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• Coding Dynamic Events?

  - by Joey Green

  I have no idea what the title of this question should be so bare with me. My game has turns. On a turn a player does something and this can result in a random number of explosions that occur at different times. I know when the explosions are done. I need to know when ALL are done and then do some other action. Also, each explosion is the same amount of time, say 3 seconds.. Right now I'm thinking of using a counter to hold how many explosions are happening. Then once the explosion is finished decrement this counter. Once the counter is zero, do my action. This idea is inspired by objective-c memory management btw. Anyways, does this sound like a good approach or would there be another way. An alternative might be to figure out the explosion who happened last and let it be responsible for calling this subsequent action. I'm asking mostly, because I haven't done this before and am trying to figure out if there are bugs that may occur that I'm not foreseeing.

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• Unit testing statically typed functional code

  - by back2dos

  I wanted to ask you people, in which cases it makes sense to unit test statically typed functional code, as written in haskell, scala, ocaml, nemerle, f# or haXe (the last is what I am really interested in, but I wanted to tap into the knowledge of the bigger communities). I ask this because from my understanding: One aspect of unit tests is to have the specs in runnable form. However when employing a declarative style, that directly maps the formalized specs to language semantics, is it even actually possible to express the specs in runnable form in a separate way, that adds value? The more obvious aspect of unit tests is to track down errors that cannot be revealed through static analysis. Given that type safe functional code is a good tool to code extremely close to what your static analyzer understands. However a simple mistake like using x instead of y (both being coordinates) in your code cannot be covered. However such a mistake could also arise while writing the test code, so I am not sure whether its worth the effort. Unit tests do introduce redundancy, which means that when requirements change, the code implementing them and the tests covering this code must both be changed. This overhead of course is about constant, so one could argue, that it doesn't really matter. In fact, in languages like Ruby it really doesn't compared to the benefits, but given how statically typed functional programming covers a lot of the ground unit tests are intended for, it feels like it's a constant overhead one can simply reduce without penalty. From this I'd deduce that unit tests are somewhat obsolete in this programming style. Of course such a claim can only lead to religious wars, so let me boil this down to a simple question: When you use such a programming style, to which extents do you use unit tests and why (what quality is it you hope to gain for your code)? Or the other way round: do you have criteria by which you can qualify a unit of statically typed functional code as covered by the static analyzer and hence needs no unit test coverage?

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• XNA 4.0: Problem with loading XML content files

  - by 200

  I'm new to XNA so hopefully my question isn't too silly. I'm trying to load content data from XML. My XML file is placed in my Content project (the new XNA 4 thing), called "Event1.xml": <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <XnaContent> <Asset Type="MyNamespace.Event"> // error on this line <name>1</name> </Asset> </XnaContent> My "Event" class is placed in my main project: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using System.Xml.Linq; namespace MyNamespace { public class Event { public string name; } } The XML file is being called by my main game class inside the LoadContent() method: Event temp = Content.Load<Event>("Event1"); And this is the error I'm getting: There was an error while deserializing intermediate XML. Cannot find type "MyNamespace.Event" I think the problem is because at the time the XML is being evaluated, the Event class has not been established because one file is in my main project while the other is in my Content project (being a XNA 4.0 project and such). I have also tried changing the build action of the xml file from compile to content; however the program would then not be able to find the file and would give this other warning: Project item 'Event1.xml' was not built with the XNA Framework Content Pipeline. Set its Build Action property to Compile to build it. Any suggestions are appreciated. Thanks.

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• Data structure for pattern matching.

