Tag Archives: javascript

Got regex mojo? Not so fast!

If you think you’re a regex person (not following what XKCD has told us), and that most problems can be solved with simple (yet always too simple) regular expressions, I’ve got a challenge for you: http://regex.alf.nu/.

I know a bit of regexes (use them quite a lot with VI’s search, but it’s not ECMAscript), and I’m stuck at abba. 😀 Gotta study a bit more, or learn how to think again. I could match all the “should not match” words, would be a matter of inverting the match, but I couldn’t find a way to invert the search… thanks, ECMAscript! 🙂

I hope you have better regex mojo, you’ll need it!

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Back, and with hitboxes!

Hello there! After a short break, I’m finally getting back on track! This last month has been quite a ride, so many new experiences and, while not busy busy busy, been lazy lazy lazy. 🙂 Truth is, I’ve been resting or running errands when not working, and the little time I had at home I used to relax and rest a bit.

Can’t say it didn’t work out, after all, here I am once again! 😀

I took some time to also beat some S3&K with Super Tails (on the cellphone, touchscreen gaming is hard!) and Warcraft 2 (only did it before on the PlayStation, the PC version seems to be much nicer, although more rough), things I’ve wanted to do for quite a while!

While we’re at it, another game-related thing is my new commit on the MM3 repository! I’ve finally been able to test hitboxes (even the “debug” mode works now!) and it works great! It’s not a JAWS feature, but my implementation will do. I still need to adjust its size for the current animation (different shapes, different boxes), but that’s work for another commit.

Beside everything, now that I’m a full time Java developer, I’m learning more and more about its design patterns and how things go together on large systems. It’s been a wild ride, but I’m quickly getting used to. 🙂 Gives me the creeps to look at some of my old implementations, they desperately need refactoring! 😀

See ya!

Some cleanup

Hey there, it’s hard to find time with Dexter and Breaking bad finales approaching! But they’ve already been dealt with for this week, so, more free time! 😀 Getting more tasks done, and not missing midnight, is quite an achievement for me.

Also, made a new commit from some of today and yesterday’s code on the new game, implemented a rough hitbox scheme, and still trying to debug it, works ok on bullets but not on enemies… perhaps it’s not a good approach to override a sprite’s rect() and I should implement my own collision functions, that look for hitboxes instead of them. Still, I can finally hit monsters and kill them (after the brief immunity period)!

I’m thinking about doing some cleanup tomorrow, on older posts, saw some code out of code tags, gonna check it out. I miss the CodeJam times, gotta do some more of those problems. Quite some work ahead!

 

Whoa… and we’re back!

Bah, the last couple of days almost made me die at HabitRPG, mostly because I must complete tasks before midnight (!) and I’ve got used to updating before going to sleep… and that was already late. I had something like 5HP left to avoid losing my beloved belongings, but tonight I made up and the experience gave me a new level (which restores all health), so I’m saved! 🙂 In a boring note, I could still have bought and used a potion, had the money to.

Been quite entertained with the new project, now I’m getting along with method encapsulation and developing resources as I need to. JAWS is awesome, but it lacks some features, such as hitboxes, and correctly being able to tell if a given element is partially inside the viewport … but I’m already implementing them, or didn’t look further into its code (the documentation is not as helpful as I need). JavaScript, in all its freedom, is a nice language but can be a pain sometimes too. Kudos to the guys that develop such great VMs to run all sorts of things, that must indeed be quite a challenge!

