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[sffoundry games] February 10, 2003

From: <sffoundry-games-txt-mm-admin(at)newsfeed.osdn.com>
Date: Mon Feb 10 2003 - 04:42:02 EST

  OPEN SOURCE DEVELOPMENT NETWORK                 WEEKLY EDITION * NEWSLETTER

February 10, 2003

                  SourceForge.net - Gaming Foundry

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Sponsored by Thinkgeek
http://www.ThinkGeek.com/

#======= NEWS =======# snip 0.8 has been released
http://gaming.foundries.sourceforge.net/article.pl?sid=02/12/19/229244

Snip 0.8 is out! Snip is a simple yet perfectly playable and customizable Tetris implementation that's available under the conditions of the GPL. It includes a fully-open-source DirectX-wrapper and an os-independent generic Tetric-class. It's simple but nevertheless highly addictive - make sure to check it out!

Underworld Adventures - major feature additions http://gaming.foundries.sourceforge.net/article.pl?sid=02/12/19/2213216

Submitted By- Michael Fink Underworld Adventures is a project to recreate Ultima Underworld 1 on modern operating systems (e.g., Win32, Linux, or MacOS), using the original game files.

Assault Wing 0.4 released - - 2002-Jun-24 2:05:4 http://gaming.foundries.sourceforge.net/article.pl?sid=02/07/08/2329207

Assault Wing version 0.4 has been released. The new version features playing over network (this time it really works). There is also a simple user interface for some basic options. Remember to download both the source code and the data packages (Check it out)

Do you need help?

Armies UI coding complete
http://gaming.foundries.sourceforge.net/article.pl?sid=02/07/08/2326234

Well, finally it's sort of complete and ready to be used. It only lacks support for ScrollBars and images. The last one is actually quite easy to do, but I decided to wait on this and continue with more game related coding. Read more on the Armies webpage A HREF="http://sourceforge.net/projects/armies/http://sour"here

Arianne's July evaluation report.
http://gaming.foundries.sourceforge.net/article.pl?sid=02/07/08/2324228