  - by alvonellos

  Let's say you have an input file with many entries like these: date, ticker, open, high, low, close, <and some other values> And you want to execute a pattern matching routine on the entries(rows) in that file, using a candlestick pattern, for example. (See, Doji) And that pattern can appear on any uniform time interval (let t = 1s, 5s, 10s, 1d, 7d, 2w, 2y, and so on...). Say a pattern matching routine can take an arbitrary number of rows to perform an analysis and contain an arbitrary number of subpatterns. In other words, some patterns may require 4 entries to operate on. Say also that the routine (may) later have to find and classify extrema (local and global maxima and minima as well as inflection points) for the ticker over a closed interval, for example, you could say that a cubic function (x^3) has the extrema on the interval [-1, 1]. (See link) What would be the most natural choice in terms of a data structure? What about an interface that conforms a Ticker object containing one row of data to a collection of Ticker so that an arbitrary pattern can be applied to the data. What's the first thing that comes to mind? I chose a doubly-linked circular linked list that has the following methods: push_front() push_back() pop_front() pop_back() [] //overloaded, can be used with negative parameters But that data structure seems very clumsy, since so much pushing and popping is going on, I have to make a deep copy of the data structure before running an analysis on it. So, I don't know if I made my question very clear -- but the main points are: What kind of data structures should be considered when analyzing sequential data points to conform to a pattern that does NOT require random access? What kind of data structures should be considered when classifying extrema of a set of data points?

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• What should be the architecture of an urban game system?

  - by pmichna

  I'm going to develop an urban game using a telco API for phone geolocation and sending/receiving messages. A player would pick up one of the scenarios, move around the city and when he hits a given location, he gets a message and possibly has to answer it. I'm wondering, what approach would be the best in my case. I came up with this general idea: Web application as a user interface (user registration, players ranking, scenarios editing) written in Ruby on Rails. Game server (hosting games, game logic like checking players location, sending and receiving messages) written in Ruby. Database (users, scores, scenarios etc.), probably MySQL or someother open source DB. I want to learn Ruby and RoR, that's why I chose these language and framework. Do you think it's a good choice for a game server? Another question: is this project division good? I mean, I have little experience with Ruby and Rails - that's why I'm asking. Maybe it's better to have web application merged with game server and somehow have the server hosting RoR application do the tasks like mobile phone pinging and message sending? How would that be performed? Maybe this is worth mentioning: the API is RESTful, most results are JSON, few are XML.

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• Linking Libraries in iOS?

  - by Joey Green

  This is probably a totally noob question but I have missing links in my mind when thinking about linking libraries in iOS. I usually just add a new library that's been cross compiled and set the build and linker paths without really know what I'm doing. I'm hoping someone can help me fill in some gaps. Let's take the OpenCV library for instance. I have this totally working btw because of a really well written tutorial( http://niw.at/articles/2009/03/14/using-opencv-on-iphone/en ), but I'm just wanting to know what is exactly going on. What I'm thinking is happening is that when I build OpenCV for iOS is that your creating object code that gets placed in the .a files. This object code is just the implementation files( .m ) compiled. One reason you would want to do this is to make it hard to see the source code and so that you don't have to compile that source code every time. The .h files won't be put in the library ( .a ). You include the .h in your source files and these header files communicate with the object code library ( .a ) in some way. You also have to include the header files for your library in the Build Path and the Library itself in the Linker Path. So, is the way I view linking libraries correct? If , not can someone correct me on this ?

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• Fixed JavaScript Warning - Pin to Top of Page Using CSS Position [migrated]

  - by nicorellius

  I am new to this site, but it seems like the right place to ask this question. I am working on a noscript chunk of code whereby I do some stuff that includes a <p> at the top of the page that alerts the users that he/she has JavaScript disabled. The end result should look like the Stack Exchange sites when JavaScript is disabled (here is a screenshot of mine - SE looks similar except it is at the very top of the page): I have it working OK, but I would love it if the red bar stayed fixed along the top, upon scrolling. I tried using the position: fixed; method, but it ends up moving the p element and I can't get it to look exactly the same as it does without the position: fixed; modification. I tried fiddling with CSS top and left and other positioning but it doesn't ever look like I want it to. Here is a CSS snippett: <noscript> <style type="text/css"> p. noscript_warning { position: fixed; } </noscript>

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• What is the best way to work with large databases in Java depending on context?

