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• Preliminary List of Keyboard Shortcuts for Unity Now Available

  - by Asian Angel

  Have you been searching for a list of keyboard shortcuts for Ubuntu’s new Unity UI? Then sit back, relax, and get your favorite printer ready to go. We have just what you have been looking for fresh from the Ask Ubuntu forums. Photo by okubax. Note: Keep in mind that some of these keyboard shortcuts may not be implemented yet due to the early development status of Unity. And now for the keyboard shortcuts… We also grabbed a copy of these Mouse Tricks that had been added to the comments sections. Keyboard Shortcuts for Unity Documentation Page [via DownloadSquad] Latest Features How-To Geek ETC Should You Delete Windows 7 Service Pack Backup Files to Save Space? What Can Super Mario Teach Us About Graphics Technology? Windows 7 Service Pack 1 is Released: But Should You Install It? How To Make Hundreds of Complex Photo Edits in Seconds With Photoshop Actions How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7 How to Use Google Chrome as Your Default PDF Reader (the Easy Way) Preliminary List of Keyboard Shortcuts for Unity Now Available Bring a Touch of the Wild West to Your Desktop with the Rango Theme for Windows 7 Manage Your Favorite Social Accounts in Chrome and Iron with Seesmic E.T. II – Extinction [Fake Movie Sequel Video] Remastered King’s Quest Games Offer Classic Gaming on Modern Machines Compare Your Internet Cost and Speed to Global Averages [Infographic]

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• Alternative to Game State System?

  - by Ricket

  As far as I can tell, most games have some sort of "game state system" which switches between the different game states; these might be things like "Intro", "MainMenu", "CharacterSelect", "Loading", and "Game". On the one hand, it totally makes sense to separate these into a state system. After all, they are disparate and would otherwise need to be in a large switch statement, which is obviously messy; and they certainly are well represented by a state system. But at the same time, I look at the "Game" state and wonder if there's something wrong about this state system approach. Because it's like the elephant in the room; it's HUGE and obvious but nobody questions the game state system approach. It seems silly to me that "Game" is put on the same level as "Main Menu". Yet there isn't a way to break up the "Game" state. Is a game state system the best way to go? Is there some different, better technique to managing, well, the "game state"? Is it okay to have an intro state which draws a movie and listens for enter, and then a loading state which loops on the resource manager, and then the game state which does practically everything? Doesn't this seem sort of unbalanced to you, too? Am I missing something?

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• Implementing a multilanguage AI contest platform

  - by Alejandro Piad

  This is a followup to this question. To sum: I'm implementing an AI contest site, where each user may submit several AI implementations for different games. Think about Google AI Challenge but instead of just having a big event once a year, I would like it more on a league fashion, with all virtual players playing with each other every some close period of time. I want to support as many programming languages as possible. I've seen that contest sites (like codeforces) ask you to submit a source code and interact through stdin and stdout. The first question is: what is the best way of supporting multiple languages? As I see it, I can either ask people to upload some binary/script, and interact either through stdin/*stdout*, or sockets, or the file system; or ask people to submit source code, and wrap it with whatever is necessary for the interaction. I would like to skip the need to compile the code by myself (in the server, I mean), but I am willing to do it if its the "best" choice. I need to comunicate virtual players with each other, or even better, with some intermediary arbiter. The second question is regarding security. If I'm going to be running user code in my server, I want to ensure strict security conditions, like no file system access, no networking, etc. Otherwise it would be a safe heaven for hackers. I will be implementing the engine/arbiter in .NET. I would like to support at least C#, C++, Java and Python for the user's implementations. I'm willing to write interfaces for each of these languages to simplify the user interaction with the system. Thanks in advance.