On our second month project evaluation report I will try to spot the most important problems and areas of Arianne and we later will show a list of the achieved goals. First of all I need some input about the status of Areas of Arianne that I don't manage directly: What happen with the Websystem, how it is comming? I really expect that there is a "small" progress in this area soon or I will take care of it. We need Websystem for ALPHA 2 release, and now we only miss it for the release. Please whoever manage it contact us on arianne-general and give a report of the status. What we do with the web page? Really I expected *Nuke to help us speed up development by: Incrementing project transparency by publish the biggest possible amount of stories Incrementing people collaboration as a result of the above Decrementing time required to design features as a result of people collaboration Incrementing the number of features as a result of several teams working on parallel After 500000 of visits and 4 months of test, the experience is not totally satisfactory. Mainly because to publish news has been a task centered mainly on me, and that is not the goal of Nukes. It has been really hard to show people that they SHOULD publish news of all their advances. Also people collaboration hasn't been as high as expected mainly I spot here a few problems: Website is extremly complex and hard to be gathered All the info is there but can't be found in a simple way People usually works faster with words that with hands People DON'T read at all So on my side, the Arianne, I compromise to try to build a clearer website by organizing more the information on Areas and building newbies area where main themes are explained or pointed. I also suggest to raise the threehold with which we accept new people on Arianne, we really should only add people to the team once proved collaboration. We should keep using Sourceforge to manage our development, we need to use all its features to manage the project specially: Bugs Tracker: Only way that we ACCEPT bugs Features Tracker: Should contain features, also Mailing list is acceptable, but results should be posted here Support Request: People problems with Arianne MUST be managed using this tracker. Documentation: We will keep using Wiki as seems to be simpler that Sourceforge tool. Task Manager: The task Manager is a bit buggy, doesn't show relations between tasks and it is really slow. There is no alternative Open Source tool, so I will keep using Microsoft Project 98 File Manager: We will use it for all our files release, we should create File Releases for everything on Arianne project that shoul be downloaded. Mailing lists, Forums and CVS: They are our OFFICIAL ones. We could work on integrating all that features into our own website. It could be a really insteresting task. Does it worth the time? We should rework our organization, actual one doesn't really works: Coordinators are missing, people is not organized, Coordinators that exist doesn't update the rest of people with reports about the status of their task. We should ENFORCE some kind of organization into all this. Again if things doesn't work, I will centralize all again on me. I suggest to develop something like a cluster of coordinators for each task, so there is always someone willing to coordinate the work and be able to send reports. We need to create a few guidelines about how do we add people to the developer's staff and such things. We still need to discuss the LICENSE of Arianne as actually code is only usable for GPL projects and being an engine that perhaps is not good, also we need to avoid the GPL 2.0 blackhole by, perhaps, switching to Affero GPL to disallow service providers to avoid the GPL restrictions to enforce users rights. Our goals should be: Open Source Disallow possible ways of close RP, AI or framework of the Engine Allow creation of close source clients easily Disallow use of Arianne by Service providers that doesn't collaborate into Open Source The resulting license and the discussion to reach it should be done on arianne-general. I WON'T allow any kind of Arianne special License. We DON'T forbid commercialization of Arianne, we forbid closing source the application. We need to organize our CVS as Arianne is growing far beyond the possible way of organizing it into a single module. So as GuidoJ suggested we need to split in: server client containing client libraries and the examplatory arianne-client common containing common libs used by both client and server 2dclient worldeditor utils containing small utilities that, maybe this needs to be split up into server-utils and client-utils All this changes should happen AFTER the release of ALPHA 2. Now let's talk about documentation, Wiki is really great for collaborative editing, but really sucks when it is time to read. So from time to time Wiki documentation should be gathered and a Documentation doc in PDF/PS should be generated. It is important to have an automatic tool to create this because this way we can update is as often as desired. IMO all the documentation should be updated at least twice per month. That's all about the problems I spot on Arianne right now. It is time now to talk about features for this new month. First of all we need to define what are our goals for ALPHA 3. These goals are actually the next ones: AI RP Net Quest Clients Metaserver There is a draft written for AI and actually Skyflash is working on the AI. The RP system is already written, and most of it is already implemented. We need to document now what it is done to spot inconsistences. Once the system is done, we should start to add the skill actions as explained on Doggie3 draft. We should refocus the RP Code to a more Object Oriented approach so we can save lots of checkings. The Network system should be redone and converted the WHOLE protocol into XML and document it. We should work on lowering the packages's size to more or less 512 bytes per package. We should also work on making the packages flow more constant, instead of making it burst at the begin of each turn. We need to spot WHY the client looks so jumpy, and fix it, we need to coordinate on a better way both client and server, perhaps by using a Learning Machine algorithm to determine the amount of length required to move on each perception. The Quest system is the jewel of the Arianne Engine and will determine the usefulness of the engine, we need something really simple to use, easy to change and scriptable. We should consider Lua to build the scripts and we could define them on .lua files or directly contained on a Quests.xml file. The format was explained on the mailing list and as soon as work begins will be re-explained. About Clients, just to say that progress on 2D Client is really satisfactory and that Skyflash will work on 3D Client soon. We will expand LibClient to be even easier to create a new Client by adding to it all the code parts that has been spotted on 2D Client as shareable with other clients. It will means a modification of all the already existing clients, but at the price of making it easier to write and debug. There is a feature that should be added to Clients that is to allow a small difference between actual state and state given by the server so that the correction doesn't means a little jump. Finally talk about Metaserver, actuall Andre coded in PHP a metaserver. Servers already send their data in a HTTP stream to the Metaserver if it is defined. IMO we should recode the Metaserver into C++ language and perhaps fill a database with info about logged servers, but I think it is not optimal to use PHP for this tasks, although Andre work is really excellent. We need to implement some kind of handshaking protocol to verify that we are talking with a real Arianne server. About the achieved goals, I have to point that we have a really working 2D Client that can be playable and we have a stabler server, also the new Map system is speeding up a lot the execution of the isInRange operation, as it is now using a BSP approach to ellaborate it. It is important to add as soon as possible the possibility of joining two neightbours pieces, as now it is only possible to split them. Also another great achieved goal is the introduction of a working RP system thanks to the efforts of many people but mainly Eugen and Skyflash. The 2D Client is now playing sounds, just copy the SFX folder into the Bin folder. We still are looking people that help us on: Creating 3D Objects on 3DS format Creating SFX sounds for actions on the format <object>_<action>.[wav|mp3|ogg] Creating binaries and installers for Arianne Help on coding in general. Generate 2D Kyra Sprites using 3D Objects or create new 2D Sprites. Help on mantaining the site and publish news. That's all for now. Soon you will see the rework of our website and I hope that you this time collaborate on making the site live and usable. My best regards to you, Miguel - The project Leader -

New Release of the Lost Realm of Anoria engine SDK http://gaming.foundries.sourceforge.net/article.pl?sid=02/07/08/2323253

The new Alpha03 (A03) Release of the Lost Realm of Anoria online multiuser world engine SDK and demos is now available for download at The Lost Realm of Anoria This latest version of the sourceforge hosted open source project offers many improvements and new features: - more API functions now available to scripts - improved keyboard support - engine objects support customizable userAttribute sets - userAttribute set templates for easy creation of user defined engine objects - many new, instructive demonstration scripts included - demo client supports full screen display modes - the demo zone is much larger now (inluding some outdoor terrain) Have Fun! - Gsk

