Panda3D 1.6 Game Engine Beginner's Guide. This is the A-Z of Panda3D for developers who have never used the engine before. Step-by-step, it takes you from first principles to ultimately creating a marketable game. You’ll learn through first-hand experience and clear explanations

David Brian Mathews, David B Mathews, Reinier de Blois

Panda3D is a game engine, a framework for 3D rendering and game development for Python and C++ programs. It includes graphics, audio, I/O, collision detection, and other abilities relevant to the creation of 3D games. Also, Panda3D is Open Source and free for any purpose, including commercial ventures. This book will enable you to create finished, marketable computer games using Panda3D and other entirely open-source tools and then sell those games without paying a cent for licensing.Panda3D 1.6 Game Engine Beginner's Guide follows a logical progression from a zero start through the game development process all the way to a finished, packaged installer. Packed with examples and detailed tutorials in every section, it teaches the reader through first-hand experience. These tutorials are followed by explanations that describe what happened in the tutorial and why.You will start by setting up a workspace, and then move on to the basics of starting up Panda3D. From there, you will begin adding objects like a level and a character to the world inside Panda3D. Then the book will teach you to put the game's player in control by adding change over time and response to user input. Then you will learn how to make it possible for objects in the world to interact with each other by using collision detection and beautify your game with Panda3D's built-in filters, shaders, and texturing. Finally, you will add an interface, audio, and package it all up for the customer.

Kinect in Motion - Audio and Visual Tracking by Example. Start building for the Kinect today by capturing gestures, movements, and spoken voice commands

massimo fascinari, Clemente Giorio

Kinect is a motion-sensing input device by Microsoft for the Xbox 360 video game console and Windows PCs. It provides capabilities to enhance human-machine interaction along with a zero-to-hero journey to engage the user in a multimodal interface dialog with your software solution.Kinect in Motion - Audio and Visual Tracking by Example guides you in developing more than five models you can use to capture gestures, movements, and voice spoken commands. The examples and the theory discussed provide you with the knowledge to let the user become a part of your application.Kinect in Motion - Audio and Visual Tracking by Example is a compact reference on how to master color, depth, skeleton, and audio data streams handled by Kinect for Windows.Starting with an introduction to Kinect and its characteristics, you will first be shown how to master the color data stream with no more than one page of lines of code. Learn how to manage the depth information and map them against the color ones. You will then learn how to define and manage gestures that enable the user to instruct the application simply by moving arms or any other type of natural action. Finally you will complete your journey through a multimodal interface, combining gestures with audio.The book will lead you through many detailed, real-world examples, and even guide you on how to test your application.

Unleashing the Power of Data with Trusted AI. A guide for board members and executives

Wendy Turner-Williams

Written by a distinguished leader and innovator who has been instrumental in spearheading digital, cloud, and AI transformations across global brands, Unleashing the Power of Data with Trusted AI is an indispensable resource that will make you AI-ready.This comprehensive guide is designed to meet the urgent need for clarity and to give you actionable insights into today's rapidly evolving landscape of AI and its fundamental driver - data. You’ll delve into the exciting world of AI and its integration with data, uncover its significance, ethical considerations, and strategic applications with real-life success stories from industry giants like Starbucks, Netflix, and Siemens. You’ll also witness first-hand how the integration of data and AI has reshaped markets and elevated customer experiences, and discover the future of generative AI based on several surveys and case studies. You’ll gain an understanding of how AI has evolved across industries, empowering decision-making and fostering innovation. Tailored for board members, executives, innovators, and tech enthusiasts, this immersive guide will reshape your understanding of data and AI synergy.By the end of this guide, you’ll be able to lead your teams, customers, partners, and organizations confidently and responsibly in the era of AI.

Mockito Cookbook. Over 65 recipes to get you up and running with unit testing using Mockito

Marcin Grzejszczak

Linux Kernel Programming. A comprehensive guide to kernel internals, writing kernel modules, and kernel synchronization

Kaiwan N Billimoria

Linux Kernel Programming is a comprehensive introduction for those new to Linux kernel and module development. This easy-to-follow guide will have you up and running with writing kernel code in next-to-no time. This book uses the latest 5.4 Long-Term Support (LTS) Linux kernel, which will be maintained from November 2019 through to December 2025. By working with the 5.4 LTS kernel throughout the book, you can be confident that your knowledge will continue to be valid for years to come.You’ll start the journey by learning how to build the kernel from the source. Next, you’ll write your first kernel module using the powerful Loadable Kernel Module (LKM) framework. The following chapters will cover key kernel internals topics including Linux kernel architecture, memory management, and CPU scheduling. During the course of this book, you’ll delve into the fairly complex topic of concurrency within the kernel, understand the issues it can cause, and learn how they can be addressed with various locking technologies (mutexes, spinlocks, atomic, and refcount operators). You’ll also benefit from more advanced material on cache effects, a primer on lock-free techniques within the kernel, deadlock avoidance (with lockdep), and kernel lock debugging techniques.By the end of this kernel book, you’ll have a detailed understanding of the fundamentals of writing Linux kernel module code for real-world projects and products.