  - by Singletony

  Hi guys. We are trying to figure out the best practice for working with very large DBs in Java. What we do is a kind of BI, i.e analyzing very large DBs, and using them to create intermediate DBs that represent intelligent knowledge of the DBs. We are currently using JDBC, and just preforming queries using a ResultSet. As more and more data is being created, we are wondering whether more appropriate ways exist for parsing and manipulating these large DBs: We need to support 'chunk' manipulation and not an entire DB at once(e.g. limit in JDBC, very poor performance) We do not need to be constantly connected since we are just pulling results and creating new tables of our own. We want to understand JDBC alternatives, with respect to advantages and disadvantages. Whether you think JDBC is the way to go or not, what are the best practices to go by depending on context (e.g. for large DBs queried in chunks) ? If my question is not clear, I will gladly elaborate! THANK YOU SO MUCH!

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• Watson Ties Against Human Jeopardy Opponents

  - by ETC

  In January we showed you a video of Waton in a practice round against Jeopardy champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. Last night they squared off in a real round of Jeopardy with Watson in a tie with Rutter. Watson held his own against the two champions leveraging the 90 IBM Power 750 servers, 2,880 processors, and the 16TB of memory driving him to his full advantage. It was impressive to watch the round unfold and to see where Watson shined and where he faltered. Check out the video below to footage of Watson in training and then in action on Jeopardy. Pay special attention to the things that trip him up. Watson answers cut and dry questions with absolute lighting speed but stumbles when it comes to nuances in language–like finis vs. terminus in the train question that Jennings answered correctly. Watch Part 2 of the video above here. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Here’s a Super Simple Trick to Defeating Fake Anti-Virus Malware How to Change the Default Application for Android Tasks Stop Believing TV’s Lies: The Real Truth About "Enhancing" Images The How-To Geek Valentine’s Day Gift Guide Inspire Geek Love with These Hilarious Geek Valentines MyPaint is an Open-Source Graphics App for Digital Painters Can the Birds and Pigs Really Be Friends in the End? [Angry Birds Video] Add the 2D Version of the New Unity Interface to Ubuntu 10.10 and 11.04 MightyMintyBoost Is a 3-in-1 Gadget Charger Watson Ties Against Human Jeopardy Opponents Peaceful Tropical Cavern Wallpaper

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• If not gamedev, what do I do !

  - by brainydexter

  Hi, I am a game dev who was working in the game-industry and then..got laid off. Ever since then, life couldn't get less stressful! During this time, I have met so many other devs who have also been laid off irrespective of the number of years they have been in the game. Now, the problem really gets worse, since I am not a US citizen (yes, I am in US) , and am on an international visa here, I might have to soon pack my bags and go back to my native country. Going back is not bad at all, apart from the fact, that gamedev is still in a very nascent stage there. There just aren't many opportunities. So, employment is the key to maintain a valid visa status. After giving it a lot of thought, I am thinking of staying away from gamedev jobs for the time being, given its job unstablity. This brings me to my current problem. I can't think of a domain/place where I can use my game development skills. I know graphics/simulation/visualization is huge, but I can't think straight and am left clueless where to go from here. What are some of the domains/companies where I can use my skills ? I'd appreciate any insight on this (and I apologize if this is not the place to post this kind of a question).

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• Consistency of an object

  - by Stefano Borini

  I tend to keep my objects consistent during their lifetime. In some cases, setting up an object requires multiple calls to different routines. For example, a connection object may operate in this way: Connection c = new Connection(); c.setHost("http://whatever") c.setPort(8080) c.connect() please note this is just a stupid example to let you understand the point. In between calls to setHost and setPort the object is inconsistent, because the Port has not been specified yet, so this code would crash Connection c = new Connection(); c.setHost("http://whatever") c.connect() Meaning that it's a requisite for connect() to have previous calls to both setHost and setPort, otherwise it won't be able to operate as its state is inconsistent. You may fix the issue with a default value, but there may be cases where no sensible default may be devised. We assume in the later example that there's no default for the port, and therefore a call to c.connect() without first calling both setHost and setPort will be an inconsistent state of the object. This, to me, points at an incorrect interface design, but I may be wrong, so I want to hear your opinion. Do you organize your interface so that the object is always in a consistent (i.e. workable) state both before and after the call ? Edit: Please don't try to solve the problem I gave above. I know how to solve that. My question is much broader in sense. I am looking for a design principle, officially or informally stated, regarding consistency of object state between calls.

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• How can a large, Fortran-based number crunching codebase be modernized?

