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  • It is worth planning before jumping in the code?

    - by Rushino
    I always thought that planning is important for a game. But i don't know at which point. Some are telling me to code instead of planning but i feel like its still important because when you will be in the code you will know what to do next more easily. I am currently working on a game that will have lots of content so i decided to start a design document introducing thoses content and at a side-level i am doing proofs of concept to check if it can be done. Parts of each proofs of concept then could be used later in the real game. EDIT: I am working alone on this project. So my question is : It is worth planning before jumping in the code ? Im still interested to know what others have to say about this. Cause i still get some poeple saying i should code instead of thinking.. so what your opinion on this ?

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  • Using Copyrighted Images

    - by TMP
    I was thinking about developing a sidescrolling platformer very similar to an old Mario and Luigi game for NES. To start out I was thinking about taking the images from a site like this: http://www.mariouniverse.com/sprites/nes/smb3 Which clearly states a copyright. I was wondering how far I am allowed to take these images. I figure I'm probably allowed to use it for personal development, but what if I publish the game as an exe file and send it to some friends? I figured a definite no-no would be selling the game with the copyrighted images included. A secondary question would be whether or not I would be allowed to modify them slightly and then call them my own.

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  • Where to find current information on quality of released games as software products?

    - by Tom
    As a gamer, one thing I have learned I need to be savvy about is knowing whether SomeBigGame is actually unstable or otherwise problematic as a piece of software (riddled with invasive DRM products, only runs well on a particular video driver version, crashes on non-English-language systems, etc.). I know that game news media can sometimes be relied upon to report on some problems, but I doubt they bother to cover smaller or indie titles. An example: I've started playing Transformice on Kongregate, and I'm considering installing the downloadable client (it is an online multiplayer game). The part of me that cares about data privacy and maintaining a clean-and-healthy PC wants to know whether there is a place I can check to find out more about a title-as-software than "it is not a literal virus." Put another way: where would you not want to see your game receive lots of attention?

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  • How do I duplicate a Box2d simulation, mid-simulation?

    - by Whyte
    I want to serialize the state mid-game, send it over the network to an identical computer (same CPU, same OS, same binary), load it there, and have the two games run in tandem doing the exact same simulation, without one of them drifting off and going haywire. In short: I want pop-in, pop-out networking support on my HIGHLY physics-intensive game, where sending object coordinates every few seconds is impossible, due to having thousands of objects, and many clients. I tried this with Box2D, and saving an object's location/velocity/etc wasn't enough... there's internal state that's not accessible through any public methods. My current workaround is to force EVERY client to save its entire worldstate and reload it from scratch, whenever a new player connects... but this is obviously bad practice, because it hangs the game for everyone whenever someone new connects. However, it works, with zero desynchronization. So, anyone know of any other techniques that can help me? Or should I just kiss my project goodbye?

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  • XML\Jquery create listings based on user selection