Getting Started with Unity 5. Leverage the power of Unity 5 to create amazing 3D games

Dr. Edward Lavieri

Instant Oracle BPM for Financial Services How-to. Discover how to leverage BPM in the financial sector

B. M. Madhusudhan Rao, B.M Madhusudhan Rao

Oracle Business Process Management helps in process automation and improvement with a very high level of flexibility for all the process participants from the process planning team to the end users. It also makes it possible to have corporate employees and customers collaborating towards common goals.Instant Oracle BPM for Financial Services How-to covers many concepts that can be easily reused across industries such as core banking, healthcare, travel, self service automation, e-governance, and so on. It highlights various roles of Business Process Management such as Business Process Modeling, Process Developer, Process Owner, and Process Participant along with the way they work together in a financial services environment.Instant Oracle BPM for Financial Services How-to is your guide to implementing Oracle Business Process Management whilst working in the Financial Services industry.Starting through the discovering of implementation and Business challenges for financial services we will move on to Modeling, Implementation, Process ork-flow’s, deployment and testing.Moving on to cover advanced topics such as Process administering, changing business processes using process analysts, business reporting, participants and notifications and finally collaboration. You will learn to setup, maintain and alter your Business Process Management aimed specifically for the Financial services industry.

ASP.NET Core 1.0 High Performance. Create fast, scalable, and high performance applications with C#, ASP.NET Core 1.0, and MVC 6

James Singleton, Pawan Awasthi, Dylan Beattie

ASP.NET Core is the new, open source, and cross-platform, web-application framework from Microsoft. It's a stripped down version of ASP.NET that's lightweight and fast. This book will show you how to make your web apps deliver high performance when using it.We'll address many performance improvement techniques from both a general web standpoint and from a C#, ASP.NET Core, and .NET Core perspective. This includes delving into the latest frameworks and demonstrating software design patterns that improve performance.We will highlight common performance pitfalls, which can often occur unnoticed on developer workstations, along with strategies to detect and resolve these issues early. By understanding and addressing challenges upfront, you can avoid nasty surprises when it comes to deployment time.We will introduce performance improvements along with the trade-offs that they entail. We will strike a balance between premature optimization and inefficient code by taking a scientific- and evidence-based approach. We'll remain pragmatic by focusing on the big problems.By reading this book, you'll learn what problems can occur when web applications are deployed at scale and know how to avoid or mitigate these issues. You'll gain experience of how to write high-performance applications without having to learn about issues the hard way.You'll see what's new in ASP.NET Core, why it's been rebuilt from the ground up, and what this means for performance. You will understand how you can now develop on and deploy to Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux using cross-platform tools, such as Visual Studio Code.

Hands-on ESP32 with Arduino IDE. Unleash the power of IoT with ESP32 and build exciting projects with this practical guide

Asim Zulfiqar

ESP32 is a versatile microcontroller and a great starting point for anyone venturing into the IoT realm, but its configuration and interfacing of sensors can be challenging for new users. Arduino Integrated Development Environment (IDE) simplifies programming, uploading code, and utilization of ESP32 capabilities, enabling users to incorporate it into their IoT projects with ease. This book will help you learn the essentials of sensing, networking, data processing, and applications with ESP32, laying a strong foundation for further IoT development.Starting with ESP32 and Arduino Ide 2.0 basics, you'll first explore practical implementation examples of interfacing sensors with ESP32. These examples will also teach you how to interface the ESP32 camera and display modules with ESP32. As you progress, you’ll get to grips with IoT network and data protocols, as well as the many options they unlock within IoT applications. The book will also help you leverage your newly acquired knowledge with exciting projects ranging from smart connected devices to data loggers and automation.By the end of this book, you'll confidently navigate ESP32 projects with newfound knowledge and skills, know what IoT protocol to select for your applications, and successfully build and deploy your own IoT projects.

