So, after two and a half weeks of progressively programming a nested switch calculator for a future University of Michigan application, I have come to the climax of new ideas and creations for this calculator. It is a C++, control-prompt ran nested switch calculator; prompting users to enter 'A-P' at the main menu for the type of calculation (Calculus, Trig, Business, etc.), with switches inside for each, including various inclusions and subsections of each process.
[1]: http://i.stack.imgur.com/5QTPE.png --MY CURRENT PROJECT
So, my next step/problem.
I have yet to find out how I can combine all these into a smart, concise and accurate calculator that takes TEXT INPUT, and calculates it right then and there with the given operators, evidently given by the users. Does anyone have any clue on how to accomplish this? What I can look into to completely change this calculator into something similar to Wolfram Alpha™ (the GOOGLE for calculations).
It would look something like this:
Enter your calculation here:_____________________________________
The user would enter anything ranging from quadratic formulas to just simple addition. Seems like a very tough concept to grasp given that C++ isnt very inclined to create Applets like Java, and also that I am fairly new to programming (about 1 month strong).
If anyone has any clue on how I can accomplish this (if it is even possible), that would be amazing. Thank you!
Related
I am beginning C++. I have a long way to go and I am one to never stop learning. I want to create a project for myself that will allow me to learn as I go. It will also give me the motivation and possibly add to my portfolio when I graduate.
The runescape skill calculator will ask for your current experience in the current skill of your choosing and your desired level.
For Example: my woodcutting experience is 60 and I want to get to lvl 5 which is 120 exp. That means im 60 experience away. by cutting oak logs I get 5 experience per log. The calculator would tell me I need to cut 12 Oak logs. All these numbers are made up.
So to my question. Where would I even begin? Hoping it would have buttons to press.
Sorry pretty new to all this. I will start with getting what I want in a Command Line first. I will be using Visual C++ 2010 express. Not sure of all the tools I will need as I am new. I can not go into detail as I do not know how I am going about this. Vague was good. Thank you
Unfortunately, a general question can only get a general answer:
First, build the program to run interactively from the command line with correct behaviour.
Then, (if you haven't designed it this way) extract the code into a class. This will allow you to call it from future programs.
Then, write an GUI that interfaces with the class.
A good set of unit tests will help throughout this project, and will make you more marketable when you present your portfolio.
For more specific answers, ask again with more detail provided.
I think that it is important to get a grip on the problem before developing.
The main questions are:
Where will you get the information about the exp. (manual input in your program, or available on-line as open data)?
Will you put your lvl in the app, or will you use the Runescape highscores API (Runescape Highscores API) and just give your UserId?
Will you get the data on the fly, or will you load them once (e.g. startup of your application). What will you do if your application runs for a long time?
How will you calculate the result you want? Are there error margins?
Afterward, you should start thinking about your UI.
Will this application be transported to different platforms?
Will you use only a text interface or something more graphical?
An now is the time to make the choice for the development architecture (what part of the code will run where: server, client, web-based, etc...). Once this choice is made, you can make a choice of development language or languages.
Visual Studio Express seems a good choice, since it permits you to choose a number of development options: client/Server, client, web application, database application, choice of development language (C, C++, C#, F), ...
Now is the time to do what Steve V. advises you to do.
As already said above: your question is general, so I could not get into more detail.
Good luck !
I'm curious about how works feature on many social sites today.
For example, you enter list of movies you like and system suggests other movies you may like (based on movies that like other people who likes the same movies that you). I think doing it straight-sql way (join list of my movies with movies-users join with user-movies group by movie title and apply count to it ) on large datasets would be just impossible to implement due to "heaviness" of such query.
At the same time we don't need exact solution, approximate would be enough. I wonder is there way to implement something like fuzzy query to traditional RDBMS that would be fast to execute but has some infelicity. Or how such features implemented on real systems.
that's collaborative filtering, or recommendation
unless you need something really complex the slope one predictor is one of the more simple ones it's like 50 lines of python, Bryan O’Sullivan’s Collaborative filtering made easy, the paper by Daniel Lemire et al. introducing "Slope One Predictors for Online Rating-Based Collaborative Filtering"
this one has a way of updating just one user at a time when they change without in some cases for others that need to reprocess the whole database just to update
i used that python code to do predict the word count of words not occurring in documents but i ran into memory issues and such and i think i might write an out of memory version maybe using sqlite
also the matrix used in that one is triangular the sides along the diagonal are mirrored so only one half of the matrix needs to be stored
The term you are looking for is "collaborative filtering"
Read Programming Collective Intelligence, by O'Reilly Press
The simplest methods use Bayesian networks. There are libraries that can take care of most of the math for you.