    - by Sirius Mane
    Alright, so what I need to try and accomplish is having a static web page that will display information pulled from an XML document and render it to the screen without refreshing. Basic AJAX stuff I guess. The trick is, as I'm trying to think this through I keep coming into 'logical' barriers mentally. Objectives: -Have a chart which displays baseball team names, wins, losses, ties. In my XML doc there is a 'pending' status, so games not completed should not be displayed.(Need help here) -Have a selection list which allows you to select a team which is populated from XML doc. (done) -Upon selecting a particular team from the aforementioned selection list the page should display in a separate area all of the planned games for that team. Including pending. Basically all of the games associated with that team and the dates (which is included in the XML file). (Need help here) What I have so far: HTML\JS <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <link rel="stylesheet" href="batty.css" type="text/css" /> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" /> <title>Little Batty League</title> <script type="text/javascript" src="library.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="jquery.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> var IE = window.ActiveXObject ? true: false; var MOZ = document.implementation.createDocument ? true: false; $(document).ready(function(){ $.ajax({ type: "GET", url: "schedule.xml", dataType: "xml", success: function(xml) { var select = $('#mySelect'); $(xml).find('Teams').each(function(){ var title = $(this).find('Team').text(); select.append("<option/><option class='ddheader'>"+title+"</option>"); }); select.children(":first").text("please make a selection").attr("selected",true); } }); }); </script> </script> </head> <body onLoad="init()"> <!-- container start --> <div id="container"> <!-- banner start --> <div id="banner"> <img src="images/mascot.jpg" width="324" height="112" alt="Mascot" /> <!-- buttons start --> <table width="900" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tr> <td><div class="menuButton"><a href="index.html">Home</a></div></td> <td><div class="menuButton"><a href="schedule.html">Schedule</a></div></td> <td><div class="menuButton"><a href="contact.html">Contact</a></div></td> <td><div class="menuButton"><a href="about.html">About</a></div></td> </tr> </table> <!-- buttons end --> </div> <!-- banner end --> <!-- content start --> <div id="content"> <br /> <form> <select id="mySelect"> <option>please make a selection</option> </select> </form> </div> <!-- content end --> <!-- footer start --> <div id="footer"> &copy; 2012 Batty League </div> <!-- footer end --> </div> <!-- container end --> </body> </html> And the XML is: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <Schedule season="1"> <Teams> <Team>Bluejays</Team> </Teams> <Teams> <Team>Chickens</Team> </Teams> <Teams> <Team>Lions</Team> </Teams> <Teams> <Team>Pixies</Team> </Teams> <Teams> <Team>Zombies</Team> </Teams> <Teams> <Team>Wombats</Team> </Teams> <Game status="Played"> <Home_Team>Chickens</Home_Team> <Away_Team>Bluejays</Away_Team> <Date>2012-01-10T09:00:00</Date> </Game> <Game status="Pending"> <Home_Team>Bluejays </Home_Team> <Away_Team>Chickens</Away_Team> <Date>2012-01-11T09:00:00</Date> </Game> <Game status="Played"> <Home_Team>Bluejays</Home_Team> <Away_Team>Lions</Away_Team> <Date>2012-01-18T09:00:00</Date> </Game> <Game status="Played"> <Home_Team>Lions</Home_Team> <Away_Team>Bluejays</Away_Team> <Date>2012-01-19T09:00:00</Date> </Game> <Game status="Played"> <Home_Team>Bluejays</Home_Team> <Away_Team>Pixies</Away_Team> <Date>2012-01-21T09:00:00</Date> </Game> <Game status="Played"> <Home_Team>Pixies</Home_Team> <Away_Team>Bluejays</Away_Team> <Date>2012-01-23T09:00:00</Date> </Game> <Game status="Played"> <Home_Team>Bluejays</Home_Team> <Away_Team>Zombies</Away_Team> <Date>2012-01-25T09:00:00</Date> </Game> <Game status="Pending"> <Home_Team>Zombies</Home_Team> <Away_Team>Bluejays</Away_Team> <Date>2012-01-27T09:00:00</Date> </Game> <Game status="Pending"> <Home_Team>Bluejays</Home_Team> <Away_Team>Wombats</Away_Team> <Date>2012-01-28T09:00:00</Date> </Game> <Game status="Played"> <Home_Team>Wombats</Home_Team> <Away_Team>Bluejays</Away_Team> <Date>2012-01-30T09:00:00</Date> </Game> <Game status="Played"> <Home_Team>Chickens</Home_Team> <Away_Team>Lions</Away_Team> <Date>2012-01-31T09:00:00</Date> </Game> <Game status="Played"> <Home_Team>Lions</Home_Team> <Away_Team>Chickens</Away_Team> <Date>2012-02-04T09:00:00</Date> </Game> <Game status="Played"> <Home_Team>Chickens</Home_Team> <Away_Team>Pixies</Away_Team> <Date>2012-02-05T09:00:00</Date> </Game> <Game status="Played"> <Home_Team>Pixies</Home_Team> <Away_Team>Chickens</Away_Team> <Date>2012-02-07T09:00:00</Date> </Game> <Game status="Played"> <Home_Team>Chickens</Home_Team> <Away_Team>Zombies</Away_Team> <Date>2012-02-08T09:00:00</Date> </Game> <Game status="Played"> <Home_Team>Zombies</Home_Team> <Away_Team>Chickens</Away_Team> <Date>2012-02-10T09:00:00</Date> </Game> <Game status="Played"> <Home_Team>Lions</Home_Team> <Away_Team>Pixies</Away_Team> <Date>2012-02-12T09:00:00</Date> </Game> <Game status="Played"> <Home_Team>Pixies </Home_Team> <Away_Team>Lions</Away_Team> <Date>2012-02-14T09:00:00</Date> </Game> <Game status="Played"> <Home_Team>Lions</Home_Team> <Away_Team>Zombies</Away_Team> <Date>2012-02-15T09:00:00</Date> </Game> <Game status="Played"> <Home_Team>Zombies</Home_Team> <Away_Team>Lions</Away_Team> <Date>2012-02-16T09:00:00</Date> </Game> <Game status="Played"> <Home_Team>Lions</Home_Team> <Away_Team>Wombats</Away_Team> <Date>2012-01-23T09:00:00</Date> </Game> <Game status="Played"> <Home_Team>Wombats</Home_Team> <Away_Team>Lions</Away_Team> <Date>2012-02-24T09:00:00</Date> </Game> <Game status="Pending"> <Home_Team>Pixies</Home_Team> <Away_Team>Zombies</Away_Team> <Date>2012-02-25T09:00:00</Date> </Game> <Game status="Pending"> <Home_Team>Zombies</Home_Team> <Away_Team>Pixies</Away_Team> <Date>2012-02-26T09:00:00</Date> </Game> <Game status="Played"> <Home_Team>Pixies</Home_Team> <Away_Team>Wombats</Away_Team> <Date>2012-02-27T09:00:00</Date> </Game> <Game status="Played"> <Home_Team>Wombats</Home_Team> <Away_Team>Pixies</Away_Team> <Date>2012-02-28T09:00:00</Date> </Game> <Game status="Played"> <Home_Team>Zombies</Home_Team> <Away_Team>Wombats</Away_Team> <Date>2012-02-04T09:00:00</Date> </Game> <Game status="Played"> <Home_Team>Wombats</Home_Team> <Away_Team>Zombies</Away_Team> <Date>2012-02-05T09:00:00</Date> </Game> <Game status="Played"> <Home_Team>Wombats</Home_Team> <Away_Team>Chickens</Away_Team> <Date>2012-02-07T09:00:00</Date> </Game> <Game status="Played"> <Home_Team>Chickens</Home_Team> <Away_Team>Wombats</Away_Team> <Date>2012-02-08T09:00:00</Date> </Game> </Schedule> If anybody can point me to Jquery code\modules that would greatly help me with this I'd be appreciate. Any help right now would be great, I'm just banging my head against a wall. I'm trying to avoid using XSLT transforms because I absolutely despise XML and I'm not good with it. So I'd -like- to just use Javascript\PHP\etc with only a sprinkling of the necessary XML where possible..

