Cocos2d-X by Example Beginner’s Guide by Roger Engelbert

Cocos2d-X by Example Beginner’s Guide by Roger Engelbert

Summary:Nice introduction, but I am not sure whether beginners will survive

If you are looking for cross platform mobile development, Cocos2d-X can be a solution for you. Written in C++, cross-platform graphics engine that allows to develop games with ease.

But with new engine comes great effort – you simply have to learn it. And it’s always good to have a companion to show you where to start. COCOS2d-X by Example can be such companion. It is organised such way it covers most common topics in games development: sprites, layers, graphics, sound, music, animations and basics of physics (big plus for the appendix with physics basics at the and of the book). You will also find nice clues e.g. how to create game tutorial with ease.

I have just one big remark here. This book is titled as “Beginner’s Guide”. Well, this might be a challenge if you are complete beginner:

- C++ explanation is definitely too shallow – make sure to buy some companion book to get started with C++
- There are also small issues with the C++ explanation. For example, I am not quite sure whether this sentence is quite correct:

“You use this instead of self. The -> notation is used to access public methods inside an object, and the . (dot) notation is used for public properties”

I think that “->” is used for accessing pointer’s properties while . (dot) is used for object’s instances.

Another thing here is, that book demands some knowledge of physics – surprise, surprise. If you haven’t heard that yet, be warned that developing games without basics of physics is hardly possible.

As for the Cocos2d-X itself, I think this is really good introduction. Each example is covered from the beginning till the end – you actually work with executable samples. There are detailed explanations of what’s going on, but as I said, people who are not familiar with C++ will probably get lost in the source listings.

Why do I give just three stars here? For the miss leading title. In my opinion, this book is for intermediate developers who are already familiar with XCode and have some basic knowledge of C++.

Summarizing, if you want to start coding with Cocos2d-X – make sure to check this book as one of the sources but be prepared for challenging source codes.

Product page:

Packt: Cocos2d-X by Example Beginner’s Guide
Safari Books Online: Cocos2d-X by Example Beginner’s Guide

How to increase numbering in sections in LyX

If you want more than just three levels of numbering within sections, you can achieve that with two different approaches inside LyX.

1. By changing Document’s settings

Document -> Settings -> Numbering & TOC

2. By applying LaTeX commands

\setcounter{secnumdepth}{5}
\setcounter{tocdepth}{5}

First approach is more elegant in case of LyX, as you will see the numbering within LyX document. In case of second approach, you will see it after compiling the source.

How to save money by moving from nazwa.pl to home.pl

Recently, I got new invoice from nazwa.pl. In order to keep my server running they asked for more than 500 PLN (~150 euro). That’s a lot. For the personal blog? That’s really huge price.

As I didn’t agreed to pay that, I made a call to nazwa.pl asking for a discount. I have done something similar already with nazwa.pl last year. In order to save on the server price, I had to order new server with some discounts and I had to move all services – which is not quite a problem for IT guy. This time, it didn’t work well. nazwa.pl made this clever move – you can get discount, but you get it only for the first 6 months of the service.

Anyway, as I made a call already, I was waiting for some reasonable discount from call centre. They did offer me a discount. But, to be polite, all they had to say was – “I have already prepared my counter-proposal. It reads thusly: You may strategically place your wonderful lips upon my posterior and kiss it repeatedly!”.

So, eventually, I have decided to move all services to home.pl.

Result:

I had two options to choose from – one from nazwa.pl

553 PLN (490 PLN after huge reduce) or
downgrade of the server and 370 PLN

vs.

offer from home.pl – 92 PLN for one year subscription (of course with some promo).

I know that home.pl will charge me heavily next year (~300 PLN) for keeping my we page alive, but still, that’s something. I will invest my current savings on that :)

Anyway, I think it’s a good idea to move your services from one place to another – from time to time.

Farewell, nazwa.pl

Getting Byword CSS working inside Mou

I really like both these applications. Both have advantages. What I really like about Mou, is it’s clear simultaneous view of Markdown and preview. Byword, on the other hand is more ascetic and “elegant”. Anyway, in my opinion, they both go head to head.

If, for any reason, you would like to use Byword’s CSS inside Mou it is super simple.

1. Download CSS from Byword page

http://bywordapp.com/extras/

Direct link to ZIP file is below:

http://bywordapp.com/static/BywordForMarked.zip

2. Unzip the file and put Byword.css inside

~/Library/Application Support/Mou/CSS

3. Since now, after restarting Mou, you can choose Byword theme as well

It is a pity that I can’t make it the other way round :( I’d really like to see Clearness inside Byword.

You can get these apps from here

   

Mac OS X Productivity Tips for Developers by Tim Berglund and Matthew McCullough

Summary:If you are new to Mac, buy it, if you are veteran – google

Mac OS X Productivity is all about these little things that are not exposed to user right after they boot into the OS X. Typically, people are not aware of that behind nice GUI there is actually a fully functional BSD system. If you are new to OS X, and you plan to use it as your development platform, it might be worth considering to take a look at this one. There are few things that might be of your interest.