Clean Code with C#. Refactor your legacy C# code base and improve application performance using best practices - Second Edition

Jason Alls

Traditionally associated with Windows desktop applications and game development, C# has expanded into web, cloud, and mobile development. However, despite its extensive coding features, professionals often encounter issues with efficiency, scalability, and maintainability due to poor code. Clean Code in C# guides you in identifying and resolving these problems using coding best practices.This book starts by comparing good and bad code to emphasize the importance of coding standards, principles, and methodologies. It then covers code reviews, unit testing, and test-driven development, and addresses cross-cutting concerns. As you advance through the chapters, you’ll discover programming best practices for objects, data structures, exception handling, and other aspects of writing C# computer programs. You’ll also explore API design and code quality enhancement tools, while studying examples of poor coding practices to understand what to avoid.By the end of this clean code book, you’ll have the developed the skills needed to apply industry-approved coding practices to write clean, readable, extendable, and maintainable C# code.

Arduino for Secret Agents. Transform your tiny Arduino device into a secret agent gadget to build a range of espionage projects with this practical guide for hackers

Marco Schwartz

Q might have Bond’s gadgets– but he doesn’t have an Arduino (not yet at least). Find out how the tiny Arduino microcomputer can be used to build an impressive range of neat secret agent projects that can help you go undercover and get to grips with the cutting-edge of the world of espionage with this book, created for ardent Arduino fans and anyone new to the powerful device.Each chapter shows you how to construct a different secret agent gadget, helping you to unlock the full potential of your Arduino and make sure you have a solution for every tricky spying situation.You’ll find out how to build everything from an alarm system to a fingerprint sensor, each project demonstrating a new feature of Arduino, so you can build your expertise as you complete each project. Learn how to open a lock with a text message, monitor top secret data remotely, and even create your own Arduino Spy Robot, Spy Microphone System, and Cloud Spy Camera This book isn’t simply an instruction manual – it helps you put your knowledge into action so you can build every single project to completion.

Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2015 Professional Reporting. Discover tips and trick for Dynamics NAV report building

Steven Renders

Managing Risks in Digital Transformation. Navigate the modern landscape of digital threats with the help of real-world examples and use cases

Ashish Kumar, Shashank Kumar, Abbas Kudrati, Sarah Armstrong- Smith

With the rapid pace of digital change today, especially since the pandemic sped up digital transformation and technologies, it has become more important than ever to be aware of the unknown risks and the landscape of digital threats. This book highlights various risks and shows how business-as-usual operations carried out by unaware or targeted workers can lead your organization to a regulatory or business risk, which can impact your organization’s reputation and balance sheet.This book is your guide to identifying the topmost risks relevant to your business with a clear roadmap of when to start the risk mitigation process and what your next steps should be. With a focus on the new and emerging risks that remote-working companies are experiencing across diverse industries, you’ll learn how to manage risks by taking advantage of zero trust network architecture and the steps to be taken when smart devices are compromised. Toward the end, you’ll explore various types of AI-powered machines and be ready to make your business future-proof.In a nutshell, this book will direct you on how to identify and mitigate risks that the ever- advancing digital technology has unleashed.

The Immersive Metaverse Playbook for Business Leaders. A guide to strategic decision-making and implementation in the metaverse for improved products and services

Irena Cronin, Robert Scoble, Hugo Swart

“The metaverse” has become a widely known term within a very short time span. The Immersive Metaverse Playbook for Business Leaders explicitly explains what it really refers to and shows you how to plot your business road map using the metaverse.This book helps you understand the concept of the metaverse, along with the implementation of generative AI in it. You'll not only get to grips with the underlying concepts, but also take a closer look at key technologies that power the metaverse, enabling you to plan your business road map. The chapters include use cases on social interaction, work, entertainment, art, and shopping to help you make better decisions when it comes to metaverse product and service development. You’ll also explore the overall societal benefits and dangers related to issues such as privacy encroachment, technology addiction, and sluggishness. The concluding chapters discuss the future of AR and VR roles in the metaverse and the metaverse as a whole to enable you to make long-term business plans.By the end of this book, you'll be able to successfully invest, build, and market metaverse products and services that set you apart as a progressive technology leader.

Blueprints Visual Scripting for Unreal Engine. Build professional 3D games with Unreal Engine 4's Visual Scripting system

Brenden Sewell

Blueprints Visual Scripting for Unreal Engine is a step-by-step approach to building a fully functional game, one system at a time. Starting with a basic First Person Shooter template, each chapter will extend the prototype to create an increasingly complex and robust game experience. You will progress from creating basic shooting mechanics to gradually more complex systems that will generate user interface elements and intelligent enemy behavior. Focusing on universally applicable skills, the expertise you will develop in utilizing Blueprints can translate to other types of genres.By the time you finish the book, you will have a fully functional First Person Shooter game and the skills necessary to expand on the game to develop an entertaining, memorable experience for your players.From making customizations to player movement to creating new AI and game mechanics from scratch, you will discover everything you need to know to get started with game development using Blueprints and Unreal Engine 4.