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  • xml file save/read error (making a highscore system for XNA game)

    - by Eddy
    i get an error after i write player name to the file for second or third time (An unhandled exception of type 'System.InvalidOperationException' occurred in System.Xml.dll Additional information: There is an error in XML document (18, 17).) (in highscores load method In data = (HighScoreData)serializer.Deserialize(stream); it stops) the problem is that some how it adds additional "" at the end of my .dat file could anyone tell me how to fix this? the file before save looks: <?xml version="1.0"?> <HighScoreData xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"> <PlayerName> <string>neil</string> <string>shawn</string> <string>mark</string> <string>cindy</string> <string>sam</string> </PlayerName> <Score> <int>200</int> <int>180</int> <int>150</int> <int>100</int> <int>50</int> </Score> <Count>5</Count> </HighScoreData> the file after save looks: <?xml version="1.0"?> <HighScoreData xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"> <PlayerName> <string>Nick</string> <string>Nick</string> <string>neil</string> <string>shawn</string> <string>mark</string> </PlayerName> <Score> <int>210</int> <int>210</int> <int>200</int> <int>180</int> <int>150</int> </Score> <Count>5</Count> </HighScoreData>> the part of my code that does all of save load to xml is: DECLARATIONS PART [Serializable] public struct HighScoreData { public string[] PlayerName; public int[] Score; public int Count; public HighScoreData(int count) { PlayerName = new string[count]; Score = new int[count]; Count = count; } } IAsyncResult result = null; bool inputName; HighScoreData data; int Score = 0; public string NAME; public string HighScoresFilename = "highscores.dat"; Game1 constructor public Game1() { graphics = new GraphicsDeviceManager(this); Content.RootDirectory = "Content"; Width = graphics.PreferredBackBufferWidth = 960; Height = graphics.PreferredBackBufferHeight =640; GamerServicesComponent GSC = new GamerServicesComponent(this); Components.Add(GSC); } Inicialize function (end of it) protected override void Initialize() { //other game code base.Initialize(); string fullpath =Path.Combine(HighScoresFilename); if (!File.Exists(fullpath)) { //If the file doesn't exist, make a fake one... // Create the data to save data = new HighScoreData(5); data.PlayerName[0] = "neil"; data.Score[0] = 200; data.PlayerName[1] = "shawn"; data.Score[1] = 180; data.PlayerName[2] = "mark"; data.Score[2] = 150; data.PlayerName[3] = "cindy"; data.Score[3] = 100; data.PlayerName[4] = "sam"; data.Score[4] = 50; SaveHighScores(data, HighScoresFilename); } } all methods for loading saving and output public static void SaveHighScores(HighScoreData data, string filename) { // Get the path of the save game string fullpath = Path.Combine("highscores.dat"); // Open the file, creating it if necessary FileStream stream = File.Open(fullpath, FileMode.OpenOrCreate); try { // Convert the object to XML data and put it in the stream XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(HighScoreData)); serializer.Serialize(stream, data); } finally { // Close the file stream.Close(); } } /* Load highscores */ public static HighScoreData LoadHighScores(string filename) { HighScoreData data; // Get the path of the save game string fullpath = Path.Combine("highscores.dat"); // Open the file FileStream stream = File.Open(fullpath, FileMode.OpenOrCreate, FileAccess.Read); try { // Read the data from the file XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(HighScoreData)); data = (HighScoreData)serializer.Deserialize(stream);//this is the line // where program gives an error } finally { // Close the file stream.Close(); } return (data); } /* Save player highscore when game ends */ private void SaveHighScore() { // Create the data to saved HighScoreData data = LoadHighScores(HighScoresFilename); int scoreIndex = -1; for (int i = 0; i < data.Count ; i++) { if (Score > data.Score[i]) { scoreIndex = i; break; } } if (scoreIndex > -1) { //New high score found ... do swaps for (int i = data.Count - 1; i > scoreIndex; i--) { data.PlayerName[i] = data.PlayerName[i - 1]; data.Score[i] = data.Score[i - 1]; } data.PlayerName[scoreIndex] = NAME; //Retrieve User Name Here data.Score[scoreIndex] = Score; // Retrieve score here SaveHighScores(data, HighScoresFilename); } } /* Iterate through data if highscore is called and make the string to be saved*/ public string makeHighScoreString() { // Create the data to save HighScoreData data2 = LoadHighScores(HighScoresFilename); // Create scoreBoardString string scoreBoardString = "Highscores:\n\n"; for (int i = 0; i<5;i++) { scoreBoardString = scoreBoardString + data2.PlayerName[i] + "-" + data2.Score[i] + "\n"; } return scoreBoardString; } when ill make this work i will start this code when i call game over (now i start it when i press some buttons, so i could test it faster) public void InputYourName() { if (result == null && !Guide.IsVisible) { string title = "Name"; string description = "Write your name in order to save your Score"; string defaultText = "Nick"; PlayerIndex playerIndex = new PlayerIndex(); result= Guide.BeginShowKeyboardInput(playerIndex, title, description, defaultText, null, null); // NAME = result.ToString(); } if (result != null && result.IsCompleted) { NAME = Guide.EndShowKeyboardInput(result); result = null; inputName = false; SaveHighScore(); } } this where i call output to the screen (ill call this in highscores meniu section when i am done with debugging) spriteBatch.DrawString(Font1, "" + makeHighScoreString(),new Vector2(500,200), Color.White); }

