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KaVir
God Wars II Admin
Germany
3062 Posts |
 Posted - 25/02/2002 : 10:28:09 AM
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I will post a weekly status report of the project in this thread. Please do not reply to this thread - if you've got questions or feedback, please start a new thread for them.
Edit 29-Nov-04: I've decided to move this to the player forums, so that the forum readers can be kept up to date without having to check the website separately.
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KaVir
God Wars II Admin
Germany
3062 Posts |
Posted - 25/02/2002 : 10:28:30 AM
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Progress - Week 8 (week ending Sun 24th February)
Jobo has completed the basic socket code, although it still needs a little work (it seems to only echo input to people who have connected AFTER the connection doing the echoing?). I've added an interface for the server part, but not for the client part (not sure if Jobo wants to do that or not).
Kastagaar has created a scheduler. I've not had a chance to test it yet, but will soon (I hope) as it's going to be needed for the command parser, which should be implemented as part of release 0.1.
I've created the Thing class, and very basic Creature, Object and Place classes which are derived from it. They are very basic, but that's all we need for release 0.1. I also have a Brain interface, along with derived Human and Mobile brains (although the former is stubbed, and the latter has no functionality yet).
We now have 2 weeks remaining until release 0.1. Before then, we have to get the socket code tied in to the Brain class (which itself is already tied in to the Creature class). We also need to get a basic command parser in place, and the encryption algorithm working for passwords so that we can implement a basic character creation system.
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KaVir
God Wars II Admin
Germany
3062 Posts |
Posted - 04/03/2002 : 10:05:31 AM
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Progress - Week 9 (week ending Sun 3rd March)
Jobo's socket code is working and is integrated with my Brain class, which in turn calls my (currently stubbed) parser class. Koryon has provided us with server space, and we now have a warning (and error) free target build.
After discussions with Kastagaar, I have decided to make some changes to the way the Brain class works - but this shouldn't cause much impact on anything else.
The parser is under development (it's almost there, but I was too tired to finish it off last night when I got back to Germany).
Jobo has written a set of dice functions, which I've moved into a "gw2" namespace. I've also added a stubbed Log() function, and a GetToken() function (for the parser). Kastagaar has added the map.
It's now up me to get the parser working by the end of the week for release 0.1.
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KaVir
God Wars II Admin
Germany
3062 Posts |
Posted - 11/03/2002 : 09:19:51 AM
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Progress - Week 10 (week ending Sun 10th March)
The Brain class has been reorganised somewhat: only a HumanBrain now has socket information, and the Brain and Thing both know about each other.
Jobo has split the server and socket code into two independant sections and fixed an I/O blocking problem.
I've also added a new Room class (derived from Thing), which I will be using for the basic movement system. It works in a similar way to the Diku room system, however it's really just a prototype. It should be sufficient for release 0.2 though.
The basic parser allows you to "create" a character (it just gives you a name) and "say" things to each other. Unfortunately I didn't get around to adding any other commands, due to having a very hectic weekend (again!). However we DO now have more than enough for alpha release 0.1 - so we're ahead of target.
We now have 2 weeks to get basic room, objects and mobiles in place, ready for alpha release 0.2.
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KaVir
God Wars II Admin
Germany
3062 Posts |
Posted - 18/03/2002 : 10:41:07 AM
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Progress - Week 11 (week ending Sun 17th March)
Jobo's server can now handle multiple ports, allowing us to have various "minimuds".
Players can now create rooms and enter them. A number of other user-commands have been added. More to come.
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KaVir
God Wars II Admin
Germany
3062 Posts |
Posted - 25/03/2002 : 09:29:34 AM
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Progress - Week 12 (week ending Sun 24th March)
Players can now link rooms together, create objects, pick up and drop things. It is also possible to kick off your old connection, and characters now have passwords (utilising Jobo's password code). The only thing missing from release 0.2 is the ability to wear objects, but I've decided to move that option to release 0.3 (because objects worn will be creature-specific, thus we can add them as we add each particular class).
We now have 1 week to get the stat system in place, which shouldn't be difficult.
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KaVir
God Wars II Admin
Germany
3062 Posts |
Posted - 02/04/2002 : 12:23:14 AM
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Progress - Week 13 (week ending Sun 31st March)
The primary and secondary stats are in place. The "train" command can be used to improve stats, and bonuses are applied as each "age" category is reached, as specified in section 1.2.6 of the design document. The temporary "score" hack (allowing you to directly set stats via the score command) has been removed.
The object creation has been modified slightly to use short descriptions, which will eventually be replaced with the dynamic ones. It is now possible to wear and remove objects ("inv" shows what you are carrying, "eq" what you are wearing).
The problem with CPU-munching has been fixed, and Jobo has also made some further updates to the server (including adding MCP support).
