Heyas,

awww, shush! It's the end of the year, and we have crap workload to do. Unfortunately, it will stay this way at least till end of january. And then again at the end of february as we are relocating our server farm (not the silverline server farm).

If anyone is interessted to take the stake and help me out with the server-side stuff, feel free to poke (not lynch) me. I would happyly grant you access to the sources to contribute

regards
/D

 

P-U-R-E Awesomeness :D

The bats need evil eyes (to detect their facing) imho. Other than that: Great work!

However, i doubt a bit that those mobsters are server side controlled?

regards
/D

PS: Oh, and btw: I fixed that collision detection

Heyas,

cleaned up the server installation sql scripts a bit.
The current setup provides
- 3 races (Human, Elf, Dwarf) and
- 3 professions (Warrior, Mage, Rogue)
- balanced race->ability/profession->skill values upon character roll
- a basic map to walk around and the needed objects (spawn points for player/monster)

But Lazycow wasn't lazy by all means! We have graphics for all three professions, different hair+bodystyles, a monster and working attack animation.

I think he will show some mockups soonish. Stay tuned!

regards
/D

...
If you are interessted, i can show you parts of the serverside code.
...

 
Yes please.

PM sent.

Please tell me it isn't multiplayer only. If it becomes popular then that's ok I suppose..But like many indie multiplayer games I play, player count is quite sparse.

Hopefully you may create a single player mode? I guess you could just make a client and a server and play by yourself but I would assume that would be quite difficult (this is co-op, right?)

Um,... single player isn't really supported yet. You know, technically you can just install a MySQL, upload table DDL and UDF DDL into it and play with the client locally. But then again, this would mean to release the server code to public, which is not really wanted (yet).

Let's see, where this goes.

regards
/D

Heyas,

the ERM has been generated using TOAD for MySQL. It has evolved over time, but its pretty much stable now. Apparently, only approximately 30% of its possibilities are developed (eg. item management, inventory, equipment, dynamic objects, dynamic maps, different profession/races/gender templates are currently there in only skeletal form).

The position of the toons (players and monsters operate on the same table, monsters are basically a special account which is controlled by the server) is saved every step. Otherwise you would have "jumps" in the movement on the other clients.

We are currently doing it like this:
- Player hits movement key (cursors)
- Client send a message to the server: "Move Player around"
- Client starts to move towards the new target
- Server checks for walls, monsters, dynamic objects, etc.
- Server updates position on toon table
- trigger detects change on toon table and sends message to all clients with toons on the same map (this happens for EVERY update on toon-table)
- Client verifies new position.

Note: The client does not check for walls, etc. If you start moving next to a wall in the wrong direction, server denies movement and client resets position back to the original state.

We limited ourselfs to ~2 movements per second at the moment(toon.speed is 2 for all toons atm). I still have to test the new implementation of this limitation server side.

Monsters are controlled in an endless loop (aka: Operate every monster which is on the same map as an active player, etc). We already got a smooth demo with ~12 monsters an one player.

If you are interessted, i can show you parts of the serverside code.

regards
/D

Here is the ERM

Heyas,

we are currently aiming at 15k players  :D

j/k... The database model is a prototype test only. Currently we dont have a "real" server available. If things get ... rough, i consider a migration to a free oracle or db/2 database. Both compile their internal SQL dialect, whilst MySQL just interprets it.

I am hoping for MySQL move from interpreter to compiler in a few versions.

As for the gameplay: It seems as if it is moving towards a Multiplayered-Zelda/Nethack-Clone. So, Dungeon raiding on multiple levels (maps). But it may be we integrate some "open world" maps, as well (currently the graphic subset only contains walls/floors, iirc).

regards
/D

Heyas,

currently, the whole database related stuff is done in ... *drummroll* MySQL's procedural SQL dialect.. 

Works quite well so far, we have tested up to 3 clients simultaneously and we had a test of one client and approximately 8 to 10 server side controlled monsters.

We may end up moving the monster AI outside the database to gain better performance. Probably a plug-in for the server would work as well...

Server is my iMac (2x2.16Ghz, 2GB RAM) at the moment.

If you are looking for a way to connect programmatically to a MySQL, see here for a good start.
Currently, the client is directly connecting the database using the C-API.

regards
/D

Heyas,

basic architecture is a MySQL database serving the account, player, map, items data and handling the monsters.

Communication betwenn client and server is done using a self developed protocol which emulates a very basic RPC (remote procedure call) interface.

Feel free to ask if you have questions. I may come back and post a ERM of the database model (if i find out how to attach images...)

regards
/D