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  • SDL side-scroller scrolls inconsistantly

    - by SDLFunTimes
    So I'm working on an upgrade from my previous project (that I posted here for code review) this time implementing a repeating background (like what is used on cartoons) so that SDL doesn't have to load really big images for a level. There's a strange inconsistency in the program, however: the first time the user scrolls all the way to the right 2 less panels are shown than is specified. Going backwards (left) the correct number of panels is shown (that is the panels repeat the number of times specified in the code). After that it appears that going right again (once all the way at the left) the correct number of panels is shown and same going backwards. Here's some selected code and here's a .zip of all my code constructor: Game::Game(SDL_Event* event, SDL_Surface* scr, int level_w, int w, int h, int bpp) { this->event = event; this->bpp = bpp; level_width = level_w; screen = scr; w_width = w; w_height = h; //load images and set rects background = format_surface("background.jpg"); person = format_surface("person.png"); background_rect_left = background->clip_rect; background_rect_right = background->clip_rect; current_background_piece = 1; //we are displaying the first clip rect_in_view = &background_rect_right; other_rect = &background_rect_left; person_rect = person->clip_rect; background_rect_left.x = 0; background_rect_left.y = 0; background_rect_right.x = background->w; background_rect_right.y = 0; person_rect.y = background_rect_left.h - person_rect.h; person_rect.x = 0; } and here's the move method which is probably causing all the trouble: void Game::move(SDLKey direction) { if(direction == SDLK_RIGHT) { if(move_screen(direction)) { if(!background_reached_right()) { //move background right background_rect_left.x += movement_increment; background_rect_right.x += movement_increment; if(rect_in_view->x >= 0) { //move the other rect in to fill the empty space SDL_Rect* temp; other_rect->x = -w_width + rect_in_view->x; temp = rect_in_view; rect_in_view = other_rect; other_rect = temp; current_background_piece++; std::cout << current_background_piece << std::endl; } if(background_overshoots_right()) { //sees if this next blit is past the surface //this is used only for re-aligning the rects when //the end of the screen is reached background_rect_left.x = 0; background_rect_right.x = w_width; } } } else { //move the person instead person_rect.x += movement_increment; if(get_person_right_side() > w_width) { //person went too far right person_rect.x = w_width - person_rect.w; } } } else if(direction == SDLK_LEFT) { if(move_screen(direction)) { if(!background_reached_left()) { //moves background left background_rect_left.x -= movement_increment; background_rect_right.x -= movement_increment; if(rect_in_view->x <= -w_width) { //swap the rect in view SDL_Rect* temp; rect_in_view->x = w_width; temp = rect_in_view; rect_in_view = other_rect; other_rect = temp; current_background_piece--; std::cout << current_background_piece << std::endl; } if(background_overshoots_left()) { background_rect_left.x = 0; background_rect_right.x = w_width; } } } else { //move the person instead person_rect.x -= movement_increment; if(person_rect.x < 0) { //person went too far left person_rect.x = 0; } } } } without the rest of the code this doesn't make too much sense. Since there is too much of it I'll upload it here for testing. Anyway does anyone know how I could fix this inconsistency?