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• Blending animations for more character movements

  - by Noob Saibot

  I am making a hack n slash 3rd person game. And I want the character movements to be more dynamic not like fighting games where you have a moves list. I want to animate tons of different animations and have them "Tween" between each other? Because I want the controls to not be keyboard mouse. I want it to be all keyboard. that way you have up to 10 inputs (All your fingers) to blend and morph animations to create more fluid movements. In the end this will almost be similar to characters typing a phrase or string of keys rather than move forward mouse look click to melee. My question is. Has anyone done this before and would someone go about trying to tween lets say one for key on the keyboard excluding Tab, Caps, R+Shift, L+Shift, Enter, R+Ctrl, L+Ctrl, L+Alt, R+Alt, Windows Key, and Menu. So thats all the numbers, letters and punctuation keys. Thats 46 keys gives me a combination of 46P1 = 5502622159812088949850305428800254892961651752960000000000L (used Python) and with a minimum entry value of 2 keypresses shortening to half. This is not humanly possible to create so many inique animations in one lifetime. But I'm guessing there is a reason this hasn't been done already. Or if I just used 10 basic keys. Maybe ASDF SPACE (RIGHT HAND) 456+0 (LEFT HAND KEYPAD) it would give me 3,628,800 posible unique animations.

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• How to implement lockstep model for RTS game?

  - by user11177

  In my effort to learn programming I'm trying to make a small RTS style game. I've googled and read a lot of articles and gamedev q&a's on the topic of lockstep synchronization in multiplayer RTS games, but am still having trouble wrapping my head around how to implement it in my own game. I currently have a simple server/client system. For example if player1 selects a unit and gives the command to move it, the client sends the command [move, unit, coordinates] to the server, the server runs the pathfinding function and sends [move, unit, path] to all clients which then moves the unit and run animations. So far so good, but not synchronized for clients with latency or lower/higher FPS. How can I turn this into a true lockstep system? Is the right methodology supposed to be something like the following, using the example from above: Turn 1 start gather command inputs from player1 send to the server turn number and commands end turn, increment turn number The server receives the commands, runs pathfinding and sends the paths to all clients. Next turn receive paths from server, as well as confirmation that all clients completed previous turn, otherwise pause and wait for that confirmation move units gather new inputs end turn Is that the gist of it? Should perhaps pathfinding and other game logic be done client side instead of on the server, if so why? Is there anything else I'm missing? I hope someone can break down the concept, so I understand it better.

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• game multiplayer service development

  - by nomad

  I'm currently working on a multiplayer game. I've looked at a number of multiplayer services(player.io, playphone, gamespy, and others) but nothing really hits the mark. They are missing features, lack platform support or cost too much. What I'm looking for is a simple poor man's version of steam or xbox live. Not the game marketplace side of those two but the multiplayer services. User accounts, profiles, presence info, friends, game stats, invites, on/offline messaging. Basically I'm looking for a unified multiplayer platform for all my games across devices. Since I can't find what I'm planning to roll my own piece by piece. I plan to save on server resources by making most of the communication p2p. Things like game data and voice chat can be handled between peers and the server keeps track of user presence and only send updates when needed or requested. I know this runs the risk of cheating but that isn't a concern right now. I plan to run this on a Amazon ec2 micro server for development then move to a small to large instance when finished. I figure user accounts would be the simplest to start with. Users can create accounts online or using in game dialog, login/out, change profile info. The user can access this info online or in game. I will need user authentication and secure communication between server and client. I figure all info will be stored in a database but I dont know how it can be stored securely and accessed from webserver and game services. I would appreciate and links to tutorials, info or advice anyone could provide to get me started. Any programming language is fine but I plan to use c# on the server and c/c++ on devices. I would like to get started right away but I'm in no hurry to get it finished just yet. If you know of a service that already fits my requirements please let me know.

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• Debugging/Logging Techniques for End Users

  - by James Burgess

  I searched a bit, but didn't find anything particularly pertinent to my problem - so please do excuse me if I missed something! A few months back I inherited the source to a fairly-popular indie game project and have been working, along with another developer, on the code-base. We recently made our first release since taking over the development but we're a little stuck. A few users are experiencing slowdowns/lagging in the current version, as compared to the previous version, and we are not able to reproduce these issues in any of our various development environments (debug, release, different OSes, different machines, etc.). What I'd like to know is how can we go about implementing some form of logging/debugging mechanism into the game, that users can enable and send the reports to us for examination? We're not able to distribute debug binaries using the MSVS 2010 runtimes, due to the licensing - and wouldn't want to, for a variety of reasons. We'd really like to get to the bottom of this issue, even if just to find out it's nothing to do with our code base but everything to do with their system configuration. At the moment, we just have no leads - and the community isn't a very technically-savvy one, so we're unable to rely on 'expert' bug reports or investigations. I've seen the debug logging mechanism used in other applications and games for everything from logging simple errors to crash dumps. We're really at a loss at this stage as to how to address these issues, having been over every commit to the repository from the previous to the current version and not finding any real issues.