PPTactical Engine 0.8.6
http://gaming.foundries.sourceforge.net/article.pl?sid=02/07/08/2323231

The 0.8.6 isn't visually impressive. Instead, several useful features were added: advanced terrain: now it has support for water and shores serialization/deserialization for almost all classes in the engine map editor was rewritten using engine classes tile editor become mapchunk editor compiles with both MSVC and C++Builder infantry script to deal with terrain types changed directory structure For your convenience, 0.8.6 now comes packed in one big archive containing sources, binaries, data, docs and project files. Along side the release, we launched a web page dedicated to the engine:
http://aspc.cs.utt.ro/~karg/ppt/index.html The project page is: http://sf.net/projects/pptactical

Do you need more help?

Palm OS gaming framework Razor! released. http://gaming.foundries.sourceforge.net/article.pl?sid=02/06/24/2134201

Hello! I have released a Palm OS gaming framework, called Razor!. It offers sprites three voice music sfx blinding speed input control timing and flow control. So all the building blocks for a mobile game should be there. All it takes is some basic C++ knowledge, and some Palm experience with PRC-Tools or Codewarrior. Being a former game developer myself, I am always looking for people to share the fun, discuss with me, make improvements, develop small games with it, etc. The Razor! homepage is at http://www.tilo-christ.de/razor The Razor! presence on SourceForge is at
http://sourceforge.net/projects/razor-engine Cheers, Tilo --teacy

phpRPG 0.5 Released!
http://gaming.foundries.sourceforge.net/article.pl?sid=02/06/24/2133212

phpRPG 0.5 is now available for download. This release includes some major changes: - Reviewed code and tidied up to comply with the coding standards - Eliminated the need of cookies - Changed all pics to .png or .jpg format (NO MORE .gif!) - Dynamic hexagonal grid image is now replaced by image tiles - Incorporated JavaScript to provide better player control - Implemented event processor - Advanced the map editor and reorganised database structures - Improved chat system (but disabled emotions for the moment) - Items-related functions such as take, drop, identify, equip - A rough but functional and playable combat system --ttschung

Announcing Copter-Commander.org
http://gaming.foundries.sourceforge.net/article.pl?sid=02/06/13/2310224

Copter commander's web pages have moved to here. The content is the same as always. Thanks to all who donated DNS services to make this happen. You're the man ... er ... the men! : ) If you haven't seen this game, it is way fun. (chris)

ph'@ntasy - Now Playable!
http://gaming.foundries.sourceforge.net/article.pl?sid=02/05/27/048243

Yes, we are getting there! Our first phpRPG project - ph'@ntasy - although may not be the best game, it is finally playable!! The source of phpRPG 0.5 is yet to be released, with much improved changes: - Cookies are no longer required! :) - Dynamic hexagonal grid image is now replaced by image tiles - JavaScript to allow keyboard control - Implemented event processor - Items-related functions such as take, drop, identify, equip - A rough combat system Register an account and try and get a feel of where phpRPG is heading! More information can be found within the game. phpRPG website: http://phprpg.org/ phpRPG project: http://sourceforge.net/projects/phprpg/ --Timothy Chung

Can we help you?

Arianne is looking for developers, artists and wri http://gaming.foundries.sourceforge.net/article.pl?sid=02/05/27/049251

We need urgently developers to help us lower the Bug List available at Sourceforge. Mainly we need people that: have experience with C++ have read the Arianne Code Book have a few spare hours to spend on Arianne. Just take a unassigned bug and tell us about it here

New FreeCraft engine and media snapshots available http://gaming.foundries.sourceforge.net/article.pl?sid=02/05/27/049223

A new snapshot from CVS of the FreeCraft engine and FcMP is available here. What's new: Bug fixes for multiple viewports support Network menus are ready FcMP works with the engine snapshot without modifications The complete changelog This is the first release with user friendly multiplayer menus. Please test the multiplayer network support. If no bugs are reported, this will be the next unstable release. You find the files than in the sourceforge file area. --The FreeCraft Project

DOEDELS project started
http://gaming.foundries.sourceforge.net/article.pl?sid=02/05/27/0410209

Who does not know games like settler or warcraft? This will be "DOEDELS", the final solution for strategy-games. It will be a realtime peer to peer game written in java. The project has just started take a look. If you want to join, you are invited.

Lost Realm of Anoria Online World Engine Rel A02 http://gaming.foundries.sourceforge.net/article.pl?sid=02/05/11/1726213

The Lost Realm of Anoria Project has just released the A02 pre alpha/demo version of it's online world engine. Click Read More to learn more..

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