Keyboard hacks is all about how to improve your keyboard experience. In my opinion both authors are a little bit too crazy about the shortcuts etc. Well, let me put that different way. OK, that’s true shortcuts are good as they speed up your work, but let be honest. Working as IT engineer is not as working at factory line. You don’t type 8h straight. So, I don’t think that working with keyboard only is that much speedup gain. Maybe in short run. Anyway, there are few interesting tips related to keyboard and I like them.

When it comes to terminal, you will learn why iTerm 2 is way better than standard terminal installed by default in OSX. I, personally, use iTerm 2 for more then year and I don’t remember the last time when I have started Terminal. What was missing here is the way to share the same terminal session. This would be something nice to watch. As for prompt modifications, I suggest to google for nice shell prompts. There is not that much here, in the video. In fact, what is shown is very git oriented.

I was slightly disappointed with the source control as well. Git only, again. Contrary, notes on markdown and Mou application is a plus. But again, GitHub pops up from middle of nowhere :)

mdfind is yet another interesting tool shown in the tutorial. To be honest, I had no idea that it exists. I always use find to locate the files (typically with grep on the other side of pipe), however it turned out that mdfind is nice, content based, search tool available straight from the command line.

There are few nice tricks related to the Finder as well. One of my favourite is Command-Option-V while copying files.

When it comes to web service helpers, Tim points out that many developers don’t know curl or wget. Well, it’s a surprise to me as for me these two apps are simply part of the basic toolset. Anyway, you will learn here few things regarding curl. If you haven’t known them, it’s definitely worth watching.

In addition to above you will get some notes on Automator – which might make your life easier in case you do some repetitive tasks. I, personally, prefer to do all the automation via scripts in the shell. Anyway, if you have the toolset of apps that register as Automator actions it might be interesting to play with it a little.

Overall, I have really, really mixed felling about this particular video. I am huge fan of Matthew and Tim (I have really enjoyed their Git related series and Grails 101). Here, however, it is different story. I think that whether this video is worth a shot really depends on your experience with OS X. If you use OS X a lot. If you don’t hesitate to use keyboard and shell, let’s be honest, you probably know, like 70%-90% of the content. On the other hand, if you have just moved to OS X and you just start to get familiar with it, I think you might benefit from this one. Anyway, like the authors say in the video by themselves – lots of the information shown here you can find using google.

Choice is yours.

O’Reilly (e-book): Mac OSX Productivity Tips for Developers
Safari Books Online: Mac OSX Productivity Tips for Developers

Learning the vi and Vim Editors by Arnold Robbins, Elbert Hannah, and Linda Lamb

Summary:If you are new to vi or vim, that’s a good starting point

vi is probably everywhere. ex, is probably everywhere. On each and every machine, you may be still during installation phase, and it might be that nothing is there, yet, but you will most likely find vi or ex or both.

Anyway, there is a huge chance that you will be either in position where you simply want to learn vi or you will be forced to use it. And then, horror begins. “How the $%^&* can I quit this editor!? Where is menu? Who have invented that?!”. And that’s the place where it is worthy to by some sort of vi related book.

Learning the vi and Vim is a really nice introduction to vi as it brings you form the point where you open a file to edit to the topics as complex as scripting in the editor. What I liked while reading were examples of vi behaviour shown is separate tables. Once you have read how to do something you are shown all the steps again. This, of course, is not shown for each and every command, but for more complex tasks.

Deeper you go into the book, the more complex topics start to pop up. These are key mappings, scripting, executing shell commands, etc. And, suddenly, out of nowhere, description of different vi clones pops up. To be honest, I have completely skipped this chapter, well, maybe not completely, I have gone quickly looking at things that might be of interest for me in context of Vim. Well, the point is, I am pretty sure that I will stick to Vim anyway (as it is mostly available clone). So, as for me, this particular chapter could be removed completely and the book would be still worth reading.

And then, part two begins – the Vim himself. Here, after brief history of the tool the party begins. Starting with command line arguments, configuration files, and all that stuff that helps you start the environment in most desired way. If you use Vim already, you are probably familiar with infinite undos and window mode (editing multiple files at once is possible in Vim if you haven’t heard that yet). Anyway, as I am pure shell like person, I definitely enjoyed description of the windows and scripting, while the section related to gvim was completely needless for me. On the other hand, chapter called “Vim Enhancements for Programmers” is highly suggested for anyone working with the source code in Vim (yes, I use Vim for coding, and gdb for debugging – they rock).

As for the part III – “Other vi Clones”, I simply browsed over it quickly as I was still in the mood for the Vim only.

Anyway, apart from the sections related to the clones I think this book is definitely worth reading. I bet you won’t memorise everything at once – there is too many information here. But you will definitely get more familiar with some less common features of Vim. And just one remark. Do your homework as you read. Open terminal, start Vim and type as you read. It will definitely help you to follow the book.