Getting Started with Hazelcast. Learn how to write rich, interactive web applications using HTML5 and CSS3 through real-world examples. In a world of proliferating platforms and devices, being able to create your own “go-anywhere” applications gives you a significant advantage

Mat Johns, Matthew Johns

Python Unlocked. Become more fluent in Python—learn strategies and techniques for smart and high-performance Python programming

Arun Tigeraniya

Python is a versatile programming language that can be used for a wide range of technical tasks—computation, statistics, data analysis, game development, and more. Though Python is easy to learn, it’s range of features means there are many aspects of it that even experienced Python developers don’t know about. Even if you’re confident with the basics, its logic and syntax, by digging deeper you can work much more effectively with Python – and get more from the language.Python Unlocked walks you through the most effective techniques and best practices for high performance Python programming - showing you how to make the most of the Python language. You’ll get to know objects and functions inside and out, and will learn how to use them to your advantage in your programming projects. You will also find out how to work with a range of design patterns including abstract factory, singleton, strategy pattern, all of which will help make programming with Python much more efficient. Finally, as the process of writing a program is never complete without testing it, you will learn to test threaded applications and run parallel tests. If you want the edge when it comes to Python, use this book to unlock the secrets of smarter Python programming.

PrestaShop Module Development. Develop and customize powerful modules for PrestaShop 1.5 and 1.6

Fabien Serny

Machine Learning for Time-Series with Python. Use Python to forecast, predict, and detect anomalies with state-of-the-art machine learning methods - Second Edition

Ben Auffarth

The Python time-series ecosystem is a huge and challenging topic to tackle, especially for time series since there are so many new libraries and models. Machine Learning for Time Series, Second Edition, aims to deepen your understanding of time series by providing a comprehensive overview of popular Python time-series packages and helping you build better predictive systems.This fully updated second edition starts by re-introducing the basics of time series and then helps you get to grips with traditional autoregressive models as well as modern non-parametric models. By observing practical examples and the theory behind them, you will gain a deeper understanding of loading time-series datasets from any source and a variety of models, such as deep learning recurrent neural networks, causal convolutional network models, and gradient boosting with feature engineering. This book will also help you choose the right model for the right problem by explaining the theory behind several useful models. New updates include a chapter on forecasting and extracting signals on financial markets and case studies with relevant examples from operations management, digital marketing, and healthcare.By the end of this book, you should feel at home with effectively analyzing and applying machine learning methods to time series.

Enhanced Test Automation with WebdriverIO. Unlock the superpowers of hybrid testing frameworks

Paul M. Grossman, Larry C. Goddard, Angie Jones

This book helps you embark on a comprehensive journey to master the art of WebdriverIO automation, from installation through to advanced framework development.You’ll start by following step-by-step instructions on installing WebdriverIO, configuring Node packages, and creating a simple test. Here you’ll gain an understanding of the mechanics while also learning to add reporting and screen captures to your test results to enhance your test case documentation. In the next set of chapters, you’ll delve into the intricacies of configuring and developing robust method wrappers, a crucial skill for supporting multiple test suites. The book goes beyond the basics, exploring testing techniques tailored for Jenkins as well as LambdaTest cloud environments. As you progress, you’ll gain a deep understanding of both TypeScript and JavaScript languages and acquire versatile coding skills.By the end of this book, you’ll have developed the expertise to construct a sophisticated test automation framework capable of executing an entire suite of tests using WebdriverIO in either TypeScript or JavaScript, as well as excel in your test automation endeavors and deliver reliable, efficient testing solutions.

Deep Learning with MXNet Cookbook. Discover an extensive collection of recipes for creating and implementing AI models on MXNet

Andrés P. Torres, Paul Newman

Explore the capabilities of the open-source deep learning framework MXNet to train and deploy neural network models and implement state-of-the-art (SOTA) architectures in Computer Vision, natural language processing, and more. The Deep Learning with MXNet Cookbook is your gateway to constructing fast and scalable deep learning solutions using Apache MXNet.Starting with the different versions of MXNet, this book helps you choose the optimal version for your use and install your library. You’ll work with MXNet/Gluon libraries to solve classification and regression problems and gain insights into their inner workings. Venturing further, you’ll use MXNet to analyze toy datasets in the areas of numerical regression, data classification, picture classification, and text classification. From building and training deep-learning neural network architectures from scratch to delving into advanced concepts such as transfer learning, this book covers it all. You'll master the construction and deployment of neural network architectures, including CNN, RNN, LSTMs, and Transformers, and integrate these models into your applications.By the end of this deep learning book, you’ll wield the MXNet and Gluon libraries to expertly create and train deep learning networks using GPUs and deploy them in different environments.

