Finals Almost Here

The semester is almost over! Couple more weeks... more exams then I want to think about, then im done for a little bit.... before I go back for an even harder semester. As it is now, im thinking that next semester I can't really count on getting anything done on dynamic. It might happen, but if I don't think i'll do anything for it and I get something done then it's a bonus not a disappointment.

I've been thinking about winter break and I think im pretty sure about what I'd like to work on. I would like to work on persistance issues, connecting the save code and the world code more closely. I think i'll also fill in a good chunk of the world data and room types. If I have more time i'll move on to doing similar persistance stuff with beings and items. Once I do get this set of stuff done however the core will be in really good shape. I would imagine that I could pretty easily start building off of that and really get something playable, at least to the old level, that would be at least fun enough to test. Progress always feels good, so im hoping i'll be able to make a lot of it this January.

Until finals are done I probably wont be back, i'll make sure to make it known when I start coding again.

Later,
Toraux

Still Busy

I have a few free moments so I figure id write up something real quick to keep everyone posted. I'm still pushed to the wall with all my school work, hopefully it will ease up by thanksgiving, but even then I'll only have a few weeks until finals so most likely I'll put off coding until sometime once I'm on winter break. Next semester will likely be worse then this one, possibly being this hard the whole way through so I'm not making any promises to myself that I'll make much progress next semester. I've also pretty much decided to drop coop. This means two things for dynamic, I'm going to loose that full year of work and relatively little distraction to work on dynamic, but on the other hand I'll graduate a year earlier and be able to work on dynamic as a non student much sooner. If your desperate to play dynamic like me..... then I hope you can wait because it likely wont be ready for real play until a good time after I graduate. Hopefully I'll get a lot done over break though, might be able to make some sort of mini game and let it run and slowly work out core bugs and tweak things for speed and efficiency.

Regardless, I wouldn't expect much new stuff until the end of the semester, guess we'll wait and see.

Later,
Toraux

Busy Busy Busy

I thought last week was going to suck.... and it didn't really. I didn't think this week was going to suck.... and it is. Two exams, two projects, and a lab report basically take command of this week. To top it off I have a world civ paper due in 3 weeks... 10 to 12 pages. I have a feeling my conscious wont let me do much coding until this stuff is pretty much taken care of so this week seems to be lost, no clue how the next few weeks after this will be, guess we'll see. I probably shouldn't feel this overwhelmed based on the work but I do, so I'm going to take care of this stuff and wait until all these extra stressors are out of the way. Hopefully I'll get through this without issue and I'll be back to coding in a week or two. At least I'm at a pretty natural break point in my coding, so why not take a break I guess. Anyway I'll let you all know when I have time again.

Later,
Toraux

Stuff Happening

Well, I wanted to get some coding done today but it didn't happen. All this homework, projects, and now I guess quizzes are stressing me a bit and making it a bit harder to get work done. My next few days are pretty packed so I'm not sure if I will even try tomorrow night, I guess it depends on how things go, hopefully I'll be back on track by Sunday night.

My next task is to write some python scripts to interact with the running game. I plan on making a script to provide status, one to provide access to the scrolling output log, and a means of shutting down the game without logging in. Next after that is some general clean up and code formatting, and then I'm moving on to improving overall persistence. My goal with this is to allow the game to load and maintain a large world with a minimum of memory usage etc.

Guess beyond this there isn't much to mention, hopefully by next week I'll be fully on track. I already got more done this week then I had originally though possible so I guess I can't complain. I'll probably be posting next once I have some more code done unless something big comes up.

Later,
Toraux

This Week

Well this coming week was going to be horrible. I had an OS lab to do, Digital Electronics Lab Report to write, and a matlab project for Signals and Systems. The tides have turned however, I got up this morning and blew away the OS lab in several hours. I thought it would take 10-12 hours like the last one was so this frees up a lot of time. I've been working like crazy on getting ahead of the game for other hw too, got my World Civ's reading done through Monday, and other homework done through mid week. Hopefully this means that I won't loose any coding time this week like I thought, and instead maybe pick up a little more. Friday night and Saturday I'm spending in New York training so I might loose some time this coming weekend.

I took advantage of all this today and got the new accounts system fixed up. There isn't too much of a change apparent for the user, but internally things are a bit better, and will support future changes that will be needed to finish up some comms stuff. Also, char creation now includes genders.

Can't wait until this game is ready, I day dream at least once a day about playing, what I would do as a player, the goals and dreams of my character and the means I would take to get there. Whenever I read or listen to my Civs lectures I think about the game from those terms, means of governments that might form, balancing the economy and agriculture etc. Half the movies I see make me think about it too. Hopefully things will speed up and I can get this thing to a beta stage relatively shortly.

Hopefully this week goes good.
-Toraux

Accounts

Sorry I haven't posted for a few days, school as always has been hectic. Things are moving forward, but of course not as fast as I would like. My next project is pretty big, I've decided I need to overhaul the account system again. First off I need this so that I can make the news and announce prompt tags work based on each account. Secondly the current login code pretty much blows. Its disgusting to try to read and debug.

My aim is to have some sort of class represent accounts and to redo all of the Login code with a bit more preplanning. So far I'm turning up nothing, kind of a stumbling block because its so involved and has so many different cases. Then there also comes into the picture the storing of these accounts etc etc etc . And on top of that the synchronization issue where an account could be loaded or not loaded and if it is loaded it needs to be updated differently then an unloaded account. This might make persistence easier however as I figure out how to deal with it on a smaller scale here. Hopefully when I get back to school on Sunday I'll have time to get to this and get it done right. I don't want to have to modify login code after this until I'm ready to change char creation over to random selection of pre made chars.

I'm going to sleep soon now though and give this some good thought before I get too much further into it. Wish me luck.
-Toraux

Damn, What a Weekend

Well this weekend was a little heavier on the homework then I'd have liked. I spent all of Saturday getting almost all of my normal homework out of the way at home, and then spent all day today working on finishing my Shell for Operating Systems. Its pretty sweet, but I think all that time could have been spent more productively coding something cool.... like Dynamic.

I'm slowly making progress, committed some changes tonight and worked out my to do list some more, seems like its getting longer faster then I can work on them. I think now is also a good time to Mention that it is pretty much official, Sliis is working on help files and documentation for me, and Qyae is shifting some of his responsibilities to include web development. Hopefully we'll actually have a website soon, and testers will have a bit of information to turn to.

I was also thinking this weekend that I can possibly package up a jar from my code and run it on a virtual machine on my home machine on weekends. The next weekend that I have that I know I'll have time I'll give it a try, if it works then I can possibly run some more tests, but the less stable machine would still be somewhat of an issue I guess.

Anyway, time to get ready for sleep and stuff, Later.
-Toraux

Quick Update

Just want to post a quick update. The last few days of each week are usually hell for getting stuff done, and thus I haven't moved forward on coding since Wednesday. This weekend is looking like it will be rough too. I have a lot of homework, and I need to write a shell in c for my Operating Systems course due Tuesday, which could potentially take a lot of time. The command interpreter for it is already done but I got to code the piping operators, and that doesn't seem quite as simple. Hopefully I'll get this and my other huge stack of homework to do this weekend done in reasonably time so I can hit up some dynamic coding Sunday night.

Anyway, I need sleep.
Later
-Toraux

Sun Microsystems Needs Better Documentation

So last night I was messing around with some of my code, I decided to load up my Java into a jar and give it a try outside of eclipse. Of course my normal classpath setting wouldn't make Java understand that the database resource I needed was available so it wouldn't run. However there is this nice utility called Java-config that lets you set the classpath.... so lets use that. Wrong! Java-config's classpath options are all depreciated so they don't do anything. All the documentation online points to these as the ways of fixing this problem. Thankfully however I stumbled on a forum post that made sense.