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  • Java 2D Game Frameworks

    - by Software Monkey
    I have been looking at frameworks for writing 2D games in Java - part of a growing desire to rediscover my roots in writing those simple but addictive video games. I have googled and found some possibilities, but it's hard to judge which is best without investing significant time in each. Does anyone out there have any recommendations from experience, preferably with a list of pro's and con's for the framework. NOTE: I am not looking so much for comparisons between frameworks but, rather, feedback on any given framework from actually having used it firsthand, or knowing someone who has. The other possibility I am considering is rolling my own, but would rather not. EDIT: I am targeting Java on the Desktop, and expect capable machines, though not state of the art. Some of the 2D engines I have found: Free PulpCore (License: BSD) Slick2D (License: BSD) GTGE - Golden T Game Engine JGame GAGE - Genuine Advantage Gaming Engine GameFrame for Java Basilisk (2D and 3D) Free for non-commercial use Genuts EasyWay - a high-level 2D engine

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  • Design: an array of "enemy" objects for game AI

    - by Meko
    Hi..I made shoot em up like game.But I have only one ememy which fallows me on screen.But I want to make lots of enemys like each 10 second they will across on screen together 5 or 10 enemys. ArrayList<Enemies> enemy = new ArrayList<Enemies>(); for (Enemies e : enemy) { e.draw(g); } is it good creating array list and then showing on screen? And Do I have to make some planing movements thoose enemies in my code ? I want that they vill appear not on same pozition.Like First 5 enemies will come top of screen then the other 5 or 10 enemies will come from left side.. so on.What is best solution for this?

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  • why do game engines prefer static libraries over dynamic link libraries

    - by numerical25
    I've been reading a few gaming books. And they always prefer to create the engine as a static library over dynamic link. I am new to c++ so I am not highly knowledge when it comes to static libraries and dynamic link libraries. All I know is static libraries increase the size of your program, where DLL link libraries are loaded as you need them within your program. [edit] I've played games where it almost seemed they used DLL's to load in sound, lighting, and what not all individually. as the level was loading up. cause you don't necessarily need that when your at the game menu.

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  • Social Game Mechanics in Django

    - by oliland
    I want users to receive 'points' for completing various tasks in my application - ranging from tasks such as tagging objects to making friends. I havn't yet found a Django application that simplifies this. At the moment I'm thinking that the best way to accumulate points is that each user action creates the equivalent of a "stream item", and the points are calculated through counting the value of each action published to their stream. Obviously social game mechanics is a huge area with a lot of research going on at the moment. But from a development perspective what's the easiest way to get started? Am I on the wrong track or are there better / simpler ways?

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  • Developer’s Life – Disaster Lessons – Notes from the Field #039

    - by Pinal Dave
    [Note from Pinal]: This is a 39th episode of Notes from the Field series. What is the best solution do you have when you encounter a disaster in your organization. Now many of you would answer that in this scenario you would have another standby machine or alternative which you will plug in. Now let me ask second question – What would you do if you as an individual faces disaster?  In this episode of the Notes from the Field series database expert Mike Walsh explains a very crucial issue we face in our career, which is not technical but more to relate to human nature. Read on this may be the best blog post you might read in recent times. Howdy! When it was my turn to share the Notes from the Field last time, I took a departure from my normal technical content to talk about Attitude and Communication.(http://blog.sqlauthority.com/2014/05/08/developers-life-attitude-and-communication-they-can-cause-problems-notes-from-the-field-027/) Pinal said it was a popular topic so I hope he won’t mind if I stick with Professional Development for another of my turns at sharing some information here. Like I said last time, the “soft skills” of the IT world are often just as important – sometimes more important – than the technical skills. As a consultant with Linchpin People – I see so many situations where the professional skills I’ve gained and use are more valuable to clients than knowing the best way to tune a query. Today I want to continue talking about professional development and tell you about the way I almost got myself hit by a train – and why that matters in our day jobs. Sometimes we can learn a lot from disasters. Whether we caused them or someone else did. If you are interested in learning about some of my observations in these lessons you can see more where I talk about lessons from disasters on my blog. For now, though, onto how I almost got my vehicle hit by a train… The Train Crash That Almost Was…. My family and I own a little schoolhouse building about a 10 mile drive away from our house. We use it as a free resource for families in the area that homeschool their children – so they can have some class space. I go up there a lot to check in on the property, to take care of the trash and to do work on the property. On the way there, there is a very small Stop Sign controlled railroad intersection. There is only two small freight trains a day passing there. Actually the same train, making a journey south and then back North. That’s it. This road is a small rural road, barely ever a second car driving in the neighborhood there when I am. The stop sign is pretty much there only for the train crossing. When we first bought the building, I was up there a lot doing renovations on the property. Being familiar with the area, I am also familiar with the train schedule and know the tracks are normally free of trains. So I developed a bad habit. You see, I’d approach the stop sign and slow down as I roll through it. Sometimes I’d do a quick look and come to an “almost” stop there but keep on going. I let my impatience and complacency take over. And that is because most of the time I was going there long after the train was done for the day or in between the runs. This habit became pretty well established after a couple years of driving the route. The behavior reinforced a bit by the success ratio. I saw others doing it as well from the neighborhood when I would happen to be there around the time another car was there. Well. You already know where this ends up by the title and backstory here. A few months ago I came to that little crossing, and I started to do the normal routine. I’d pretty much stopped looking in some respects because of the pattern I’d gotten into.  For some reason I looked and heard and saw the train slowly approaching and slammed on my brakes and stopped. It was an abrupt stop, and it was close. I probably would have made it okay, but I sat there thinking about lessons for IT professionals from the situation once I started breathing again and watched the cars loaded with sand and propane slowly labored down the tracks… Here are Those Lessons… It’s easy to get stuck into a routine – That isn’t always bad. Except when it’s a bad routine. Momentum and inertia are powerful. Once you have a habit and a routine developed – it’s really hard to break that. Make sure you are setting the right routines and habits TODAY. What almost dangerous things are you doing today? How are you almost messing up your production environment today? Stop doing that. Be Deliberate – (Even when you are the only one) – Like I said – a lot of people roll through that stop sign. Perhaps the neighbors or other drivers think “why is he fully stopping and looking… The train only comes two times a day!” – they can think that all they want. Through deliberate actions and forcing myself to pay attention, I will avoid that oops again. Slow down. Take a deep breath. Be Deliberate in your job. Pay attention to the small stuff and go out of your way to be careful. It will save you later. Be Observant – Keep your eyes open. By looking around, observing the situation and understanding what your servers, databases, users and vendors are doing – you’ll notice when something is out of place. But if you don’t know what is normal, if you don’t look to make sure nothing has changed – that train will come and get you. Where can you be more observant? What warning signs are you ignoring in your environment today? In the IT world – trains are everywhere. Projects move fast. Decisions happen fast. Problems turn from a warning sign to a disaster quickly. If you get stuck in a complacent pattern of “Everything is okay, it always has been and always will be” – that’s the time that you will most likely get stuck in a bad situation. Don’t let yourself get complacent, don’t let your team get complacent. That will lead to being proactive. And a proactive environment spends less money on consultants for troubleshooting problems you should have seen ahead of time. You can spend your money and IT budget on improving for your customers. If you want to get started with performance analytics and triage of virtualized SQL Servers with the help of experts, read more over at Fix Your SQL Server. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: Notes from the Field, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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  • Developer’s Life – Attitude and Communication – They Can Cause Problems – Notes from the Field #027