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KaVir
God Wars II Admin
Germany
3062 Posts |
Posted - 22/04/2002 : 1:15:53 PM
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Progress - Week 16 (week ending Sun 21st April)
We had a two week break (weeks 14 and 15) while I was back in the UK, which gave us a chance to tidy up our loose ends and do some code scrutinies. During this time Rotain, Kastagaar and I met up for a real-life design meeting, in which we discussed various issues, particularly those relating to PK and clans. Tepic and Jobo have also been investigating mud/web integration, and have written up some design specs.
This week was primarily spent finishing up the webpages, sorting out the domain names, and throwing together ideas for class powers as well as refining the various issues raised during our meeting last week. We've clarified a number of points now, and the basic webpage content is finished, so it's time to start working on release 0.4 at last. This gives us three weeks from now to get the basic combat system in place, including mobs, the earning of Primal, skills and stances.
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KaVir
God Wars II Admin
Germany
3062 Posts |
Posted - 03/06/2002 : 11:41:47 AM
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Progress - Week 22 (week ending Sun 2nd June)
The basic combat system is in place, along with stances and skills. This works like the Glad2.0 combat system, except with shared action points and no "eyes" location. It is essential that basic coordinate-based Places are implemented asap, as the combat system requires coordinate-based movement.
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KaVir
God Wars II Admin
Germany
3062 Posts |
Posted - 18/09/2002 : 10:05:27 AM
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Progress - Week 29 (week ending Sun 21st July)
Each creature now has a desired destination, which is either a fixed coordinate location, or another "thing". Typing "north" sets your desired location as 1 coordinate location ahead of your current desired location (so you can stack them). You can also type "north X", where X is the number of positions you'd like to move. This means the interface shouldn't be too difficult for those who are used to the standard compass-movement system.
Movement is automatic, although your speed depends on your "feet" body location. If you're in "advance" mode, you will move forward 2 positions, while "retreat" mode will move you backwards 1 position from your target. Other "combo" moves with your feet will allow for faster movement, although I've not put the combos in yet. For example moving forward with your feet when already moving forward will upgrade your speed to a jog, while another "forward" will turn your speed into a run. There are also actions for circling around your target, although these are not implemented yet either (they just move you forward right now).
The forward-facing movements work for coordinate-based movement as well, but you can only retreat or circle if you have a target. If you have no target, you stop moving. If you're at the same location as your opponent, you cannot retreat.
If you move in a compass direction, you lose your target. If you target someone, your "desired location" is constantly updated to be the same as your current location. The "stop" command will clear your buffer. This can be a little confusing at times, for example if you type "north 100" then see something to the east a few seconds later and type "east 10", you'll keep moving until you've gone 100 north and 10 east. If you type "south 10" it will set your final destination to 10 south of the original amount, but you'll keep going north. The alternative would be to stack up commands, but I think that could get even more confusing. You can see your destination when you type "look", anyway, so it shouldn't be too bad.
The mud creates a "Nexus" Place at bootup, and sticks all new players there at position 0/0. Going west from there would take you to a negative "X" position - personally I think that makes it easier to read than the LC-style wraparound. Note that we still have Rooms - the difference is that a Room can be linked, Diku-style, while a Place has coordinate positions instead.
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KaVir
God Wars II Admin
Germany
3062 Posts |
Posted - 18/09/2002 : 10:05:56 AM
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Progress - Week 30 (week ending Sun 28th July)
Tepic has now put together a rather nice startup script.
The mud now works with the Glad combat system, plus I've encapsulated the Glad dynamic description code within the gw2 namespace - I wanted to do this as early as possible to save me having to rewrite huge amounts of code. I've also put together a "PutSense()" method within each Thing, allowing sense-specific messages to be sent to everything within a specified range.
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KaVir
God Wars II Admin
Germany
3062 Posts |
Posted - 18/09/2002 : 10:06:31 AM
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Progress - Week 31 (week ending Sun 4th August)
While I was away on holiday, Rotain and Kastagaar spent some time going through the code. Kastagaar investigated adding the scheduler, while Rotain added a whole range of bare-hand fighting techniques, based on those found in the Glad2.0 codebase. Rotain also started looking into some new ideas for the website.
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KaVir
God Wars II Admin
Germany
3062 Posts |
Posted - 18/09/2002 : 10:07:12 AM
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Progress - Week 35 (week ending Sun 1st September)
Kastagaar has integrated the latest version of the scheduler, and I've merged it with the other latest changes. The basic loading/saving of accounts is in place, but we're having trouble deciding which is the best design approach to use.
