From erik.hjortsberg at iteam.se Mon May 5 03:01:04 2008 From: erik.hjortsberg at iteam.se (Erik Hjortsberg) Date: Mon, 5 May 2008 12:01:04 +0200 Subject: [WF-General] Website Preview (Mark 2) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <93BE8A5F0814E64D8CEDC34CA57B764A01404DD760@brun.iteam.local> Hi, sorry for not answering this before. I see now that you've now updated the live web site layout. It looks good and is an improvement on the former one, while still retaining most of the structure. I also saw that you (or someone else?) have added some newer screenshots from Ember. That's great! One thing though is that I still would like to see that the blue sphere behind the sword and anvil in the logo would be a sphere, and not just a raised circle. It represents a globe (like a planet) and I think it would both be nice to keep that symbolic and that it would look good as a sphere. I can't say though why we have the current setup with the separate blog from where news items are fetched: Al knows more about that. Overall though I think it looks much better, and that the new logo is an improvement. The font is much nicer and the lighter background subtle and nice. You should start putting all of your source materials into the main svn media repository though, as soon as possible. Talk with jayr at jayr at hourglass3d.com about where in the structure it should fit (since he's in the process of rearranging it all). If you haven't accessed the svn repository before this will help: http://worldforge.org/media/documents/media_faq Btw., I think we could benefit from having that page appear in the main menu, under "Media". Sincerely Erik From: general-bounces at mail.worldforge.org [mailto:general-bounces at mail.worldforge.org] On Behalf Of Chris Baker Sent: den 23 april 2008 02:00 To: general at mail.worldforge.org Subject: [WF-General] Website Preview (Mark 2) Hi everyone, I've been pretty busy with essays/exams as my finals are coming up at university at the moment, but given that the GSoC is about to begin and we might get a bit of interest in the website, I thought I should probably set aside an afternoon and try and get it to a finished stage, or at least polish it a bit. So here's what I've got done on the logo and the site itself. First up is the logo. I've redone the image into a PSD file, and now the globe is a seperate entity from the anvil and the sword. This means I can change the colour of it, and change the appearence of it generally without messing up the rest of the logo. I played about for a bit and put together this, which I'm provisionally putting forward as the final project logo: http://trial.dreamhosters.com/logosample2.jpg Comments, as always, are welcome. I much prefer the lighter blue globe to the dark blue of the previous logo, and I feel it works much better on the site. At Kai's request I figured out how to export the logo as a SVG file so it could be freely resized without any loss of quality. You can find the result here: http://trial.dreamhosters.com/logo.svg I'm not really familiar with Inkscape, the program I used to convert the JPG to an SVG, so I don't know how to remove the background or even if it's been converted properly. If someone wants to check it out, feel free to do so. Secondly, I put together my vision of how I think the Worldforge site should end up: http://trial.dreamhosters.com/WF-Site-Mockup.jpg I personally think this looks MUCH better than the current site (trying loading them up and comparing them side by side), and it is essentially only a series of slight modifications to the proportions, positioning and colours of the elements that already exist. The only real change is to the way news is posted on the front page of the site. I'm somewhat mystified as to why we're still using the current system that links to the developer blog when it's fairly standard on the web to post the news on the frontpage itself, or at least an excerpt from it. The system I'd like to implement would still use the developer journal, but would just provide a snippet of information to viewers as to what the notice is about. The only thing that it would lose compared to the existing system is that the really old news wouldn't be as easily accessible, but then that's probably not a concern to the average visitor (and the experienced users would know where to find the old news anyway). Overall I think it be a big step towards the easy accessibility of information, which I'm sure we can all agree can only be a good thng. On the technical side, I'm not entirely sure if this is possible using Zope as I'm more familiar with Joomla, but as Zope's intended to be a CMS I'd be very surprised if it's not. So, anyone got any thoughts on all that? Chris. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.worldforge.org/pipermail/general/attachments/20080505/03fac96d/attachment-0002.html From erik.hjortsberg at iteam.se Mon May 5 03:01:04 2008 From: erik.hjortsberg at iteam.se (Erik Hjortsberg) Date: Mon, 5 May 2008 12:01:04 +0200 Subject: [WF-General] Website Preview (Mark 2) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <93BE8A5F0814E64D8CEDC34CA57B764A01404DD760@brun.iteam.local> Hi, sorry for not answering this before. I see now that you've now updated the live web site layout. It looks good and is an improvement on the former one, while still retaining most of the structure. I also saw that you (or someone else?) have added some newer screenshots from Ember. That's great! One thing though is that I still would like to see that the blue sphere behind the sword and anvil in the logo would be a sphere, and not just a raised circle. It represents a globe (like a planet) and I think it would both be nice to keep that symbolic and that it would look good as a sphere. I can't say though why we have the current setup with the separate blog from where news items are fetched: Al knows more about that. Overall though I think it looks much better, and that the new logo is an improvement. The font is much nicer and the lighter background subtle and nice. You should start putting all of your source materials into the main svn media repository though, as soon as possible. Talk with jayr at jayr at hourglass3d.com about where in the structure it should fit (since he's in the process of rearranging it all). If you haven't accessed the svn repository before this will help: http://worldforge.org/media/documents/media_faq Btw., I think we could benefit from having that page appear in the main menu, under "Media". Sincerely Erik From: general-bounces at mail.worldforge.org [mailto:general-bounces at mail.worldforge.org] On Behalf Of Chris Baker Sent: den 23 april 2008 02:00 To: general at mail.worldforge.org Subject: [WF-General] Website