If you can't get a class to load on your classpath with Java 1.5 and later: make sure its in your /opt/sun-jdk-1.5.0.08/jre/lib/ext/ directory, where the sun-jdk-1.5.0.08 is your version. Its similar under windows but I can't remember the exact path but it should be something like C:\Program Files\Java\Java-version-here\lib\ext.

I hope this helps someone else save 50 minutes of their life.
-Toraux

Contract and Copyright

As was brought up on top mudsites last night and early this morning, there was some concern over ownership of produced works in conjunction with this game. My intent is mainly to prevent work done for this game from showing up elsewhere, and I wouldn't mind letting people keep their work in the even that the project is canceled. On that note I think we can add another available position to the fold:

Law Expert - I need someone with some sort of legal background, whether it be a professional lawyer, or someone who is studying to be one, or have other exposure to business, contract, and copyright law. Just like the other jobs send an email to jobs@dymuw.slayn.net.

Hopefully before any work is actually published the legal matters will be handles.

Thanks,
Toraux

Dynamic Open Positions

Currently the Dynamic MUD staff needs to definately grow in a few areas. This listing will include any positions that definately need filling, as well as several that sometime over the next few months could potentially be filled, as well as other areas of expertise that would be good to have access to. If you would like to contribute and none of the jobs here fit you, you might consider applying anyways, impress me and i'll try and make use of you. I recommend checking out this to see the general guidelines and recommendations for applying.

High Priority:

Webmaster - We just got access to some decent free webhosting, which seems to mean its a good time to start developing the website. All applicants should have good understanding of PHP, MySql, CSS, html, and possibly other forms of webprograming and webpage design. I would expect the webmaster to be able to handle installation of other webscripts and modules and be capable of various design and graphics as well on occation. The webmaster will work with myself in integrating google adsense advertisements into the website and possibly writing web based utilities for game content creation or modification.

Non-story Content Developer - This position is basically going to be a documentation writer. Primary responsibilities include writing help files and tutorial guides for gameplay. Possibly also taking on the responsibility of moderating and organizing the socials (non gameplay related player actions like nod,wave etc) development and integration.

Content Editor - We will need an editor who is capable of proofreading for spelling, punctuation, and grammer. Someone in this position could possibly also take on further moderation or writing responsibilities if so desired beyond their base responsibilities.

Lower Priority:

Marketing - We will eventually need someone to handle advertisement and promotion of the game and website on other websites and forums to drive up our playerbase and readership. This position can also take on other responsibilities if the work required directly becomes low.

Art - We will need various sketch and graphic artists for various art projects related with publications, the website, etc. A portfolio of examples would be a good place to start with an application for this position.

Story Content Developer - Finally we will also be needing content editors to write up the various story and plot lines that will run behind the scenes. These content staff members will write up stories, and play various characters in the game to influence events. Interest in fantasy, sci-fi, and or history would be very helpful in this position.

We are currently not looking for coders, however sometime in the next year or two we might be looking for coders for side projects.

Please send all emails to jobs@dymuw.slayn.net, preferably putting Dynamic MUD and the position(s) of interest in the subject line.

Thanks all,
-Toraux

Application Requirements

The following are general requirements for those who are interested in applying for positions here for Dynamic MUD. These are general guidelines for the most part, but if you are serious about working on or with the game you should be serious about how you apply as well.

1. All applicants should hopefully have some sort of examples of past work, most likely not in the field of game development but in related fields, education, or other personal projects.

2. All applicants should understand that any work they do for the game will become property of the game, meaning you forfeit all rights to ownership of the works you do for the game.

3. Your application should include your favorite feature(s) mentioned here on the blog or elsewhere. Anyone who wants to be a part of this game's development but doesn't understand what it's about wont be a good fit with us.

4. On a similar note we will often take preference on those who have shown a previous interest in the game, either by signing up for testing, or by being frequently involved in discussion over the game in whatever public means of discussion that we can provide.

For the time being, anyone interested in applying for any positions should send an email to jobs@dymuw.slayn.net. This email should include Dynamic MUD in the subject line, and include the position (or general area of your expertise), why you want to work on the game, previous experience, and your favorite Dynamic MUD feature. I will try to get back to you regardless of whether we are looking to recruit for that position.

Thanks,
-Toraux

Socials Complete

Woo, socials are coded. Pretty simple system to use, but it took a bit to get it all implemented. Thankfully it is done and a few simple socials have already been scripted in. Hopefully soon I'll be able to have staff writing them on the side if they want to or have one of the data people work on adding some. This major enhancement brings me to 16716 total lines, and 9046 actual lines of functioning code. These changes also put me almost to the end of the fixes and improvements to comms, so I should be able to move onto some other stuff soon.

In other news, I set up an account with slayn.net, So I now have some free web hosting space and eventually a possible mud host. This means I'll be posting the new job advertisements sometime hopefully in the next few days (maybe tonight).
Later all,
Toraux

News and Socials

I added the news and emote commands today, didn't take long at all. The next thing I have to work on is the socials system which could potentially take several hours more then most additions. Total lines are up to 16034, actual lines of code hit 8662 today.

This is also a good juncture to think about a stylistic option for the game. One way would involve making the game more or less 'third person' and make all the messages you see include your name etc. This would actually be easier to code in a lot of ways and might make things feel more like a book, but might be harder to keep track of what your doing in a high stress environment. The other option is the standard first person. Right now I think I'm on track for first person, but making the switch might take a whole bunch of effort so I think I'll be thinking about it tomorrow on my coding off day.

I also managed to pick up a whole bunch of plastic coated calendars that the school is giving out today. Screw the calendar, the back is just as dry erase, a great way to do some design in marker and be able to move them around and store them etc. Hopefully this all makes sense, I'm finding it hard to stay conscious right now, kind of tired and I have an exam tomorrow morning.

Hopefully Friday and Saturday will be productive coding days, heading home Sunday and Monday and then back to the grind on Tuesday

Announcement

Well announcements are basically in. I will need to revisit it when I improve accounts later on to add the [ANN] to your prompt if you haven't read the latest announcements yet. I also improved help slightly. Next on the docket is news which will be quite simple I believe, and then emote, then socials. Things will hopefully start moving faster now.

Trying to do this around school is a hassle. I wish I had the time to just code for 4 or 5 hours a day at least but right now I feel lucky when I get an hour. my homework has been rough, and a couple tests this week two.

Oh, and on the matter of storage, I think I have several options now. The first would be to sign up for a free FTP/storage account at a place like maybe ripway. Of course this means anyone involved would need to share the same username and password so theres little to no accountability etc. I also got an offer today from someone to let me use their free hosting service to host that stuff which I think could potentially work quite well. I could also probably make use of this to host test servers and the initial website too.

Perpetually waiting for the weekend.
-Toraux

Damn School Work

Hey all, didn't get any coding done tonight, homework really pushed me into a corner tonight, and I have an exam tomorrow too so I've been busy. Hopefully tomorrow night will go better and I can finish implementing the announcement system.
Now that the help system is working I think I will be taking on someone to write help files and other for player documentation to get that stuff handled and at the same time out of my hands so I can concentrate on developing the code. I will post an official job description later this week, but the job pretty much seems like it's assigned. If anyone else is interested in it get in touch and we can see if I'm ready for more then one person in this capacity.

On a similar note I will be looking for some sort of free online data storage place that allows shared access to facilitate the movement of these data files and possibly other data files as well. Comments on any of these subjects are encouraged.

