I KNOW, THERE REALLY IS AN ‘I’ IN ARCHITECTURE. But it’s not a capital ‘I’, calling attention to itself, dominating discussion. The lowercase character fits neatly within the word. It’s there only because it fulfills requirements for proper spelling and pronunciation. How does that relate to us as software architects? Our egos can be our […]
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Software is one big building with many floors and rooms. Architecture is all around you, regardless of the reason why you’re in the building. Like posters on the walls of this building, i want to share this article with some mantras that everybody should take in mind. Mantra #1—It Depends It always depends. As an […]
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In games, you often want to have your characters or game objects appear as if they are in motion. When you move game objects around the screen to create movement, using static images the game feel somewhat lifeless. To address this problem, you can use animation. As you may know, you create an animation by […]
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Development of AI in Games When developers were working on a new game in the past, they waited until the very last development stages before AI was implemented into the game. For many of the published games it cannot even be said they had an AI engine, because in some games AI code was so […]
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Runtime AOP tools create decorator/proxy classes dynamically at runtime. These classes are built by examining the signature of classes/interfaces along with an interception aspect that you’ve written, then generate a decorator class. Typically, these tools are part of IoC containers, as such containers allow you to use these generated classes transparently. My goal in this […]
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While most of us aren’t building websites for banks, medical centers, or the NCSA, it’s still important to focus on and be aware of the possible failure points of our applications. Doing so gives our products an attention to detail that will be appreciated by our user base and will evolve into real, tangible profits. […]
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Sometimes developers don’t know whether they should use a Func<> or an Expression<Func<>> with the Entity Framework and LINQ. The difference may be critical in same situations. Let’s say that you have a metod that perform a query with a where condition made as this: public IEnumerable<MyEntity> LoadMyEntities(string parameter) { return Context.MyEntities.Where(x=>x.sameValue==parameter); } If you have to use the […]
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Parallax scrolling is a technique that is frequently used in sidescrolling 2D games to give the impression of depth. It consists of making objects that are further away appear to move slower in relation to the viewer than objects that are near. Parallax scrolling is nothing but just different layers that all scroll at different […]
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Reacting to Solid Objects Collision detection is an important technique that you should learn. It is a requirement for every game ever made. I can’t think of any game that does not need collision detection, because it is such an essential aspect of gameplay. Without collisions, there is no action, goal, or purpose in a […]
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A Neural Network is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) methodology that attempts to mimic the behavior of the neurons in our brains. Neural networks really shine when it comes to pattern recognition and are used in image and character recognition programs, data filtering applications, and even robotics. A neural net was even used to drive an […]
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I know that Martin Fowler has written about this extensively, but I wanted to write a concise version, since this point seems to bear reiterating from time to time. Mocks aren’t stubs. Specifically, I recommend against setting an expectation on a method (“mocking” it) when you really want to simulate a specific response from that […]
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What Is Monogame Monogame is a component used by game developers to make their games. Monogame is an open source implementation of Microsoft XNA 4 Framework. It can target more platforms, including Android, iOS, Linux, Mac, and Windows 8. On the other hand, its development is a bit more fragmented and there are some bugs […]
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