Preview (Mark 2) Hi everyone, I've been pretty busy with essays/exams as my finals are coming up at university at the moment, but given that the GSoC is about to begin and we might get a bit of interest in the website, I thought I should probably set aside an afternoon and try and get it to a finished stage, or at least polish it a bit. So here's what I've got done on the logo and the site itself. First up is the logo. I've redone the image into a PSD file, and now the globe is a seperate entity from the anvil and the sword. This means I can change the colour of it, and change the appearence of it generally without messing up the rest of the logo. I played about for a bit and put together this, which I'm provisionally putting forward as the final project logo: http://trial.dreamhosters.com/logosample2.jpg Comments, as always, are welcome. I much prefer the lighter blue globe to the dark blue of the previous logo, and I feel it works much better on the site. At Kai's request I figured out how to export the logo as a SVG file so it could be freely resized without any loss of quality. You can find the result here: http://trial.dreamhosters.com/logo.svg I'm not really familiar with Inkscape, the program I used to convert the JPG to an SVG, so I don't know how to remove the background or even if it's been converted properly. If someone wants to check it out, feel free to do so. Secondly, I put together my vision of how I think the Worldforge site should end up: http://trial.dreamhosters.com/WF-Site-Mockup.jpg I personally think this looks MUCH better than the current site (trying loading them up and comparing them side by side), and it is essentially only a series of slight modifications to the proportions, positioning and colours of the elements that already exist. The only real change is to the way news is posted on the front page of the site. I'm somewhat mystified as to why we're still using the current system that links to the developer blog when it's fairly standard on the web to post the news on the frontpage itself, or at least an excerpt from it. The system I'd like to implement would still use the developer journal, but would just provide a snippet of information to viewers as to what the notice is about. The only thing that it would lose compared to the existing system is that the really old news wouldn't be as easily accessible, but then that's probably not a concern to the average visitor (and the experienced users would know where to find the old news anyway). Overall I think it be a big step towards the easy accessibility of information, which I'm sure we can all agree can only be a good thng. On the technical side, I'm not entirely sure if this is possible using Zope as I'm more familiar with Joomla, but as Zope's intended to be a CMS I'd be very surprised if it's not. So, anyone got any thoughts on all that? Chris. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.worldforge.org/pipermail/general/attachments/20080505/03fac96d/attachment-0003.html From kai.blin at gmail.com Wed May 14 03:09:52 2008 From: kai.blin at gmail.com (Kai Blin) Date: Wed, 14 May 2008 12:09:52 +0200 Subject: [WF-General] WF git repo ssh keys have been disabled Message-ID: <200805141209.52590.kai.blin@gmail.com> Hi folks, there's been a security issue with the random generator used by ssh to generate public/private key pairs, making them predictable. If your key used to access git.worldforge.org was vulnerable, I've removed it. Please send me a new one. For more information about this, see http://secunia.com/advisories/30220/ Cheers, Kai -- Kai Blin WorldForge developer http://www.worldforge.org/ Wine developer http://wiki.winehq.org/KaiBlin Samba team member http://www.samba.org/samba/team/ -- Will code for cotton. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part. Url : http://mail.worldforge.org/pipermail/general/attachments/20080514/d2084687/attachment.bin From atorkhov at gmail.com Fri May 16 04:55:16 2008 From: atorkhov at gmail.com (Alexey Torkhov) Date: Fri, 16 May 2008 15:55:16 +0400 Subject: [WF-General] Sear question and wfut Message-ID: <482D7624.4020206@gmail.com> Hi Simon! A general question about sear: how well is current cvs version working in comparsion with 0.6.3 ? And I hope you don't mind my commit to wfut on gcc 4.3 support. Alex. From alriddoch at googlemail.com Fri May 16 05:10:13 2008 From: alriddoch at googlemail.com (Alistair Riddoch) Date: Fri, 16 May 2008 13:10:13 +0100 Subject: [WF-General] Sear question and wfut In-Reply-To: <482D7624.4020206@gmail.com> References: <482D7624.4020206@gmail.com> Message-ID: <4b05edd10805160510h7d037a90v44b089470a70eb85@mail.gmail.com> 2008/5/16 Alexey Torkhov : > > Hi Simon! > > A general question about sear: how well is current cvs version working > in comparsion with 0.6.3 ? > > And I hope you don't mind my commit to wfut on gcc 4.3 support. > I am not sure how much time Simon has at the moment, or how well Sear works compared with 0.6.3, but Sear has fallen behind relative to developments on the server, and in the protocol, and will need some time commitment from Simon if it is going to be brought up to speed for WorldForge development. As a team I think we currently view Sear as a suspended effort, and are not devoting time to support it. I would certainly be happy to see it come back, but I understand as well as anyone that there is more to life than WorldForge, and people have other commitments. Al -- Alistair Riddoch alriddoch at googlemail.com http://alistairriddoch.org/ From sryan at evercrack.com Fri May 23 07:13:15 2008 From: sryan at evercrack.com (sryan) Date: Fri, 23 May 2008 10:13:15 -0400 Subject: [WF-General] Small discussion with Erik Message-ID: <20080523141315.GD15789@evercrack.com> Greetings, Erik has asked that I forward part of the email chain that he and I are having regarding building issues with Ember. I'm not sure exactly where he's going with this, but he would like to start some discussions on it. I have attached the emails. I leave it to Erik to elaborate more. /Sean -- Real Time, adj.: Here and now, as opposed to fake time, which only occurs there and then. Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914), The Devil's Dictionary char sig[] = { 87,105,108,108,32,112,114,111,103,114,97,109, 32,102,111,114,32,102,111,111,100,0 }; -------------- next part -------------- Hi, could you send this mail and the next to the General mailing list? This is something that Alexey added after my approval, so I think it's a pr= ime candidate for mailing list discussion. :) /erik -----Original Message----- From: sryan [mailto:sryan at evercrack.com] Sent: den 23 maj 2008 05:44 To: Erik Hjortsberg Subject: Re: SV: gui event thing Perfect thanks, I'll have a read. A new error I've got due to the AC_CHECK_LIB that was recently added. If I just add those items to the LIBS it functions as it did before the macro check was added and all is well. ----------- configure: Lua version =3D> 5.1, make sure that CEGUI also has been compiled for this version checking for main in -lCEGUItoluapp... no checking for main in -ltolua++... no configure: error: Couldn't find tolua++. Make sure that CEGUI compiled with Lua scripting support. ----------- I went and did a bit more digging to see what the deal was, and I see that the AC_CHECK_LIB macro has a prototype of : AC_CHECK_LIB (library, function, [action-if-found], [action-if-not-found], [other-libraries]) Anyway, the only way I could make this work was to have a -llua so that the checks become: # Check for tolua++ AC_CHECK_LIB([CEGUItoluapp],[main], [ LIBS=3D"-lCEGUItoluapp $LIBS" ], [ AC_CHECK_LIB([tolua++], [main], [ LIBS=3D"-ltolua++ $LIBS" ], [ AC_MSG_ERROR([error]) ] ) ], [-llua] ) This concerns me a bit, as I have both 5.0 and 5.1 lua installed. The pkg-config information all suggests that I'm ok, and my CEGUI appears ok from what I see. The liblua.so seems to be 5.1 based on dates. The libCEGUItoluapp.so also doesn't have any reference to liblua, which suggests that it's doing a dlopen to get it. sryan at oberon:~/code/test$ ldd /usr/local/lib/libCEGUItoluapp.so linux-gate.so.1 =3D> (0xffffe000) liblualib.so =3D> /usr/local/lib/liblualib.so (0xb7f04000) libpthread.so.0 =3D> /lib/i686/cmov/libpthread.so.0 (0xb7eec000) libdl.so.2 =3D> /lib/i686/cmov/libdl.so.2 (0xb7ee7000) libc.so.6 =3D> /lib/i686/cmov/libc.so.6 (0xb7d99000) /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x80000000) Can you do an autogen && configure && compile to see if you are good ? It's an easy enough change to push, but I want to make sure it's not something wierd about my setup that's causing this. Let me know, I'll check email first thing. /sr -------------- next part -------------- A small addition to this. After watching the cimpiles go by, I don't think checking for these libraries in this way is a good thing ( docs say this macro is very error prone ). More manual reading indicates that this compiles a small test program against the library. It is important to note that I don't think this test makes use of pkg-config to find the information out. The .pc file I created did not have -llua or -llua5.1. So my test was originally ( note the extra libs after the pkg-config ): gcc -o zzz test.c `pkg-config --cflags --libs CEGUItoluapp` -llua5.1 -llua So I added those libraries ( which I'm not a big fan of doing ) to the .pc file, and then things worked for my test: gcc -o zzz test.c `pkg-config --cflags --libs CEGUItoluapp` sryan at oberon:~/code/test$ echo $? 0 Then I removed my additional library from the configure.ac and it still didn't find it. So this says to me that autoconf/automake is not making use of the system information with this check, it's just got a little test program like I have and really just tries to compile and check for success. autoconf_fu++ /sr From erik.hjortsberg at iteam.se Fri May 23 07:31:08 2008 From: erik.hjortsberg at iteam.se (Erik Hjortsberg) Date: Fri, 23 May 2008 16:31:08 +0200 Subject: [WF-General] Small discussion with Erik In-Reply-To: <20080523141315.GD15789@evercrack.com> References: <20080523141315.GD15789@evercrack.com> Message-ID: <93BE8A5F0814E64D8CEDC34CA57B764A0146E99027@brun.iteam.local> Hehe, yeah, I think this is a nice discussion for the mailing list. Sean: I think I know the problem. It looks like you have some locally compiled version of lua which it picks up when trying to test compile. Look at the config.log output where it says "/usr/local/lib/liblualib.so: undefined reference to `lua_newtable'", but then has " -I/usr/include/lua5.1". I.e. it did find lua 5.1 in its system installed place (/usr/lib) but when it tries to compile the test the linker first looks in /usr/local/lib where it finds another liblualib.so which it tries to use, which is what's causing the problems. One solutions would be to alter the checks for lua so instead of CXXFLAGS="$CXXFLAGS $LUA_CFLAGS..." LDFLAGS="$LDFLAGS $LUA_LIBS" It says CXXFLAGS="$LUA_CFLAGS $CXXFLAGS..." LDFLAGS="$LUA_LIBS $LDFLAGS" That way the next test will always look in the correct place first (unless something else is overriding the paths). /erik -----Original Message----- From: general-bounces at mail.worldforge.org [mailto:general-bounces at mail.worldforge.org] On Behalf Of sryan Sent: den 23 maj 2008 16:13 To: general at worldforge.org Subject: [WF-General] Small discussion with Erik Greetings, Erik has asked that I forward part of the email chain that he and I are having regarding building issues with Ember. I'm not sure exactly where he's going with this, but he would like to start some discussions on it. I have attached the emails. I leave it to Erik to elaborate more. /Sean -- Real Time, adj.: Here and now, as opposed to fake time, which only occurs there and then. Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914), The Devil's Dictionary char sig[] = { 87,105,108,108,32,112,114,111,103,114,97,109, 32,102,111,114,32,102,111,111,100,0 }; From sryan at evercrack.com Fri May 23 09:05:04 2008 From: sryan at evercrack.com (sryan) Date: Fri, 23 May 2008 12:05:04 -0400 Subject: [WF-General] Small discussion with Erik In-Reply-To: <93BE8A5F0814E64D8CEDC34CA57B764A0146E99027@brun.iteam.local> References: <20080523141315.GD15789@evercrack.com> <93BE8A5F0814E64D8CEDC34CA57B764A0146E99027@brun.iteam.local> Message-ID: <20080523160504.GE15789@evercrack.com> > Sean: I think I know the problem. It looks like you have some locally compiled version of lua which it picks up when trying to test compile. Look at the config.log output where it says "/usr/local/lib/liblualib.so: undefined reference to `lua_newtable'", but then has " -I/usr/include/lua5.1". > I.e. it did find lua 5.1 in its system installed place (/usr/lib) but when it tries to compile the test the linker first looks in /usr/local/lib where it finds another liblualib.so which it tries to use, which is what's causing the problems. > > One solutions would be to alter the checks for lua so instead of > CXXFLAGS="$CXXFLAGS $LUA_CFLAGS..." > LDFLAGS="$LDFLAGS $LUA_LIBS" > It says > CXXFLAGS="$LUA_CFLAGS $CXXFLAGS..." > LDFLAGS="$LUA_LIBS $LDFLAGS" > I came to the bottom of the issue, and it is as you guessed a locally compiled version of lua. I actually had 4 versions of lua installed, 2 locally compiled, and 2 system packages. The wrinkle for this minor fiasco came in when I compiled CEGUI, for some reason it was linked against at least one 5.0 .so ( the logs were blown away before I thought to save them, CEGUI might have been completely linked against 5.0 ) As a result the deps were out of whack. I have removed the offending locally compiled versions of lua ( I don't like thier build process much anyway ) and I've configured just fine. I'm done feeling silly now. -- Real Time, adj.: Here and now, as opposed to fake time, which only occurs there and then. Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914), The Devil's Dictionary char sig[] = { 87,105,108,108,32,112,114,111,103,114,97,109, 32,102,111,114,32,102,111,111,100,0 }; From erik.hjortsberg at iteam.se Mon May 26 02:36:41 2008 From: erik.hjortsberg at iteam.se (Erik Hjortsberg) Date: Mon, 26 May 2008 11:36:41 +0200 Subject: [WF-General] Task up for grabs: mediaindexer Message-ID: <93BE8A5F0814E64D8CEDC34CA57B764A0146E99071@brun.iteam.local> We have quite a lot of media nowadays and we need a better way to present it than the basic web interface found at http://purple.worldforge.org/repositories/svn/ The last couple of days I've fiddled with a tool called The MediaIndexer (http://sourceforge.net/projects/mediaindexer ) It's basically a php-application that uses a sqllite database to index all media, and to present it with a nice interface. I've put up my tweaked version of it on amber, over at http://amber.worldforge.org/media/mediaIndexer/mediaIndexer.php However, there are two things I need help with: 1) I don't have time to work on this. I've changed some base stuff like the logo and background colour, but someone with better design skills should perhaps take a closer look at it, to make it better fit with the rest of the sites (Chris perhaps?). Also, the default file info functionality prints some basic file system info, as seen here: http://amber.worldforge.org/media/mediaIndexer/mediaIndexer.php?file=/README.txt . The original version printed even more internal file system info (owner, group rights etc) which I've removed. But since we keep everything in svn we would much rather have it print out info from the svn. I.e. the original svn author, the last svn change date, the last log message, an ability to view the full log and so on. In short: alter it to get as much info from svn as possible. This will require some php scripting. 2) I can't host it on amber. Amber simply can't handle the strain of the app while at the same time providing a working cyphesis server and a place for the Ember media. I don't know if it perhaps can be hosted on purple? Or if someone else has hosting resources. (Also, the main strain seems to come from accessing the top root level; perhaps one could look at what it does that takes so much time. I'm guessing it rescans the whole tree or something.) So in short: it needs a new maintainer and a new host. /sincerely Erik -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.worldforge.org/pipermail/general/attachments/20080526/f571d54f/attachment-0001.html From pchavez_nmt at msn.com Thu May 29 09:56:38 2008 From: pchavez_nmt at msn.com (Patrick Chavez) Date: Thu, 29 May 2008 16:56:38 +0000 Subject: [WF-General] A few general questions Message-ID: Good evening! Long time lurker here with a few questions for the team: - Where are media items stored? The meshes, the textures, and the sounds? - Is there a design document for the server? - Has anyone tried to integrate Sun's Darkstar server with the WorldForge project? - Who would I talk to about contributing a tool that is not a client, not a server, and not a world editor? - Who would I talk to about contributing a world? Thank you for your time! -Patrick -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.worldforge.org/pipermail/general/attachments/20080529/b05078f1/attachment.html From sryan at evercrack.com Thu May 29 11:05:19 2008 From: sryan at evercrack.com (sryan) Date: Thu, 29 May 2008 14:05:19 -0400 Subject: [WF-General] A few general questions In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20080529180519.GA4375@evercrack.com> On Thu, May 29, 2008 at 04:56:38PM +0000, Patrick Chavez wrote: > Good evening! Good to meet you! > Long time lurker here with a few questions for the team: I'm resonably new here, but I will try and answer what I can. > - Where are media items stored? The meshes, the textures, and the sounds? Check out http://purple.worldforge.org/ . There are links to browse the svn repo where I suspect all media resources are included. You can also try off the main page under the "Media" section in the left navigation. Someone from the media team might like to expand on this. > - Is there a design document for the server? http://worldforge.org/dev/eng/servers/cyphesis/docs There are also supposed to be .diagram files for the server, however I've just checked the source and they do not appear to be present. Al will need to comment ( perhaps they are removed, out of date ? ) > - Has anyone tried to integrate Sun's Darkstar server with the WorldForge > project? I don't think so. I took a quick look at the source ( although the website was down so I didn't get a good look at any docs ), and it seems like we could define our own protocol ( which we have, Atlas ), so it might be possible. This looks like it might mean re-implementation in java ... so I'm not sure this would get the popular vote. > - Who would I talk to about contributing a tool that is not a client, not > a server, and not a world editor? This depends on what you would like to contribute. Those exclusions leave most active things out excepting assets ( models, textures, sound, etc ). If you have a tool in mind, flesh out the idea a little bit. If it doesn't fit in anywhere, maybe we can start a fresh code tree for you =) > - Who would I talk to about contributing a world? Again depends on how. If you want to add models/sounds/textures, these are relatively independant and the media guys can best describe how to do this. If you mean you want to help expand a world (or perhaps the 'default' world ) as a whole, then using the Ember client is likely the best way. You can make world modifications, export them, and then al/erik can work them into the ember/cyphesis trees. These things are done as part of some of the tools built into Ember ... entity creator, and a few others. There is a tutorial on how to do this here : http://wiki.worldforge.org/wiki/Ember_Tutorial_World_Editing Generally speaking, take a look around the site/wiki there is a ton of information. I myself found the history to be extremely interesting. If you have more questions, feel free to just ask away. -- Real Time, adj.: Here and now, as opposed to fake time, which only occurs there and then. Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914), The Devil's Dictionary char sig[] = { 87,105,108,108,32,112,114,111,103,114,97,109, 32,102,111,114,32,102,111,111,100,0 }; From sryan at evercrack.com Thu May 29 11:05:19 2008 From: sryan at evercrack.com (sryan) Date: Thu, 29 May 2008 14:05:19 -0400 Subject: [WF-General] A few general questions In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20080529180519.GA4375@evercrack.com> On Thu, May 29, 2008 at 04:56:38PM +0000, Patrick Chavez wrote: > Good evening! Good to meet you! > Long time lurker here with a few questions for the team: I'm resonably new here, but I will try and answer what I can. > - Where are media items stored? The meshes, the textures, and the sounds? Check out http://purple.worldforge.org/ . There are links to browse the svn repo where I suspect all media resources are included. You can also try off the main page under the "Media" section in the left navigation. Someone from the media team might like to expand on this. > - Is there a design document for the server? http://worldforge.org/dev/eng/servers/cyphesis/docs There are also supposed to be .diagram files for the server, however I've just checked the source and they do not appear to be present. Al will need to comment ( perhaps they are removed, out of date ? ) > - Has anyone tried to integrate Sun's Darkstar server with the WorldForge > project? I don't think so. I took a quick look at the source ( although the website was down so I didn't get a good look at any docs ), and it seems like we could define our own protocol ( which we have, Atlas ), so it might be possible. This looks like it might mean re-implementation in java ... so I'm not sure this would get the popular vote. > - Who would I talk to about contributing a tool that is not a client, not > a server, and not a world editor? This depends on what you would like to contribute. Those exclusions leave most active things out excepting assets ( models, textures, sound, etc ). If you have a tool in mind, flesh out the idea a little bit. If it doesn't fit in anywhere, maybe we can start a fresh code tree for you =) > - Who would I talk to about contributing a world? Again depends on how. If you want to add models/sounds/textures, these are relatively independant and the media guys can best describe how to do this. If you mean you want to help expand a world (or perhaps the 'default' world ) as a whole, then using the Ember client is likely the best way. You can make world modifications, export them, and then al/erik can work them into the ember/cyphesis trees. These things are done as part of some of the tools built into Ember ... entity creator, and a few others. There is a tutorial on how to do this here : http://wiki.worldforge.org/wiki/Ember_Tutorial_World_Editing Generally speaking, take a look around the site/wiki there is a ton of information. I myself found the history to be extremely interesting. If you have more questions, feel free to just ask away. -- Real Time, adj.: Here and now, as opposed to fake time, which only occurs there and then. Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914), The Devil's Dictionary char sig[] = { 87,105,108,108,32,112,114,111,103,114,97,109, 32,102,111,114,32,102,111,111,100,0 }; From pchavez_nmt at msn.com Thu May 29 13:02:06 2008 From: pchavez_nmt at msn.com (Patrick Chavez) Date: Thu, 29 May 2008 20:02:06 +0000 Subject: [WF-General] Character History Manager tool proposal Message-ID: I've been working on a "MMO author helper tool" project to flesh out NPC histories. With all the burdens of creating the artwork, the plot, and the quests the NPC histories and personalities frequently get left unfinished. Where does that armor vendor live? Where was he born? Who does he know and what does he do for fun? Wouldn't it be useful to have a tool that could generate a fully fleshed out history of a character at the push of a button? Even if most of the information is never used it will provide a starting point for the game designers. Does this sound like it would be a fit in the WorldForge project? It is quite a bit off the path of the usual 3d client / multi-user server development effort but there are very few post-platform tools for MMO designers out there. Thoughts? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.worldforge.org/pipermail/general/attachments/20080529/5760a5b1/attachment.html From darkmoon03 at gmail.com Fri May 30 06:41:56 2008 From: darkmoon03 at gmail.com (Calandra) Date: Fri, 30 May 2008 09:41:56 -0400 Subject: [WF-General] Character History Manager tool proposal In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, May 29, 2008 at 4:02 PM, Patrick Chavez wrote: > I've been working on a "MMO author helper tool" project to flesh out NPC > histories. With all the burdens of creating the artwork, the plot, and the > quests the NPC histories and personalities frequently get left unfinished. > Where does that armor vendor live? Where was he born? Who does he know and > what does he do for fun? > > Wouldn't it be useful to have a tool that could generate a fully fleshed out > history of a character at the push of a button? Even if most of the > information is never used it will provide a starting point for the game > designers. > > Does this sound like it would be a fit in the WorldForge project? It is > quite a bit off the path of the usual 3d client / multi-user server > development effort but there are very few post-platform tools for MMO > designers out there. > > Thoughts? I'd say that would be a very useful tool. I know I would have loved such a thing when I was writing LARPS. It's very useful for you (the world builder) to have a good understanding of the world so that when someone asks a question, you'll have a framework to pull your answer from. It would help even simple things like decorating rooms. If you know that the blacksmith that lives in a room has a hobby of music, you'd know to put a flute on the dresser. You would not be creating NPCs in a vacuum, you'd want to make sure any new character meshed with the existing ones. (Hmmm. NPC relationship database.) If you were generating lots of characters, you might want to be able to set population distributions (50% male, 50% female, 10% elven, 12% dwarven, 77% human, 68% middle class, etc...) /random thoughts From pchavez_nmt at msn.com Fri May 30 07:54:44 2008 From: pchavez_nmt at msn.com (Patrick Chavez) Date: Fri, 30 May 2008 14:54:44 +0000 Subject: [WF-General] Character History Manager tool proposal In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Thank you and excellent ideas! Please keep them coming. That is exactly what I had in mind. Hopefully being able to query the manager tool via APIs or something so that you can synchronize game state with character history but that probably will have to wait until later. >From your comments I think you would like