simulation. Lines 12-17: Create the graphics device we’ll be rendering on. This is an XNA component and we’re just setting it to be the same size as the phone and toggling it to be full screen (no system tray). Lines 34: We create a SpriteFont here by adding it to the project. It’s called “font” because that’s what the DebugView uses but you can name it whatever you want (and if you’re not using DebugView for your production app you might have several fonts). Lines 37-44: We create the physics environment that Farseer uses to contain all the objects by specifying it here. We’re using Vector2.UnitY*10 to represent the gravity to be used in the environment. In other words, 10 units going in a downward motion. Lines 46-56: We create the DebugViewXNA here. This is copied from the […] from the code you downloaded and provides the ability to render all entities onto the screen. In a production release you’ll be doing the rendering yourself of each object but we cheat a bit for the demo and let the DebugView do it for us. The other thing it can provide is to render out a panel of debugging information while the simulation is going on. This is useful in tracking down objects, figuring out how something works, or just keeping track of what’s in the engine. Lines 49-67: Here we create a rigid body (Farseer only supports rigid bodies) to represent the floor that we’ll drop objects onto. We create it by using one of the Farseer factories and specifying the width and height. The ConvertUnits class is copied from the samples code as-is and lets us toggle between display units (pixels) and simulation units (usually metres). We’re creating a floor that’s 480 pixels wide and 50 pixels high (converting them to SimUnits for the engine to understand). We also position it near the bottom of the screen. Values are in metres and when specifying values they refer to the centre of the body object. Lines 77-78: The game Update method fires 30 times a second, too fast to be creating objects this quickly. So we use a variable to track the elapsed seconds since the last update, accumulate that value, then create a new box to drop when 1 second has passed. Lines 89-94: We create a box the same way we created our floor (coming up with a random width and height for the box). Lines 96-101: We set the box to be Dynamic (rather than Static like the floor object) and position it somewhere along the top of the screen. And now you created the world. Gravity does the rest and the boxes fall to the ground. Here’s the result: Farseer Physics Engine Demo using XNA Lines 105: We must update the world at every frame. We do this with the Step method which takes in the time interval. [more] Lines 108-114: Body objects are added to the world but never automatically removed (because Farseer doesn’t know about the display world, it has no idea if an item is on the screen or not). Here we just loop through all the entities and anything that’s dropped off the screen (below the bottom) gets removed from the World. This keeps our entity count down (the simulation never has more than 30 or 40 objects in the world no matter how long you run it for). Too many entities and the app will grind to a halt. Lines 125-130: Farseer knows nothing about the UI so that’s entirely up to you as to how to draw things. Farseer is just tracking the objects and moving them around using the physics engine and it’s rules. You’ll still use XNA to draw items (using the SpriteBatch.Draw method) so you can load up your usual textures and draw items and pirates and dancing zombies all over the screen. Instead in this demo we’re going to cheat a little. In the sample code for Farseer you can download there’s a project called DebugView XNA. This project contains the DebugViewXNA class which just handles iterating through all the bodies in the world and drawing the shapes. So we call the RenderDebugData method here of that class to draw everything correctly. In the case of this demo, we just want to draw Shapes so take a look at the source code for the DebugViewXNA class as to how it extracts all the vertices for the shapes created (in this case simple boxes) and draws them. You’ll learn a *lot* about how Farseer works just by looking at this class. That’s it, that’s all. Simple huh? Hope you enjoy the code and library. Physics is hard and requires some math skills to really grok. The Farseer Physics Engine makes it pretty easy to get up and running and start building games. In future posts we’ll get more in-depth with things you can do with the engine so this is just the beginning. Enjoy!

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• Multi-Resolution Mobile Development

  - by user2186302

  I'm about to start development on my first game for mobile phone (I already have a flash prototype completed so it's jsut a matter of "porting" it to mobile and fixing up the code) and plan on hopefully being able to get the game working on iphones and most android devices. I am using Haxe along with OpenFL and HaxeFlixel for development. My question is: What resolution should I design the game in initially and/or what is the best way to develop a game for multiple resolutions. I have found multiple different methods, the best, in my opinion, being strategy 3 on this page: http://wiki.starling-framework.org/manual/multi-resolution_development. However I have some questions about this. First, what would the best base resolution to use be, the guide suggests 240*320 which seems alright to me, although if I chose to use pixel graphics as I most probably will given I'm using HaxeFlixel, I'm not sure if they'll look too blocky on larger screens which I'm not even sure is a problem as it might still look alright. (Honestly, not sure about that and if anyone has any examples of games that use this method and look nice). Finally, please feel free to share whatever methods you use and think is best. For example, HaxeFlixel has a scaling feature that scales the game to fit the exact screen size, but I'm afraid that would lead to blurry and improperly scaled graphics since it would scale by non-integers. But, I'm not sure how noticeable a problem that may or may not be. Although from experience I'm pretty sure it won't look nice and currently I do not think I'm going to go for this option. So, I would really appreciate any help on this subject. Thank you in advance.