Until tomorrow then, I think I will sleep. Later all.
-Toraux

Shout and Help done

So I finished shout and help today. Shout works as it used to in the old proto-type, messages become broken up the further you get from the shouter. I also coded up the help system today. Help to the user appears to be the same as basically any help system in any other mud out there. Internally I improved the mechanism beyond the old system to allow it reload the help database while running, and eliminate the need for an index file. Help should work pretty efficiently and be easy to manage help files in. The next system i'm working on is the announcement system, which is about 40% done. Once this system is done i'll add news which should be an easy add, followed by emote and socials.

The code is now up to 15530 total lines in the files, 8396 of those are actual code, the rest is whitespace and comments, guess no one can say it isn't documented. Hopefully i'll be able to finish announcements tomorrow around my homework and studying. Cant wait to get all this done so I can run this for
real.

Later all,
-Toraux

Today's Fun

Well the run of the prototype today went pretty well. I'd post an update to the last map there with the changes but they barely show up yet, maybe next time it will be worth the space to upload it. It worked out fine and I think the several of us who showed up had a good time. The next running will be in about two weeks most likely, maybe three. Hopefully tomorrow I will get a lot of coding done and won't have too many issues getting my homework done. Im tired though so i'll post some more tomorrow.

Later
-Toraux

The World for the Prototype

Communications Blitz

Its been a hectic couple of days, but I think I'm back under control for the most part. Got some coding done so far, and a bunch more to be done tonight if I can keep it straight. I fixed up and improved some core functionality that doesn't really reach the surface but it makes me feel better none the less. My upcoming stuff to do is all basically communications. I'll be coding new comm features and commands in the following order: shout, help, announce, news, emote, and socials. Hopefully it won't take too much work to get these all done but you can never tell. One thing I learn from engineering is stuff comes up and gets in your way and you can never use your time how you want.

As I mentioned before, check out the tester group and come log in this weekend when I run the prototype. This will be a warm up for the first big one where we'll try to pick up more interested people.

Sign up here.

We'll, I think I'll go start working on shout, should be fun. C-ya all this weekend.

-Toraux

Prototype Running Next Weekend

This past weekend I took the old prototype version of Dynamic I had that was written in python and installed it on my PC that I have at home for weekend use. It seems to be intact. I would like to allow people to try out building and exploring on this codebase to try and get people more interested in the overall project. The first step for this is going to be getting a smaller group of people on there first to make sure nothing is broken and tweak a few performance issues to make sure it will run ok with a larger load. Anyone who is currently in the Tester group is invited, and anyone who joins the tester group between now and Saturday can as well. The time will probably be something like 2 to 5 PM Eastern Standard time. Join the tester group for more info. Next time I run it I will be inviting people from various mud forums and websites. By the way, the link to join the tester group is up on the sidebar.

Hope to see you all there.
-Toraux

Screenshot

Like I said a few weeks ago, here is a screenshot of my desktop. The theme is available here.


-Toraux

Getting in Gear

I think the feel for coding is coming back, I really want to get coding again, and I wish I had more time. Hopefully I'll be able to arrange things so I'll be moving forward quickly. I'm currently working on expanding some of the chatlog functionality, (arguments to change the number of items returned per page and arguments to allow searching for keywords and phrases). After this I have a whole bunch of fixes and tweaks I'd like to do, then its on to a whole slew of communications improvements. I'll be adding the shout command as well as news, announcements, help files, socials, and the emote command. Once all the communications tweaks are in then I'll probably be looking to take on someone to start compiling help info and possibly work on building a list of socials and soft coding them.

I will also be looking for a webmaster/web designer soon to start developing a new layout for the blog and one for the eventual site that will be launched. The third new position I'll want to fill will be a marketing position which will basically be someone to try and build recognition and grow the potential user base. This will happen around the time that I finally decide on a name for the game that will be based on the Dynamic MUD engine.

This weekend I'll be trying to see if I can get the old python version of dynamic to fire up on my win 98 machine I have at home as I'll be there for the weekend. I should also be home the following weekend, so maybe I'll get it to work. Once it works and I've made sure it's stable enough and maybe add some admin commands I'll open it up for several hours some weekends as a publicity thing, let people try out that facet of the game and see if they like it. I also think sometime over the next few weeks I'll code up the portal program that will stream data through the fire wall here which should be good, maybe I'll be able to run tests while at school after all.

Anyway I'm going to try and code a few things before I head to Operating Systems and then home to teach tonight.

Later,
-Toraux

Talk Like A Pirate Day

Tomorrow, September 19th is international Talk Like a Pirate day, Arrrrrrr!

I know I'm dragging my feet but getting going again after a hiatus takes time, its hard to just stand up and code... especially when the first few things on the todo list are boring. I got a few more database things to do to back up then I'll be moving onto comms. Besides that I don't think I have much to report tonight.

Oh yeah, I have a general plan for a tunneling program that should allow me to serve up Dynamic MUD through the routers and fire walls of school. That should also be on my list of things to do over the next week or two is code that up.

Anyway onto something requiring less thought.
-Toraux

Dynamic Fixed

Well dynamic runs again, and I think the database is all set. I wouldn't be surprised if I created a whole lot of bugs in the process of fixing everything and getting it running again. My next move will be to continue trying to test and see if I can find any of the bugs I created. I am also going to set up a means of backing up the database structure and data and possibly creating some documentation on the save format of the various structures that are saved. After that I'm going to move onto some of my older goals that I rehashed last night. I added some new ones and basically listed out everything I want to accomplish next. I made sure to include a lot of fixes and core improvements, I really want the core to be tight before I move onto the next set of goals including starting to fill in the real game and data. Hopefully all of this will go well. As for me now though, I think I'm going to play a game and de stress, then maybe do some more homework. Ill probably be back to coding by tonight though.

Later,
Toraux

Hope

So I think I might be using subversion after all. I wrote a shell script that will basically add all newly added files and then committing them. I will still need to take a few extra steps for renamed files but at the very least I won't lose anything. I already eliminated all the compile errors from the code based on the errors, I just need to fix some of the bugs and non compile errors and get the database fixed. Once this is all done I'll be able to get back to some forward stuff. I should be good to go some time tomorrow (I hope). Hopefully this will all go well, ill report in at least once tomorrow, maybe more times, depends on my progress and how I feel.

Later
-Toraux

Bad News!

Well all I can say is that I'm kind of disappointed. Subversion has let me down. Mostly because it isn't idiot proof enough to stop me from screwing up. Apparently last time I changed a file name.... I forgot to remove and read it to the subversion registry. I think I can fix the problem in an hour or two of work however... the two missing files had very little changes if I remember correctly, but enough that it might take a little work to get it running and debug.... Especially without any viable player data to use, ill have to fix that tonight and tomorrow too.

Im looking into alternate means of keeping backups of my data. One option I'm considering is writing a python script to back up all my data and keep log files. Instead of using the more efficient subversion and cvs methods of only storing changes, I would use a system that would just copy the entire set of source code. I need to think about this tonight and possibly tomorrow. Once I figure out what I will do ill move into implementing it and then fixing my source code and getting it back operational. I think backing up 100% of the code is viable because my working directory only is at about 1.4MB now, even if it grew to 10-20MB I think I have plenty of backup space. I will just need to back up every so often to CD's.

In other news I think I have a viable name idea, I'm still toying with it but maybe I'll let people know about it soon on here.

Anyway, I need a break, got to go cry because of my loss and stuff.
Later,
-Toraux

Coding This Weekend

The plans are official.... I'm staying on campus this weekend, which means between my massive hw assignments and school stuff ill be unpacking Dynamic and getting my plans in order, and hopefully working towards the next goals. Everything I do reminds me of the game, its sad really, its almost like the game wants to tempt me to find enough time to get back to it.

The name dilemma is still bugging me, I think I might just have to run a contest or some sort of public brainstorming contest to help come up with a name. I have ideas but they always have shortcomings. I really need something that will:

• Stand out in a list.
• Have a good acronym.
• Be original.
• Not suck.
• Entice people to play.
• Be representative of the game.
  

