At 11/23/09 11:24 AM, Rucklo wrote:

dunno if anyone here ever used matlab? that's the playground where maths and programming meet and duke it out. ^____^

I did, matlab is fun :D.
Also algorithm analysis

At 11/23/09 01:52 AM, DeviantSpaceMan wrote:

At 11/22/09 08:35 AM, Jessii wrote: Why are you using tables? And just use an image, slice it and stick it back together with 3 different columns (preferably using divs instead of tables).

I'm using tables because It just seems easier to develop layouts with it then css. Don't know why, I'm just weird.

It might seem that way now, but you're gonna hate yourself when you'll have to do maintenance

At 11/22/09 05:55 AM, adam2510 wrote:

i'm going to have fun with tafe next year :P

assignment after assignment :D

whats astrobite?

That's one of my projects, it's a game I started a while ago, there's a link to a gameplay video in the projects page.

Also I'm basically two buttons away from making multiple fighting instances for it. If I'm lucky I'm gonna upload a video in a few days to show you exactly what I mean

At 11/22/09 03:50 AM, adam2510 wrote: so... how was everyones week?

Really tired, assignments :(
I let my homework build up and right now I think I have 5 more assignments.
On the other hand Astrobite now has a shiny new HUD.

At 11/13/09 10:21 AM, GodsBitch wrote:

The new project does sound rather interesting. We will be programming mobile apps using a simplified version of Java for mobile devices (although I forget the name). I don't think we have to make anything advanced. From what I gather it's a simple question game, where the user must select between to answers. If they answer correctly, they move on to the next question. If they get it wrong it's game over.

That actually sounds very nice. I always said that I'm gonna try to do some sort of app for my phone, specifically something that would take advantage of my phones' accelerometer.And maybe someday I'm actually gonna do it.

I'm also still working on improving the text based adventure game "World of Zuul". I can't imagine this becoming very exciting, but as it's a game, and that's where my passion lies, I think I'm going to try and making something that I will be proud of.

You could use your imagination for this project if you want to make it interesting. For instance try to make the text update using a Matrix text like effect

I'm also doing mostly homework these days because I let them build up and now I kinda have to start making them. They're not that hard, but they're about 90% math. I'll get them done... evetually

I think it has to do with your area of interest. Personally I tend to believe that if you don't really need math in your activity, then you're probably gonna suck at it.

However I also think that it's important for programmers to have some mathematical knowledge, stuff like trigonometry, integrals and derivatives, basic geometry (Pythagoras theorem, polar coordinates, stuff like that), maybe some linear algebra too if you have to work with matrices.
That's because some problems have a simple mathematical solution that is usually easier and sometimes better than a more intuitive algorithm (The only thing that comes to mind right now is population dynamics)

I speak four languages :D, sometimes even at the same time, because I am *that* hardcore (nerdy)

At 11/9/09 11:47 AM, GodsBitch wrote:

Also, I'm not sure if Kiwi-Kiwi want me to be advertising this or now, but I don't see how it can be of any harm. He is working on the Microsoft MSN Casual Games Program and is looking for a team of people to work with. If anyone thinks they have the appropriate skills to be working on a game, then I don't see why they shouldn't drop him a PM.

I'm not sure if working on the program is the right syntax, I recently found out about the program and want to submit a game.

I want to set up a team mostly because I'm curious about working on a project over the internet. I'm not sure if there's any remuneration to be had, if there is, we'll just split the money evenly.

And thanks a lot for the advertisement.

At 11/9/09 04:58 AM, adam2510 wrote: oh great i killed it again :(

How's that NG app goin?

Quick google revealed this ASM IDE
Also MASM 6.11 is a pretty old version, I would get the newest masm if I were you, but the book might still be good for learning purposes.
And I'd also suggest reading AOA

At 11/4/09 04:32 AM, GodsBitch wrote:

Thanks for the advice. We do have an optional computer game programming module in our 3rd or 4th year which I'm pretty keen to take, but I'm not sure how much help it will be, as it will only be a 12 or so week module I think. I know they teach you C++ in it though, so I think it will be worth my time.

Both C and C++ are some languages that are very interesting to know because they don't add that extra abstraction layer over computer resources (I'm talking mostly about memory management).

Even though this means it's a lot easier to screw up, I tried benchmarking a simple OpenGL app by displaying a simple model made out of 100 or so vertices on a Lenovo 3000 N200 with 2GB memory. By dropping /clr from the compile options in Visual Studio, it gained another 100 frames per second.