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• My Windows 8 App in Windows Store

  - by Stephen.Walther

  Finally, you have a good reason to upgrade to Windows 8! My Brain Eaters app was just accepted into the Windows Store. Just in time for Halloween! The Brain Eaters app is a sample app from my soon to be released book Windows 8 Apps with HTML5 and JavaScript. The game illustrates several important programming concepts which you need when building Windows 8 games with JavaScript such as using HTML5 Canvas and the new requestAnimationFrame() method. If you are looking for Halo or Call of Duty then you will be disappointed. If you are looking for PAC-MAN then you will be disappointed. I created the simplest arcade game that I could imagine so I could explain it in the book. All of the code for the game is included with the book. The goal of the game is to eat the food pellets while avoiding the zombies while running around a maze. Every time you get eaten by a zombie, you can hear my six year old son saying “Oh No!”. Here’s the link to the game: http://apps.microsoft.com/webpdp/app/brain-eaters/e283c8d0-1fed-4b26-a8bf-464584c9de6d

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, November 10, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, November 10, 2012Popular ReleasesImageGlass: Version 1.5: http://i1214.photobucket.com/albums/cc483/phapsuxeko/ImageGlass/1.png v1.5.4401.3015 Thumbnail bar: Increase loading speed Thumbnail image with ratio Support personal customization: mouse up, mouse down, mouse hover, selected item... Scroll to show all items Image viewer Zoom by scroll, or selected rectangle Speed up loading Zoom to cursor point New background design and customization and others... v1.5.4430.483 Thumbnail bar: Auto move scroll bar to selected image Show / Hi...Building Windows 8 Apps with C# and XAML: Full Source Chapters 1 - 10 for Windows 8 Fix 002: This is the full source from all chapters of the book, compiled and tested on Windows 8 RTM. Includes: A fix for the Netflix example from Chapter 6 that was missing a service reference A fix for the ImageHelper issue (images were not being saved) - this was due to the buffer being inadequate and required streaming the writeable bitmap to a buffer first before encoding and savingmyCollections: Version 2.3.2.0: New in this version : Added TheGamesDB.net API for Games and NDS Added Support for Windows Media Center Added Support for myMovies Added Support for XBMC Added Support for Dune HD Added Support for Mede8er Added Support for WD HDTV Added Fast search options Added order by Artist/Album for music You can now create covers and background for games You can now update your ID3 tag with the info of myCollections Fixed several provider Performance improvement New Splash ...Draw: Draw 1.0: Drawing PadPdfReport: PdfReport 1.4: - Added Html Footer Template. - Added a new HeaderTemplate (HtmlHeader) to simplify creating the headers of pages and groups by using HTML. See HtmlHeader/HtmlHeaderPdfReport.cs sample for more info. - Added a new sample (HtmlCellTemplate/HtmlCellTemplatePdfReport.cs) to show how to use the HtmlField template for creating the custom cell templates. - Added transparency setting to DiagonalWatermark. See ProgressReportPdfReport for more info. - Added DynamicCompile/DynamicCompilePdfReport.cs sa...Player Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows 8 (v1.0): IMPORTANT: List of breaking changes from preview 7 Ability to move control panel or individual elements outside media player. more info... New Entertainment app theme for out of the box support for Windows 8 Entertainment app guidelines. more info... VSIX reference names shortened. Allows seeing plugin name from "Add Reference" dialog without resizing. FreeWheel SmartXML now supports new "Standard" event callback type. Other minor misc fixes and improvements ADDITIONAL DOWNLOADSSmo...WebSearch.Net: WebSearch.Net 3.1: WebSearch.Net is an open-source research platform that provides uniform data source access, data modeling, feature calculation, data mining, etc. It facilitates the experiments of web search researchers due to its high flexibility and extensibility. The platform can be used or extended by any language compatible for .Net 2 framework, from C# (recommended), VB.Net to C++ and Java. Thanks to the large coverage of knowledge in web search research, it is necessary to model the techniques and main...Umbraco CMS: Umbraco 4.10.0: NugetNuGet BlogRead the release blog post for 4.10.0. Whats newMVC support New request pipeline Many, many bugfixes (see the issue tracker for a complete list) Read the documentation for the MVC bits. Breaking changesWe have done all we can not to break backwards compatibility, but we had to do some minor breaking changes: Removed graphicHeadlineFormat config setting from umbracoSettings.config (an old relic from the 3.x days) U4-690 DynamicNode ChildrenAsList was fixed, altering it'...MySQL Tuner for Windows: 0.3: Welcome to the third beta of MySQL Tuner for Windows! This release fixes bugs in the displaying of numbers, and a crash that occurred due to the program incorrectly closing and disposing of resources, Be warned that there will be bugs in this release, so please do not use on production or critical systems. Do post details of issues found to the issue tracker, and I will endeavour to fix them, when I can. I would love to have your feedback, and if possible your support! Requirements Microso...SharePoint Manager 2013: SharePoint Manager 2013 Release ver 1.0.12.1106: SharePoint Manager 2013 Release (ver: 1.0.12.1106) is now ready for SharePoint 2013. The new version has an expanded view of the SharePoint object model and has been tested on SharePoint 2013 RTM. As a bonus, the new version is also available for SharePoint 2010 as a separate download.D3D9Client: D3D9Client R7: New release for Orbiter 2010-P1 - Added horizon/sun angle for night-lights