I might be posting open positions over the next month or so too, I think I might need some help to get certain things done and help get the word out.

Until next time.
-Toraux

Not Much News

There isn't much news to report today. Past few days I've been trying to keep my head above water with homework. I haven't forgotten about dynamic, I just need a break. I think this weekend I'm staying on campus so I should have some more time to get my stuff done with linux that I need done to get back to development. That and I'm back addicted to Shogun: Total War. Fun game, too bad I had to go to great lengths to get it to run again under Windows XP. I've also been picking up quite a bit from my World Civ's reading that seems to tie into the concept of villages, tribes, and nations in dynamic, and should shape how the development for that goes. Once I'm back full time development will speed right along.

Anyway, until later.
-Toraux

TGIF

Thankfully I get a few days to recuperate before my next week of school. It has been a pretty tough week getting back adjusted to school, and now I have a lot of hw to catch up on. Lots of reading for all my classes, thats basically my plan for tomorrow now that I'm home for the weekend. Come tomorrow night I'm heading back to school, hopefully on Sunday I'll be able to finish up my reading and clear out the remainder of my linux todo list. I think ill be posting a screen shot or two of my desktop, I think it looks quite cool. Hopefully I will have time to at least get the repository opened up on Sunday, if not it will happen next week sometime, I want to code!

Anyway tired.
-Toraux

Coding This Weekend

I believe that all the updates and software have all been installed. My new stuff also worked with gimp, the graphics editor I wanted but couldn't get to work before my failure. Most likely on Sunday I will unpack the repository and see if my todo list is there and possibly start coding. Friday is my heaviest day class wise, and I still have to go about backing up all my critical config and install files so next time I pull a stupid move and nuke linux ill be ready.

Speaking of backups, if I find out my todo list isn't in the repository I will make a move to write a shell script to auto backup Dynamic MUD and the todo list at the same time. That way ill know what I have left to do if I'm ever forced to revert to an old version. Hopefully it wont take me long to get back on my feet. I want to make progress. I also think I'm going to reinstall Shogun: Total War. I'm about 95% done reading "The Art of War" by Sun-Tzu, and want to try applying the strategies to combat. That and I think the game is a good influence for ideas in terms of large scale strategic combat and tactical warfare that might spill over into Dynamic's design.

Anyway, tired as always.
-Toraux

Getting There

I'm almost back to normal. Got several packages left to install, and some backups of config files etc. Unfortunately I think I lost my todo file. Ill find out once subversion is installed and I open up my repository.

I figured out my Java problems yesterday, and I'm quite proud of myself. With Java transitioning between version 1.4 and 1.5 there is some complication i the installation process. The Java-config-1 script... used for setting your generation 1 virtual machine had a bug.. trying to reference a variable that didn't exist, so I cracked it open and commented out the line, and now I have Java. Eclipse is currently installing in the background, making writing this quite a pain in the ass.

Guess there isn't much else left to mention, ill hopefully have an update later.
-Toraux

Fixing Linux

Well, I'm still trying to fix linux. The core stuff is successfully installed but I'm still short most of my development tools and other day to day utilities. Next on my list is Java and Eclipse, followed by subversion and mysql. Java is giving me a hard time because of the transition from 1.4 to 1.5 so hopefully it will go more smoothly tomorrow. Hopefully I can get this stuff taken care of soon, I miss coding.

In other news Google Code Jam utterly destroyed me. I think I got problem 1, but problem 2 was way too hard to solve in the time allotted. And based on the high scores I'm not Indian enough to be a top contestant. Anyway, not that big of a deal, this way I wont have to worry about competing in round 2.

As for classes, had Digital Circuits and Operating Systems today. I think I'm going to like these classes! Circuits is basically going to be Digital Logic in CMOS I think, and Operating Systems will just rock. I've always wanted to code my own Kernel Modules and Device Drivers. Maybe ill finally be able to conquer the hardware that never wants to work in linux for me! Tomorrow is: Discrete Math, World Civs I, and Continuous Linear Systems. Discrete sounds like the teacher will make the class a bitch (he wont hit all the material but were still responsible for it), but at least it isn't calc. And I hear the professor for CLS is really hard, so hopefully that will go ok.

Hopefully ill have better news tomorrow.
-Toraux

What a Weekend

This was one hell of a weekend. The move in part went quite well. Everything happened quickly and without too much extra work. After that though it all went to hell. Saturday night I somehow managed to wipe out my gentoo install. Im right now trying to reinstall all the applications I had before the loss. Luckily I backed up DynamicMUD before I moved this weekend so no code is lost, just some time this week. Hopefully ill be ready to code again by Sunday, hopefully earlier, I guess we'll see.

The weekend however got worse.... Steve Irwin is dead. To me it feels almost like 9/11. I feel like I might wake up tomorrow and he'll still be alive. I don't really know why. I hope he didn't feel much pain, and my thoughts and prayers go out to his friends, family, and his kids.

Anyway back on topic.... everything will be back to normal eventually. Ill try to check in again tomorrow, first day of class tomorrow: Digital Circuits and Operating Systems. Hope they'll be fun, and I hope I have the time to do CodeJam with all the other crap I have going on. Oh and on top of that I need to teach tomorrow night. The week gets more stressful!

Anyway back to life.
-Toraux

Busy Weekend

I'm done with working for another school year, wooooot. Tomorrow will be one busy day though, need to run to the bank and deposit some of the money I made into a CD and finish packing up for school. My move in window starts at 3:30 and goes until 6:30, hopefully there wont be a backup from the window before me. I will try to post something tomorrow night but it will depend on how everything goes, how tired I am, and the amount of free time I have. Once I'm settled I will be spending some time doing some practice for the google Code Jam that takes place starting Tuesday at noon. I will also be expanding and improving the communications modules.

Until then.... later.
-Toraux

Last Day of Work

Well, tomorrow will be my last day of work this summer. My coop finished ill be moving in Saturday and shifting paces once again. Hopefully this move wont slow down my development pace too much. I will lose all my coding time Saturday though because of the move in, packing, and unpacking. Sunday I might have some time, I guess ill see when I get there. Once I'm at school however I predict a slight increase in personal time which will definitely create more progress.

The past few days have been pretty good, we just hit our 3000th page impression. I'm hoping that over the next few months we can pull off our second 3k hits. If you know people who might be interested in dynamic send them here, and sign up for page change notification!

Today I got a comment as well, I responded to the comment so scroll down and read the comments on the previous post to see that, but I think I will respond a bit here as well. A reader expressed concern with being able to play the game with visual impairment. I know Multi User Dungeons are a game played by visually impaired players, so I don't want to exclude them or break from the tradition. I believe that the auto generated room and player descriptions for example will make it easier without the map. A room description might note the number of trees or the room type, that state it is in etc. Surveys will work in two ways as well. A survey that will see beings and other moveable objects of interest, and a terrain survey to see physical land features in the near area. A mountain or forest will appear on these surveys and give the player a second option for navigating. I still believe that there will be some level of disadvantage not being able to see players on the map through highlighting like the game was designed to be played, but still fun and playable. I hope this will be enough, and if anyone has suggestions on this matter feel free to comment or contact me privately so I can try and make the game fun for all.

I don't think there is much else for me to mention tonight. Tomorrow I'm stepping away from coding and attempting to install SSH Server on my gentoo machine. If there is ever a dull moment in class ill at least be able to log in and code :P My next week or two after that is going to be an overhaul of communications. Fixing the channels already in existence and adding shout, socials, emotes, and the help system. Speaking of which ill need a 'Non-Story Content Developer' or whatever I decide would be a good title in the near future. Someone to write help files, socials, etc so I don't take time away from coding. Add this to the marketing position ill be recruiting for soon.

