It seems I solved my problem from last night. One thing about linux is if you have too many things installed in the root directory (instead of the home directory) there may not be enough room left to run the gui. In order to fix this problem, I logged into the console as root and deleted some libraries. When I installed this system, apparently I had not given enough room for the / partition.
I decided to delete guichan, a library I probably used for the Mana World that I never manged to compile, let alone run. Also I removed a bunch of libraries and documentation for MIT scheme. At one time, i thought it would be fun to go through the MIT course ware. Then I realized that I was not interested in pie in the sky projects and algorithms, but rather down to earth real code that compiles and runs. Sure, I need to know some algorithms, but if you are going to code, you might as well code in a useful language like C.
I also deleted the libraries for kopete, an ancient IM program that always told me I had exceeded the rate limit for icq. Once upon a time, it worked properly, but now it was just any annoying start up feature so I was just as glad to be rid of it.
Finally, I ran shutdown -r now in root mode. that shutdown and rebooted the computer so that I could log into the gui.
Its strange to say this, but I was worried I would have to reinstall linux and maybe accidently overwrite my home directory. Apparently, despite what the mean person in the freenode chat channel said when I gripped about the boost library and called it a piece of garbage, I do not need to go back to windows.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Boost yourself to hell!
Yesterday I got the brilliant (no stupid) idea to try and install licq on my computer. For those who do not know, licq is an instant messageing application that uses the icq protocol. I have an ancient version of mandrake 10.0 on that computer. I figured I would install licq so that I could get in contact with some of my old friends from ultima online if they were still using icq (who uses icq these days? anyone?)
I figured that former Ultima Online players would be in a good position to help me develop this game because I would not have to spend hours upon hours explaining the game design to them. They already know for the most part what features it is supposed to have, so I do not have to go into detail about things like banking, dyeable clothing, skill based systems or most importantly, what features an mmorpg should have that most are lacking (things such as customizable housing and being able to leave items on the ground come to mind)
Anyway, after I installed the pre-requiste boost libraries needed to compile licq, I then went a head and installed licq. It seemed to work fine. I did not message anyone because there were few people on, and I was kind of tired anyway (yes, I have a massive contact list of practically every aquentence I ever had in UO.) I got my whole contact list, and yes, there appeared to be some people online as well. I was pleased, but at the same time disappointed that there were not more people to try and contact. Before I went to bed, I turned the computer off. When I went to boot it into Linux this afternoon, I was left with a terminal login screen an a failure to get the x11 server started. I could login as root (I forgot my user password lol) and look around directories and use commands, but some things just do not work very well in the command line, so I would like my gui back.
The ultimate lesson that can be learned from this is libraries suck, dependency hunt sucks, even if you thought it works, it can just be broke and you won't find out until you reboot your computer. I wonder if I will be able to fix the issue before I die. Also the boost documentation was terriable. I did hardly know what I was doing half the time, and I had to spent a lot more time reading documentation to install it than I would have liked. I feel that the free software community does not appreciate good writers and would not know how to write documentation for stupid libraries (that they should not have anyway) if it bit them.
I figured that former Ultima Online players would be in a good position to help me develop this game because I would not have to spend hours upon hours explaining the game design to them. They already know for the most part what features it is supposed to have, so I do not have to go into detail about things like banking, dyeable clothing, skill based systems or most importantly, what features an mmorpg should have that most are lacking (things such as customizable housing and being able to leave items on the ground come to mind)
Anyway, after I installed the pre-requiste boost libraries needed to compile licq, I then went a head and installed licq. It seemed to work fine. I did not message anyone because there were few people on, and I was kind of tired anyway (yes, I have a massive contact list of practically every aquentence I ever had in UO.) I got my whole contact list, and yes, there appeared to be some people online as well. I was pleased, but at the same time disappointed that there were not more people to try and contact. Before I went to bed, I turned the computer off. When I went to boot it into Linux this afternoon, I was left with a terminal login screen an a failure to get the x11 server started. I could login as root (I forgot my user password lol) and look around directories and use commands, but some things just do not work very well in the command line, so I would like my gui back.
The ultimate lesson that can be learned from this is libraries suck, dependency hunt sucks, even if you thought it works, it can just be broke and you won't find out until you reboot your computer. I wonder if I will be able to fix the issue before I die. Also the boost documentation was terriable. I did hardly know what I was doing half the time, and I had to spent a lot more time reading documentation to install it than I would have liked. I feel that the free software community does not appreciate good writers and would not know how to write documentation for stupid libraries (that they should not have anyway) if it bit them.