  - by Dave Mateer

  A friend in academia asked me for advice (I'm a C# business application developer). He has a legacy codebase which he wrote in Fortran in the medical imaging field. It does a huge amount of number crunching using vectors. He uses a cluster (30ish cores) and has now gone towards a single workstation with 500ish GPUS in it. However where to go next with the codebase so: Other people can maintain it over next 10 year cycle Get faster at tweaking the software Can run on different infrastructures without recompiles After some research from me (this is a super interesting area) some options are: Use Python and CUDA from Nvidia Rewrite in a functional language. For example, F# or Haskell Go cloud based and use something like Hadoop and Java Learn C What has been your experience with this? What should my friend be looking at to modernize his codebase? UPDATE: Thanks @Mark and everyone who has answered. The reasons my friend is asking this question is that it's a perfect time in the projects lifecycle to do a review. Bringing research assistants up to speed in Fortran takes time (I like C#, and especially the tooling and can't imagine going back to older languages!!) I liked the suggestion of keeping the pure number crunching in Fortran, but wrapping it in something newer. Perhaps Python as that seems to be getting a stronghold in academia as a general-purpose programming language that is fairly easy to pick up. See Medical Imaging and a guy who has written a Fortran wrapper for CUDA, Can I legally publish my Fortran 90 wrappers to Nvidias' CUFFT library (from the CUDA SDK)?.

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• Getting into driver development for linux [closed]

  - by user1103966

  Right now, I've been learning about writing device-drivers for linux 3.2 kernel for about 2 months. So far I have been able program simple char drivers that only read and write to a fictitious dev structure like a file, but now I'm moving to more advance concepts. The new material I've learned about includes I/O port manipulation, memory management, and interrupts. I feel that I have a basic understanding of overall driver operation but, there is still so much that I don't know. My question is this, given that I have the basic theory of how to write a dev-driver for a piece of hardware ... how long would it take to actually develop the skills of writing actual software that companies would want to employ? I plan on getting involved in an open-source project and building a portfolio. Also what type of beginner drivers could I write for hardware that would best help me develop my skills? I was thinking that taking on a project where I design my own key logger would easy and a good assignment to help me understand how IO ports and interrupts are used. I may want to eventually specialize in writing software for video cards or network devices though these devices seem beyond my understanding at the moment. Thanks for any help

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• How to Handle frame rates and synchronizing screen repaints

  - by David Kroukamp

  I would first off say sorry if the title is worded incorrectly. Okay now let me give the scenario I'm creating a 2 player fighting game, An average battle will include a Map (moving/still) and 2 characters (which are rendered by redrawing a varying amount of sprites one after the other). Now at the moment I have a single game loop limiting me to a set number of frames per second (using Java): Timer timer = new Timer(0, new AbstractAction() { @Override public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) { long beginTime; //The time when the cycle begun long timeDiff; //The time it took for the cycle to execute int sleepTime; //ms to sleep (< 0 if we're behind) int fps = 1000 / 40; beginTime = System.nanoTime() / 1000000; //execute loop to update check collisions and draw gameLoop(); //Calculate how long did the cycle take timeDiff = System.nanoTime() / 1000000 - beginTime; //Calculate sleep time sleepTime = fps - (int) (timeDiff); if (sleepTime > 0) {//If sleepTime > 0 we're OK ((Timer)e.getSource()).setDelay(sleepTime); } } }); timer.start(); in gameLoop() characters are drawn to the screen ( a character holds an array of images which consists of their current sprites) every gameLoop() call will change the characters current sprite to the next and loop if the end is reached. But as you can imagine if a sprite is only 3 images in length than calling gameLoop() 40 times will cause the characters movement to be drawn 40/3=13 times. This causes a few minor anomilies in the sprited for some charcters So my question is how would I go about delivering a set amount of frames per second in when I have 2 characters on screen with varying amount of sprites?