Python Data Visualization Cookbook. As a developer with knowledge of Python you are already in a great position to start using data visualization. This superb cookbook shows you how in plain language and practical recipes, culminating with 3D animations

Igor Milovanovic

Today, data visualization is a hot topic as a direct result of the vast amount of data created every second. Transforming that data into information is a complex task for data visualization professionals, who, at the same time, try to understand the data and objectively transfer that understanding to others. This book is a set of practical recipes that strive to help the reader get a firm grasp of the area of data visualization using Python and its popular visualization and data libraries.Python Data Visualization Cookbook will progress the reader from the point of installing and setting up a Python environment for data manipulation and visualization all the way to 3D animations using Python libraries. Readers will benefit from over 60 precise and reproducible recipes that guide the reader towards a better understanding of data concepts and the building blocks for subsequent and sometimes more advanced concepts.Python Data Visualization Cookbook starts by showing you how to set up matplotlib and the related libraries that are required for most parts of the book, before moving on to discuss some of the lesser-used diagrams and charts such as Gantt Charts or Sankey diagrams. During the book, we go from simple plots and charts to more advanced ones, thoroughly explaining why we used them and how not to use them. As we go through the book, we will also discuss 3D diagrams. We will peep into animations just to show you what it takes to go into that area. Maps are irreplaceable for displaying geo-spatial data, so we also show you how to build them. In the last chapter, we show you how to incorporate matplotlib into different environments, such as a writing system, LaTeX, or how to create Gantt charts using Python.This book will help those who already know how to program in Python to explore a new field – one of data visualization. As this book is all about recipes that explain how to do something, code samples are abundant, and they are followed by visual diagrams and charts to help you understand the logic and compare your own results with what is explained in the book.

Sakai CLE Courseware Management: The Official Guide. Take your e-learning, research, and collaboration experience to the next level

Alan Mark Berg, Ian Dolphin, Sakai Foundation, Sakai Foundation (Project)

Sakai is a Collaboration and Learning environment that provides the means to manage users, courses, instructors, and facilities, as well as a spectrum of tools including assessment, grading, and messaging. Sakai is loaded with many handy features and tools, which make it uniquely the Learning system of the present as well as the future.This book is the officially endorsed Sakai guide and is an update to the previous book, Sakai Courseware Management: The Official Guide. From setting up and running Sakai for the first time to creatively using its tools and features, this book delivers everything you need to know.Written by Alan Berg, a Sakai fellow and former Quality Assurance Director of the Sakai Foundation and Ian Dolphin the Executive Director of the Sakai Foundation with significant contributions from the Sakai community, Sakai CLE Courseware Management: The Official Guide is a comprehensive study of how Sakai CLE should be used, managed, and maintained, with real world examples and practical explanations.The book opens with an overview of Sakai, its history and how to set up a demonstration version. Next, the underlying structures and tools are described. In using Sakai for Teaching and Collaboration, there is a detailed discussion of how to structure online courses for teaching and collaboration between groups of students, from creating course sites to understanding their use in different organizations around the world.

Odoo 11 Development Essentials. Develop and customize business applications with Odoo 11 - Third Edition

Daniel Reis

Odoo continues to gain worldwide momentum as the best platform for open source ERP installations. Now, with Odoo 11, you have access to an improved GUI, performance optimization, integrated in-app purchase features, and a fast-growing community to help transform and modernize your business. With this practical guide, you will cover all the new features that Odoo 11 has to offer to build and customize business applications, focusing on the publicly available community edition.We begin with setting up a development environment, and as you make your way through the chapters, you will learn to build feature-rich business applications. With the aim of jump-starting your Odoo proficiency level, from no specific knowledge to application development readiness, you will develop your first Odoo application. We then move on to topics such as models and views, and understand how to use server APIs to add business logic, helping to lay a solid foundation for advanced topics.The book concludes with Odoo interactions and how to use the Odoo API from other programs, all of which will enable you to efficiently integrate applications with other external systems.