Monday, December 21, 2009
Why I started my own project team
In the beginning, I was not someone who wanted to spend my life making video games. I started down a completely different track in school. Sure, I spent a lot of time playing video games, but when it came time to pick my major, I took my fathers advice and majored in electrical engineering technology, something you can make money it as he put it. It was only too late that I realized I had no intrest in working at the kinds of jobs that require that sort of degree. I walked into this one place my first day, and knew I would not enjoy it. As a result, I did not go to work, nor even look for a job. I did not worry about money at first, because my husband has a four year in the same proffession, so I figured he would be making big bucks. Little did I know, with housing price inflation, his salary would not be enough to afford the kind of lifestyle I wanted.
I could not deal very well with the negative choices I had made, so I spent a great deal of time playing Ultima Online. I also got very intrested in GNU/Linux and the free software movement after one version of Ultima Online did not run on windows XP when it first came out. (then windows xp deleted my files)
I thought that everything would go in the Linux direction, so I just needed some patience, and Ultima Online would create an official client for Linux. That did not happen, and also Ultima Online changed the game play in ways I did not like. The more I played Ultima Online, the more fundamental design flaws I saw in the game. For instance, found items were still better than crafted items, doing too many things client side caused cheating to be rampent, there were no other races except human (elves and gargoyles were added later, but never orcs or undead) Player run shards existed, but there was no easy way to add new artwork to an existing game without the source code, in addition all the fundamental design flaws of the game, plus the fact that it is intellectual property of EA posed problems.
After a while, I realized that if I did not start the design team from scratch, no one would bother to do it. I considering joining other project teams for games unrelated to what I really wanted to make, but mostly found that either I did not enjoy the game enough, or the project had policies that I did not agree with (either dependency hunt or standards of realism aka "quality")
I could not deal very well with the negative choices I had made, so I spent a great deal of time playing Ultima Online. I also got very intrested in GNU/Linux and the free software movement after one version of Ultima Online did not run on windows XP when it first came out. (then windows xp deleted my files)
I thought that everything would go in the Linux direction, so I just needed some patience, and Ultima Online would create an official client for Linux. That did not happen, and also Ultima Online changed the game play in ways I did not like. The more I played Ultima Online, the more fundamental design flaws I saw in the game. For instance, found items were still better than crafted items, doing too many things client side caused cheating to be rampent, there were no other races except human (elves and gargoyles were added later, but never orcs or undead) Player run shards existed, but there was no easy way to add new artwork to an existing game without the source code, in addition all the fundamental design flaws of the game, plus the fact that it is intellectual property of EA posed problems.
After a while, I realized that if I did not start the design team from scratch, no one would bother to do it. I considering joining other project teams for games unrelated to what I really wanted to make, but mostly found that either I did not enjoy the game enough, or the project had policies that I did not agree with (either dependency hunt or standards of realism aka "quality")
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Flustrated with my project team
I know the rest of the projects memebers will not like to hear this, but I am flustrated with my project team. I know I have written about this numerious times in several posts before hand. I just feel that nothing is getting done because
I am thinking about kicking the last two people off the team. All they do is argue with each other and with me about things that have nothing to do with the wograld source code.
The first is a guy. He makes piles of notes and no one else can read about the code and refuses to explain them to anyone else. He is also very difficult to work with because he worries other people will see him as inadiquite. I guess the whole free software culture of "quality" has gotten to him and taken away his ego even though he did over 90% of the code work on the project, in fact all of it. I took care of all the adminstration things like, figuring out what we needed to know, setting up the sourceforge website, etc.
The girl, I'm not sure if I should call her a "girl" at her age, is so obsessed with stupid stuff like cooking for her husband and exercise. Then, when I tell her to get on it, she makes some excuse about not being able to concentrate. Not able to concentrate. What kind of B.S. is that. If you look in the project history, you would see she had no contributions except to add this person we did not even know as a project member. I had to remind her these are real people on sourceforge, and not just test identies. People wanted to know why they should not have two or three accounts at source forge, and why they should learn to use version control. Okay, yeah, it might not be apparently obvious, but I feel that both of these people insist on too much hand-holding.
I'm thinking maybe I should take the advice of a former IT manager I talked to, and just get a whole new team. A team that does not need their hands held. A team that will be just as passionate about the aims of the project as I am, a team that will take over and practically run the project for me while meeting and exceeding all of the goals of the project.
Every time I suggest it to the current project members, they get themselves in gear for a couple days and attempt to make some progress. Invariably, they get sidetracked by issues like the fact it does not compile on solaris. Then they just forget the whole thing.