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• How to restrict paddle movement using Farseer Physics engine 3.2

  - by brainydexter

  I am new to using Farseer Physics Engine 3.2(FPE), so please bear with my questions. Also, since FPE 3.2 is based on Box2D, I have been reading Box2D manual and pieces of code scattered in samples to better understand terminology and usage. Pong is usually my testbed whenever I try to do something new. Here is one of the issue I am running into: How can I restrict paddles to move only along Y axis, because the ball comes in and knocks off the paddles and everything floats in space afterwards ? (Box = Rectangle and ball = circle) I know MKS is the unit system, but is there a recommendation for sizes/position to be used ? I know this is a very generic question, but it would be good to know a simple set of values that one could use for making a game as simple as pong. Between box2d and FPE, I have some doubts: what is the recommended way of making a body in FPE ? world.CreateBody() does not exist in FPE Box2d manual recommends never to "new" body(since Box2D uses Small Object allocators), so is there a recommended way in Farseer to create a body (apart from factories) ? In box2d, it is recommended to keep a track of the body object, since it is also the parent to fixture(s). Why is it that in most of the examples, the fixture object is tracked ? Is there a reason why body is not tracked ? Thanks

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• What build tools do not depend on java (or Ruby)?

  - by Mohamed Meligy

  I'm wondering what generic build tools out there include their binary run-times and do not depend on another environment not shipped with them. For example, ANT requires Java, Rake requires Ruby, etc.. would be great if talking about also target-platform-agnostic tools, where I'd just give whatever command for building, whatever command for testing, etc.. and can then define my artifacts in CI or so. Would see something like that useful for building .NET projects (say, on both Windows .NET and Mono), and Node JS projects especially. I do not want to install Java and / or Ruby if what I want is a .NET build or a Node JS build. This is a bit of general awareness question not an exact problem I'm facing, that's why it's here not on StackOverflow. Update: To explain a bit more, what I'm after is the build script that would run MSBuild for compiling for example ( in .NET, and then maybe several Node/NPM commands in Node, etc..), and then have the rest build/test steps, instead of setting these all in MSBuild (again, in .NET case, also, wondering if there is equivalent story in Node).

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• How common is it to submit papers to journals or conferences outside of academia?

  - by Furry

  I worked in academia a few years, but more on the D-side of R&D. The race for papers never appealed to me and I'm a practical not theoretical type, but I do like reading papers on certain topics (e.g. Google Papers, NLP, FB papers, ...) a lot. How common is it that normally working developers submit papers to conferences or even journals? It seems to be somewhat common in certain companies (it's not common or encouraged in mine). Do journals or conferences even take papers by an academic nobody (BSc) under consideration? I ask, because I have a few rough ideas and I would just like to bring them into form, one way or the other. Bonus question: Is there a list of CS (in the widest sense) conferences/journals with short descriptions? PS (Four out of five researchers I met published quite some fluffy stuff for my taste. I am no expert, but those people told me sometimes themselves, that the implementation does not matter, just the idea and the presentation. I always wondered about that. I probably could write about ideas all day long (not instantly but with a bit of preparation), but the implementation and the practical part is the really hard part, that academia just does not like to be concerned with. Also many papers actually scream: I was written so the publication list of my author gets longer - which is a waste of time for everyone, and often a waste of tax money, too. When I think of CS-ish papers, I think of running implementations or actual data, like e.g. Google's Map Reduce, Serving Large-scale Batch Computed Data with Project Voldemort or the like.)

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• How to slow down a sprite that updates every frame?

  - by xiaohouzi79

  I am going through a Allegro 5 tutorial which has a game loop. There is also a variable "active" which determines if a key is being held down. Thus if the left key is being held down active is on and it begins looping through the row on the sprite sheet that corresponds to moving left. The problem is that this logic is checked everytime the loop is performed thus at approximately 60 fps the three images that are used to do the left walking animation cycle round super fast which means my character looks like it is in a rush. Total beginner question: so what is the correct way to slow down the transition between sprites so that the walking looks like it is done at a moderate pace. Here is the code used to transition across the sprite between the three different phases of the person walking: if (active) { sourceX += al_get_bitmap_width(player) / 3; } else { sourceX = 32; } if (sourceX >= al_get_bitmap_width(player)) { sourceX = 0; } I can kind of guess what it should be in plain English: update sourceX only every certain part of a second but I can't think of how to put this into code.

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• Does a team of developers need a manager?