O’Reilly (print): Learning the vi and Vim Editors, 7th Edition
Safari Books Online: Learning the vi and Vim Editors, 7th Edition

Undefined symbols for architecture x86_64: ld: symbol(s) not found for architecture x86_64

If you are getting similar error in your code (while mixing C and C++ code)

Undefined symbols for architecture x86_64:
  "func()", referenced from:
      _main in cc_code-NhxeQf.o
ld: symbol(s) not found for architecture x86_64
clang: error: linker command failed with exit code 1 (use -v to see invocation)

or something like this, during linking phase

error: ‘your_symbol_goes_here’ was not declared in this scope

It might mean that you are trying to include C code in an inappropriate way.

Take a look at samples below

/* This is c_code.h */
void func();

/*This is c_code.c */
void func() {
	int a = 1;
}

/* This is cc_code.cc */
#include "c_code.h"

int main() {
	func();
	return 0;
}

Now, let’s try to compile it:

shell> cc -o cc_code cc_code.cc c_code.c
Undefined symbols for architecture x86_64:
  "func()", referenced from:
      _main in cc_code-seLpaq.o
ld: symbol(s) not found for architecture x86_64
clang: error: linker command failed with exit code 1 (use -v to see invocation)

The solution here is to mark explicitly, that symbols included in cc_code.cc are coming from C

/* This is modified cc_code.cc, now it is called cc_code_modified.cc*/
extern "C" {
        #include "c_code.h"
}

int main() {
        func();
        return 0;
}

And now, there are no issues with compilation

shell> cc -o cc_code cc_code_modified.cc c_code.c

Make sure to check this page: http://www.parashift.com/c++-faq/index.html

Fluent Conference 2013: JavaScript & Beyond Complete Video Compilation

Summary:Expensive, but still worth considering

Whenever Fluent Conference takes place I try to follow it at some point through the video materials. There is no chance for me to attend the conference, but I try at least, to see what is hot each and every year.

There is one point here. I have to confess that I am neither JavaScript developer nor HTML5 designer. What I simply do is keeping up to most recent trends and ideas in the mobile/browser world.

This is second time I am write about Fluent and I have to state it once again. The quality is great. Of course you may experience some issues with audio from time to time, you may complain that slides in the video material were shown for too short but still that’s really good stuff.

Personally, I’d like to point to two talks that seems to be completely unrelated to the topic of the conference at first place, but are definitely worth watching. First one is – A “Thank You” Can Change Your Life by Nicholas Zakas and second one is “Hey Kid! Don’t Copy That Floppy!” by Aaron Kalin. Both have catchy titles but the content itself is also worth watching.

I don’t believe that anybody will watch the whole material through and out but probably, everybody in JavaScript/HTML5 world will find some topics that may be interesting. For me, these were: Advanced jQuery Techniques by Elijah Manor and “this” in JavaScript : How It Really Works by Martha Girdler.

The issue with the material is that it is really expensive. In fact, you may well consider subscribing to Safari Books Online instead of buying this particular video. That’s a simple calculation 384 for Safari (per year) and 399 for a single video material. Well, the choice is yours.

O’Reilly (e-book): http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920030843.do
Safari Books Online: http://my.safaribooksonline.com/9781449371579?portal=oreilly&cid=orm-cat-readnow-9781449371579

Beware of bugs – they may kill your project :)

Recently, together with my son, we were playing Skylanders – Spyro’s adventure, to be precise. We have gone through all the levels, fought all the enemies and were on clear path to victory. The only enemy left was Kaos himself.

So far so good. If you have played Skylanders before, you are well aware of the final boss fight concept in that game. Simply put – completely stupid. You have to fight like 30 – 45 minutes to destroy last monster.

Anyway, we were brave :) But, there is one but. We were supposed to punch the Kaos for the very last time, his life bar was reduced to almost zero, and … game froze. Completely. No chance for any recovery.

Guess what. From the huge fan of the game and Skylanders concept, my son became antagonist. Game went on the shelf and probably it will take a long time before we get back to it.

And that’s the place for Quality Assurance in the games. I thing that apart from regular saves, it would be nice if you could have crash recovery checkpoints. This way, you could recover from the place were game crashed or just before that. Wouldn’t it be great?

Single button Apple mouse – mystery resolved :)

Irony - turn on

I have finally resolved the mystery of single button mouse in Apple’s systems.

I have broke my thumb recently and it turned out that using mouse became a nightmare. I was clicking right button accidentally all the time (I am using magic mouse). It turned out that using single button mouse (by disabling secondary button) is a bless! I can now rest like three fingers on a button without worrying that I will click secondary button.

Now, everything become clear. It seems like obvious thing that person responsible for initial Apple’s mouse concept had his/hers thumb broken.

Thank you Apple. I had no idea that there was human behind the idea after all.

Praise to single button mouse!

Irony - turn off