I National Conference on Computer Games Development in Gdańsk is officially over. Three days with polish game dev, technical lectures and challenging 8 hour game programming contest.

TouK as one of the lecturers presented comparison between two worlds: „Developing business web applications and producing rich browser based games”. Both, media presentation and technical paper are available below (polish version only)

WGK 2011 was also first spot where gamers and developers could check out „Project Ark” – rich space MMO browser web game project, based on open Java solutions (GWT, Spring, Hibernate) and common web standards (HTML/CSS/javascript). Project is developed in spare time by small team of coworkers of TouK. We will try to add some media presentation soon.

Technical paper

Media presentation

Technical paper summary:

Development process comparison between business web application and advanced browser based games. Presentation will touch many aspects of development process starting from analysis and technical design, through implementation, testing and final deployment, with attention to project management and business model. Very important part of presentation will discuss Open Source solutions and consequences of their use. Web game development process will be presented on example of ongoing Project Ark. It is rich space MMO browser web game project, based on open Java solutions and common web standards (HTML/CSS/javascript). It is developed in spare time by small team of coworkers of TouK IT company (www.touk.pl).

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

TouK is one of the lecturers on this year WGK (I National Conference on Computer Games Development). The conference is to take place on Gdańsk University of Technology on 2-4 September.

Our performance will be divided into two presentations. Saturday afternoon on Developers Showcase panel we will present  glimpse of fresh and revolutionary web game project – „Project Ark”. It is rich space MMO browser web game project, based on open Java solutions (GWT, Spring, Hibernate) and common web standards (HTML/CSS/javascript). Project is developed in spare time by small team of coworkers of TouK. Sunday noon is reserved for our technical lecture: „Developing business web applications and producing rich browser based games”.

Hope to see you all there !

Link to official conference web page can be found: here

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Using locale specific characters in schema or wsdl (i.e. for documentation purpose) is still quite problematic. Especially if you are using JAXB to generate wsdl2java java classes.

Because JAXB uses default system encoding and classes are usually compiled in UTF-8 special chars in java comments resolves in compilations error:

/url/to/file/SomeFile.java:[11,12] unmappable character for encoding UTF-8

A workaround to this problem is to isolate wsdl2java code generation in a dedicated maven module and to configure the compiler plugin to use OS dependant encoding:

<plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
        <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
        <configuration>
          <encoding>${file.encoding}</encoding>
        </configuration>
</plugin>

More info related to this topic: here

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Recently I was able to run some basic GWT / GXT compilation tests to compare time efficiency between some old and new machines using Microsoft Windows. Test results wasn’t something that surprised me much but by accident I was able to find a reason that makes GWT compilation choke even modern monster desktops (6 core Phenom 3.3GHz with fast 8GB Dual RAM and top SSD II Disc)

If you are using something else then lightweight anti-virus program your GWT compilation can be much more time consuming (depending on project size and complexity average of few times longer) and even freeze your desktop for a little while.

Suggestion: use lightweight anti-virus program (like Avast AV) or change its configuration that it would skip real time scanning of your local drive (greatly improves compilation time with NOD32, Norton AV etc…)

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

GWTaculous is open source visual effects library for application created in or based on GWT.

It is based on other open source library – scriptaculous which is javascript solution for visual effects and html object manipulations.

At the first glance GWTaculous is a java wrapper for javascript functions (JSNI) in scriptaculous library. But in fact it is complete solution with full java API (visual effects, effect queues, animation GWT event handlers etc). Let alone documentation and use examples. It also contains some minor bug fixes and will be updated with new visual effects.

You don’t even have to know javascript to use it. Bring life to your user interface with a single line of code !

Read more on project home page: http://top.touk.pl/confluence/display/top/GWTaculous

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Have you ever experienced problem with login to your web application that uses JCIFS NtlmHttpFilter ? Does the problem occurs on new Windows platforms (Windows 7 or Vista) and all is fine on Windows Xp ? Finally, why some user with theoretically same system have this problem while other do not report any difficulties ?

Technically the answer to your problem is here. But does it practically means that you will have to rebuild whole authentication process and start using NTLMv2 ? The answer is: it would be a good thing to do ! But if your application is pretty old, problem is selective and only handful of users report authentication problem and finally there is no time and money on the horizon… well I suppose we can think of small workaround.

First solution is pure client side workaround. Force client Windows to use old NTLMv1 with below registry change:

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa
Set LmCompatibilityLevel (DWORD) to “1”

Second solution. Small application change. Modify your NtlmHttpFilter config (web.xml):

<init-param>
    <param-name>jcifs.smb.lmCompatibility</param-name>
    <param-value>1</param-value>
</init-param>
<br>

Although first solution is bullet proof and 100% working it is not very convenient client OS modification. Use it only if second solution fails.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Using maven release plugin can save you a lot of time, especially if you still manually mange your project versioning. But sometimes it can be pain in the “back”. Simple scenario that occurred at least few times in some of my maven projects:

1. Project contains at least two separate modules (A & B)
2. One of this modules (A) is dependant on the other module (B)
3. While trying to prepare a release (release:prepare) you get missing artefact error which points at second module (B)

“Brute force” solution is launching clean install process just after getting missing artefact error and after that resume release prepare process (release:prepare). But since maven release plugin main purpose was cutting down unnecessary manual work like this – solution should be little bit subtle. For example you can change a little bit plugin configuration:

<plugin>
    <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
    <artifactId>maven-release-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>2.0</version>
    <configuration>
        <preparationGoals>clean install</preparationGoals>
    </configuration>
</plugin>
<br>

Lot of other helpful configuration properties exists, be sure to check http://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-release-plugin/prepare-mojo.html

Bookmark It

Hide Sites