  - by Amadiere

  Background: I'm currently part of a team of four: 1 manager, 1 senior developer and 2 developers. We do a range of bespoke in-house systems / projects (e.g. 6-8 weeks) for an organisation of around 3500 staff, as well as all the maintenance and support required from the systems that have been created before. There is not enough of us to do all the work that is potentially coming our way - we're understaffed. Management acknowledge this, but budget restraints limit our ability to recruit additional members to the team (even if we make the salary back in savings). The Change This leaves us where we are now. Our manager is due to leave his role for pastures new, leaving a vacancy in the team. Management are using this opportunity to restructure our team which would see the team manager role replaced by another developer and another senior developer. Their logic being that we need more developers, so here's a way of funding it (one of the roles is partially funded from another vacant post). The team would have no direct line manager and the roles and responsibilities would be divided up between the seniors and the (relatively new to post) service manager (a non-technical role with little-to-no development knowledge/experience whose focus is shared amongst a number of other teams and individuals) - who would be our next actual manager up the food chain. I guess the final question is: Is it possible to run a development team without an manager? Have you had experience of this? And what things could go wrong / could be of benefit to us? I'd ideally like to "see the light" and the benefits of doing things this way, or come up with some points for argument against it.

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• Firefox 12's hardware acceleration on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

  - by user64943

  After I have installed Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (32 bits), Firefox 12 works fine but without hardware acceleration. Needless to say I have the latest nVidia's proprietary drivers installed and my Firefox Preferences, on "Advanced" tab, "Browsing" section, have the option "Use hardware acceleration when available" checked. I have tried the following things before asking this question: Creating a boolean key "webgl.force-enabled" and set it to true on Firefox's page about:config; Starting a new profile like commented on thread Mozilla Firefox 12 is very slow on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS; I have updated my nVidia driver to version 295.53. And none of this have worked. As you can see below in my Firefox's page about:support report, "Graphics" section shows no "GPU Accelerated Windows": Adapter Description NVIDIA Corporation -- GeForce GTX 460/PCIe/SSE2 Vendor ID NVIDIA Corporation Device ID GeForce GTX 460/PCIe/SSE2 Driver Version 4.2.0 NVIDIA 295.53 WebGL Renderer NVIDIA Corporation -- GeForce GTX 460/PCIe/SSE2 -- 4.2.0 NVIDIA 295.53 GPU Accelerated Windows 0 AzureBackend skia I use the following site to test hardware acceleration: http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Performance/FishBowl/ On Windows 7 I get 60 fps even with 1,750 fishes on browser's Full Screen Mode (1680x1050x32bit-color). On Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, same nVidia drivers (as shown in report), won't go faster than 15 fps with only 1,000 fishes. Can anybody help me? Best Regards,

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• Naming methods that do the same thing but return different types

  - by Konstantin Ð.

  Let's assume that I'm extending a graphical file chooser class (JFileChooser). This class has methods which display the file chooser dialog and return a status signature in the form of an int: APPROVE_OPTION if the user selects a file and hits Open /Save, CANCEL_OPTION if the user hits Cancel, and ERROR_OPTION if something goes wrong. These methods are called showDialog(). I find this cumbersome, so I decide to make another method that returns a File object: in the case of APPROVE_OPTION, it returns the file selected by the user; otherwise, it returns null. This is where I run into a problem: would it be okay for me to keep the showDialog() name, even though methods with that name — and a different return type — already exist? To top it off, my method takes an additional parameter: a File which denotes in which directory the file chooser should start. My question to you: Is it okay to call a method the same name as a superclass method if they return different types? Or would that be confusing to API users? (If so, what other name could I use?) Alternatively, should I keep the name and change the return type so it matches that of the other methods? public int showDialog(Component parent, String approveButtonText) // Superclass method public File showDialog(Component parent, File location) // My method

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• Jump and run HTML5 Game Framework