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KaVir
God Wars II Admin
Germany
3062 Posts |
Posted - 18/09/2002 : 10:07:37 AM
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Progress - Week 36 (week ending Sun 8th September)
Saving and loading of both accounts and characters now works. The save/load solutions are currently hacky, but the class structures are okay - I will update the functions transparently later. Limitations: Each account can currently have only one character.
Commands now work by either name or ID - so you can "target kavir" rather than having to "target 4". For objects, this means you specifically have to type "target a sword". I will fix that later, when we get around to equipment.
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KaVir
God Wars II Admin
Germany
3062 Posts |
Posted - 18/09/2002 : 10:08:05 AM
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Progress - Week 37 (week ending Sun 15th September)
When you strike someone, you cause damage (depending on your stats, and how well you hit them). If you receive more damage than you have health, your state is set to "dead". As a dead person, you are limited to only a handful of simple commands, however you are also immune to further damage - and you heal 1 point of damage per second. Once your damage reaches 0, your state becomes "alive" and you clamber back to your feet. Note that death will also move you to your personal plane (once those are in), as well as adjust status and primal (once those are in as well). For now, however, it still provides us enough to simulate beating someone in combat.
Note that the regular (while alive) healing is a bit iffy - you heal so fast than it's very hard for someone to kill you, unless they are dealing a lot of damage very quickly. This will need some work.
Kastagaar has also recommended moving the healing over to the scheduler. He is investigating this, particularly regarding the possibility of a requeueing option.
I've re-added all of the stuff I hacked out to get it running on my dodgy old compiler, fixed the missing usleep stuff, fixed all of the compiler warnings, and added the correct paths into Tepic's startup script. We now have a clean version of the code that can be simply unzipped, compiled, and executed via the startup script.
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KaVir
God Wars II Admin
Germany
3062 Posts |
Posted - 23/09/2002 : 08:21:18 AM
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Progress - Week 38 (week ending Sun 22nd September)
Healing while alive is now "staggered" - you heal 0.1 point of damage the first second after being hit, 0.2 the next second, etc, until after 10 seconds you are healing at the rate of 1 damage per second. This still seems to be a bit fast, however, and may require some more work.
I've added a load of help files, added the "credits" and "shutdown" commands, implemented the a "gender" command to set your gender (which is now randomly determined during creation), re-integrated Rotain's bare-hand fighting techniques, made some modifications to the combat code to allow for non-damaging attacks such as "smash" and "stun", added some new techniques, and also added an "admin" privilage level, for imm-related commands.
I've also readded the stance code (which was coded ages ago and never actually got integrated back). I've redesigned it somewhat so that it's a separate class, rather than integrated into the Creature class, and made it much more generic.
We also did a test-run, but unfortunately the mud seems to keep crashing on the target. There are no stability problems under cygwin, so this is a bit worrying.
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KaVir
God Wars II Admin
Germany
3062 Posts |
Posted - 30/09/2002 : 09:01:50 AM
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Progress - Week 39 (week ending Sun 29th September)
The skills code has been redesigned and reinserted, just as I did with the stance code last week. The new solution is much cleaner, and also includes magic colours. Note that there is not yet any implementation of the skills - only the appropriate interface for storing/retrieving your current skill levels, improving your skills, and saving them. The "score more" option displays your current ratings in stances, weapons and magic, while the basic skills are displayed on the initial score screen.
The basic "Class" interface has been implemented, as has a derived "VampireClass" interface. There is also basic functionality (but no actual powers) and a "class" command for people with admin status. If you turn someone into a vampire, they get the appropriate stat bonuses and "score class" lists all of their powers (along with their current ratings in those powers). To implement a new class, all you have to do is copy the vampire interface and change the class name, the power names and the stat bonuses - all the calculations and score layout are handled through the base class functionality. Obviously the powers don't actually do anything yet, though - that will require a lot more work, and will have to be done for each class individually.
I finally got around to implementing saving and loading properly, using a proper lookup table. It's much more robust now, and easier to add things to. As more and more stuff was being added, it was becoming more and more of a pain to keep updating the hacky old solution, so this really needed to be done asap - it also means we no longer need to wipe the pfiles every time a new variable is added, which was becoming annoying for testing.
A bug with the healing speed has been discovered and fixed - and the number of action points gained per second has been increased by 3.
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KaVir
God Wars II Admin
Germany
3062 Posts |
Posted - 07/10/2002 : 09:55:54 AM
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Progress - Week 40 (week ending Sun 6th October)
I've added my naming policy snippet (which provides some useful functions), and added command abbreviations (although certain commands, such as "quit", have to be typed out in full). Kastagaar has also provided some nice tokenising functions, which have been integrated into the code to allow things to be manipulated with multiple keywords (for example if there is an iron helmet, a steel longsword and an iron longsword on the ground, you can type "get iron sword" to specifiy exactly which item you want).