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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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• Developing a feature which sole purpose to be taken out?

  - by adib

  What is the name of the pattern in which individual contributors (programmers/designers) developed an artifact for the sole purpose is to serve as a diversion so that management can remove that feature in the final product? This is a folklore I heard from an ex-colleague who used to work at a large game development company. At that company, it is well known that middle management is pressurized to "give inputs" and "make changes" to the product otherwise they risk being seen as not contributing to the project. This situation have delayed many projects because of these superfluous "management inputs". In one project at the above company, the artists and developers created a supernumerary animated character that appears in every cutscene and sticks out like a sore thumb. They designed it in such a way that it can be easily removed before the game is shipped (this was when games were still sold in physical media and not a downloadable product). Obviously the management then voted to remove the animation. On the positive side, management didn't introduced any unnecessary changes that would have delayed the project because they have shown that they provided constructive inputs to the product. This process pattern has a name among game programmers that work in corporates, but I forgot what was the actual name. I believe it's duck-something. Anybody can help pointing out the name and perhaps some rather credible reference to how the pattern develops?.

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• How to optimise Andengine's PathModifer (with singleton or pool)?

  - by Casla

  I am trying to build a game where the character find and follows a new path when a new destination is issued by the player, kinda like how units in RTS games work. This is done on a TMX map and I am using the A Star path finder utilities in Andengine to do this.David helped me on that: How can I change the path a sprite is following in real time? At the moment, every-time a new path is issued, I have to abandon the existing PathModifer and Path instances, and create new ones, and from what I read so far, creating new objects when you could re-use existing ones are a big waste for mobile applications. This is how I coded it at the moment: private void loadPathFound() { if (mAStarPath != null) { modifierPath = new org.andengine.entity.modifier.PathModifier.Path(mAStarPath.getLength()); /* replace the first node in the path as the player's current position */ modifierPath.to(player.convertLocalToSceneCoordinates(12, 31)[Constants.VERTEX_INDEX_X]-12, player.convertLocalToSceneCoordinates(12, 31)[Constants.VERTEX_INDEX_Y]-31); for (int i=1; i<mAStarPath.getLength(); i++) { modifierPath.to(mAStarPath.getX(i)*TILE_WIDTH, mAStarPath.getY(i)*TILE_HEIGHT); /* passing in the duration depended on the length of the path, so that the animation has a constant duration for every step */ player.registerEntityModifier(new PathModifier(modifierPath.getLength()/100, modifierPath, null, mIPathModifierListener)); } } The ideal implementation will be to always have just one object of PathModifer and just reset the destination of the path. But I don't know how you can apply the singleton patther on Andengine's PathModifer, there is no method to reset attribute of the path nor the pathModifer. So without re-write the PathModifer and the Path class, or use reflection, is there any other way to implement singleton PathModifer? Thanks for your help.

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• Feeling Old? Before Middleware, Gamification, and MacBook Airs

  - by ultan o'broin

  Think we're done with green screens in the enterprise apps world? Fusion User Experience Advocate Debra Lilley (@debralilley) drew my attention to this super retro iPad terminal emulator app being used by a colleague to connect to JDE. Yes, before Middleware, this is how you did it. Surely the ultimate in hipster retro coexistence? Mind you, I've had to explain to lots of people I showed this to just what Telnet and IBM AS/400 are (or were). MochaSoft TN5250 Terminal Emulator iPad App This OG way of connecting to apps is a timely reminder not to forget all those legacy apps out there and the UX aspect to adoption and change. If a solution already works well and there's an emotional attachment to it, then the path to upgrade needs to be very clear and have valuable and demonstrable ROI for users and decision makers, a path that spans emotion and business benefits. On a pure usability front, that old school charm of the character-based green glow look 'n' feel could be easily done as a skin, personalizing an application for the user so that they feel comfortable with it. Fun too particularly in the mobile and BYOD space! In fact, there is a thriving retro apps market out there as illustrated by this spiffy lunar lander app (hat tip: John Cartan), part of a whole set of Atari's greatest hits available for iOS. Lunar Lander App And of course, there's the iOS version of Pong. Check out this retro Apple Mac SE/30 too. I actually remember using one of these. I have an Apple Mac Plus somewhere in my parents' house. I tried it out recently, and it actually booted, although all it was good for was playing the onboard games. Looking at all these olde worlde things makes me feel very old, but kinda warm inside too. The latter is a key part of today's applications user experience too.