Admittedly, last month was bad, with car troubles and the fact I worked on it less than I normally do, due to Nano-Wri-mo I'm still working on the novel, but at a less frantic pace now, since I got over 50k words in last month, I would be happy with just 30k words this month and some editing. Of course, writing the novel probably will not fix the project team even though the novel is about a free software project developer.
I am thinking about kicking the last two people off the team. All they do is argue with each other and with me about things that have nothing to do with the wograld source code.
The first is a guy. He makes piles of notes and no one else can read about the code and refuses to explain them to anyone else. He is also very difficult to work with because he worries other people will see him as inadiquite. I guess the whole free software culture of "quality" has gotten to him and taken away his ego even though he did over 90% of the code work on the project, in fact all of it. I took care of all the adminstration things like, figuring out what we needed to know, setting up the sourceforge website, etc.
The girl, I'm not sure if I should call her a "girl" at her age, is so obsessed with stupid stuff like cooking for her husband and exercise. Then, when I tell her to get on it, she makes some excuse about not being able to concentrate. Not able to concentrate. What kind of B.S. is that. If you look in the project history, you would see she had no contributions except to add this person we did not even know as a project member. I had to remind her these are real people on sourceforge, and not just test identies. People wanted to know why they should not have two or three accounts at source forge, and why they should learn to use version control. Okay, yeah, it might not be apparently obvious, but I feel that both of these people insist on too much hand-holding.
I'm thinking maybe I should take the advice of a former IT manager I talked to, and just get a whole new team. A team that does not need their hands held. A team that will be just as passionate about the aims of the project as I am, a team that will take over and practically run the project for me while meeting and exceeding all of the goals of the project.
Every time I suggest it to the current project members, they get themselves in gear for a couple days and attempt to make some progress. Invariably, they get sidetracked by issues like the fact it does not compile on solaris. Then they just forget the whole thing.
Admittedly, last month was bad, with car troubles and the fact I worked on it less than I normally do, due to Nano-Wri-mo I'm still working on the novel, but at a less frantic pace now, since I got over 50k words in last month, I would be happy with just 30k words this month and some editing. Of course, writing the novel probably will not fix the project team even though the novel is about a free software project developer.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Crafting in multiplayer online rpgs
A lot of times, crafting in multiplayer online rpgs leaves much to be desired. Usually, monster loot drops are much better than anything a player can make out of component parts. I would like to reverse this trend. I would prefer to have player crafted items be better than anything you can find on monsters. I feel this would add much to the game. The other problem that I have seen in some multiplayer online rpgs is that you have to craft thousands of items to gain a few skill points. I think this is wasteful of a players time. I think how world of warcraft did it where it only took a few craftings of the item to raise skill at a certain level, and the time consuming part was gathering resources. I feel this is better since it means that players will do less sitting in one spot for hours trying to raise a crafting skill.
The negative side of player crafted items being too powerful, is that it can leave monster loot a little less exciting. But monster loot could still have random drops thosse could be taken apart with something similar to the world of warcraft disenchant skill, allowing the item properties to be separated from the items. Maybe they could be reused to make newer stronger items. The other idea I have for crafting is something similar to the diablo2 gem system. In diablo 2, you could collect gems. With a horadric cube, you would put 3 gems of any property, so long as it was all the same property and the same color gem at the same level into the cube. Thosse three gems could then be upgraded to the next higher level. So for instance, you could put 3 chipped rubies into the gem and get a flawed ruby. 3 flawed rubies would get you a ruby, 3 rubies will get you a flawless ruby, and 3 flawless a perfect ruby. The gems in diablo had different properties depending on what item they were put into. Later, in the expansion, diablo2 added jewels that had the same properties no matter what item you put them into, and runes that became a completely different type of rune when you put 3 of them into the cube. I would like to do something similar with the disenchanted components from monster items, or other stuff that you may be able to find or mine.
I think all items should be like socket items, except instead of being permanite like in diablo, you could break the item in order to remove the components that had the properties in them. People would end up making custom items depending on the kind of monsters/players they were fighting, or what kind of template and stats and skills they had. You could then break the item, so that there would always be a market for armor pieces since you would always need new ones to put the gems into.
I think it would take the flustration out of waiting for ever to find the random properties on an item you need, at the same time make looting monsters fun and intresting. I only wish I had the skill to add this new crafting idea into the user interface. It would make a great addition to our game, while keeping it fresh and exciting forever.