I've also done some work on objects - each object now has a material type, which is used in calculating its attributes (previously the material class was stubbed). There are only a handful of materials currently, but Rotain is going to start adding a load of new ones. I've also reworked the object class itself slightly, and basic dynamic descriptions/keywords are now generated on the fly.
Unfortunately I didn't have time for anything else, as a friend flew over for the Oktoberfest on Wednesday evening, and stayed until Sunday morning.
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KaVir
God Wars II Admin
Germany
3062 Posts |
Posted - 14/10/2002 : 10:22:31 AM
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Progress - Week 41 (week ending Sun 13th October)
Another slow week, due to having lots of other things to do. However I was able to add the interfaces for Werewolves and Demons in the same way as I'd previously done for Vampires. This means that while none of the classes have any working powers, they are (in all other respects) fully working - you can set someone's class, they get the appropriate stat bonuses, and all of the infrastructure is in place to allow them to train their stats and powers. In other words, all that needs to be done is for the powers themselves to be coded (although I shouldn't really just say "all", because it's actually quite a large task).
However I've primarily been working on the objects and materials, making some changes to the structure to make it more flexible. Rotain has also been working on new material types, although these have not yet been integrated. Proper wear locations are almost working, and I hope to soon get the magical item generator working within the mud.
Kastagaar and I have been putting some more thought into the current command parser, and Tepic has started looking into the possibility of switching over to a natural language parser.
Rotain's new website design (including some great graphics by Jeff Hastings - thanks Jeff) is looking really good. Hopefully we'll be able to switch over to the new design as soon as Rotain is happy with it.
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KaVir
God Wars II Admin
Germany
3062 Posts |
Posted - 21/10/2002 : 4:58:44 PM
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Progress - Week 42 (week ending Sun 20th October)
I've finally managed to get the wear location system working, using a very generic approach that makes it easy to later add different races with different sets of locations. I've also implemented a rather nice system for handling magical bonuses, which seems to be working fine.
In terms of design, I've been putting together a full write-up for the vampire powers - it's currently about half finished. I've also put forward some proposals for a better version of the magical item generator, and have received some positive feedback from the rest of the team. I plan to get it working for next week.
Kastagaar has updated the Scheduler to allow for event removal. He's also tracked down and solved some bugs.
Rotain has now put up the new website design. He's also emailed me his list of new material types, which have now been integrated.
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KaVir
God Wars II Admin
Germany
3062 Posts |
Posted - 28/10/2002 : 09:55:22 AM
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Progress - Week 43 (week ending Sun 27th October)
I've modified the immortal "make" command so that it now assigns a set of random bonuses to each created item. This will allow us to have a play with simple randomly generated items until we've agreed on a good design to implement. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get the "proper" magical item generator implemented because we've still not finalised exactly how it should work.
Another temporary modification to the "make" command allows you to create a generic mob, which is called (unimaginatively enough) "Mob". Mob looks and acts in all respects like a player character, except that it has a MobileBrain instead of a HumanBrain, and thus does nothing except sit there (because there is no mob AI implemented yet).
The "look" command now allows you to optionally specify a target, which can be anything nearby, or in your inventory (but NOT worn - that was getting really confusing). If it is something you are carrying, you will see any magical bonuses it has. This functionality may later be moved into some sort of power, but for now it'll remain as part of the look command.
The "get" and "drop" commands have now been fixed so that they display messages to other people around you. In addition, the "get" command now requires you to be standing right beside the thing you wish to pick up (it should have been like this before, but for some reason it wasn't).
I've added a new "PutHint()" method, which allows optional hint messages to be sent to people. The idea is to put these into commands in order to provide more informative feedback for newbies, while allowing the more experienced players to switch them off. I'm not talking about those annoying "hint" messages that some muds have which pop up every few seconds, either - the idea is that these will give specific responses to whatever you've just done (or tried to do).
Following some feedback from Rotain, the movement stuff has been seriously revamped - you are now informed when you start/stop moving and how fast you're moving, as well as when you change direction - you no longer get strange messages like "you start running" when you are *already* standing at your destination, or "you start walking north" after typing "north", even though your final destination is actually to the south of you.
Kastagaar has made another major update to his scheduler, and also put together a function to randomly pick one token from a string (with optional weighing for different tokens) - this will be really handy for the random item/mob generators.
Rotain has been working on some formatting problems with the website.
Tepic has been working on the MWI protocol, and is currently putting together some documentation following feedback posted on the forums. What he's done so far sounds really cool, but I don't want to reveal too many of the ideas just yet!
The initial draft for the vampire powers is now about 90% complete, and I plan to finish it within the next couple of days. Once it's done I'll post it so that we can get some public feedback.
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Progress Report
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