I am immediately placing this as a community wiki thing. I don't want to ask for help in programming yet or have even a specific question about programming, but rather the process and the resources needed to make such a game.
To put it simply: My college friend and I decided to give ourselves a really big challenge to further our skills in programming. In six months time we want to show ourselves a Pac-Man game. Pac-Man will be AI-controlled like the Ghosts and whichever Pac-Man lives the longest after a set of tries wins.
This isn't like anything we've done so far. The goal here, for me, isn't to create a perfect game, but to try and complete it, learn a whole bunch in the process. Even if I don't finish in the time, which is a good possibility, I would want to have at least tried this.
So my question is this: How should I start preparing myself? I already have started vector math, matrices, all that fun stuff. My desired platform would be DirectX 9.0c; is that advisable? Keep in mind that this is not a preference just for this project, but I wish to have some kind of future in graphics development, so I want to pick a platform that is future-safe.
As for the game development in general, what should I take into consideration? I have never done a real game before, so any and all advise to development of mid-scale projects( if this would be a mid-scale project ) is greatly appreciated.
My main concerns are the pit-falls and demotivators.
Sorry if the question is so vague. If it doesn't belong here, then I will remove it. Otherwise, any and all advise regarding making larger projects is greatly appreciated.
Given you've not tried this sort of thing before here's a few things I'd recommend.
Start with something other than DirectX (and presumably C++)
DirectX and C++ expose you to a lot of low-level stuff you can learn later. Keep things simple and perhaps try XNA and C# which is close enough you can port it later but will let you skip a lot of things like memory management and pointers for now.
Start with 2D instead of 3D
The original Pacman is 2D so you won't be needed vector math for now.
So where does that leave you?
Well, a few things to think about are the game loop, keeping things in sync, updating the screen and responding to user input.
These are great principles and will let you get something up and running a lot sooner. Do not underestimate how important it is to keep seeing progress - this is hard if you set the technical bar too high initially.
I'd go down this route (ordered to keep things fun and interesting)
Get a screen displaying - this is highly visual
Get a Pacman responding to user input
Get Pacman constrained to within the walls
Get a ghost responding to secondary user input - you can chase each other
Figure out some collision detection
Get the dots and power pills rendering so you can score and eat ghost
Render some more ghosts and figure out AI
Work out the code for finding when the level is complete
Make the map change and state reset when on a new level
Once you've got this working and running you can then decide if you want to play with better AI, 3D math or switch over to C++.
I had to write a pacman game in Java for an OO class. I found it to be very straightforward, possibly with the exception of figuring out the best way to map walls. After a bit of research, I came across this: http://javaboutique.internet.com/PacMan/source.html which uses bit-shifting to determine walls. It looks like complexity overkill, but I found it to be pretty elegant after I played around with the math a little. Other than that, pacman is a very array-friendly concept, so use an array for the board, some basic sprites, tinker with the speed and refresh, keep track of game data, and toss it in a loop.
As for the AI with the ghosts, there are articles written about them. Each ghost has a specific "strategy". Or you could roll your own..you could program them to be as easy as always heading towards pacman (or his general location/quadrant), or as complex (shortest-path) as you'd like.
Play pacman! This is the first task for your project!