    - by Pinal Dave
    [Note from Pinal]: This is a 27th episode of Notes from the Field series. The biggest challenge for anyone is to understand human nature. We human have so many things on our mind at any moment of time. There are cases when what we say is not what we mean and there are cases where what we mean we do not say. We do say and things as per our mood and our agenda in mind. Sometimes there are incidents when our attitude creates confusion in the communication and we end up creating a situation which is absolutely not warranted. In this episode of the Notes from the Field series database expert Mike Walsh explains a very crucial issue we face in our career, which is not technical but more to relate to human nature. Read on this may be the best blog post you might read in recent times. In this week’s note from the field, I’m taking a slight departure from technical knowledge and concepts explained. We’ll be back to it next week, I’m sure. Pinal wanted us to explain some of the issues we bump into and how we see some of our customers arrive at problem situations and how we have helped get them back on the right track. Often it is a technical problem we are officially solving – but in a lot of cases as a consultant, we are really helping fix some communication difficulties. This is a technical blog post and not an “advice column” in a newspaper – but the longer I am a consultant, the more years I add to my experience in technology the more I learn that the vast majority of the problems we encounter have “soft skills” included in the chain of causes for the issue we are helping overcome. This is not going to be exhaustive but I hope that sharing four pieces of advice inspired by real issues starts a process of searching for places where we can be the cause of these challenges and look at fixing them in ourselves. Or perhaps we can begin looking at resolving them in teams that we manage. I’ll share three statements that I’ve either heard, read or said and talk about some of the communication or attitude challenges highlighted by the statement. 1 – “But that’s the SAN Administrator’s responsibility…” I heard that early on in my consulting career when talking with a customer who had serious corruption and no good recent backups – potentially no good backups at all. The statement doesn’t have to be this one exactly, but the attitude here is an attitude of “my job stops here, and I don’t care about the intent or principle of why I’m here.” It’s also a situation of having the attitude that as long as there is someone else to blame, I’m fine…  You see in this case, the DBA had a suspicion that the backups were not being handled right.  They were the DBA and they knew that they had responsibility to ensure SQL backups were good to go – it’s a basic requirement of a production DBA. In my “As A DBA Where Do I start?!” presentation, I argue that is job #1 of a DBA. But in this case, the thought was that there was someone else to blame. Rather than create extra work and take on responsibility it was decided to just let it be another team’s responsibility. This failed the company, the company’s customers and no one won. As technologists – we should strive to go the extra mile. If there is a lack of clarity around roles and responsibilities and we know it – we should push to get it resolved. Especially as the DBAs who should act as the advocates of the data contained in the databases we are responsible for. 2 – “We’ve always done it this way, it’s never caused a problem before!” Complacency. I have to say that many failures I’ve been paid good money to help recover from would have not happened had it been for an attitude of complacency. If any thoughts like this have entered your mind about your situation you may be suffering from it. If, while reading this, you get this sinking feeling in your stomach about that one thing you know should be fixed but haven’t done it.. Why don’t you stop and go fix it then come back.. “We should have better backups, but we’re on a SAN so we should be fine really.” “Technically speaking that could happen, but what are the chances?” “We’ll just clean that up as a fast follow” ..and so on. In the age of tightening IT budgets, increased expectations of up time, availability and performance there is no room for complacency. Our customers and business units expect – no demand – the best. Complacency says “we will give you second best or hopefully good enough and we accept the risk and know this may hurt us later. Sometimes an organization will opt for “good enough” and I agree with the concept that at times the perfect can be the enemy of the good. But when we make those decisions in a vacuum and are not reporting them up and discussing them as an organization that is different. That is us unilaterally choosing to do something less than the best and purposefully playing a game of chance. 3 – “This device must accept interference from other devices but not create any” I’ve paraphrased this one – but it’s something the Federal Communications Commission – a federal agency in the United States that regulates electronic communication – requires of all manufacturers of any device that could cause or receive interference electronically. I blogged in depth about this here (http://www.straightpathsql.com/archives/2011/07/relationship-advice-from-the-fcc/) so I won’t go into much detail other than to say this… If we all operated more on the premise that we should do our best to not be the cause of conflict, and to be less easily offended and less upset when we perceive offense life would be easier in many areas! This doesn’t always cause the issues we are called in to help out. Not directly. But where we see it is in unhealthy relationships between the various technology teams at a client. We’ll see teams hoarding knowledge, not sharing well with others and almost working against other teams instead of working with them. If you trace these problems back far enough it often stems from someone or some group of people violating this principle from the FCC. To Sum It Up Technology problems are easy to solve. At Linchpin People we help many customers get past the toughest technological challenge – and at the end of the day it is really just a repeatable process of pattern based troubleshooting, logical thinking and starting at the beginning and carefully stepping through to the end. It’s easy at the end of the day. The tough part of what we do as consultants is the people skills. Being able to help get teams working together, being able to help teams take responsibility, to improve team to team communication? That is the difficult part, and we get to use the soft skills on every engagement. Work on professional development (http://professionaldevelopment.sqlpass.org/) and see continuing improvement here, not just with technology. I can teach just about anyone how to be an excellent DBA and performance tuner, but some of these soft skills are much more difficult to teach. If you want to get started with performance analytics and triage of virtualized SQL Servers with the help of experts, read more over at Fix Your SQL Server. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: Notes from the Field, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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  • Speed improvements for Perl's chameneos-redux in the Computer Language Benchmarks Game