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• 'Binary XML' for game data?

  - by bluescrn

  I'm working on a level editing tool that saves its data as XML. This is ideal during development, as it's painless to make small changes to the data format, and it works nicely with tree-like data. The downside, though, is that the XML files are rather bloated, mostly due to duplication of tag and attribute names. Also due to numeric data taking significantly more space than using native datatypes. A small level could easily end up as 1Mb+. I want to get these sizes down significantly, especially if the system is to be used for a game on the iPhone or other devices with relatively limited memory. The optimal solution, for memory and performance, would be to convert the XML to a binary level format. But I don't want to do this. I want to keep the format fairly flexible. XML makes it very easy to add new attributes to objects, and give them a default value if an old version of the data is loaded. So I want to keep with the hierarchy of nodes, with attributes as name-value pairs. But I need to store this in a more compact format - to remove the massive duplication of tag/attribute names. Maybe also to give attributes native types, so, for example floating-point data is stored as 4 bytes per float, not as a text string. Google/Wikipedia reveal that 'binary XML' is hardly a new problem - it's been solved a number of times already. Has anyone here got experience with any of the existing systems/standards? - are any ideal for games use - with a free, lightweight and cross-platform parser/loader library (C/C++) available? Or should I reinvent this wheel myself? Or am I better off forgetting the ideal, and just compressing my raw .xml data (it should pack well with zip-like compression), and just taking the memory/performance hit on-load?

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• How to organize a programming course?

  - by Bogdan Gavril

  I've been given the task to train our manual testers to become developers in test (write test automation!). some have basic programing knowledge (either dabbling in PHP or reading stuff) and some who have no experience. Note that I do have teaching experience, but with real students, not employees, and one concern is that they will not put extra hours except the 20% management gave them for the transition. Language to be taught and used: C# We have 8 hours per week to do this and should decide if they will make it in 2 months. I am thinking of a combined approach: use a manual such as Head First C# (although I'm not happy with the labs, they're mostly games and I don't want to add UI complexities) have them read from the manual do labs with them, solving more and more difficult problems and explain the theoretical stuff as well have them do a bigger project towards the end Some questions: do you have a better suggestion as far as manuals go? do you have a better aproach? Focus less on labs? what kind of assesments should I use and how often? should I let them do a bigger project (bank system or small game) and how much time should I invest in that? ideeas on labs? other resources ? Any other tips would be most welcomed! Thanks!

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• I want to build a Virtual Machine, are there any good references?

  - by Michael Stum

  I'm looking to build a Virtual Machine as a platform independent way to run some game code (essentially scripting). The Virtual Machines that I'm aware of in games are rather old: Infocom's Z-Machine, LucasArts' SCUMM, id Software's Quake 3. As a .net Developer, I'm familiar with the CLR and looked into the CIL Instructions to get an overview of what you actually implement on a VM Level (vs. the language level). I've also dabbled a bit in 6502 Assembler during the last year. The thing is, now that I want¹ to implement one, I need to dig a bit deeper. I know that there are stack based and register based VMs, but I don't really know which one is better at what and if there are more or hybrid approaches. I need to deal with memory management, decide which low level types are part of the VM and need to understand why stuff like ldstr works the way it does. My only reference book (apart from the Z-Machine stuff) is the CLI Annotated Standard, but I wonder if there is a better, more general/fundamental lecture for VMs? Basically something like the Dragon Book, but for VMs? I'm aware of Donald Knuth's Art of Computer Programming which uses a register-based VM, but I'm not sure how applicable that series still is, especially since it's still unfinished? Clarification: The goal is to build a specialized VM. For example, Infocom's Z-Machine contains OpCodes for setting the Background Color or playing a sound. So I need to figure out how much goes into the VM as OpCodes vs. the compiler that takes a script (language TBD) and generates the bytecode from it, but for that I need to understand what I'm really doing. ¹ I know, modern technology would allow me to just interpret a high level scripting language on the fly. But where is the fun in that? :) It's also a bit hard to google because Virtual Machines is nowadays often associated with VMWare-type OS Virtualization...