I'd look at the original arcade cabinet assembly code for Pacman and the description of what it does. It's a real eye opener :)
Personally, here's what I would do:
study open source games to see what they do
buy a book about game programming (actually, I have a book about game programming already, but you probably want something more recent than that)
pick a toolset/game development library (Sourceforge, Google Code)
work through the tutorials that come with that library, possibly change to a different library if the API is too weird
come up with a requirements document
draw up a first pass design ("plan to throw one away"), try to have somebody review it
decide on a test plan
write up a schedule, not because I want to stay on schedule but because I want to break things down into easily-defined tasks
write the smallest complete game I could (eg., a Pac Man sprite that I can control inside a window: no maze, ghosts, score, lives, ability to die, etc.)
add features to that game until I've implemented the whole thing
Sounds like a good idea for a learning project! The 2 general things I recommend for your approach are
work in iterations
read a bunch about C++ and DirectX along the way
Start small -- write some code that does nothing more than draw Pac-Man on the screen. Then build on that by implementing movement across the screen. Then build the map boundaries and the inability to travel through them. And continue in this fashion, prioritizing the next task you need to complete, and then doing whatever it takes to complete it. Try not to make the tasks too big.
In order to figure out how to complete the tasks, you'll need to read. Books, web sites and existing code are all very helpful in figuring out how to do what you want. It's worth looking at several different ways to complete the same task, because some ways are better than other, or might better fit your project.
Good stuff! I am glad that Pacman motivates and inspires you.
Things to get started.
1) Decide on the development environment.
a) Are you building a standalone game or a networked game.
b) Which language are you targetting at to improve?
2) How well versed with AI?
3) How well versed with the programming algorithms techniques - like A * (A star) path finding, Dijkstra algorith, collision detection, hit testing or even recursive programming?
4) Are any of you talented in graphical design?
Good luck.
P/S FYI, if I were to write a Pacman game, I would do it in C# and Silverlight 4.0 (I can write C++ comfortably but my priority is to jump on the Silverlight bandwagon).
This is my first time asking here but I've been a reader for ages! A fantastic place to learn!
I was asked to design a simple board game as a programming project this semester (using C++) and to implement GUI for a bonus mark. I was rather lost reading through tens of possible GUI toolkits and not knowing which one to use. I'm rather a beginner and this is my first big project!
My requirements for GUI are very very basic. All I want is to allow the user to pick from between two options at the start of the game. Those options determine which character the user will pick in the game to play with. This is the only input I want from the user. The console program would receive this input, interpret it and do all the logic of the game in the console window.
Currently, the console window displays a numbered list of options for the user who then picks a number and based off that character input, the console knows what to do through some if-statements.
Up till now, I've been told that GTK+ is a good option and I've been advised to check out wxWidgets and QT4. I'm confused on which one to use since I want something fast to learn and simple to implement because the purpose I want it for is also simple. I was also rather reluctant to start learning a GUI toolkit from its basics then realizing it might not have my simple requirement.
Thank you in advance fellas and sorry for the rather long post!
If you want something pretty basic as far as a GUI goes, it might be worth looking into some sample applications from any of the named projects. See what you can find in a sample application that is most similar to what you have, and try to get that working. Then once you have it working, and tweaked to your liking, maybe play around with things a bit more then for a further/better understanding.
My previous experience is with WxWidgets and Qt. My advice would be to check out Qt because of the great documentation for the project as well as the QAssistant.
Good Luck, GUIs can be really fun to incrementally learn!
just finished writing a five card poker hand evaluator in C++. now im looking for a new project about the same level of difficulty. maybe a very simple DOS command parser?
It sounds like you might be interested in the type of problems Project Euler offers. In particular, it sounds like you have a solution for Problem 54 already.
Try a calculator, one that takes a full formula, evaluates it and gives the result.
(96+123)/3-56^2+45*2
Are you done yet? Why not write a 7-card evaluator, first using your 5-card evaluator and then find a direct way that does not require the 21 checks per evaluation? The latter is a challenge in caching and memory management! There are many sources of inspiration to be found online -- check out Coding-The-Wheel to get started, for instance.
Extend your hand evaluator to have more inputs - like being able to dynamically calculate strength should it know another hands worth of cards. From there, extend further to calculate strength based on knowing N hands. With this, you're half way to a very nice poker-bot - capable of working with other instances of itself against other players.
:D
Complete source code for Texas hold'em poker game evaluator can be found here:
http://www.advancedmcode.org/poker-predictor.html
It is built for matlab, the GUI id m-coded but the computational engine is c++.
It allows for odds and probability calculation. It can deal, on my 2.4Ghz laptop, with a 100000 10 players game computation in 0,3 seconds.
An accurate real time computer:-)