into the configuration file (default 10deg) - Some runway lights related bugs are fixed - Added more configuration options for runway lightsFiskalizacija za developere: FiskalizacijaDev 1.2: Verzija 1.2. je, prije svega, odgovor na novu verziju Tehnicke specifikacije (v1.1.) koja je objavljena prije nekoliko dana. Pored novosti vezanih uz (sitne) izmjene u spomenutoj novoj verziji Tehnicke dokumentacije, projekt smo prošili sa nekim dodatnim feature-ima od kojih je vecina proizašla iz vaših prijedloga - hvala :) Novosti u v1.2. su: - Neusuglašenost zahtjeva (http://fiskalizacija.codeplex.com/workitem/645) - Sample projekt - iznosi se množe sa 100 (http://fiskalizacija.codeplex.c...MFCMAPI: October 2012 Release: Build: 15.0.0.1036 Full release notes at SGriffin's blog. If you just want to run the MFCMAPI or MrMAPI, get the executables. If you want to debug them, get the symbol files and the source. The 64 bit builds will only work on a machine with Outlook 2010 64 bit installed. All other machines should use the 32 bit builds, regardless of the operating system. Facebook BadgeJayData - The cross-platform HTML5 data-management library for JavaScript: JayData 1.2.3: JayData is a unified data access library for JavaScript to CRUD + Query data from different sources like OData, MongoDB, WebSQL, SqLite, HTML5 localStorage, Facebook or YQL. The library can be integrated with Knockout.js or Sencha Touch 2 and can be used on Node.js as well. See it in action in this 6 minutes video Sencha Touch 2 example app using JayData: Netflix browser. What's new in JayData 1.2.3 For detailed release notes check the release notes. TypeScript supportWrite your code in a ...MCEBuddy 2.x: MCEBuddy 2.3.7: Changelog for 2.3.7 (32bit and 64bit) 1. Improved performance of MP4 Fast and M4V Fast Profiles (no deinterlacing, removed --decomb) 2. Improved priority handling 3. Added support for Pausing and Resume conversions 4. Added support for fallback to source directory if network destination directory is unavailable 5. MCEBuddy now installs ShowAnalyzer during installation 6. Added support for long description atom in iTunesFoxyXLS: FoxyXLS Releases: Source code and samplesWindow Manager: Window Manager 1.0: First releaseProDinner - ASP.NET MVC Sample (EF4.4, N-Tier, jQuery): 8: update to ASP.net MVC Awesome 3.0 udpate to EntityFramework 4.4 update to MVC 4 added dinners grid on homepageASP.net MVC Awesome - jQuery Ajax Helpers: 3.0: added Grid helper added XML Documentation added textbox helper added Client Side API for AjaxList removed .SearchButton from AjaxList AjaxForm and Confirm helpers have been merged into the Form helper optimized html output for AjaxDropdown, AjaxList, Autocomplete works on MVC 3 and 4BlogEngine.NET: BlogEngine.NET 2.7: Cheap ASP.NET Hosting - $4.95/Month - Click Here!! Click Here for More Info Cheap ASP.NET Hosting - $4.95/Month - Click Here! If you want to set up and start using BlogEngine.NET right away, you should download the Web project. If you want to extend or modify BlogEngine.NET, you should download the source code. If you are upgrading from a previous version of BlogEngine.NET, please take a look at the Upgrading to BlogEngine.NET 2.7 instructions. If you looking for Web Application Project, ...New ProjectsAuthor-it Variables Report Plug-in: The Variable Information Plug-in is an Author-it plug-in that displays information about all the variables in a library.bobthebuilder: Bob the builderCalendarSite: This webapplicaton is a calendar and appoinement manager app.ControlIP: This project helps users make the control task in a projectDaily Math Training: Daily Math Training app is Windows 8 app for children.Diablo III: This Project will contain several Diablo III related Implementations (a Windows 8 App another API Implementation, maybe some Calculators...)gelform: Ejercicio UTNJHashWin: Calcular hash MD5 SHA1 SHA256 SHA512 de arquivos MultiTask .NET 4.0 C# Marron TFS: Marron TFSMiddle Tennessee State University Robotics Team: Home of the MTSU Raider Robotics team.myexam: examN2F Router: The Zibings, N2Framework, url mapping/router project.NZBMatrix Advanced Feed Reader: This project is simple filter for NZBMatrix website feeds to update user with new movies which falls into the predefined customizable search templates.OpenTrading: Projeto em VB .net 3.5 que utiliza Active Record para mapeamento do banco de dados diretamente na classe das entidades e NHibernate para persistência dos dadosProjeto Parque - PI: Este projeto é resultado de um trabalho que realizamos todos os semestres na faculdade. 4º BSI - Centro Universitário Senac. QuesSys: this project is about examinationsample of inheritance: this project a sample of inheritance between classes at C#SharePoint 2013 Search Query Tool: Tool to test and debug the Search REST API in SharePoint 2013. Issue GET and POST search and suggestions queries. Use also against SharePoint Online. SharePoint Metro Grid: SharePoint 2010/2013 web part that displays links in Metro Tile Grid format. Just like Windows 8. Includes 215 images in 7 different sizes. Or use your own.SQL Server Partitioned Table Framework: The SQL Server Partitioned Table Framework (PTF) consists of a set of T-SQL Procedures that ease the maintenance work associated with partitioned tables.String -By GigaPlux Inc.: String OS is a operating system that was developed using C# and is based on the cosmos project .It has a beautiful File System by GRUNT.svu cms: first cms with chat and message between user vConsole for Windows 8: Just a very simple little app to help IT folks stuck in vSphere 5.0 with Win 8 console issues until you get to the next version of vSphereWikiprep#: The Wikiprep program is completely written in C# and based on .Net 4.0 . It processes Wikipedia dumps.Windows 8 Lock Screen: Windows 8 Lock Screen is a app that works like the Windows 8 Lock Screenwsccproject: updates will be made in due time during development