Anyway, I've rambled enough.
Later,
-Toraux

Post #100

As the title indicates, we finally made it to #100. A lot has passed since last October when I started taking this seriously and started my specification. I have toiled to hit quite a few thousand lines of Java so far with lots more to be accomplished. Every day I get a chance to code I feel like I move forward ever so slightly. Sometimes its the progress in the game, other times its personal progress towards becoming a better programmer. Someday I will finish and there will be joy had by all.

While software development is fun, I think it would be far more fun to have the game completed. I wouldn't mind waging war or hunting. Changing my world and living out a possibility that I cannot live out here in real life. Players being able to 100% change their world and influence the course of game history.... thats my kind of entertainment. To get to this point and get listed among the great computer games, MUDs, and mmorpgs of our day and next there is much left to be accomplished.

The next half a year or so will include some pretty exciting events:

* I will be looking to recruit a marketing wiz to help get the word out and create a brand and image that people will associate with this game.
* I plan to dust off my several year old python prototype and have a fun day or weekend where players will be able to see a tiny glimpse into what the final game will be like.
* Major testing will commence next January.
* A new blog layout will be set hopefully within the next 6 months, followed by a brand new website.
* A new name for Dynamic MUD, a world to go with the engine.

Anyone who might be new here might want to take this time to get on the site change notification page down on the right side bar. Anyone who is interested in testing or get some early info on the prototype fun day should check out the tester group link on the right side bar as well.

Thanks all for your continued support!
-Toraux

Change Detection Works!

It has been confirmed, change detection works! Please enter your email address in the box at the bottom right and press the 'Go' button. This will take you to the website that will handle notifying you by email whenever the blog is updated. I believe it checks about once every 24 hours, and if you register for free you can increase that to once every 12 hours. Anyone who is on the google groups page go here.

As for the google groups page, this will be the last post sent there, I will disable the automatic email to the group after I post this message. At some point in the next week or so I will either empty the google group of content or remove it all together, so please bookmark this page and/or sign up for change notification.

As always tell your friends now too. This is a great time to get people into the Dynamic MUD concept, I'm going to be posting hopefully at least once a day or every other day depending on time. There will be no better free online game then Dynamic MUD. Both MUDs and MMORPGs will pale in comparison, and most single player genres wont compare either when it comes to immersion, wether they be RPG, FPS, or RTS games..

Dynamic MUD For the Win!
-Toraux

Change Detection Test

I just added a change detection thing to the site on the right sidebar. I'm going to try posting something and see if I get any notification. I will endorse it fully once I've seen it in action a few days and see that it doesn't send notification on things that it doesn't need to, and make sure that it sends something appropriate when it sends notice.

Question: should I try opting everyone who is on the mailing list in and let them accept or deny if they do or don't want to be notified?

-Toraux

Progress Continues

I've been making progress as expected. The new faction stuff works well, and the test went well today. My aim for this next week is to improve the editfaction command. I want to improve the feedback and response of the command so it will be easy to use for staff members in the future. Right now it was kind of hacked together last minute to be ready for the test today. After that I aim to improve the performance command to hopefully be able to track a longer period of time and maybe even more accurately. The performance information is very useful for getting a grasp on how much work the game does.

After that I'm moving on to installing SSH server support for my linux machine. I want to be able to connect from the classroom once I'm at school if I have extra downtime or I'm bored. Being able to work on code or fix a server issue remotely will be something I need, and has been on my todo list for a very long time.

The next major block of changes after that is a handful or two of communications changes. Adding shout, allowing users to search for a specific number of lines in the communications logs etc. Oh and I almost forgot, ill be transferring to the new site change notification system in the next week, I just need to pick one I like and test it.

Until next time.
-Toraux

Test Results

We just finished our third test. Well more like an hour ago... and abruptly. My wifi connection cut out for an hour or so. The test was cut short and I couldn't even get any direct feedback. If you were there head over to the test group and join the discussion. If you weren't there join the test group and join in on the discussion!

Testing went well, no major bugs except one, and I think I've found it already. Just need to sit down and test to make sure. The faction save stuff is about 90% done now too. I just need to add some better feedback so it is more user friendly. Should be done tonight.

Also just so people know I think ill be killing off the normal mailing list group at google groups in the next day or two. I've basically confirmed that it takes away from the readers that would normally read at the blog instead. I will be replacing it with some kind of website change notification service. In fact if I set it up right ill be getting a notification on this post, and then ill be able to make the necessary changes to integrate it. The layout also seems to be improving things here too already.

As for now I think I'm heading out a bit.
Later,
-Toraux

Layout Changes

I changed the blog layout again today. I placed the ads under the posts, I think this is less intrusive and makes the site look far more professional. Anyone who might have the site cached might want to refresh or clear their cache to see it. I hope people like the changes.

The test is still on for this afternoon. I have a few more minor tweaks ill be making today and then things should be good. Factions now save and load nicely. I will be adding functionality so staff members can make and remove factions from the game, as well as change their names and allegiance.

I'll post again this afternoon, c-ya then.
-Toraux

Making Progress

I'm definitely making progress on the development front. Factions are almost completely liberated from their reliance on hard coded data. I have a lot of simple tweaks left for the next week or two before ill be in on something new and exciting I think but at least progress is being made. I really cant wait until I'm at a late stage and I can test some of the real features I want for the final game.

The whole concept of a MUD without the limitations of static zones and mobs excites me. I hate how MUDs and even modern MMORPGs all have zones and static game play. I don't want the same experience every time I play, I want to do something different. I think this is really best accomplished with competition between players and including the facilities for the players to change their environment and take charge. I think players will find it quite fun to try their hand at taking a stand and staking out their own part of the world, maybe even making the attempt to take over.

Tomorrow at 3pm Eastern Standard Time I'm running the next test. You guys can surf through the last handful of posts to find the link to the tester group and mailing list if you want to sign up last minute. Ill try and post the ip and port by 2pm ish and have the game up and running soon after. Come back tomorrow afternoon for the results of the test and information on another position or two that will be possibly opening on the Dynamic MUD staff in the next few months.

As always I'm tired, c-ya tomorrow.
-Toraux

Quick Note

I was looking at the two Google groups associated with Dynamic MUD this morning. There are a handful of people that have signed up for the mailing list that I don't know, welcome! If your interested in testing tomorrow go to: http://groups.google.com/group/Dynamic-MUD-Testers?lnk=oa to sign up for the tester group and get info about that. And if any of you joined directly from finding the Google groups thing hit up our real blog page: http://dynamicmud.blogspot.com

Another FYI to everyone who frequents the site..... im thinking I might drop the mailing list group. Having the information available in two locations hurts the traffic for the actual blog page, and thats where I can actually earn something from our ads instead of Google taking all the profit. The tester group would remain at least until our new website goes up and we have our own forums there.

Thats all for now.
-Toraux

Week Until School

So today marks the end of my second to last week working for Verizon Wireless. I have next week left, and next weekend will be attacked and brutally murdered by my move in to school. I should hopefully have more time to code once I'm back at school though. From what I've heard my job working for the facilities department won't be there waiting for me when I return to school so most likely ill pick up the extra 6-10 hours each week for coding or doing homework. Add in the extra weekends ill be spending at school and I should hopefully crank right along.

In other news I found another advertising provider that competes with Google adsense. Adster is different however, they provide flat rate advertising on specific pages. I think this kind of advertising would be great if I ran some sort of general knowledge website like a game review site or some set of guides and articles on a specific subject. As for now I think ill hold off and try and stick with google, I think it will work better for my situation.

As for this weekend my two main goals for programing are to: add another set of constructors for all my command classes, one that will allow AI controllers directly create commands more easily. Secondly I want to remove the hard coded factions and start storing them in the database and make them more changeable.

