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[godatplay]

Nice work, sir! 

[Evan Balster]

Things are taking a little longer than expected.  Public release data is planned at Saturday.  Milestone B should be done by tomorrow or Friday.

Currently, I'm getting networking set up.  It's not nearly as hard as networking usually is because ENGINE!  I realized, however, that my system doesn't allow the host to send a certain type of message to single clients.  Since clients only need to know about things near them, that's a big problem.  The engine was never designed for an MMO.  But, the fix isn't hard.

Drawable characters are facilitated other than a thingie that prompts the user to draw them.  That's easy enough to complete.  Window resizing with a letterbox is done.  The CSG system will be some work but will get in one way or another.

Some unmentioned goodies like the minimap (done) and maybe the grappling hook / jetpack / other generic maneuverability increaser will have snuck in too.


As my apology for being late (but in a way that doesn't change the planned release date hopefully) I plan to make a video tutorial of the (currently very confusing) Figure Editor.


EDIT: and I should be making that mac port today!

EDIT 2: I am and oh god it's a pain in the ass

[Evan Balster]

Okay, as of about an hour ago Plaidgadget now runs on OS X 10.4 with a universal binary.  Took all afternoon and produced a pain-in-the-rump bug in an API used by the rendering engine that turned out to be the serialization system having endian issues with floating-point numbers.  As Ted M. reminded me, though, one afternoon isn't bad time at all for a port.  

I did the dev work on an old G5, so it's reasonably stable on PowerPC.  It seems to have a minor crash on Intel but I'll get to it tomorrow on a friend's machine.  Credit goes to Ken Kopecky for guru-guidance with Mac development.  Along with Windows and Red Hat Enterprise Linux that brings the total to three OS-es.


I'm behind on milestone B at this point, but I really want to submit to indiecade, so I'll definitely have a release on Saturday or Sunday.  Wish me luck, friends!


Current task list in descending order of priority:

Networked map system - critical to game
CSG system - bounding drawable area
Networked player avatars - see other players
Drawable avatars
Figure Editor simplifications - video tutorial should compensate

[Evan Balster]

Needed to recombobble my network engine to support both of my networking-related goals, as it was never made for an MMO.  But now it is!  I plan to have a functional "massively-singleplayer" version done this evening.

EDIT: that is to say, the game's networked aspects, minus seeing other characters.

[Evan Balster]

Lots of unexpected hitches have me with the game successfully letting clients explore the world right now.  Won't be hard at this point to add world editing and visible avatars should make it in too.  It'll be rough around the edges, but expect a release tomorrow evening!

Don't be mad at me if the server crashes a lot at first

[Carrie Nation]

Posted demo is really nice, though I was unable to see any rooms drawn by anybody else. I drew a few rooms myself, added a nice cave below the starting point and a bleak forest above. The interface is really nice and I managed to fire off those two rooms pretty quickly.

Again, this is looking excellent, can't wait for the network features to be implemented.

[Evan Balster]

The current versions are non-networked.  I'll be releasing the networked version 20 - 26 hours from now.

Currently I'm debugging room locking and editing from the client-side.

EDIT: So far so good.  Rooms can be added.  Now, editing and password lock...

[Evan Balster]

Bad news, folks.  I wiped the machine I plan to use as a server, and then the new version of the operating system crashed during installation.

I'm going to have to get a new OS for it.  Any suggestions are welcome.  It'll definitely be a Unix, and probably not Fedora since its security system makes it a huge pain to unblock ports in my experience.  Common ones are well supported (which as you'll see below relates to why I'm in this pickle) so maybe BSD.

Embarrassing story:  This started as a solve for a linker error that cropped up as I ported the program to Fedora, which was apparently present in GCC pre-4.1.4 or something.  Some kind of GCC intrinsic for handling atomic integers.  A necessary library needed the new GCC, and the new GCC isn't available for my version of ths OS.  So, I decided I'd update it.  When prompted about what I'd do with the partitions, I thought "I don't have anything important on here, wipe the machine" and then the installer crashed, leaving the computer with GRUB and nothing else usable to my knowledge.  It's my only spare machine, so I don't have any other good server candidates.

This will delay release by a day or a few days.  In the meantime I should be able to make the program more stable and feature-rich than it would be otherwise in its first release.  I was rushing to make this deadline, and have not been getting my sleep or eating very much.  So, this takes the edge off and to be honest I'm a bit glad of it.

RELEASE GOAL IS NOW WEDNESDAY (or earlier)

EDIT: and in all honesty, I was kinda looking for an excuse to give myself more time.  Why give my world-builders substandard tools to work with?

[Carrie Nation]

Ah sorry about that, was looking forward to a possible release tonight.