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• Live programming help

  - by frazras

  This idea has been floating around my head for a few years. I started some work on it but I just want to know if it is feasible, sensible, or if there is something else like it out there. Dont want to know I was wasting time on a solved issue. Whenever I have a programming issue, this is my sequence: Google it!: That usually brings up a lot of things: blogs, forums, stackoverflow, stackexchange, and even the official docs of the language/framework/cms. Ask on IRC: I format my question and try to get people on IRC to help me. Make a post: I create a post on forums/stackoverflow/stackexchange or shout on twitter with hashtags. Now a lot of the time I am in the middle of a project with a deadline. So I want answers NOW!!! Sometimes just 5-15 minutes worth of attention. Usually by the time I am failing at getting answers at #2, I am imagining how many people are ONLINE NOW with the skill and my exact answer but playing video games, watching youtube or idling online. However, if they were motivated, they would invest the 15 mintes helping me, that would make a world of a difference. I am even in positions where I would PAY for that 15 minutes of instant help. If your rate is as much as $100/hour (relatively good programmer) that is $25 that might save me 3 hours. This help would be live, text chat/skype/phone/screenshare. Should I continue developing this idea or is there a better alternative out there? Or is this even an unfeasible idea?

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• Is there an application that converts a PC into a video game kiosk/arcade machine?

  - by Rahil627

  Sorry to make the question so vague. What I ultimately want is software that allows people to play independent video games on a PC and not have to worry about maintaining it. Imagine a game that was made in a few hours that does not have a restart button and crashes often. It should be able to handle these kinds of things and do more! The software should: allow the game to be restarted manually handle game crashes (likely by restarting the game) restrict the user from doing anything crazy later... offer a UI to select the game from a list handle pre-configured key bindings cross-platform (start with windows) I just want to know if this exists already before I start creating one. As of now AutoHotKey is being used to do this sloppily. If such software does not exist then perhaps someone could recommend a general open source Kiosk software? Open Kiosk? I'll take anything. (I also could not find a related tag. Not even sure if this question should be here rather than stackoverflow)

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• Electronics 101 for kids: littleBits review

  - by Daniel Cazzulino

  I'm always on the lookout for cool toys that can empower my kids (9, 6 and 2yo) to be creative and break the mold of being just consumers of other's ideas. I recently came across littleBits while watching a TED video of their creator. I was immediately hooked. It seemed like the perfect blend of simplicity and self-learning that I was looking to get my kids into electronics. So I went ahead and purchased the kit from SparkFun and a bunch of standalone parts (&quot;bits&quot;) from the site itself. There are also a bunch of videos and pictures on their site to get a better idea of what they are, as well as multitude YouTube videos. This weekend I gave them to my kids, and coincidentally, we also travelled to my hometown and they got to share them too with their cousins. Man, what a blast it was! I decided to approach this &quot;toy&quot; just like one of the iPod/iPad games I buy for them: &quot;How it's used? I've no idea! I just heard it was great, you go figure it out!&quot;. And figure it out they did....Read full article