Also after next week I will be taking a crack at the Google Code Jam. Hopefully ill be able to get to the top 100 and make some cash to pay for my start up cost and server. If not then I hope I loose early and don't waste too much of my precious time. I think once I'm safely moved in ill try doing some simple practice exercises and maybe write some helper snippets that I can copy and paste in to make developing my solution for Code Jam more rapid to get more points.

And testing is still 3pm on Sunday. Get on the mailing list and tester group if you want a piece of that. We will also discuss the new name and ideas as well as the next few new positions ill be hiring for.

Anyway guys, ill post tomorrow about my progress.
-Toraux

Sunday's Test

Heres an update on the test that is planned for Sunday. The time has been set for 3pm Eastern Standard time. Please sign up on the mailing list and the tester group if you would like to participate. The server ip and port will be announced on the tester group sometime between 2pm and 2:30 pm, and the server might be open once the ip and port are announced before the test begins.

The test should last about an hour. The main purpose will be to test the major internal changes since the last test before I head to school for the semester and put my computer behind a crazy firewall.

Also on the agenda for Sunday:

• Discussion on the near and far future of DynamicMUD.
• The new name for the DynamicMUD world.
• Advertisement and voting.
• New staff openings.

I hope everyone can make it for the test, if you can't be sure to check here on Sunday after the test for an update on the happenings during the test.

Thanks all, see you then.
-Toraux

Update

The basic mapper is done for now. There is more functionality that could be there but I wont need it for a while so ill throw it back on my todo stack. I also made a few other minor changes.

I have grown the set of sites to post to once again:
www.topmudsites.com Ranking and Forums
www.mudconnector.com Forums and Listing
www.andreasen.org/newmud
www.happypenguin.org
www.wikipedia.org
blog.announce.googlepages.com/submit
www.mudbytes.net Forums and Listing + Mini Banner
various roguelike and mud google groups

Please send suggestions if you have any ideas on good places to post links to this site!

I also noticed yesterday that google is running a programing contest with topcoder: Code Jam. I think ill try entering and see if I make it past the qualifing round into the top 1000 contestants. If I manage to make it into the top 100 then ill get to go to New York City to compete in the finals and win at least $750 dollars. Money for website and mud hosting! First place is $10000 which would be a sweet server and hosting for a while as well as business registration fees. Of course to compete in the two rouns before the top 100 and the championships ill need to miss some class, but I think computer engineering teachers would understand me missing class to destroy programmers from all over :)

-Toraux

Planned Posting

Graphics are starting to come together. Hopefully the layout will be set pretty soon and ill start posting the site in more places to build traffic. I wouldnt mind having a name too so I can officially start posting. The following is a list of the places I currently plan on posting to once the layout and name are picked:

www.topmudsites.com Ranking and Forums
www.mudconnector.com Forums and Listing
www.andreasen.org/newmud
www.happypenguin.org
www.wikipedia.org

As always suggestions and ideas are greatly appreciated. I think the wikipedia page for muds had a bunch of sites that might be good, maybe ill look through them at work tomorrow. I cant wait to get this game out on the market. Anyway, time to get some sleep and read some more of the introduction to "The Art of War" by Sun-Tzu. Picking up a lot of history that might play well into the game's theme.

Later,
Toraux

New Team Member

Im happy to announce that Qyae has joined the team as our new artist. He will be working on graphics for the website, blog layout, and other projects for us. He will be working closely with Raptre to improve the visual appeal of the website and layout that are currently under development. Hopefully later today or sometime in the next few days I will post some examples of his work and the other work in progress to get the website running.

I am planning on taking on several more staff members sometime in the next few months. The two positions im considering are a marketing/advertising position, and a non-story content position (help files, emotes, player guides etc). I also think I will be recruiting one or more people to help run the tests that will start in January. These people will play the role of leaders, and should be people familiar with the general game concepts and commands. More details on that recruitment will follow later this week as well.

Sunday this week is the planned day for the next test session for DynamicMUD. The time will be posted a little bit later this week. Please join the mailing list and the tester group if you want to be included in the test:
Mailing List
Tester Group

Until Later,
Toraux

This for That

Tonight I ended up shifting my work from working on the map code to the blog. I found a free web stat tracking website that tracks quite a few things, hopefully it will allow me to optimize better and find out what brings me traffic. I also set up channels on my google adsense account to track which ads bring in the most profit so I can optimize those as well.

Tomorrow I probably wont have time to do much coding. I need to pack for my trip up to Vermont for the weekend and all that fun stuff. Come Sunday night and next week I will finish up the map stuff and move forward onto more features, I really cant wait to clear out this core stuff to move onto real code.

I think thats all for tonight, going to head to bed and read some more of the introduction to 'The Art of War'.
-Toraux

Good Vibes

Things are going well now. Finally got the graphics program working so I can edit images. Got new tunes to listen to while coding. Ive decided this week will basicly be dedicated to tweaking this map stuff. Im going to Vermont again on Friday so I dont have this coming weekend to code. The map reader is slow at the moment, it takes quite a few minutes to read only a few thousand colored rooms, I need it to be able to do about 4mil in maybe 15 minutes.

I am also compiling a list of websites to post Dynamic to once I have a name and a bit of a better website going. Heres the list so far, please comment to this post if you have suggestions, when were ready I want traffic here to explode so maybe I can afford a webserver.

www.topmudsites.com
www.andreasen.org/newmud
happypenguin.com

Tell me where else to post if you know of any other mud or free game websites!

I am also working on a new name for the actual game to run on DynamicMUD. I have an idea but I dont want to release it just yet, if anyone else has suggestions also post a comment here.

Thanks all for your support, tell your friends!
-Toraux

Paint Programs for KDE

Man is it a pain to get a damn paint program to work under KDE. Kolourpaint which should be a simple one line command to install: emerge kolourpaint under gentoo should install it fine. For some reason its missing mimetypes or something, and ive wasted the whole day to failing the fix. Other packages ive tried today wont even compile, graphics hate me this week I guess. Im trying to emerge xpaint as I write this, hopefully this one will work. All I need is the ability to edit .png image files.

I also exchanged the crappy copy of "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu today for a better copy. The copy I got for my birthday had a paragraph from Sun Tzu and then like 5 from various interpreters, rinse and repeat. I hope to apply some of this reading to the Dynamic design. Warefare will be deeply rooted in the real world art of military strategy. I cant wait for large battles and combat in dynamic. A good stress reducer to go all or nothing when the day is going bad.

And back on the topic of paint programs.... xpaint is installed, can open my file and works, now if it had features id be all set. Never good middle ground, eesh.

Also, I need people to throw ideas at me for a name for the game world. I want to get this thing posted on topmudsites and else where. I also wouldnt mind hearing from people if they could tell me if they would vote or not on topmudsites.

Do any of you post regularly in gaming forums? Would you put a link here in your profile/signature? Im brainstorming ideas to grow traffic.

Anyway im tired.
-Toraux

Mapping

Im going to start off and say Yesterday was by birthday, and thanks everyone who said "Happy Birthday" etc. I spent the morning developing the map writing code for dynamic, followed by playing Half Life 2: Episode 1. Was a decent short game, felt a little weak compared to the original Half Life 2, but the trailer for Episode 2 rocked.

Most of the map reading code is done, im waiting now on the install for some image editing software for linux so I can try drawing some stuff and test the reading code. Ill probably draw a whole lot of features onto the map and see if it loads ok and all that stuff.

The next test is currently planned for Sunday August 27th. Please click the link at the top right and join the Tester group if your interested in logging in and helping me test the core engine. Remember you need to be a member of the mailing list to be approved for the test group, that link is also at the top right of the page.