the following features: - Integrate with other applications, similar to a database - Specify a "relationship" between two individuals - Have multiple races - Mass create a group (village of 5,000 or town guard of 100, etc) with similar characteristics - Tweak the random variables that create groups (40% female, 50% dwarves, etc) - Define social economic classes - Define locations for characters (Blacksmith's shop, Blacksmith's house, Blacksmith's favorite bar) This is also going down the route of making a model for what a person (character) is. -Patrick > Date: Fri, 30 May 2008 09:41:56 -0400> From: darkmoon03 at gmail.com> To: general at worldforge.org> Subject: Re: [WF-General] Character History Manager tool proposal> > On Thu, May 29, 2008 at 4:02 PM, Patrick Chavez wrote:> > I've been working on a "MMO author helper tool" project to flesh out NPC> > histories. With all the burdens of creating the artwork, the plot, and the> > quests the NPC histories and personalities frequently get left unfinished.> > Where does that armor vendor live? Where was he born? Who does he know and> > what does he do for fun?> >> > Wouldn't it be useful to have a tool that could generate a fully fleshed out> > history of a character at the push of a button? Even if most of the> > information is never used it will provide a starting point for the game> > designers.> >> > Does this sound like it would be a fit in the WorldForge project? It is> > quite a bit off the path of the usual 3d client / multi-user server> > development effort but there are very few post-platform tools for MMO> > designers out there.> >> > Thoughts?> > I'd say that would be a very useful tool. I know I would have loved> such a thing when I was writing LARPS. It's very useful for you (the> world builder) to have a good understanding of the world so that when> someone asks a question, you'll have a framework to pull your answer> from.> > It would help even simple things like decorating rooms. If you know> that the blacksmith that lives in a room has a hobby of music, you'd> know to put a flute on the dresser.> > You would not be creating NPCs in a vacuum, you'd want to make sure> any new character meshed with the existing ones. (Hmmm. NPC> relationship database.)> > If you were generating lots of characters, you might want to be able> to set population distributions (50% male, 50% female, 10% elven, 12%> dwarven, 77% human, 68% middle class, etc...)> > > /random thoughts> _______________________________________________> General mailing list> General at mail.worldforge.org> http://mail.worldforge.org/lists/listinfo/general -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.worldforge.org/pipermail/general/attachments/20080530/d4961c49/attachment.html From demitar at worldforge.org Fri May 30 08:26:38 2008 From: demitar at worldforge.org (Anders Petersson) Date: Fri, 30 May 2008 15:26:38 +0000 Subject: [WF-General] Character History Manager tool proposal In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1212161198.3355.15.camel@rose> tor 2008-05-29 klockan 20:02 +0000 skrev Patrick Chavez: > I've been working on a "MMO author helper tool" project to flesh out > NPC histories. With all the burdens of creating the artwork, the > plot, and the quests the NPC histories and personalities frequently > get left unfinished. Where does that armor vendor live? Where was he > born? Who does he know and what does he do for fun? This is an idea that fits very well with the ideas floating around in the worldforge project, so well in fact that ... > Wouldn't it be useful to have a tool that could generate a fully > fleshed out history of a character at the push of a button? Even if > most of the information is never used it will provide a starting point > for the game designers. ... someone already did, in the form of Hissim: http://users.utu.fi/sajuma/hissim.html which was also used in another project by the same author: http://kokatrix.sourceforge.net/ Hissim may be more geared towards generating the full world rather than doing point generation of a character. But it should at the very least be useful as a proof of concept and for inspiration. (Hissim can be compiled after a bit of poking. If you want I'll post a patch.) /Anders From darkmoon03 at gmail.com Fri May 30 08:42:13 2008 From: darkmoon03 at gmail.com (Calandra) Date: Fri, 30 May 2008 11:42:13 -0400 Subject: [WF-General] Character History Manager tool proposal In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 10:54 AM, Patrick Chavez wrote: > Thank you and excellent ideas! Please keep them coming. That is exactly > what I had in mind. Hopefully being able to query the manager tool via APIs > or something so that you can synchronize game state with character history > but that probably will have to wait until later. You're welcome. > >From your comments I think you would like the following features: > - Integrate with other applications, similar to a database Yes, at the very least, integrate with the other characters generated by this tool. Ideally, it could do a lot more. I tend towards the 'storytelling' side of things, rather than the raw 'combat/grind' side, so a coherent, integrated world story is important to what I'd like to build. > - Specify a "relationship" between two individuals While I can see advantages of having a full relationship web, that might be a bit much to ask for now. I was thinking that the various relationships a character has are listed when you go back to add something to the character. That way you have a better chance of maintaining consistency. > - Have multiple races That was an example. User definable fields (race, sex, nationality, job/class, guild, etc). It would depend on your world which ones you'd want to use. > - Mass create a group (village of 5,000 or town guard of 100, etc) with > similar characteristics > - Tweak the random variables that create groups (40% female, 50% dwarves, > etc) Yes, exactly. Then go back in and edit (some of) the individuals to add the over all story. > - Define social economic classes > - Define locations for characters (Blacksmith's shop, Blacksmith's house, > Blacksmith's favorite bar) > > This is also going down the route of making a model for what a person > (character) is. Ummm. Yes. This could get complicated quickly. -- Calandra From pchavez_nmt at msn.com Fri May 30 09:11:27 2008 From: pchavez_nmt at msn.com (Patrick Chavez) Date: Fri, 30 May 2008 16:11:27 +0000 Subject: [WF-General] Character History Manager tool proposal In-Reply-To: <1212161198.3355.15.camel@rose> References: <1212161198.3355.15.camel@rose> Message-ID: That's very snazzy. Are there any design documents or a description of the model to accompany it? -Patrick > From: demitar at worldforge.org> To: general at worldforge.org> Date: Fri, 30 May 2008 15:26:38 +0000> Subject: Re: [WF-General] Character History Manager tool proposal> > tor 2008-05-29 klockan 20:02 +0000 skrev Patrick Chavez:> > I've been working on a "MMO author helper tool" project to flesh out> > NPC histories. With all the burdens of creating the artwork, the> > plot, and the quests the NPC histories and personalities frequently> > get left unfinished. Where does that armor vendor live? Where was he> > born? Who does he know and what does he do for fun?