Good luck getting the server back on it's feet. Looking forward to Wednesday.

[Evan Balster]

I owe you guys this much for my lateness.



What is done:

- Users can connect to the server and explore the world.  They can draw new cells and set passwords when finished.

- Users can go back to their existing cells and edit them if they have the password, resetting the password if desired.

- Various rules to manage 'locking' and 'uploading' of cells, including password protection, anti-reservation measures (you can only start a cell once every five minutes), and adjacent-cell protection (you can't edit a cell if someone's editing one that shares a border with it, so the later draw-er can transition properly.)

- The masking tool now oscillates between semitransparent black and white so as to be visible anywhere, but not too distracting.  The server hasn't crashed on me yet.

I've got a few friends I've given a prerelease to as of this morning, drawing the first few bits of the world.  On my own side I'm still tweaking a few things like the look of the map.


What I'm working on:

- A proper CSG system rather than the simple one I was planning to hack, which was causing the tessellator to crash.  This is the thingie that keeps cells from protruding past the alotted overlap zone (10%) into other cells.  It will also resolve the issue that results from cells being placed back on top of newer neighbors when edited.  (It messes up transitions)

- Making other players' avatars visible.  This part is child's play with the network engine.  Also, making avatars editable and integrating that functionality into the network.  I probably would have cut the latter from the release which would have been a shame.

- Tracking down bugs.  There are a few identified already.

- Fixing a few things in the Figure Editor, like copy and paste.

- Making a video tutorial for the Figure Editor (it's got lots of un-obvious feature, really)


TEASE, TEASE



This is from a client session.  Expect the map edges to change...

[Evan Balster]

Woo.  The new InfiniteBlank server is up and running with a fresh copy of Ubuntu Server edition.  I'm gonna finish out the changes, though.  Because I love you.  I think I should have it up to specs tomorrow.  We'll see.

I'll definitely have avatars done tonight.  Clipping too, maybe.



...



I'd like your input on something:  What should I do for music?

There won't be any in release one.  I've thought about putting in a "radio" that plays Creative Commons music, and/or stuff some collaborators of mine make.  Blue-sky, I'd have a music-making tool and let users make music for their own rooms, copy music from other rooms or leave them open for others to musicify.  But I don't have the time right now to make that stuff...


EDIT:  And here's another thing.  If the game gets any kind of significant user base, the junky server I'm running won't be able to handle it.  I've also been pulling very few hours while occupied with this project.  I had the idea of making prints of the game's world and selling them in addition to donation-scrounging.  Is that not cool?  I'd be selling other folks' art, but not individually.  And it would fund hosting / development.


EDIT 2:  Hah, it's late and I noticed something in my code that gave me a laugh.  If a client cancels editing a cell, but they don't have it 'locked' to them for editing, the server does this: LOG("NO SUCH LOCK");

EDIT 3:  Argh didn't plan to pull a late-nighter but I got the avatars working and frolicked with a friend and I'm so excited about this project

EDIT 4:  Clipping WORKS, awesome.

[baconman]

I can think of a few ways about dealing with BGM for this.

1. Assemble a "general soundtrack" of 20 or so different kinds of themes. Then as players are level-building, allow them to choose one. You might even enable playback of it while world-building/editing. You could consider employing the talents of musicians on the Audio/Unpaid Collabs boards for this as well.

2. You could opt for an easily-editable "Mario Paint Music" kind of interface; along with a generous amount of sample beat mappings/inputs, so that designers can easily stick 8 or so of these together, and then simply add/remove edit them to their heart's content.

3. Either of the above examples, along with a playback-rate editor, for artificially altering the songs' tempo.

4. Custom "radio" folder(s) in options, and then allow straight playback of whatever music they already have on their computer.


EDIT: Yeah, there's a good number of projects I'd like to play around with, this being one of them. Admittedly, I've been sinking a lot of time in my own little world (IRL) lately.

[mokesmoe]

4 wouldn't have much point, because if they wanted their own music they would just use a separate program and could just mute the in-game audio
I would say go with 1. You could let people send in their own music to add too. 3 is a good idea, but put it low on the priority list, unless it would be super fast to add in.

[Evan Balster]

I'm gonna take an extra hour to put in character select, now that IndieCade's deadline has been pushed back again.  It'll let players build up a little library of avatars for themselves.  Defaults by Beau Blyth.



EDIT:

Status:  Coding a character select screen and the character drawing tool.  That'll take another hour at the most.  When finished, I'll release the game for Windows.  I'll then build it for Mac and release that.  Afterwards, I'll go back home, recompile, update and reset the server.  So you might get bumped during the night.  Don't worry; if you're working on a Cell it'll be autosaved.  Give it two minutes and rejoin.  The new version will feature a system already coded into the client to give a warning to clients before intentional server reboots.