The negative side of player crafted items being too powerful, is that it can leave monster loot a little less exciting. But monster loot could still have random drops thosse could be taken apart with something similar to the world of warcraft disenchant skill, allowing the item properties to be separated from the items. Maybe they could be reused to make newer stronger items. The other idea I have for crafting is something similar to the diablo2 gem system. In diablo 2, you could collect gems. With a horadric cube, you would put 3 gems of any property, so long as it was all the same property and the same color gem at the same level into the cube. Thosse three gems could then be upgraded to the next higher level. So for instance, you could put 3 chipped rubies into the gem and get a flawed ruby. 3 flawed rubies would get you a ruby, 3 rubies will get you a flawless ruby, and 3 flawless a perfect ruby. The gems in diablo had different properties depending on what item they were put into. Later, in the expansion, diablo2 added jewels that had the same properties no matter what item you put them into, and runes that became a completely different type of rune when you put 3 of them into the cube. I would like to do something similar with the disenchanted components from monster items, or other stuff that you may be able to find or mine.
I think all items should be like socket items, except instead of being permanite like in diablo, you could break the item in order to remove the components that had the properties in them. People would end up making custom items depending on the kind of monsters/players they were fighting, or what kind of template and stats and skills they had. You could then break the item, so that there would always be a market for armor pieces since you would always need new ones to put the gems into.
I think it would take the flustration out of waiting for ever to find the random properties on an item you need, at the same time make looting monsters fun and intresting. I only wish I had the skill to add this new crafting idea into the user interface. It would make a great addition to our game, while keeping it fresh and exciting forever.
Shell Scripts part 2
I know in my last blog I said that I only needed the Makefile.am in the directories. Well, I found out I was wrong. Makefile.in is what is needed to make the configure create the Makefile without all the autotools. This is a better way to go in case someone has a different version of autotools. Old versions of autotools do not work with new versions of scripts, and you can not use different versions of autotools for the configure and then another for the make.
I'm still somewhat confused as to how all the autoscripts work. It is better than having to write an install program from scratch. I hate to think of what is involved in making binary packages for a distro, but since we do not have a release yet, I do not think we need to worry about it. I have found that binary distro packages are not that great anyway, because only the old version is packaged up, and not the latest version that you invariably need if you want to play a multi-player game with other people. Often, you all need the same version.
I am also still no expert on shell scripts although I have learned some things. In all honesty, I would rather be writing quests/dialog or creating artwork than trying to figure out all the arcane meanings of funny script terms. Once I know how it works, I do not mind creating scripts, it is the learning part I detest. In fact, that is a big part of what I spent November on rather than just working on the shell script. I have been writing a novel about a guy who starts a free software project.
I'm still somewhat confused as to how all the autoscripts work. It is better than having to write an install program from scratch. I hate to think of what is involved in making binary packages for a distro, but since we do not have a release yet, I do not think we need to worry about it. I have found that binary distro packages are not that great anyway, because only the old version is packaged up, and not the latest version that you invariably need if you want to play a multi-player game with other people. Often, you all need the same version.
I am also still no expert on shell scripts although I have learned some things. In all honesty, I would rather be writing quests/dialog or creating artwork than trying to figure out all the arcane meanings of funny script terms. Once I know how it works, I do not mind creating scripts, it is the learning part I detest. In fact, that is a big part of what I spent November on rather than just working on the shell script. I have been writing a novel about a guy who starts a free software project.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Shell Scripts
The title of my post will be Shell Scripts, yet again. I am still learning the unix commands and how to put them together. It should be simple to write a script to systimatically go through all the wograld directories and delete the Makefile and Makefile.in that do not need to be there. I'm pretty sure now that it is only supposed to be Makefile.am in each directory. This is something I did not realize before. Also, I need to write a script that goes through every file and then replaces every instance of crossfire with wograld. I know that one is probably going to be a pain. How am I going to like it when every file asks me if it is okay to overwrite it. On the other hand, I do not see how else to do a true fork of the project, and I do not think doing every single line by hand would be less tedious, it would probably be more tedious. Even if I have to confirm every instance of mv, it would still be faster than replacing every instance of crossfire in every file with wograld by hand.
I would not be surprised though if I never figure it out or if it is 100 years before the shell script gets written. It just seems like something that is too complex for any mortal being to do. Ironically, neither of the other team members are capable of doing it even though both of them made a living in computers and programming. Shell scripters are probably pretty rare and value able.
I would not be surprised though if I never figure it out or if it is 100 years before the shell script gets written. It just seems like something that is too complex for any mortal being to do. Ironically, neither of the other team members are capable of doing it even though both of them made a living in computers and programming. Shell scripters are probably pretty rare and value able.
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