    - by Robert P
    Ever looked at the Computer Language Benchmarks Game (formerly known as the Great Language Shootout)? Perl has some pretty healthy competition there at the moment. It also occurs to me that there's probably some places that Perl's scores could be improved. The biggest one is in the chameneos-redux script right now—the Perl version runs the worst out of any language: 1,626 times slower than the C baseline solution! There are some restrictions on how the programs can be made and optimized, and there is Perl's interpreted runtime penalty, but 1,626 times? There's got to be something that can get the runtime of this program way down. Taking a look at the source code and the challenge, how can the speed be improved?

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  • Speed improvements for Perl's chameneos-redux script in the Computer Language Benchmarks Game

    - by Robert P
    Ever looked at the Computer Language Benchmarks Game, (formerly known as the Great Language Shootout)? Perl has some pretty healthy competition there at the moment. It also occurs to me that there's probably some places that Perl's scores could be improved. The biggest one is in the chameneos-redux script right now - the Perl version runs the worst out of any language : 1,626 times slower than the C baseline solution! There are some restrictions on how the programs can be made and optimized, and there is Perl's interpreted runtime penalty, but 1,626 times? There's got to be something that can get the runtime of this program way down. Taking a look at the source code and the challenge, what do you think could be done to reduce this runtime speed?

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  • Game Programming - GUIs

    - by Spencer
    I've been coding for a while now and would like to start looking into programming games. I know the industry's standard language is C++, for 3D graphics the main choice is between Direct 3D and OpenGL, but what is the most widely used GUI framework? I'm currently on a Mac so if native Windows API is the answer, then what is the cross platform choice? To be clear, I'm not looking for people's favourites but simply what the common or standard game industry's choice is so that I can learn and familiarize myself with it. Thanks, Spencer

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  • starting flash game development

    - by wefwgeweg
    where to begin ? i want to create multiplayer flash games using Union (any experience?) but which IDE and prerequisites do i need to begin ? also, what does Flex mean ? thank you. p.s. what is the best way to purchase Game assets ? ex) 2d sprites...i've given up trying to design my own. i need to outsource (any dedicated place for finding offshore artists?) or buy some package.