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama Top 10 for October 2012

  - by Bob Rhubart

  The Top 10 most popular items shared on the OTN ArchBeat Facebook Page for October 2012. OAM/OVD JVM Tuning | @FusionSecExpert Vinay from the Oracle Fusion Middleware Architecture Group (known as the A-Team) shares a process for analyzing and improving performance in Oracle Virtual Directory and Oracle Access Manager. SOA Galore: New Books for Technical Eyes Only Shake up up your technical skills with this trio of new technical books from community members covering SOA and BPM. Clustering ODI11g for High-Availability Part 1: Introduction and Architecture | Richard Yeardley "JEE agents can be deployed alongside, or instead of, standalone agents," says Rittman Meade's Richard Yeardley. "But there is one key advantage in using JEE agents and WebLogic – when you deploy JEE agents as part of a WebLogic cluster they can be configured together to form a high availability cluster." Learn more in Yeardley's extensive post. Solving Big Problems in Our 21st Century Information Society | Irving Wladawsky-Berger "I believe that the kind of extensive collaboration between the private sector, academia and government represented by the Internet revolution will be the way we will generally tackle big problems in the 21st century. Just as with the Internet, governments have a major role to play as the catalyst for many of the big projects that the private sector will then take forward and exploit. The need for high bandwidth, robust national broadband infrastructures is but one such example." -- Irving Wladawsky-Berger Eventually, 90% of tech budgets will be outside IT departments | ZDNet Another interesting post from ZDNet blogger Joe McKendrick about changing roles in IT. ADF Mobile - Login Functionality | Andrejus Baranovskis "The new ADF Mobile approach with native deployment is cool when you want to access phone functionality (camera, email, sms and etc.), also when you want to build mobile applications with advanced UI," reports Oracle ACE Director Andrejus Baranovskis. Podcast: Are You Future Proof? - Part 2 In Part 2, practicing architects and Oracle ACE Directors Ron Batra (AT&T), Basheer Khan (Innowave Technology), and Ronald van Luttikhuizen (Vennster) discuss re-tooling one’s skill set to reflect changes in enterprise IT, including the knowledge to steer stakeholders around the hype to what's truly valuable. ADF Mobile Custom Javascript — iFrame Injection | John Brunswick The ADF Mobile Framework provides a range of out of the box components to add within your AMX pages, according to John Brunswick. But what happens when "an out of the box component does not directly fulfill your development need? What options are available to extend your application interface?" John has an answer. Oracle Solaris 11.1 update focuses on database integration, cloud | Mark Fontecchio TechTarget editor Mark Fontecchio reports on the recent Oracle Solaris 11.1 release, with comments from IDC's Al Gillen. Architects Matter: Making sense of the people who make sense of enterprise IT Why do architects matter? Oracle Enterprise Architect Eric Stephens suggests that you ask yourself this question the next time you take the elevator to the Oracle offices on the 45th floor of the Willis Tower in Chicago, Illinois (or any other skyscraper, for that matter). If you had to take the stairs to get to those offices, who would you blame? "You get the picture," he says. "Architecture is essential for any necessarily complex structure, be it a building or an enterprise." (Read the article) Thought for the Day "I will contend that conceptual integrity is the most important consideration in system design. It is better to have a system omit certain anomalous features and improvements, but to reflect one set of design ideas, than to have one that contains many good but independent and uncoordinated ideas." — Frederick P. Brooks Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

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• Loadbalancing Questions

  - by Van Holtz

  I have been learning networking for about 4 months. Wrote a single standalone Multiplayer server and succeeded with authoritative approach. Now I want to extend it by splitting the single server into clusters to allow even more players to log in to avoid latency issues. Now I have protyped the Loadbalancing server and its running pretty good so far. This is my architecture, I have a master server which acts as a proxy, every sub servers(chat, login, game) connect to the master server as well as all the clients. when a client connects, Client Request: Send Request - MS(Master) - Decides which SS(SubServer) to forward to - Forwards Request to SS - SS - Analyze Message - Send Response to MS - Decides which Client to forward to - Forwards Response to Client Well, it looks like its going through lots of stages. it takes double the time to process the message than a single server approach. i feel like my model isnt the best or i may be wrong. is there any better model or the one they use in professional games? I still want a Master-SubServer approach. I just want to clarify that I'm going in the right direction before writing all my codes. Thanks for any answer :)

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• Unity3d web player fails to load textures