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• What is a legal way to use music from registered authors in a game?

  - by mm24

  I have recently asked a question about music in games like Guitar Hero. I have found that that in Europe (at least) if I do want to use a track composed by a musician member of a royalty collecting society I need to pay a flat fee to the society and not only to the member. So a "one-to-one" agreement is not valid and the society can come up to me and ask me for money for each download. Even if for FREE! This is a fee sheet list of the UK agency: for fee, see "Permanent download services" It is about 1,200 GBP for less than 22,000 copies and they DON'T specify anything more and they said me on the phone that I need to wait and see how many downloads I get before knowing the price. This is kind of crazy as If I give away the App for free I will have to PAY 1,200 GBP!! I am shocked and I feel very bad. One agency suggested me to use a fake name of the artist, but in this way is not fair to my collaborators as what they hope is that the App gets lots of downloads and in this way that other people will get to know about them and hopefully commission them more work. The other solution is to work only with non registered musicians. The question here to you is: Has anyone found a legal way to use music from registered authors in a game?

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• Game actions that take multiple frames to complete

  - by CantTetris

  I've never really done much game programming before, pretty straightforward question. Imagine I'm building a Tetris game, with the main loop looking something like this. for every frame handle input if it's time to make the current block move down a row if we can move the block move the block else remove all complete rows move rows down so there are no gaps if we can spawn a new block spawn a new current block else game over Everything in the game so far happens instantly - things are spawned instantly, rows are removed instantly etc. But what if I don't want things to happen instantly (i.e animate things)? for every frame handle input if it's time to make the current block move down a row if we can move the block move the block else ?? animate complete rows disappearing (somehow, wait over multiple frames until the animation is done) ?? animate rows moving downwards (and again, wait over multiple frames) if we can spawn a new block spawn a new current block else game over In my Pong clone this wasn't an issue, as every frame I was just moving the ball and checking for collisions. How can I wrap my head around this issue? Surely most games involves some action that takes more than a frame, and other things halt until the action is done.

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• How do I nstall MS Office 2010 via WINE?

  - by Emeris

  I am trying to install MS Office 2010 on Ubuntu 12.04 on my new MacBook Pro (15"). I already read and followed every existing threads on forums and followed every existing tutorial, but my problem seem unique so far, since whichever solution I try, the problem remains. When I launch PlayOnLinux, two boxes appear one after the other (before the latest upgrade of Ubuntu of last week, the second box did not appear, only the first one did); the first one tells me: Error: PlayOnLinux is unable to find 32-bits OpenGL libraries. You might encounter problem with your games." When I close this window, a second one pops up, stating: Error: PlayOnLinux cannot find 7z. You should install it to use PlayOnLinux. Of course, I tried purging PlayOnLinux (uninstalling it and re-installing it). I also tried other versions of PlayOnLinux. Nothing matters: the problem remains. I did not succeed so far to install 32-bits OpenGL libraries, since I have a Radeon graphics card (which seems to be unusual) and I just cannot find these libraries. Once the two "error" boxes are closed, PlayOnLinux is open, but does not seem to work properly; when I try to install Microsoft Office 2010, nothing happens. When I try to close PlayOnLinux, it is even worse: Unity seems unable to close it (I even had a frozen screen when trying to xkill it through the terminal). I am looking forward to any tips that could help. P.S.: 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI Whistler [AMD Radeon HD 6600M Series]

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• Want an iPad? How-To Geek is Giving One Away!

  - by The Geek

  That’s right. All you have to do to enter is become a fan of our Facebook page, and we’ll pick a random fan to win the prize. Once we’ve got 10,000 fans, we’ll change the prize from an iPod Touch to an iPad 16GB (typo in the image above). Everybody who is already a fan is already automatically entered in the contest!  (there’s no country restriction). So to make sure we upgrade the prize, make sure to share the How-To Geek Facebook Fan page with your friends that might be interested (don’t mindlessly spam everybody, of course). We’ve already got the iPad sitting here. Win an iPad on the How-To Geek Facebook Fan Page Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Why Wait? Amazing New Add-on Turns Your iPhone into an iPad! [Comic]Win a Free iPod Touch in the How-To Geek Facebook Giveaway!Geek Software: Use DeliCount to Get Site-wide del.icio.us Bookmark CountsFix for Problems with How-To Geek Sidebar GadgetSet Gmail as Default Mail Client in Ubuntu TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Will it Blend? iPad Edition Penolo Lets You Share Sketches On Twitter Visit Woolyss.com for Old School Games, Music and Videos Add a Custom Title in IE using Spybot or Spyware Blaster When You Need to Hail a Taxi in NYC Live Map of Marine Traffic