That’s it for today, just wanted to put some things out. Still gotta check Evernote everyday to get new blog subjects. I have so much to write about, but the lack of posts exists because I sometimes lack motivation to start the post… once I start writing, words flow nicely. 🙂

More on JavaScript classes, function warzone

Just like Python, JavaScript tends to create things once you mention them and they don’t yet exist. In my opinion, that’s a bit more harmful than useful, because there’s danger in accidentally creating new variables and values when you assumed it would be already holding a known value. Coming from a C/C++/Java background, I would expect some kind of error for the operation:

<html>
<body onload="testFunction()">
<div id="content"></div>

<script>
function testFunction() {
    function Test() {
        var somevar=1;
    };

    var test = new Test();
    test.somevar += 10;

    document.getElementById("content").innerHTML = ""+test.somevar;
}
</script>
</body>
</html>

In this context, somevar might not exist yet, and still, you’re adding 10 to its value! By printing it is possible to check that this var is a NaN, and no errors are issued. To properly (as I eventually found out by trying) get and set its value, one must create getter and setter functions, to “publicly interface” in other contexts:

<html>
<body onload="testFunction()">
<div id="content"></div>

<script>
function testFunction() {
    function Test() {
        var somevar=1;

        this.getSomevar = function() {
            return somevar;
        };

        this.setSomevar = function(value) {
            somevar = value;
        };
    };

    var test = new Test();
    test.setSomevar(test.getSomevar() + 10);

    document.getElementById("content").innerHTML = ""+test.getSomevar();
}
</script>
</body>
</html>

But hey, be careful when using “this”, its context is related to the current function, not the “class”, as one would think coming from a Java mindset. Using “this” inside class functions can cause undesired effects, such as defining new variables inside the “method” context and again we’ll run into the NaN problem:

<html>
<body onload="testFunction()">
<div id="content"></div>

<script>
function testFunction() {
    function Test() {
        var somevar=1;

        this.getSomevar = function() {
            return this.somevar;
        };

        this.setSomevar = function(value) {
            this.somevar = value;
        };
    };

    var test = new Test();
    test.setSomevar(test.getSomevar() + 10);

    document.getElementById("content").innerHTML = ""+test.getSomevar();
}
</script>
</body>
</html>

Pushed some updates to the game on github. 🙂

Classes in JacaScript? There’s a way

I was messing with my game prototype when something came along: how do I create objects in this thing? Many of the examples I’ve seen were quite weird, with functions creating new instances of things and being used to define objects. But what about real classes? Inheritance? After all, is there a standard in JavaScript?

Looks like it doesn’t, and many approaches seem to consist in implementing custom sugar functionality or using some weird techniques (from a C++/Java/Python developer’s point of view). I still want to check the examples to establish a memory footprint, because, apart from “static” (in JavaScript, prototype) functions there is no such thing as static beside a “global variable” (that might even contain a function). JavaScript is indeed an easy but weird language. 🙂

Anyway, my project was pushed to GitHub today, there is some basic functionality but not much beside some test bench. I’m working now to reach an architectural model for my objects with shallow inheritances to assure it “stays small” and following some best practices. The JavaScript/HTML5 Netbeans plugin is awesome! Also took some time to try jVI again, I’m more productive with it even with its performance penalty.

 

Blogging from my ancient Android tablet

Hey there, this is the first post I’m attempting to deliver from one of my cheap tablets (this one being written from an Eyo net-tab, I guess, the name may vary, also looks nothing like the picture), through the amazing WordPress app. I’m typing at one of those mini USB keyboards residing on an imitation leather cover, and I must say that it’s not that bad…

Lately I’ve been playing with some JavaScript engine called JAWS, and a game is starting to take some form. >:) It’s being hard to blog, sometimes due to lazyness, other times to being quite busy (thank HabitRPG for that), but I’m trying… trust me! 🙂

Also been using Hibernate at a Java SE application, and I can’t say bad things about it (aside reproducing some JPA bugs with floating point numbers at MySQL, but nothing directly related to Hibernate), in fact, it indeed made my life much easier with the Netbeans plugin that does all the “low-level” SQL work leaving you with ready-to-use objects from database tables, and that’s simply wonderful! No need to re-invent the wheel everytime you start a new application. This way I can focus more at UI level programming and doing a much more polished job.

For tonight, that’s it. I’ll be back later.

PS.: The WordPress app sucks at dealing with links at edit level I’ll put the text links later.

Update:  even the wordpress admin panel is not hanling links correctly at WYSIWYG editor, had to place links directly into the post’s HTML.