  - by José Franco

  I'm having a problem with Unity3d Web Player. I have developed a project and succesfully deployed it in a web app. It works with absolutely no problem on my PC. This app is to be installed on two identical machines. I have installed them in both and it only works properly in one. The issue I have is on a computer it fails to properly load the models and textures, so the game runs but instead of the models I can only see black rectangles on a blue background. It has the same problem with all browsers and I get no errors either by the player or by JavaScript. The only difference between these computers is that one that has the problem is running on Windows 8.1 and the other one on Windows 8 only. Could this be the cause of the issue? It works fine on my computer with Windows 8.1. However both of the other computers have specs that are significantly lower than mine. I have already searched everywhere and it seems that it has to do with the individual games, however I think it may have to do with the computer itself because it runs properly in the other two. The specs on the computes I'm installing the app on are as follows: Intel Celeron 1.40 GHz, 2GB RAM, Intel HD Graphics If anybody could point me in the right direction I would be very grateful I forgot to mention, I'm running Unity Web player 4.3.5 and the version on the other two computers is 4.5.0

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• Android: how do I switch between game scenes in a game? Any tutorials?

  - by Flavio

  I am trying to create a simple game using the Android SDK without using AndEngine (or any other game engine). I have plenty of experience designing games from the past, but I'm having lots of trouble trying to use the Android SDK to make my game. By far my biggest hurdle right now is switching between views. That is, for example, going from the menu to the first level, etc. I am using a traditional model I learned (I think it's called a scene stack or something?) in which you push the current scene onto a stack and the game's main loop runs the top item of the stack. This model seems non-trivial to implement in the Android SDK, mostly because Android seems to be picky about which thread instantiates which view. My issue is that I want the first level to show up when you press a button on the main menu, but when I instantiate the first level (the level class extends SurfaceView and implements SurfaceHolder.Callback) I get a runtime error complaining that the thread that runs the main menu can't instantiate this class. Something about calling Looper.prepare(). I figured at this point I was probably doing things wrong. I'm not sure how to specifically phrase my issue into a question, so maybe I should leave it as either 1) Does anybody know a good way (or the 'proper' way) to switch between scenes in an Android game? or 2) Are there any tutorials out there which show how to create a game that doesn't take place entirely in one scene? (I have googled for a while to no avail... maybe someone else knows of one?) Thanks!

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• Windows 7 Phone Developer Tools CTP download

  - by mbcrump

  For those that don’t know, you can download the W7 Phone developer tools now. It is available here. I have installed it and wanted to share my experience so far. You can read the pre-release documentation here. First, here is what it comes with the install: The Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP includes the following: Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone CTP Windows Phone Emulator CTP Silverlight for Windows Phone CTP XNA 4.0 Game Studio CTP First impressions: No ISO image install (Bad for me because I use multiple machine and have to install from a bootstrapper. Its around 228mb download. I already have the VS2010 RC, but it still makes me install the VS2010 Express Edition. Windows Phone Emulator will only work with VS2010. No support for 05/08. Need at least a DX10 graphics compatible card. Final Word: (you are probably going to need this info) To start a new project, go to Installed Templates and select Silverlight for Windows Phone and Windows Phone Application. Use Silverlight for WPF style applications or XNA for W7 Games.

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• Generated 3d tree meshes

  - by Jari Komppa

  I did not find a question on these lines yet, correct me if I'm wrong. Trees (and fauna in general) are common in games. Due to their nature, they are a good candidate for procedural generation. There's SpeedTree, of course, if you can afford it; as far as I can tell, it doesn't provide the possibility of generating your tree meshes at runtime. Then there's SnappyTree, an online webgl based tree generator based on the proctree.js which is some ~500 lines of javascript. One could use either of above (or some other tree generator I haven't stumbled upon) to create a few dozen tree meshes beforehand - or model them from scratch in a 3d modeller - and then randomly mirror/scale them for a few more variants.. But I'd rather have a free, linkable tree mesh generator. Possible solutions: Port proctree.js to c++ and deal with the open source license (doesn't seem to be gpl, so could be doable; the author may also be willing to co-operate to make the license even more free). Roll my own based on L-systems. Don't bother, just use offline generated trees. Use some other method I haven't found yet.

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• Why don't C++ Game Developers use the boost library?

  - by James

  So if you spend any time viewing / answering questions over on Stack Overflow under the C++ tag, you will quickly notice that just about everybody uses the boost library; some would even say that if you aren't using it, you're not writing "real' C++ (I disagree, but that's not the point). But then there is the game industry, which is well known for using C++ and not using boost. I can't help but wonder why that is. I don't care to use boost because I write games (now) as a hobby, and part of that hobby is implementing what I need when I am able to and using off-the-shelf libraries when I can't. But that is just me. Why don't game developers, in general, use the boost library? Is it performance or memory concerns? Style? Something Else? I was about to ask this on stack overflow, but I figured the question is better asked here. EDIT : I realize I can't speak for all game programmers and I haven't seen all game projects, so I can't say game developers never use boost; this is simply my experience. Allow me to edit my question to also ask, if you do use boost, why did you choose to use it?