C-ya later all.
-Toraux

Testing Syndication

I think I found an option that might make it only show the first paragraph, Im going to write some here and see if it works. This will be a good time to remind people that getting in touch is great. If you have ideas or want to be considered for future staff positions make yourself known, I cant hire you if I dont know you.

I also think I forgot to mention that in the latest IEEE publications there was an article about a particular AI system that should allow me a scalable AI solution that could quite easily run maybe 50 to 100k mobs at a given time for me.

Anyway this should be enough for the test.
Laters,
Toraux

DataManager Fixed

I finished fixing the DataManager today. I also changed the resolution of my performance tracking from milliseconds to microseconds. Even with these victories the battle continues, I still have tons of stuff left on the core, but at least I am a little closer.

Besides coding I have what I would call two missions that I need to get done. The first is finding a way to get the mailing list to send readers to the blog instead of showing them the post content so we can get more website hits.

The second mission is choosing a name for the Dynamic MUD world so that I can list it on Top Mud Sites and hopefully gain some viewers and make enough money to pay for a domain and web host.

If you have ideas for either post a comment or email me.
-Toraux

Creeping Along

Slowly getting stuff done, I plan to really attack it this weekend. I keep coming up with ideas as I go so I really want to make sure this data storage stuff is perfect. Id rather change the hard stuff now then have to peruse many lines of code to make simple changes.

Here is the timeline for the rest of August.....

Weekend of 5th and 6th: Finishing data storage and internal refactoring.
Weekend of 12th and 13th: Improved Function Feedback, Improved Performance (nanoseconds wooo!), new javadoc, improving error framework.
Weekend of 19th and 20th: In Vermont Training (more woooo!)
Weekend of 26th and 27th: Coding data to map and map to data code, and the last test before I head back to school.

The rest of the year looks approximately like this:
September, October, Maybe Half of Novemer: Finish and Polish core... no testing due to school firewalls.
Second Half of Novemeber and Decemeber: Come up with a name for the game world, get listed on topmudsites.com. I also plan to starting hiring either story people or some people to help do documentation and help softcode things like socials. I also should be able to start coding content stuff like adding room types and items etc.
January: Heavy work on adding content. Massive testing because ill be home and have a lot of new stuff to work on.
February: Hopefully launch a website with money made from the blog because of the topmudsites voting.

Thats the overall plan, lets see if I can stick to it.

Laters,
Toraux

DataManagement is a Bitch

I wish this rewrite was done already. Whenever I give myself a multiday project when I dont get to actually test code for days or weeks really kills me. Its not very fun and there arent any results to go on. Hopefully I can have this stuff out of the way by the end of the coming weekend.

I am dying to play, thinking about all the political intrigue, wars, a real life or death struggle to survive makes the game so appealing to me. A real try at seeing what it would be like if you were to head off into combat or make changes in a large thriving world. The intensity of going from a period of peace to complete annihilation as your tribe or nation leader summons you to go into battle. Whether it be for defense or conquest makes no difference, it will all be quite fun.

The core keeps seeming like it will take longer and longer. I only really have 2 or 3 good weekends left before school. Even those seem kind of pitiful but i'll take what I get. Hopefully the core will be done by the end of October at the latest. Once the core is done it will be a big transition to filling out a lot of the major content. Room types, combat, Humanoids, Item creation. Then the game will really kind of transition over into what DynamicMUD was during my original attempt when I was messing around with Python.

If you have questions or ideas feel free to talk to me about them. Hearing interest from people is really what makes me want to keep working on this project. Anyway I need some sleep as always, hopefully ill have some good news this weekend.

-Toraux

Restructuring DataSystem

I am currently restructuring the data storage system. This will hopefully be more robust and less prone to stupid errors and make the data more easily changed when the game isnt in operation.

As for testing ive had some people ask me when he next test is... most likely I will plan at least one more chance before I go back to school, probably some weekend in mid to late August. This test would be geared mainly to stress testing the newly rewritten and enhanced code and be less of a test of new features.

In other news I realized today that Java 1.5 contains functionality to track time in nano seconds. Hopefully this will make my testing code much more accurate!

Anyway gotta sleep, work tomorrow.
-Toraux

Slow and Steady wins the Race

I got a bit done today. The theme now seems to be slow and steady wins the race. Every time I tried to code and I rushed it things sucked down the line. I am now refactoring a lot of my stuff and even possibly rewriting the data storage framework to make things more efficient and robust. New features have been few and far between, but once this core engine is done things should start pouring out.

I installed my new CD-RW drive this morning, definately recommend Lite-On drives, well labeled, cheap, good companion software, and an easy install. Also cleaned up the inside and organized the wires etc too.

After that I upgrade to Java 1.5 and tried out this generics thing. I have to say it makes my code a lot cleaner in a lot of places. On the otherhand the over complication of java isnt exactly a great thing either, but at least it works. My next few objectives over the weekend are mainly refactoring and cleaning up core things. Making things well rounded and good for future use is of the utmost importance. Hopefully the core will be done by the end of August or September, but at my current rate of development that might be too high of an aim. Guess we'll need to wait and see. Anyway, going to sleep now and hopefully get up early tomorrow and hit a lot of stuff, I lose next weekend for a bit of a vacation so I need to try and keep up the pace now.

Later,
-Toraux

Goings On

My newer scheduling system seems to be working out ok. Im making slow and steady progress. I have plans for the next few weeks to finish up some minor improvements and then overhaul some of the base systems a bit.

At work I decided to take it upon myself to write a program to do AM Studies for me.... basicly we go to the FCC website enter in some Coordinates and a radius and it tells us which radio stations are in that area and we print it to a pdf. On Tuesday I spent about 5 hours doing 120 sites. Why do this lame stuff by hand? :P I should have a program written to download the websites and print directly to pdf without any human interaction within a week. Already today I learned about Java Generics, a relatively new feature that will make my code a lot tighter after the overhaul... basicly like the C++ template feature. Anyway going to do some other stuff now bbl :P

-Toraux

Time

I really wish I had more time each day. So much work to be done and no time to do it in. Today I converted my entire source repository over to subversion. After a bit of an issue with getting my code to actually execute properly I was able to get some other stuff done too. I have a plan now to schedule my time more wisely each week so hopefulyl I can at least make a little progress each week. I am still considering setting dynamic up on top mud sites to try and get more traffic, but that might depend on how long it takes to get this website up as well. I am hoping that maybe by January of next year I will be ready to take on a few staff members. I will hopefully have the website staff ready by then as well as someone to start work on the marketing part of dynamic and a writer to work on help files and documentation. I might even be ready to start building the story staff then, guess we'll find out. Anyway I think im done ranting and stuff, just a reminder I might make my development plans available on the google calendar linked in the upper right of this page. Oh yeah and tell your friends to check this page out!

-Toraux

Test Results

Basicly only a couple people showed up for the test today, guess I didnt actively tell enough people, not many seem to read this stuff regularly or take note :P From now on maybe ill see if I can set up a signup sheet of some sort so I know who might actually show up for future tests.

I have decided to drop automating tag in favor of finishing up this core stuff faster so I can move on to bigger and better things like the final gameplay that im aiming for to begin with. Hopefully this week ill be able to get myself coding more easily.

I am still considering Top Mud Sites as a method of promoting the game but I need more input from people. Get to the actual blog: http://dynamicmud.blogspot.com and post a comment if you think you would or wouldnt vote on top mud sites if I got dynamic listed.

C-ya around.
-Toraux

Happy 4th

Hope all my American readers had a happy 4th, and I hope anyone else had a good weekend as well. Ive been back since Sunday night but still havent really gotten myself to code anything yet, and it looks like tonight will be the same. I am planning to rewrite the paging system to be easier to use on the development end and save myself a whole lot of time writing future paging commands.