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  • Algorithm - Pick the best combination of Armor (for a game)

    - by Chu
    I'm designing a piece of a game where the AI needs to determine which combination of armor will give the best overall stat bonus to the character. Each character will have about 10 stats, of which only 3-4 are important, and of those important ones, a few will be more important than the others. Armor will also give a boost to 1 or all stats. For example, a shirt might give +4 to the character's int and +2 stamina while at the same time, a pair of pants may have +7 strength and nothing else. So let's say that a character has a healthy choice of armor to use (5 pairs of pants, 5 pairs of gloves, etc.) We've designated that Int and Perception are the most important stats for this character. How could I write an algorithm that would determine which combination of armor and items would result in the highest of any given stat (say in this example Int and Perception)?

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  • Keyboard input for a game in Java

    - by hmp
    I'm writing a game in Java, right now it's Swing + JOGL - a JFrame with a GLCanvas. I handle input using keyPressed etc. events (jframe.addKeyListener(...)) and it doesn't seem to work properly: when I have 3+ keys down at the same time, they don't register properly after the window loses, then regains focus, input stops working completely... What am I doing wrong? Is there a better way of handling keyboard input in Java? (I'd rather not switch to another library, like LWJGL... unless I have no choice).

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  • Having an online highscore leaderboard for a Flash game

    - by Marco Fox
    Why, hello there. I'm trying to develop a simple Flash game using Actionscript 2 (I know its a bit dated, but its a simple project that doesen't benefict much from AS3), and I came up with an ideia of implementing an online leaderboard that records and shows the highscore of the player. This isn't anything too complicated, but I seem to be having problem finding resources online that explain how I should implement this. All I want is a call, probably to a PHP/MySQL database that records the player's name (which will be recorded via a input window) and its current score. It would also have to show the best all time scores, by order. I should remind you that I am working on a Actionscript 2 so Actionscript 3 solutions are probably not going to work. Can anyone out there help me out here? Did any of you already been through this?

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  • Most efficient way to save tile data of an isometric game

    - by Harmen
    Hello, I'm working on an isometric game for fast browsers that support <canvas>, which is great fun. To save information of each tile, I use a two-dimensional array which contains numbers representing a tile ID, like: var level = [[1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 0], [0, 1, 1, 2, 0, 1], [0, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1]]; var tiles = [ {name: 'grass', color: 'green'}, {name: 'water', color: 'blue'}, {name: 'forest', color: 'ForestGreen'} ]; So far it works great, but now I want to work with heights and slopes like in this picture: For each tile I need to save it's tile ID, height and information about which corners are turned upward. I came up with a simple idea about a bitwise representation of all four corners, like this: 1011 // top, bottom and left corner turned up My question is: what is the most efficient way to save these three values for each cell? Is it possible to save these three values as one integer?

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  • Open Source 2D Game Engine that supports Hexagon Maps for .NET

    - by Fred F.
    Hello, I cannot find a 2D game engine to create hexagon maps for .net. The best I can find is Xconq (http://sourceforge.net/projects/xconq/) and pygame. Does anybody where I can find any? preferrably one like xconq. Thank you for your time and effort. I really apprecate it. Edit: I would like to have feature of a strategic nature. Like adding custom AIs, path finding, etc. Xcong is an engine for turn-based strategy games.

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  • Surface Detection in 2d Game?

    - by GamiShini
    I'm working on a 2D Platform game, and I was wondering what's the best (performance-wise) way to implement Surface (Collision) Detection. So far I'm thinking of constructing a list of level objects constructed of a list of lines, and I draw tiles along the lines. ( http://img375.imageshack.us/img375/1704/lines.png ). I'm thinking every object holds the ID of the surface that he walks on, in order to easily manipulate his y position while walking up/downhill. Something like this: //Player/MovableObject class MoveLeft() { this.Position.Y = Helper.GetSurfaceById(this.SurfaceId).GetYWhenXIs(this.Position.X) } So the logic I use to detect "droping/walking on surface" is a simple point (player's lower legs)-touches-line (surface) check (with some safety approximation - let`s say 1-2 pixels over the line). Is this approach OK? I`ve been having difficulty trying to find reading material for this problem, so feel free to drop links/advice.

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  • Constraints when using WCF for an online multiplayer game

    - by Etan
    I want to build a service oriented game server and client using WCF where users can play card games on different tables after they logged in with an account. I would like to choose WCF due to it's flexibility in exchanging the communication channels. Maybe, a web interface will be added later which can then just use an other channel class. An additional plus is the ability for contexts which could be used to track a user over a whole gaming session. Are there some constraints I should be aware of when using WCF for the communication between the client and the server?

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  • Is OpenGL required for my iPhone game?

    - by Ben X Tan
    On an iPhone: If I am writing a game that has multiple levels, with multiple animations (image sequences), jpg and png (transparent), some full screen and some not, some looped and some played once only. What is the best way of doing it? Each level might have up to 10MB of images. Add on to this music, and video (cut scenes). All 2D graphics, no 3D models. Is OpenGL required? Or can this be achieved with Quartz or Core Animation?

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