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• Video game "Gish" will only launch from command line

  - by aberration

  Platform: Lubuntu 11.10 x64 Program: Gish When I try to launch Gish from the command line (/opt/gish/gi.sh), there are no problems. But when I try to launch it from the LXDE menu, it will not start. Contents of /usr/share/applications/gish.desktop: [Desktop Entry] Categories=Game;ActionGame;AdventureGame;ArcadeGame; Exec=/opt/gish/gi.sh Path=/opt/gish Icon=x-gish Terminal=false Type=Application Name=Gish I tried changing Terminal=false to Terminal=true to debug it, but then I just got a blank terminal, and the game didn't start. Edit: Here is some additional information, as requested by Eliah Kagan below: I tried editing /usr/share/applications/gish.desktop, as recommended, but it had no effect However, ~/.xsession-errors contained the following error: [: 8: x86_64: unexpected operator ./gish_32: error while loading shared libraries: libGL.so.1: wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS64 I think there's a problem with the /opt/gish/gi.sh shell script. This is its contents: cd /opt/gish/ MACHINE_TYPE=`uname -m` if [ ${MACHINE_TYPE} == 'x86_64' ]; then ./gish_64 else ./gish_32 fi I'm not too familiar with Bash, so hopefully someone else can point out the error. I have a 64-bit machine. I think that when the script is run from the command line, it's properly launching the 64-bit version (/opt/gish/gish_64), but when it's run from the LXDE menu, it's launching the 32-bit version (/opt/gish/gish_32), which is causing the libGL.so.1 error. However, this may be related to my libGL.so.1 problems with 2 other games.

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• About online game servers and how to handle data

  - by TreantBG

  So my question isn't about what technology to use or how to do this or that, but a more general question. I'm currently developing a action third person shooter. With elements of RPG - weapon,armor upgrades and items. Players will be able to create new games or join old ones. So my question is how to create the game server that players will play in. I have two ideas on my mind. The player who made the game is the server. All data passes trough him and he send this data to the server updating the database of the players with their XP points kills/deaths score and other. Or my host machine is the server, the player who made the game just will open new instance on my host and will be like client. And all players send their input data to the host, the host updates the game and send response back to client for any new changes like where is the enemy and other. And if i choose option 1 is there a chance the host to change the game content and manipulate the game results? (I think there is but i'm not sure) And if i choose option 2 isn't that raising the response time and potentially the game lag? or maybe there is another option?

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• Is this technique for stat tracking without a database workable?

  - by baptzmoffire

  If I wanted to create a chess game, for iOS, that tracked both player moves (for retracing the progression of a game and for player stats), what would be the simplest route to take? To clarify, I want to track not only the moves a player has made in a particular game, but how often that player has made that move in past games. For example I want to be able to track: How many times a given player has opened by moving the king pawn up two squares (e4) as white, on move number one. What is the percentage of time the player responds to white's e4 opening move, with moving his own king pawn to e5? What percentage of time does he respond by moving his queenside bishop pawn to c5? And so on. If it's not clear, the stat tracking system should also be able to report how many times this player, as black, move his queen to h1, on move number 30. I'm using Parse.com for my back-end as a server (BaaS) service. If I were to create a class that writes strings that identify move number, player color, moved piece, algebraic notation of the square (e.g. "d8") to a file, locally in the file system saves the file to Parse, and deletes the temporary file from file system upon opening the same game in my tableview (a la a "With Friends" game), download this file from Parse, parse through it and retrieve all stats/history, assign all relevant values to variables Is this plan viable, or is there an easier way?

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• A Brief Soul Session with Joss Stone

  - by Oracle OpenWorld Blog Team

   By Karen Shamban The Oracle OpenWorld Music Festival is thrilled to have Joss Stone as one of its featured artists.  Stone took a few moments from her busy tour and travel schedule to answer a few questions for this blog, so read on:  Q. What do you like best about performing in front of a live audience?A. I love to bring the music to the people! It's all fun and games in the studio, and I love it, but the time comes when the world needs to hear it and it's nice to see their faces when they are hearing new songs. Q. Do you prefer smaller, intimate venues or larger, louder ones?  Why?A. I like the smaller ones sometimes, but it really depends on who is in the audience. I prefer it regardless of size when the audience is with you from the start and they dance and let the music take them over - as it does me when I'm on stage. Q. What about your fans surprises you?A. Not a lot really, they have always been very very sweet and polite and giving and loving. It doesn't surprise me because that's what the effect of music is. For the most part they are beautiful people. Little-known fact: Not only is Stone an award-winning musician, she acted in an award-winning television series, Showtime's The Tudors.  Stone played Anne of Cleves, Henry VIII's fourth wife.  Not only did she keep her cool - she kept her head. More about the Oracle OpenWorld Music Festival. More about Joss Stone.

