Older blog entries for alriddoch (starting at number 3)

Started work on a simple astronomy system, basically so that the moon can be represented properly for the werewolf system, but I figured I should probably do it right the first time, rather than have to come back and re-visit. Initially started working on it as an earth-centric system, but Sal pointed out that it would be better if it was sun-centric, which actually makes alot of it easier.

Still struggling with how to deal with loading Acorn map files into the server, and handle entity id parity with the client, which may have loaded a slightly different version of the same map. Do we need to extend the map format to include id?

First update for a while, been very busy.

Early last month I wrote a watchdog daemon for cyphesis that keeps a server running, initialises it and monitors it, to automate game server administration.

Ranges have now been implemented, which massively reduces the bandwidth used by each client in a game. Range is currently based on axis aligned square areas rather than circles as it really should be. The reason for this is primarily to maximise performance.

Cleaned up and optimised much of the cyphesis code. This together with changes to the Atlas protocol library means that server load is much lower than previously.

Wrote the collision detection code for cyphesis using AABB collision detection and prediction algorithms. Finally added in simple collision resolution so walking characters can no longer walk through each other.

Added MetaServer functionality to cyphesis, based on the WorldForge metaserver example code provided. All seems to work fine, but is as yet unsupported by any clients. This combined with the information that a client can now retrieve by sending a "get" operation directly after connection should mean that a client could offer a nice menu of all current running servers.

Currently working on making the handling of C++ base classes with python derived classes more generic so that more code can be moved into C++.

Fleshed out the media server ideas a bit more, and wrote the basis for some clients. Came up with a debug message control scheme that I am happy with, and fitted it into cyphesis-C++ to get rid of all the nasty warnings it spits out.

WorldForge main website is down, so announcing Acorn today does not seem to be an option

Acorn debs are now up, and apt-getable thanks to Demitar.

Started work on a media metadata server for WorldForge. Basic concept is that it will deliver entries from a database over an Atlas connection in response to queries made by a client. Format for the metadata is currently using the Atlas schema proposed by Karsten Laux for the config file sprites.xml used in uclient.

Did some more work on the whitepaper describing Acorn internals, and put some more time into infrastructure work for Acorn. Should be able to announce Acorn to the world this weekend.