> > This is an idea that fits very well with the ideas floating around in> the worldforge project, so well in fact that ...> > > Wouldn't it be useful to have a tool that could generate a fully> > fleshed out history of a character at the push of a button? Even if> > most of the information is never used it will provide a starting point> > for the game designers. > > ... someone already did, in the form of Hissim:> > http://users.utu.fi/sajuma/hissim.html> > which was also used in another project by the same author:> > http://kokatrix.sourceforge.net/> > Hissim may be more geared towards generating the full world rather than> doing point generation of a character. But it should at the very least> be useful as a proof of concept and for inspiration.> > (Hissim can be compiled after a bit of poking. If you want I'll post a> patch.)> > /Anders> > _______________________________________________> General mailing list> General at mail.worldforge.org> http://mail.worldforge.org/lists/listinfo/general -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.worldforge.org/pipermail/general/attachments/20080530/c7b3764b/attachment.html From alriddoch at googlemail.com Fri May 30 10:47:43 2008 From: alriddoch at googlemail.com (Alistair Riddoch) Date: Fri, 30 May 2008 18:47:43 +0100 Subject: [WF-General] A few general questions In-Reply-To: <20080529180519.GA4375@evercrack.com> References: <20080529180519.GA4375@evercrack.com> Message-ID: <4b05edd10805301047s6fdfd920pb6148634dd42a165@mail.gmail.com> 2008/5/29 sryan : > On Thu, May 29, 2008 at 04:56:38PM +0000, Patrick Chavez wrote: > >> - Is there a design document for the server? > http://worldforge.org/dev/eng/servers/cyphesis/docs > There are also supposed to be .diagram files for the server, however > I've just checked the source and they do not appear to be present. Al > will need to comment ( perhaps they are removed, out of date ? ) I hate writing design docs, and the design has been changing iteratively over the 8 or so years I have been working on cyphesis so much that it is now unrecognisable. I know the value of design docs, and understand that some people like them, but have no intention of writing or updating one myself at this time. > >> - Has anyone tried to integrate Sun's Darkstar server with the WorldForge >> project? > I don't think so. I took a quick look at the source ( although the > website was down so I didn't get a good look at any docs ), and it seems > like we could define our own protocol ( which we have, Atlas ), so it > might be possible. This looks like it might mean re-implementation in > java ... so I'm not sure this would get the popular vote. I've not looked at Darkstar much, but I've not heard much that made me think there was a compelling reason to migrate to it. Perhaps you could elaborate on why you think it would be a good idea? One of my key reservations is that the WorldForge model simulates more on the server than most of the commercial games, and a platform targeted at the current commercial space may not be at all suited to our needs. > >> - Who would I talk to about contributing a tool that is not a client, not >> a server, and not a world editor? > This depends on what you would like to contribute. Those exclusions > leave most active things out excepting assets ( models, textures, sound, > etc ). If you have a tool in mind, flesh out the idea a little bit. If > it doesn't fit in anywhere, maybe we can start a fresh code tree for you > =) Obviously we welcome contributions of tools, but without knowing what you have in mind I have no idea who you should talk to, or how it would be best to go about it. I am happy to offer an opinion on pretty much any idea you have. > >> - Who would I talk to about contributing a world? > Again depends on how. If you want to add models/sounds/textures, these > are relatively independant and the media guys can best describe how to > do this. If you mean you want to help expand a world (or perhaps the 'default' world ) as a whole, then using the Ember client is likely the best way. You can make world modifications, export them, and then al/erik can work them into the ember/cyphesis trees. These things are done as part of some of the tools built into Ember ... entity creator, and a few others. > > There is a tutorial on how to do this here : > http://wiki.worldforge.org/wiki/Ember_Tutorial_World_Editing > > Generally speaking, take a look around the site/wiki there is a ton of > information. I myself found the history to be extremely interesting. > > If you have more questions, feel free to just ask away. > Members of the community have been increasingly making it clear that the main blocker to truly building your own world is now server persistence. Once a server is restarted, everything that has been built is lost, and we need to build the backend systems that make everything permanent. I plan to work on the design and implementation of this over the coming months, so hopefully this will not be a barrier for long. Once this is done, contributing a world will be a case of sorting out hosting for your own server, connecting the client in admin mode, and getting to work with the built in world editing tools. Al -- Alistair Riddoch alriddoch at googlemail.com http://alistairriddoch.org/ From alriddoch at googlemail.com Fri May 30 10:47:43 2008 From: alriddoch at googlemail.com (Alistair Riddoch) Date: Fri, 30 May 2008 18:47:43 +0100 Subject: [WF-General] A few general questions In-Reply-To: <20080529180519.GA4375@evercrack.com> References: <20080529180519.GA4375@evercrack.com> Message-ID: <4b05edd10805301047s6fdfd920pb6148634dd42a165@mail.gmail.com> 2008/5/29 sryan : > On Thu, May 29, 2008 at 04:56:38PM +0000, Patrick Chavez wrote: > >> - Is there a design document for the server? > http://worldforge.org/dev/eng/servers/cyphesis/docs > There are also supposed to be .diagram files for the server, however > I've just checked the source and they do not appear to be present. Al > will need to comment ( perhaps they are removed, out of date ? ) I hate writing design docs, and the design has been changing iteratively over the 8 or so years I have been working on cyphesis so much that it is now