Also, I like pointers.

On the topic of that programming module, I'd advise you to go, even though they might not teach you everything you want to know, the course will be full of people with the same interests you have, maybe you can learn from them too, or pair up to make a game for a competition

Thanks. I'll definitely look into this.

You've been a great help Kiwi.

Glad to be of assistance.

At 11/3/09 02:23 PM, funkycaveman wrote:

You also haven't said how competent you are with computers and operating systems in general.
installed 64bit vista a few times, and have burnt an image of ubuntu on a cd ready to be installed

Competent with an operating system means for instance using the command line to set up your wireless network (I actually tried that in ubuntu)

But anyway it's worth getting linux at least for the experience of having linux, plus you never know when you might need it.
I for one have linux for more reasons. First of all I like to use synfig studio which crashes a lot on windows 7, then it's for programming reasons, specially for C/C++. Plus KDE looks very nice.

At 11/3/09 11:32 AM, GodsBitch wrote:

From what I gather, it's quite common for Computer Science students to work on this. It's called World Of Zuul. It's basically a text based adventure game, similar to old games like Colossal Cave Adventure.

That sounds very cool, if you need any help on this PM me

Text games aren't really all that appealing to me, but they can be fun.

You should try NetHack

More importantly, I think working on a game, no matter how basic, will be a little more motivating for me. I'd like to end up working in the computer game industry at some point in my life. Whether this will happen or not I have no idea.

The industry uses mostly C/C++, but you could probably get in a mobile department with a java portfolio. If you are really serious about this, you could probably find a internship as a game developer.
AFAIK companies will take you from 0 on the game development department, so they won't really expect you to know everything from the beginning, but a portfolio might be worth having.

If you have nothing better to do you could try to join the experimental gameplay project, it's a nice place to build a portfolio and you can probably meet some people there that can teach you a lot of things.

Well, I'm actually very satisfied with windows 7, I'm running a dual boot with sabayon linux and I'm very satisfied by both of them.
First of all I just love the new taskbar and the ideas they incorporated,the whole pinning and recent files thingy.
Second, network management is WAY better than other windows versions. Back when I had vista, it used to take a whole few seconds until it connected to my wireless network, right now I essentially blink and it's connected. Plus up until now I didn't find any app that I used to use on vista and won't work on 7.

As far as the system goes I'm not that sure what improvements they made except replacing DirectDraw with Direct2D, but it's fairly faster than my old windows system.Maybe the fact that I reformatted my entire hard drive had something to with it, but it definitely runs smoother and boots faster.

Anyway, like I said, I think it's pretty nice.
Also for those of you that like to play around in VMs you might find this interesting

At 11/1/09 11:30 AM, Super-Yombario wrote:

At 11/1/09 02:05 AM, kiwi-kiwi wrote:
Yes,but word,worpad,notepad and this very textbox don't give you the option of setting up a compiler to run your program, nor do they offer auto-completion for the programming language you are currently using.

Oh, really? You can make and compile a Flash game in a text editor? Would you mind telling me how to do that?

link Read skabeles' post. Notepad++ lets you configure commands to run in cmd, command line compiling fun ensues

At 11/1/09 01:38 AM, Super-Yombario wrote:

At 10/26/09 02:59 PM, hdxmike wrote:
In fact there is a nifty program called notepad++ that lets you write in virtually any language including AS

You can write AS with Word, Wordpad, Notepad, you can write AS in this very textbox. Just because Notepad++ provides syntax highlighting doesn't mean a thing.

Yes,but word,worpad,notepad and this very textbox don't give you the option of setting up a compiler to run your program, nor do they offer auto-completion for the programming language you are currently using.

At 10/31/09 05:01 PM, littleMonsterGames wrote:

At 10/29/09 09:40 AM, CronoMan wrote: My advice would be to read the entire file into memory, and then parse from there.

That's what he doesn't want to do, I think.

CronoMan is right.
Also if you need speed I'd advise you to use fread.
Relevant pic:

At 10/31/09 04:27 PM, blah569 wrote: A small operating system that I've been working on now. The kernel is pretty fast to respond and is pretty smooth at the moment. A few screenshots:

Image 1
Image 2
Image 3

Image 4 - shows the entire desktop instead of just the emulation window.

Pretty basic at the moment, but I really like how it works.