  - by user1818924

  We're developing a jump and run game with HTML5 and JavaScript and have to build an own game framework for this. Here we have some difficulties and would like to ask you for some advice: we have a "Stage" object, which represents the root of our game and is a global div-wrapper. The stage can contain multiple "Scenes", which are also div-elements. We would implement a Scene for the playing task, for pause, etc. and switch between them. Each scene can therefore contain multiple "Layers", representing a canvas. These Layer contain "ObjectEntities", which represent images or other shapes like rectangles, etc. Each Objectentity has its own temporaryCanvas, to be able to draw images for one entity, whereas another contains a rectangle. We set an activeScene in our Stage, so when the game is played, just the active scene is drawn. Calling activeScene.draw(), calls all sublayers to draw, which draw their entities (calling drawImage(entity.canvas)). But is this some kind of good practive? Having multiple canvas to draw? Each gameloop every layer-context is cleared and drawn again. E.g. we just have a still Background-Layer, … wouldn't it be more useful to draw this once and not to clear it everytime and redraw it? Or should we use a global canvas for example in the Stage and just use this canvas to draw? But we thought this would be to expensive... Other question: Do you have any advice how we could dive into implementing an own framework? Most stuff we find online relies on existing frameworks or they just implement their game without building a framework.

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• Code Measuring and Metrics Tools?

  - by David

  I'm in the process of setting up a build server for personal projects. This server will handle all the normal CI stuff, including running large suites of tests (unit, integration, automated UI). While I'm working out the kinks for including code coverage output with MSTest, it occurs to me that there may be lots of tools out there which give me additional metrics other than just code coverage. FxCop comes to mind as an example. Though I'm sure there are others. Anything that can generate useful reportable data and metrics would be good. Whether it's class dependency charts (looking for Law of Demeter violations, for example), analyses of the uses of classes/functions (looking for a function that isn't used in the system other than just the tests, for example), and so on. I'm not sure the right way to formulate the question, since polling questions or "What's your favorite code analysis tool" aren't very good. But I'm essentially just looking for recommendations on what metrics to gather and the tools that can gather them. The eventual vision for something like this is to have the CI server run a bunch of automated tests and analysis tools and track performance metrics over time. Imagine a dashboard full of graphs plotting these metrics over time. The lines should all relatively be at an equilibrium, and if one starts to stray toward the negative then it's an early indication of problems with the code. In the age old struggle to quantify code quality with management, this sounds like a potentially helpful means of doing just that.

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• Using XML as data storage

  - by Kian Mayne

  I was thinking about the XML format and the following quote: “XML is not a database. It was never meant to be a database. It is never going to be a database. Relational databases are proven technology with more than 20 years of implementation experience. They are solid, stable, useful products. They are not going away. XML is a very useful technology for moving data between different databases or between databases and other programs. However, it is not itself a database. Don't use it like one.“ -Effective XML: 50 Specific Ways to Improve Your XML by Elliotte Rusty Harold (page 230, Part 4, Item 41, 2nd paragraph) This seems to really stress that XML should not be used for data storage and should only be used for program to program interoperability. Personally, I disagree and .NET's app.config file that's used to store a program's settings is an example of data storage in an XML file. However for databases rather than configurations etc XML should not be used. To develop my point, I will use two examples: A) Data about customers with fields that are all on one level i.e. there are a number of fields all relating to one customer with no children B) Data about configuration of an application where nested fields and properties make a lot of sense So my question is, Is this still a valid statement and is it now acceptable to store data using XML? EDIT: I've sent an email to the author of that quote to ask for his input/extra context.

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• How do I create a 2.5d parallax effect?

  - by Nikolay Dyankov

  I have a decent background in 3D graphics and programming, but I'm new to game development. I'm currently exploring different possibilities and I really want to make an RPG game. I was thinking about classic 2D isometric view, but I really love how Diablo 2 looks and feels to play. My question is - how can I achieve Diablo 2's parallax effect? Everything looks hand drawn with baked lights and shadows and looks awesome, but when you move around you notice some perspective. For example, let's say that I drew a big hall with columns in Photoshop with an orthographic perspective (classic pixel art style, just parallel lines). How would I give parallax effect to this scene when the character moves around? If I use camera-facing sprites for everything it would probably look OK in the distance, but it would be really fake when a character comes close to a column (cylinder) for example. Any suggestions? How did Blizzard make the parallax effect in Diablo 2? See this screenshot: http://guidesmedia.ign.com/guides/10629/images/act2tombs.jpg

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