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• When mapping the surface of a sphere with tiles, how might you deal with polar distortion?

  - by clweeks

  It's easy to deal with the way locations interact on a clean Cartesian grid. It's just vanilla math. And you can kind of ignore the geometry of the sphere's surface for a bunch of it if you want to just truncate the poles or something. But I keep coming up with ideas for games where the polar space matters. Geo-coded ARGs and global roguelikes and stuff. I want square(ish?) locations -- reasonably representable by square tiles of the same size across the globe, anyway. This has to be a solved problem, right? What are the solutions? ETA: At the equator -- and assuming that your square locations are reasonably small, it's close enough to true that you can get away with having one square in the rows north and south of the most equatorial row. And you could probably get away with that by just hand-waving the difference up to like 45-degrees or so. But eventually, you need to have fewer squares in a pole-ward circumferential row. If I reduce the length of the row by one and offset the squares by 1/2 then they're just like hexes and it's relatively easy to do the coding to keep track of the connections. But as you get pole-ward, it gets more and more extreme. Projecting the surface of the world onto the surface of a cube is tempting. But I figured there must be more elegant solutions already in use. If I did the cube thing (not dissecting it further through geodesy) Are there any pros and cons related to placing the pole at the center of a face or at the vertex of three sides?

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• MatheMagics - Guess My Age - Method 2

  - by PointsToShare

  © 2011 By: Dov Trietsch. All rights reserved MatheMagic – Guess My Age – Method 2 The Mathemagician stands on the stage and asks an adult to do the following: ·         Do the next few steps on your calculator, or the calculator in your phone, or even on a piece of paper. ·         Do it silently! Don’t tell me the results until I ask for them directly ·         Multiply your age by 2. ·         Add 7 to the result ·         Multiply the result by 5. ·         Tell me the result. I will nonetheless immediately tell you what your age is. How do I do this? Let’s do the algebra. Let A denote your age (2A + 7) 5 = 10A + 35 so it is of the 3 digit form XY5 Now make two numbers out of the result - The last digit and the number before it. The Last digit is obviously 5, the other 2 (or 3 for a centenarian) and this number is the age + 3. Example: I am 76 years old and here is what happens when I do the steps 76 x 2 = 152 152 + 7 = 159 159 x 5 = 795 This is made of 79 and 5. And … 79 – 3 = 76 A note to the socially aware mathemagician – it is safer to do it with a man. The chances of a veracious answer are much, much higher! The trick may be accomplished on any 2 or 3 digit number, not just one’s age, but if you want to know your date’s age, it’s a good way to elicit it. That’s All Folks PS for more Ageless “Age” mathemagics go to www.mgsltns.com/games.htm and also here: http://geekswithblogs.net/PointsToShare/archive/2011/11/15/mathemagics---guess-my-age-method-1.aspx

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• Building a linux system

  - by webyankee

  I am worried about hardware compatibility. I have several older PCs with various hardware and wish to install Linux onto them. I have several ideas about what I would like to do. first, I am a novice and know just enough to get me into trouble in a lot of areas. I can not find adequate descriptions of the usage between a desktop and a server version of Linux. When would you want to choose to build a server instead of a desktop and can you change a desktop to a server if you need higher functionality? I wonder if I should use 32 or 64 bit? I believe 32 bit on older (P1 or P2 systems) would be the safe way to go. what is the extent can these systems be used? Can they used to play high end graphics on-line games or just simple browsing and word processing? How do I determine what programs the system can use? I have pondered on the idea of linking several systems together to make one big computer. I know this can be done with some functionality improvement. Any Ideas about this?

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• Best peer-to-peer game architecture

  - by Dejw

  Consider a setup where game clients: have quite small computing resources (mobile devices, smartphones) are all connected to a common router (LAN, hotspot etc) The users want to play a multiplayer game, without an external server. One solution is to host an authoritative server on one phone, which in this case would be also a client. Considering point 1 this solution is not acceptable, since the phone's computing resources are not sufficient. So, I want to design a peer-to-peer architecture that will distribute the game's simulation load among the clients. Because of point 2 the system needn't be complex with regards to optimization; the latency will be very low. Each client can be an authoritative source of data about himself and his immediate environment (for example bullets.) What would be the best approach to designing such an architecture? Are there any known examples of such a LAN-level peer-to-peer protocol? Notes: Some of the problems are addressed here, but the concepts listed there are too high-level for me. Security I know that not having one authoritative server is a security issue, but it is not relevant in this case as I'm willing to trust the clients. Edit: I forgot to mention: it will be a rather fast-paced game (a shooter). Also, I have already read about networking architectures at Gaffer on Games.

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