After all that, if I'm not too tired, I'll do some videos.  :D


EDIT 2:  I'm being way too anal about this character selector, but it's not like that many people will be awake to try the thing at this blasted hour anyway...


EDIT 3:  Done.  Prepping for release.  As for that server update I think I'll get to it tomorrow.  There are some incomplete, now-uneditable cells that I'm going to unlock.  They're the ugly ones.

EDIT 4:  Stopped to fix a minor cosmetic bug on Mac, and to make sure Cmd+Q worked, which it didn't.  Fixed!

[Evan Balster]

It's out!

Now go make awesomeness.


[Download]


Tools tutorial coming soon!  Until then, figure it out or check the readme!


Warning:  Sometime in the next 24 hours, once, I'm going to disconnect the server with no warning.
Don't sweat it, though.  If you're drawing something, it'll be rescued and you'll be given directions to resume.
The new server version, when restarted normally, will activate the automated countdown system in your copy of the client and give you two minutes' warning.  It'll also have message broadcasts, maybe.
Oh, and so you know, the reason for the restart is a server bug which prevents it from properly notifying clients that other clients have disconnected while editing.  It keeps you out of blank cells no one's working on, until you reconnect your client.


Default palette courtesy of Ted Martens.


Anyway, I'm going home and to bed now.  Official gathering time number one shall be 6 PM pacific tonight for anyone interested.  (Note however I live in Iowa)



EDIT:  I'll be doing the server update in the next few hours.  Careful.

[Evan Balster]

I've found and fixed a few bugs in a new version, 0.1.1, which I'm going to release now for Windows and soon for Mac.


0.1.1 : changes
   Changed default password from random to blank (easy to get locked out of own cells)
   Fixed errors that occur if a user is disconnected while working on a cell.
   
   (server-side) Fixed bug which occurs when a player locks an area and quits.
   (server-side) Enabled administration
   (server-side) Added warning system for server shutdowns
   (server-side) Added broadcast system
   (server-side) Added display for number of edits going on [I try not to interrupt]


(My boss lent (gave?) me an old Macbook pro for porting, so the mac update will take as long as it takes me to figure out how to install and set up Xcode on it.


I'll be resetting the server in the next hour for sure.  That will enable the (server-side) parts of the update.  There haven't been many people connecting thus far, so the fact that 0.1 bugs up if disconnected while working on a cell shouldn't be a problem.


After the server reset, I'm going to clear out some unfinished-looking rooms I suspect people locked themselves out of.  There are three.


That's all for now.  -Evan


EDIT: SERVER IS DOWN FOR MAINTENANCE.  SHOULD TAKE BETWEEN 5 AND 20 MINUTES.
    TESTING SERVER.  I MIGHT TURN IT OFF BUT YOU'LL HAVE A WARNING NOW.
    GOOD TO GO

[increpare]

Tried it out there - very interesting!  (not too much right now to say - the editor interface is a bit clunky.  One concrete suggestion: being able to change-color mid-polygon draw would be nice (even if it changes the colour of the entire poly)).

[Landshark RAWR]

i get this weird problem where the games courser doesn't actually follow the actual mouse

[Evan Balster]

I've got the new, warning-enabled server and version 0.1.1 of the game up.  Windows folks, please get the new version.  It'll save your butt if you disconnect while editing.  Mac peeps, you'll have to wait for me to get Xcode set up here at home...

I'm messing with the server to get administration working so it'll go down a few more times, but there will be warnings ingame now thanks to the new system.


I'll be making a tutorial for the graphics tool as soon as I'm done.  It has _lots_ of features it doesn't even hint at.


EDIT:  (I forgot about this page so this has been the case for a while) Server changes are probably done for the day.  And I don't expect any crashes.

[Evan Balster]

New, 3-minute tutorial complete and available here.

The server's changes are done for the day.  I'll get the mac build put together soonish.  Tomorrow I'm going to make a client version 0.1.2 that doesn't make the server work so hard and has less loading lag.  (They send a lot of redundant requests right now.)

Official congregation time in fifteen minutes, for anyone who's interested.  : D

I'll be watching the server like a mother hawk all evening, though.

i get this weird problem where the games courser doesn't actually follow the actual mouse

Does the window look like it's been squished vertically?  Can you send a screenshot?
There's a card-specific graphical bug that makes the game always think its window is square.
What platform are you running?

Tried it out there - very interesting!  (not too much right now to say - the editor interface is a bit clunky.  One concrete suggestion: being able to change-color mid-polygon draw would be nice (even if it changes the colour of the entire poly)).

Hmm, I'm not sure how I'd distinguish that from a frustrated user who wants to stop drawing a shape.  Explain further..?