I am currently busy with a project for a university module where we have to create a computer based implementation of the original Cluedo board game that can be played with 4 to 6 players over a network. My main responsibility is the network, but due to my love for data structures I volunteered to create a class that implements the actual game board as a graph in order to provide pathfinding for our AI player as well as validation for moves and paths of players playing the game. In the original project description all players started on their own tile, but this was changed recently.

Dus to the original specification and due to the rule that a player may not move through the center room, I simply made that the center room only has a path to it, not from it (thus no children in the graph node). When the project changed I forgot about this and we started getting errors that the server says a move is invalid everytime the game starts, because naturally the pathfinding says that the distance of any path from the center room is infinite and thus (distance > playerDiceRoll).

We quickly needed a work around, without changing everything or the structure of the graph, due to the face that a player shouldn't move through the center. My solution to this was that in the validate move function, I simply check whether the player is in the center room and then return whether a move from any of the for exit blocks from the center to the desired destination with the current dice roll value is valid (because moving to any block from the center a human player would take the shortest path, using the exit closest to their desired destination.

My result code was basically:

if (in center && target != destination)
return validMove(exit1, destination, rollValue) || validMove(exit2, destination, rollValue) || .......;

My friends immediately didn't think it will work, but I sat there with a smile and compiled my code with full confidence. Their faces were priceless!

Another classic

Just C++ things

Screeps.com AI

There is a feature that i have been wondering about for a while now for this app. We all know the stackoverflow community can be toxic and horrible, but sometimes I have questions that aren't right for stackoverflow and would like to be able to ask that here. I am a 2nd year Computer Engineering student, and I know I speak for many of I say you are very confused at this age. I would love a section where you can ask carreer questions and stuff like that, not coding stackoverflow type of questions. For example currently I am wondering, should I move into the networking direction or AI. I am currently doing 2 CCNA courses and I love this, and there is a feauture for this, but IA also breaks my brain and I would love to take it further. Programming is my life, and in my holidays I code, when doing a project for class I would take a break from my programming project and work on my own code or play my favourite game Screeps, but this CCNA course is amazing and I also love that. Both AI and networking have futures in this world, but now is the time for me to pick and start to work on it!

On a 2 week CCNA networking course. I can never look at any network the same again, and I have never had this much respect for the amazing protocols

Found this funny

Just though some people will find this funny here, I laughed way too much

Too accurate

From now on you don't hack ATMs, ATMs hack you!

Windows

Just programmer things

When you codes too much last week, that every time you type something in, like a log in or password, you press ctrl+s

What is you opinion on that if Android was built on the core kernel of Linux, and that they didn't add the java virtual machine, that everything had to be done in C++. Imagine the performance and speed that we could get from a pure linux android mobile operating system!

The duck agrees on pointers

The robots had been instructed to work out how to negotiate between themselves, and improve their bartering as they went along.

The actual negotiations appear very odd, and don't look especially useful:

Bob: i can i i everything else . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Alice: balls have zero to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to

Bob: you i everything else . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Alice: balls have a ball to me to me to me to me to me to me to me

Bob: i i can i i i everything else . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Alice: balls have a ball to me to me to me to me to me to me to me

Bob: i . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Alice: balls have zero to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to

Bob: you i i i i i everything else . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Alice: balls have 0 to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to

Bob: you i i i everything else . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Alice: balls have zero to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to

The guy next to me in my OOP class.... has a Microsoft Zune

So this guy that did IT with me when we were still in school is a compulsive liar and thinks he is a know-it-all. When we chat about hardware he always throws bullshit facts about GPUs and CPUs and other PC hardware, mostly for gaming.

He also thinks he is the best coder in the world, but can barely code in delphi, the language we did for 3 years in IT class, and he passed with like 3% and I never got under 95% for the same thing. I am studying Computer Engineering, and he is doing an IT diploma with economics as an extra subject at the same university as I am.

Our daily conversations are about him saying that I will never get a job, and that his course will take him further and is much more valuable, and also throws bullshit that a company already "bought" him and that he is job secured, but he is so close to dropping out!!!

To top this, he tries to explain his beginner c++ course to me.... While I have Operating systems, immersive programming and almost starting with theoretical programming...

He even tries to act like the cool kid, and whatsapps me that he is out with one of the other computer engineers partying, while said person is actually my room mate and is sitting next to me while we code together!!!!😂

Do you guys also have these know-it-all IT guys?

I just want to say, I was sceptical to start using linux, and did researxh for about a month and decided on xubuntu as my first linux on my laptop, beacuse it was sleek and fast and no amazon clutter from ubuntu, and it uses apt-get that I already know from my raspberry pi.

I just don't like windows 10, there are many things they changed, and as a coder and a gamer I have seen them all. The crashes, the freezes, the BSODs and just being slow, many times chrome doesn't respond or even task manager stops responding, so I lost my shit and download xubuntu. Windows 7 was amazing, I have been using it since the day it came out and it will always be one of my favourite OSs, but Microsoft lost me now!

After 2 and a half months my experience is amazing, it's fast, it's elegant and looks exactly how I want it. The only time linux ever froze on me was when I tried to open a massive, and when I say massive, I mean gigantic 6mb 12000 line json file in mousepad, since I started opening stuff like that in PyCharm I haven't experienced a crash again.

Thanks for introducing me to linux devrant!!!

A discord server for DevRant users. We can use it for ranting, coding together, just messing around, helping each other and everything that you can think about!

https://discord.gg/WXht3bT

Who can relate?

I have been coding for the last 10 years since I was 8. One of my subjects this year in Computer Engineering is "Introduction to programming"

Wife called our son "Jason", but I wrote it as "json" on his birth certificate.

What is your view like where you are coding

!Rant, but a suggestion for devRant.

I feel that I get the best advise and widest range of opinions on this app. Maybe we should get a Q and A section where we can ask questions

Me as a coder

I am now downloading manjaro!

Which one are you?

I found a nice new game: TIS-100
I just had to recommend it to you guys.

Nee linux for devs: www.semicodeos.com

Check it out, it really looks good