Asynchrony in Action

In this article by Joel Martinez the author of C# 5 First Look , we will explore features which are new to C# in the 5.0 release.

Creating Virtual Landscapes

Tools are everything in game development today. Modern three-dimensional games are several orders of magnitude more complex than Sandy White's 1983 Ant Attack on the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. To create lush visuals expected from current games, we rely on a host of tools to generate content at different stages of production. Quite often, terrain is the canvas on which content is painted, if you think about it, while you might play a game and think how great the scenery looks, you're not necessarily looking at the terrain but rather the textures, vegetation, buildings and everything else that artist has constructed around it. Before we dive into using GROME we're going to cover some common caveats that apply to most game engines.

In this article by Richard A. Hawley, author of Grome Terrain Modeling with Ogre3D, UDK, and Unity3D, we're going to look at:

• Describing a world in data

• Texture sizes

• Game world scales

• Starting a new GROME project

2D Graphics

In this article by Brecht Kets and Thomas Goussaert, the authors of Building your First Mobile Game using XNA 4.0 we create a basic framework for our game and add content to it.

Core .NET Recipes

This article by A.P. Rajshekhar, author of .Net Framework 4.5 Expert Programming Cookbook , will cover recipes related to core concepts in .NET, which will include the following:

• Metadata-driven programming: The first six recipes will cover how to use attributes as metadata for specific purposes such as validation and localization.

• Reflection: The Processing custom attributes via reflection recipe will tell you how to use reflection to create metadata processors such as applications or libraries that can understand custom attributes and provide the output based on them.

• Asynchronous file I/O: This is a new feature for file input/output introduced in .NET 4.5. The Using asynchronous file I/O for directory-to-directory copy recipe will cover this feature.

• Dynamic programming: .NET 4.0 introduced the concept of dynamic programming, in which blocks of code marked as dynamic will be executed directly, bypassing the compilation phase. We will look at this in the last recipe, Accessing JSON using dynamic programming.

BackTrack Forensics

Computer forensics involves using various means to analyze, report, and recover information from computers or digital storage media, generally for legal purposes. The outcome in general is to provide the information gathered in such a way that it is useful for the person requesting the information. This includes the recovery of passwords, analyzing computer break-ins or attempts, recovering data from a hard drive after it's been "erased", and so on. In the article by Willie Pritchett and David De Smet authors of BackTrack 5 Cookbook we will examine how BackTrack can be utilized for forensic purposes.

In this article, we will cover:

• Intrusion detection and log analysis

• Recursive directory encryption/decryption

• Scanning for signs of rootkits

• Recovering data from a problematic source

• Retrieving a Windows password

• Resetting a Windows password

• Looking at the Windows registry entries

Constructing and Evaluating Your Design Solution

In this article by Andy Kirk the author of Data Visualization: a successful design process , we look at the broad variety of options for building our solution and the remaining important tasks to undertake before launching.

We will run through a selection of the most common and useful software applications and programming environments to help you select the most appropriate tool to match your design requirements and technical capabilities.

We will look at some of the key considerations around testing, finishing, and launching a design solution as well as the important matter of evaluating the success of your project post-launch.

Finally, we wrap things up with a discussion about the best ways for you to continue to learn, develop, and refine your data visualization design skills as you seek to master this fascinating and rewarding discipline.