unrecognisable. I know the value of design docs, and understand that some people like them, but have no intention of writing or updating one myself at this time. > >> - Has anyone tried to integrate Sun's Darkstar server with the WorldForge >> project? > I don't think so. I took a quick look at the source ( although the > website was down so I didn't get a good look at any docs ), and it seems > like we could define our own protocol ( which we have, Atlas ), so it > might be possible. This looks like it might mean re-implementation in > java ... so I'm not sure this would get the popular vote. I've not looked at Darkstar much, but I've not heard much that made me think there was a compelling reason to migrate to it. Perhaps you could elaborate on why you think it would be a good idea? One of my key reservations is that the WorldForge model simulates more on the server than most of the commercial games, and a platform targeted at the current commercial space may not be at all suited to our needs. > >> - Who would I talk to about contributing a tool that is not a client, not >> a server, and not a world editor? > This depends on what you would like to contribute. Those exclusions > leave most active things out excepting assets ( models, textures, sound, > etc ). If you have a tool in mind, flesh out the idea a little bit. If > it doesn't fit in anywhere, maybe we can start a fresh code tree for you > =) Obviously we welcome contributions of tools, but without knowing what you have in mind I have no idea who you should talk to, or how it would be best to go about it. I am happy to offer an opinion on pretty much any idea you have. > >> - Who would I talk to about contributing a world? > Again depends on how. If you want to add models/sounds/textures, these > are relatively independant and the media guys can best describe how to > do this. If you mean you want to help expand a world (or perhaps the 'default' world ) as a whole, then using the Ember client is likely the best way. You can make world modifications, export them, and then al/erik can work them into the ember/cyphesis trees. These things are done as part of some of the tools built into Ember ... entity creator, and a few others. > > There is a tutorial on how to do this here : > http://wiki.worldforge.org/wiki/Ember_Tutorial_World_Editing > > Generally speaking, take a look around the site/wiki there is a ton of > information. I myself found the history to be extremely interesting. > > If you have more questions, feel free to just ask away. > Members of the community have been increasingly making it clear that the main blocker to truly building your own world is now server persistence. Once a server is restarted, everything that has been built is lost, and we need to build the backend systems that make everything permanent. I plan to work on the design and implementation of this over the coming months, so hopefully this will not be a barrier for long. Once this is done, contributing a world will be a case of sorting out hosting for your own server, connecting the client in admin mode, and getting to work with the built in world editing tools. Al -- Alistair Riddoch alriddoch at googlemail.com http://alistairriddoch.org/ From pchavez_nmt at msn.com Fri May 30 11:25:10 2008 From: pchavez_nmt at msn.com (Patrick Chavez) Date: Fri, 30 May 2008 18:25:10 +0000 Subject: [WF-General] A few general questions In-Reply-To: <4b05edd10805301047s6fdfd920pb6148634dd42a165@mail.gmail.com> References: <20080529180519.GA4375@evercrack.com> <4b05edd10805301047s6fdfd920pb6148634dd42a165@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: > I hate writing design docs, and the design has been changing> iteratively over the 8 or so years I have been working on cyphesis so> much that it is now unrecognizable. I know the value of design docs,> and understand that some people like them, but have no intention of> writing or updating one myself at this time. I was actually looking for some kind of definition of the world model used. Such as "there are players, non-players, creatures, structures, and items. Players have a unique name and can talk with each other." etc. > I've not looked at Darkstar much, but I've not heard much that made me> think there was a compelling reason to migrate to it. Perhaps you> could elaborate on why you think it would be a good idea? One of my> key reservations is that the WorldForge model simulates more on the> server than most of the commercial games, and a platform targeted at> the current commercial space may not be at all suited to our needs. There are a few reasons I have been really looking at Darkstar: - Interoperability: Darkstar communicates via byte streams so you can write a client in any language you want - Multi-threaded TCP/IP connections: already handeled - Authentication and authorization: Darkstar handles user accounts and logging in pretty easily as well as communication between users - Persistence: Darkstar maintains server state through restarts and crashes. I'm not saying that it is the best platform but it did cover all the things I think are a nightmare to program. The things that it does NOT do are of course the basic game functions such as collision detection. Either this is handled by the client (un-trusted result) or the server needs to maintain a model of the world somewhere in memory to compute these things. I'm interested in making a Darkstar version of the WorldForge server and I didn't want to duplicate efforts. > Obviously we welcome contributions of tools, but without knowing what> you have in mind I have no idea who you should talk to, or how it> would be best to go about it. I am happy to offer an opinion on pretty> much any idea you have. That would be the Character History gizmo mentioned earlier. > Members of the community have been increasingly making it clear that> the main blocker to truly building your own world is now server> persistence. Once a server is restarted, everything that has been> built is lost, and we need to build the backend systems that make> everything permanent. I plan to work on the design and implementation> of this over the coming months, so hopefully this will not be a> barrier for long. Once this is done, contributing a world will be a> case of sorting out hosting for your own server, connecting the client> in admin mode, and getting to work with the built in world editing> tools. I was thinking more along the lines of high level content, not a running server. Things like describing the races, the political structure, maps and family crests, etc etc. Thank you for the answers! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.worldforge.org/pipermail/general/attachments/20080530/cffcf8c3/attachment.html