That's very cool, what type of kernel architecture are you using, microkernel, monolithic ?

Also sorry for the late response, didn't see your question, yes it's XNA and also thanks for the compliment, I hardcoded all the animations. Took me a while, but I'm satisfied with the result

I use Linux mainly for making art, but I also program on it every now and then.
I'd suggest using Qt Creator as an IDE if you like to use C or C++, it has some great graphics and a very smooth auto-complete + debugger that lets you see the assembler code

mmmm assembler

At 10/27/09 04:30 AM, CronoMan wrote:

At 10/26/09 06:15 PM, UnknownFear wrote: Can anyone give me some help with this? Please?

System.in.readln()

There is no System.in.readln() in java

The easiest way to get input from the console is to use a Scanner class available in java.util

Scanner sc = new Scanner(System.in);
	System.out.print(sc.next());}

At 10/28/09 12:39 PM, GodsBitch wrote:

So much for the first year of uni being nothing but parties eh. Still, I do enjoy it a lot more than school.

I wholeheartedly agree.
It seems it's Halloween again. I'm gonna cleverly disguise myself as a tired student that has no time to sleep between assignments. It was either that or stereotype gamer that can't leave the xbox controller alone.
What are you guys gonna be ?

It probably ends at some point in the sense that beyond that point you are going to find nothing,in this case nothing being unoccupied space, therefore being something and worth taking into consideration.

It's kinda like numbers you know, just take any number and add a 9 before it and you get a bigger number and you could just go like that forever, never ending.

If this thing comes out, it's gonna make flash drives look like floppy disks

Just found out I'm gonna have three assignments due in late November, two of them involving tons of algebra I have to by hand. Right now I'm basically doing almost anything else except these assignments.

Crud

On the bright side the day after tomorrow is my free day, probably gonna start doing what I have to then.

At 10/26/09 03:56 PM, Jon-86 wrote:

I honestly don't care but I will be happy to take the opportunity even if it is from something thats been blown out of all proportion to show off the work I've done. I spent the time hammering out the project and the late nights were brutal.

I'd be very interested in reading what you wrote there if you don't mind.

At 10/25/09 03:13 PM, bgraybr wrote:

Here's your problem

put("A");

By using "A" you are passing a pointer to an array made out of two chars 'A' and '\0'
Change it to put('A') and it should work

What operating system are you using ?

At 10/24/09 01:48 PM, GodsBitch wrote:
Seems a little unfair to be given an exam on things that you haven't even been taught.

Well, I always thought uni is more about training your mind to deal with tough problems on the fly using the knowledge you already possess, therefore I think this is all that this exam is about

However reverse polish notation is a bit too much info to process in one exam if you didn't previously know about it, not to mention that if there was someone taking that exam that already knew about reverse polish notation, (s)he would have somewhat of an advantage over the others, I mean it's not an obscure concept almost no one knows anything about.
But what's done is done, how'd you do at the exam ?

At 10/22/09 02:15 PM, Jon-86 wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quicksort

Quicksort has n log n complexity in the best case scenario, insert sort has n, I bet there are more frames on average when the depth order doesn't change, so I would go for insert sort on this one, but jon is right, qsort is a pretty popular algorithm that can be applied to any kind of data and might be worth knowing for future projects.

Your best bet would be to generate and extended dataset for testing with that will contain relevant data that you expect to see (if you can) and then run a few algorithms on that and time them.

I would also advise you to do this, it is always a good strategy to test your solutions on a set of random data you expect to see in your application

At 10/22/09 01:33 PM, RyanPridgeon wrote: I'm sorting an array of classes by a property, probably going to be about 10 - 50 of them to be sorted.

It's for depth management in my game. Sorting the display objects by their y coordinate so that the depth is correct. (front-top view RPG)

Thankyou for the wiki page. And yeah, I was hoping there was something better than the infamous bubble/shuttle sort :P

It looks like insertion sort is the best for my situation? I'm not entirely sure. Thanks for the help

For 10-50 items it shouldn't be that big a deal, maybe when the item count gets >40. Also yes insert sort is a good idea to implement in your case because there are going to be a lot of cases when the array is already sorted and that being the best case scenario, it's going to have a O(n) complexity.

But anyway if you're that worried about speed and seeing as you basically sort numbers you could go for the radix sort. It could be a good exercise for you as a programmer to try and do it. If you see you can't do it just go for the insert sort

And best of luck with the development