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• London Hotel Gives iPad For Guest During Their Stay

  - by Gopinath

  The Brits are still waiting for the launch of iPad but a luxurious hotel, The Berkeley, located in London is offering its guest an iPad during their stay in the luxurious suites. The iPads are pre-loaded with a range of customized apps designed by the hotel for enriching the London experience of their guests.  The hotel explains From Le Monde to the Wall Street Journal, your local newspaper will be available at breakfast and quickly checking the opening times of Christian Louboutin on Motcomb Street has never been more convenient. A wide range of games, videos and comic books is available for children and our experienced Concierge team has created their personal Top 5 of must-visit places – shops, exhibitions, local attractions and some hidden gems – which are clearly mapped so that you can plan your itinerary. The Berkeley hotel is enjoying the free publicity it’s getting across the globe as they are the first one to introduce iPads in London hotels. And the Apple too, for being a symbol of luxurious gadgets. By the did I tell you that each night stay at the luxurious suites of the hotel costs around $2804? This money seems to be far more than the required  to travel to US, grab an iPad and return back home. Join us on Facebook to read all our stories right inside your Facebook news feed.

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• Does concurrency inherently introduce "randomness" into a game?

  - by Jeff

  When a game is implemented with concurrency (as most games are), does this necessarily, by its very nature, introduce an element of randomness into the game that is outside of the players' control? Note that when I use the word "random", I'm not meaning to launch into a philosophical debate about the deterministic nature of the system. I understand that concurrency is deterministic in the sense that the operating system decides which processes to allow time on the CPU and in what order (or the JVM controls which Thread's turn it is to execute, etc). But my understanding of this is that there is no way to control or predict whether one thread's next command will execute before or after another. The reason I'm asking is because this seems like a fundamental difficulty for game development where a game is supposedly designed around a player's skill. Consider a game like League of Legends. Assume that two players are battling it out. It's a very close contest between the two and it's coming down to the wire -- so much so that whoever gets their last attack off will be the one to kill the other and win the game for their team. If the players are implemented using concurrency and the situation really was like this, is it essentially out of the players' hands at this point? Is the outcome of this match all up to whatever system is arbitrarily deciding which player's thread/process will execute next? If not, what am I misunderstanding about concurrency? If so, is there any way around this problem so that a game of skill can always be a game of skill, especially in those most crucial moments?

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• Would this be viewed poorly amongst the programming community?

  - by Eric P

  So one of my responsibilities at work is to build an internal tool that helps the workers enter in all their information. It's an enterprise application that is similar to a Windows forms database tool. So it's not much different than like developing a Word + Excel combo application, but the average person in this workgroup is a 20-40 year old woman or a random chatty male type. Plus I know all of these people are heavily involved with Facebook on a daily basis. How bad would it be if I styled my new interface to be similar to what Facebook does. People could get award points and stuff when they fill out different types of forms and basically compete against each other like it was a game. When people had completed one, it would be posted on their wall and everyone could comment/like stuff just like in Facebook. And it would be like they are doing peer reviewing for fun. The rewards would be outstanding I would imagine. These people are so into Facebook and Facebook games that productivity would rise due to them trying to compete and earn points and achievements. Would this be taking advantage of the people by 'tricking them into working harder by giving them a game' or would it be viewed as something that would improve happiness at work?

