Star Wars: Commander

I've Meanwhile, the non-optional PvP element is basically just stealing the hard-earned resources of other players. he real goal of these games though is to get you to buy whatever points they're selling in order to speed things up. This goal results in gameplay that just isn't fun.

Don't get me wrong, they're totally addicting. That's the whole point. Each stage opens up a new thing that makes you a little bit more powerful so you keep thinking "now I can do This", but each stage of the game takes longer and longer and ultimately, nothing really changes. You're still do the same thing over and over again. It's addicting, but I get no joy in the experience. It's just hard to stop.

Meanwhile, the non-optional PvP element is basically just stealing the hard-earned resources of other players. You log into the game to find another player has stolen resources it took you hours or even days to gather. Sure, you can attack them back, but them you lose the temporary protection obtained by having your base destroyed. And what's the point? Now they've lost time and resources.

This experience could be totally turned around by adding some additional strategy or RTS elements. As is, your attack units are completely mindless. After dropping them on the battlefield, you have no control over their behavior. They'll attack random (and strategically worthless) walls while being fired upon (and destroyed) by enemy units. Your defenses seem woefully underpowered (at least that's my experience) at repelling invading players. A single enemy unit was capable of taking down both shield generators and three turrets before being reinforced by the rest of the army for wiping out the rest of the base.

OK, rant over. And so is my time with this game.

Dynamically Changing the Color of SVG Using an ASP.NET HttpHandler

I have an SVG file that I'm using as the background image of elements on the page (using sprites). I wanted to dynamically update the color of the shapes and paths when theming the application, but I could not find a way to do this using CSS when the SVG is loaded as a background image (I have heard that inline <svg> elements will inherit style rules).

The way I solved the issue was to use a custom HttpHandler in my ASP.NET application that allows me to replace parts of the SVG with other content. Here's the code I used:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.IO;
using System.Text;
using System.Web;

namespace MyNamespace
{
 public class DynamicSVGHandler : IHttpHandler
 {
  public bool IsReusable
  {
   get
   {
    return true;
   }
  }

  public void ProcessRequest( HttpContext context )
  {
   var request = context.Request;
   var response = context.Response;

   var file = context.Server.MapPath( Path.ChangeExtension( request.Url.LocalPath, ".svg" ) );

   if( File.Exists( file ) )
   {
    var lastWrite = File.GetLastWriteTimeUtc( file );
    response.Clear();
    response.ContentType = "image/svg+xml";
    response.Cache.SetExpires( DateTime.Now.AddMinutes( 5d ) );
    response.Cache.SetCacheability( HttpCacheability.Public );

    List<KeyValuePair<string, string>> replacements = new List<KeyValuePair<string, string>>();

    string value;

    foreach( string key in request.QueryString )
    {
     if( key.Length > 3 && !string.IsNullOrEmpty( value = request.QueryString[key] ) && value.Length > 3 )//Implement any custom validation here.
      replacements.Add( new List<KeyValuePair<string, string>>( key, value ) );
    }

    if( replacements.Count > 0 )
    {
     string line;
     using( StreamReader reader = new StreamReader( File.OpenRead( file ) ) )
     {
      while( (line = reader.ReadLine()) != null )
      {
       foreach( var replacement in replacements )
        line = line.Replace( replacement.Key, replacement.Value );

       response.Output.WriteLine( line );
      }
     }
    }
    else
     response.WriteFile( file );
   }
   else
   {
    response.Clear();
    response.StatusCode = 404;
    response.End();
   }
  }
 }
}

Make sure to register your handler in your web.config (This example is for IIS 7+, integrated mode and I used the extension .dsvg):

<configuration>
 <system.webServer>
  <handlers>
   <add name="*.dsvg" path="*.dsvg" preCondition="integratedMode" verb="*" type="MyNamespace.DynamicSVGHandler, MyAssembly"/>
  </handlers>
 </system.webServer>
</configuration>

You can now reference any svg file in your application with the extension .dsvg instead of .svg and specify replacements in the URL (e.g. mysvg.dsvg?white=red to change "white" to "red").

In my SVG, I found it easiest to define the color using a style section rather than setting the fill of each shape, then add the class="svg-shape" to all the shapes.