A geek of the highest order, Terence speaks a great number of (programming) languages and dabbles in a couple of tech fields. He writes about common problems programmers come across in this blog.
Here’s a really simple math problem in 2D games development that has a surprisingly complex solution. If I were to give you angles a and b, how would you calculate 1) the direction — that is, clockwise being positive; and anti-clockwise being negative — and 2) magnitude of the shorter angle of rotation from a to b?
We want the angle in green.
When you visualise it, both values seem so obvious; which was why I was so surprised I couldn’t figure it out. On the surface, it seems really simple — if you just take b – a, doesn’t it give you the solution?
One of the more complicated concepts that beginning programmers have trouble grasping is static variables. This is in part because static variables work in a way that is quite opposite to how classes and Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) work.
Since examples work wonders in explaining concepts, here’s a use-case in Java that will help to illustrate the concept. Don’t code in Java? No problem. OOP concepts are (mostly) the same across programming languages.
When importing Tiles into the Tile Palette in Unity, you may sometimes run into an issue where your Tiles are not aligned with the grids in the Tile Palette, which will subsequently lead to the Tiles being off-alignment with the grid in your Scene too.
Unity’s Device Simulator is a very nice extension in Unity that allows users to quickly and easily test out their games on a mobile platform. It extends the Game window by adding a dropdown that allows the user to switch between the Game view and a newly-added Simulator view.
I’ve been developing a WordPress child theme based on Astra for a client recently. This child theme comes with a custom post type, and I ran into a bit of trouble trying to remove the Astra Settings Meta Box (which Astra tags onto every single post type) from my custom post type.
If you’ve got a player character in your game that derives its movement from a Rigidbody or Rigidbody2D component in Unity, and you write a script to make your camera follow it, you will likely see jittering in your camera movement.
Here’s an example:
It’s not very noticeable if you don’t move at high speeds.
Essentially, the CSV file format is meant to represent tabular data. The above CSV file represents the following table:
Username
Email
Address
Contact
johndoe
john@example.com
71 Pickering Street, Singapore, Singapore
+65-91234567
janedoe
jane@website.com
24 Raffles Lane, Singapore, Singapore
+65-81234567
marysmith
mary@smith.com
83 Riveting Road, Singapore, Singapore
+65-97654321
bobsmith
bob@smith.com
84 Riveting Road, Singapore, Singapore
+65-87654321
Due to their tabular nature, data in a CSV file can very easily be imported into and stored in an SQL table. The commands to do that, however, are not very well-documented online.
If a CSV file does not open as a text file on your computer, that’s because your computer is opening the file with a spreadsheet program such as Microsoft Excel. In such a case, to see the file as text, you will want to open these files on a text editing software such as Notepad.
Here’s a common error that people usually run into when doing Unity scripting, and it’s one that even reasonably-skilled programmers can take awhile to fix.
Many keyboards have been destroyed in rage because of this error.