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• C#/XNA get hardware mouse position

  - by Sunder

  I'm using C# and trying to get hardware mouse position. First thing I tryed was simple XNA functionality that is simple to use Vector2 position = new Vector2(Mouse.GetState().X, Mouse.GetState().Y); After that i do the drawing of mouse as well, and comparing to windows hardware mouse, this new mouse with xna provided coordinates is "slacking off". By that i mean, that it is behind by few frames. For example if game is runing at 600 fps, of curse it will be responsive, but at 60 fps software mouse delay is no longer acceptable. Therefore I tried using what I thought was a hardware mouse, [DllImport("user32.dll")] [return: MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.Bool)] public static extern bool GetCursorPos(out POINT lpPoint); but the result was exactly the same. I also tried geting Windows form cursor, and that was a dead end as well - worked, but with the same delay. Messing around with xna functionality: GraphicsDeviceManager.SynchronizeWithVerticalRetrace = true/false Game.IsFixedTimeStep = true/fale did change the delay time for somewhat obvious reasons, but the bottom line is that regardless it still was behind default Windows mouse. I'v seen in some games, that they provide option for hardware acelerated mouse, and in others(I think) it is already by default. Can anyone give some lead on how to achieve that.

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• Performance issues with visibility detection and object transparency

  - by maul

  I'm working on a 3d game that has a view similar to classic isometric games (diablo, etc.). One of the things I'm trying to implement is the effect of turning walls transparent when the player walks behind them. By itself this is not a huge issue, but I'm having trouble determining which walls should be transparent exactly. I can't use a circle or square mask. There are a lot of cases where the wall piece at the same (relative) position has different visibility depending on the surrounding area. With the help of a friend I came up with this algorithm: Create a grid around the player that contains a lot of "visibility points" (my game is semi tile-based so I create one point for every tile on the grid) - the size of the square's side is close to the radius where I make objects transparent. I found 6x6 to be a good value, so that's 36 visibility points total. For every visibility point on the grid, check if that point is in the player's line of sight. For every visibility point that is in the LOS, cast a ray from the camera to that point and mark all objects the ray hits as transparent. This algorithm works - not perfectly, but only requires some tuning - however this is very slow. As you can see, it requries 36 ray casts minimum, but most of the time 60-70 depending on the position. That's simply too much for the CPU. Is there a better way to do this? I'm using Unity 3D but I'm not looking for an engine-specific solution.

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• Changing Career to Game Development

  - by Don Carleone

  I m enthusiastic about and ready to shifting my career to Game Development sector, but before that I wonder some situations, I m now working as Senior .net programmer, i can only write code in c# right now, but i started to learn c++, I m computer engineer so before I know how to write in C but I didnt work with big projects, I wrote "Game of Life" before with C and used only Linked List DataStructure becouse of pushed my limits. But now I m thinking to shift Game Development, I love to play Console Games, I respect people who works about that business. But I just wonder, I see a lot of great developers who write codes with C++ and I ask myself that guys dont think to join Game Industry so why I think I can join! is that True? I dont live in USA or big country like. I live in a poor country, and here is no any Game Development Company, so I have to move to USA for working that job. So can you tell me if I start to learn something (c++,game enginees,physic enginees,3d math etc.) right now and working my usual job, after 7-8 month is it good time to move and finding a job about Game development in USA as junior game developer? is that possible? or is this just a dream? I realy need your advices. You can give down vote about that no problem, at least one advice can help me in my life.

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• How can I rank teams based off of head to head wins/losses

  - by TMP

  I'm trying to write an algorithm (specifically in Ruby) that will rank teams based on their record against each other. If a team A and team B have won the same amount of games against each other, then it goes down to point differentials. Here's an example: A beat B two times B beats C one time A beats D three times C bests D two times D beats C one time B beats A one time Which sort of reduces to A[B] = 2 B[C] = 1 A[D] = 3 C[D] = 2 D[C] = 1 B[A] = 1 Which sort of reduces to A[B] = 1 B[C] = 1 A[D] = 3 C[D] = 1 D[C] = -1 B[A] = -1 Which is about how far I've got I think the results of this specific algorithm would be: A, B, C, D But I'm stuck on how to transition from my nested hash-like structure to the results. My psuedo-code is as follows (I can post my ruby code too if someone wants): For each game(g): hash[g.winner][g.loser] += 1 That leaves hash as the first reduction above hash2 = clone of hash For each key(winner), value(losers hash) in hash: For each key(loser), value(losses against winner): hash2[loser][winner] -= losses Which leaves hash2 as the second reduction Feel free to as me question or edit this to be more clear, I'm not sure of how to put it in a very eloquent way. Thanks!

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