I believe I will be running a test on Sunday July 9th at 3pm Eastern Standard Time. It will be the same drill as last time so make sure you sign up for the mailing list and the tester group. (The links for these are at the top right, you will need to create a google account. If you are reading this from the mailing list please click the link to get to the blog so you can click the appropriate link) More details will be available in the tester group.

Thanks all, see you Sunday.
-Toraux

Happy 4th Weekend

Well the test is canceled and im out of town this coming weekend so dont expect to see much of me. I hope everyone has a good weekend.

On the DynamicMUD front the only thing thats really happened this week is that I think I might convert my CVS stuff to Subversion. I like how SVN uses a global revision instead of revision numbers for each file. I have 70+ files now and that will multiply before this game is ready for the public. It is too hard to try and turn back multiple files if I want an old version. When I make the switch will depend on when I finish researching it and have the time (and a good break in the forward development).

In other news I noticed another non released game is on www.topmudsites.com and ranked in the top 30. I think if enough people were interested here we could do the same thing and quite possibly build up the reader and testerbase. We already have more stuff available to players because of the tests we will be running. If you would vote please post a comment to this entry and if we have 5 or 6 willing I might just get Dynamic listed. I think TMS allows a vote per ip every 12 hours, so maybe everyone could specify if they think they could vote once or twice a day. With the added readers coming from TMS we might have enough traffic to increase ad profits and make some money. By the way if your reading this from the google groups page click the link to this blog post somewhere below this so you can post a comment.

Thanks all.
-Toraux

Test Cancelled

Looks like the test I was planning for sunday will be put off another week. I basicly found out today that im heading up to Vermont to train this weekend and thats a much better opportunity for me then sitting around watching text scroll. I should have even more cool features available by then so it will be worth the wait.

I ended up spending the past two nights mashing away at the Eclipse IDE trying to get the metrics plugin to work. I finally fixed it and realized that all my files need to be correct for it to compile the metrics. Here are some cool stats about the project so far:

Total Lines: 13396
Lines of Code: 7124
Classes: 73
Methods: 657

This project is really growing. My short term todo list is shrinking which is good, and things are really improving quickly. I also added a performance command the other day which lets me see a graph of the last 100 pulses and how much of their allocated time is actually needed. Please keep checking here so you can get in on the real next test. By the way I also added a google calendar to this page, it should be in the list of links at the top right of the page. I will try my best to post all test events there.

See you all soon.
-Toraux

Moving Forward

Ok so work is moving forward, the first 11 items on my todo list have been eliminated. Only 20+ left before the immediate stuff is done and I can grab some stuff to do off of my long term list. Abbreviations are in tonight as is a nice command I can use to untag everyone at once which will make testing a million times easier for me, especially if next time is larger.

The next test still looks like it will be a week from Sunday. I am on the line about where I should post notice for it. I think MudConnector is a safe bet, but im not sure if I should post to that set of roguelike google groups. Dynamic isnt exactly a roguelike but those people need to play a good game ;) Anyone that might have come to the site because of the last time I posted there should weigh in and give me some insight from that seat at the table.

I am toying with concepts for how the staff organization will work and hopefully will be ready to start taking on a few support people to help this all continue forward smoothly. In other news I start teaching in my new location tomorrow night so Tuesdays and Thursdays from here on out for the rest of the summer will possibly lost to the cause of getting my lazy ass back into shape. Everyone please tell your friends who may be into MUDS or MMORPGS and see if we can grab some of them for the next test, I would like a bunch more people this time around. Until this weekend.

-Toraux

Test I Completed

The first test is now done, thanks all for helping. We found a lot of things that could be fixed or improved and I have 14 new items on my todo list. The next test will likely be two weeks from today, keep checking here for more details.

The teams were Ninsho, Dima, and Ryadmere with Ryad leaving early vs Sliis, Ract, and Qyae. The following is output for individual scores in game:

T# Name [ Tags ][ Saves ][ Freezes]
2 Ninsho [ 10 ][ 1 ][ 7]
3 Toraux [ 0 ][ 27 ][ 0]
2 Dima [ 8 ][ 2 ][ 6]
1 Qyae [ 5 ][ 0 ][ 6]
1 Sliis [ 4 ][ 3 ][ 5]
2 Ryadmere [ 2 ][ 0 ][ 1]
1 Ract [ 5 ][ 0 ][ 9]

Sorry for it not being clean looking but blogspot doesnt use a true space font.

Here is the command usage statistics for the main part of todays test:
Command Exec Count Exec Time Avg Exec
dymuw.core.commands.Command 40 16 0.4
dymuw.core.commands.Unknown 46 22 0.4
dymuw.core.commands.North 390 1910 4.8
dymuw.core.commands.South 337 1741 5.1
dymuw.core.commands.East 1087 4860 4.4
dymuw.core.commands.West 1073 5012 4.6
dymuw.core.commands.Look 150 1010 6.7
dymuw.core.commands.Say 99 114 1.1
dymuw.core.commands.Global 196 608 3.1
dymuw.core.commands.GlobalLog 43 51 1.1
dymuw.core.commands.Echo 36 110 3.0
dymuw.core.commands.EchoLog 3 1 0.3
dymuw.core.commands.PageCommand 892 199 0.2
dymuw.core.commands.Commands 12 41 3.4
dymuw.core.commands.GameInfo 3 1 0.3
dymuw.core.commands.Get 2 1 0.5
dymuw.core.commands.Drop 1 1 1.0
dymuw.core.commands.Equipment 1 1 1.0
dymuw.core.commands.Exam 2 2 1.0
dymuw.core.commands.EditRoom 0 0 0.0
dymuw.core.commands.EditFaction 12 4 0.3

Once again tell your friends to come check out this page!

Ill check in again sometime later in the week.
Later all.
-Toraux

First Test Tomorrow

Its been a long week so far. Got some coding done and the test should be going as planned tomorrow at 3pm Eastern time. If you havent signed up yet for the tester group look through the last few posts for the link and do that :P For everyone who isnt interested in testing yet the premise will basicly be a test of the tag code I wrote. Each team will try to freeze the other team while avoiding being tagged and saving their own teammates.

As always please tell your friends about the very cool DynamicMUD in development! I look forward to seeing my testers tomorrow. Now to sleep, I am quite tired.

-Toraux

Busy

Still busy as all hell but I got most of the basic tag stuff done. I think I will be working on some more supporting features this week. The planned test will be sometime possibly around 1 or 2pm Sunday June 18th Eastern Standard time if all goes well. This is a good time to get signed up for the testers group if you havent yet. Any and all details on ips and ports will be posted on that group. Hopefully this week wont be as hard on me time wise as last week but we'll see what happens. I might be cutting down my status posts to around once or twice a week to allow more coding time. Until next time.

-Toraux

Not Much Progress

Not too much progress today on the coding front.... I wrote up all the main comments for the new classes and implemented the TagPlayer class without testing it. Im finding it hard to get tremendus amounts of coding done now that im at work all day. It really eats my time and whipes me out by the time I get home. I found out that I will probably be home Saturday night tho so I should be able to hammer away at this tag stuff then at least and ensure a Sunday test date. I think the first test will be most likely around 1 or 2 Eastern Standard time on sunday and run no longer then an hour. Please sign up for the testers group if you havent yet, and point your friends to this blog. Remember you need to be signed up for the mailing list here to be approved for the tester group.

Mailing List

Tester Group

Thanks all.

-Toraux

Data Bug Fixed

Well after my grueling orientation I got home and fixed the big data bug. Apparently I was using the same resultset and statement variables for the database stuff so whenever there was a being involved the room would cough out and finish loading.

I also set up the files I will be needing for the tag game. There are currently 10 classes just for the tag game, basicly all of them derive off of the other base classes from the core engine. I may or may not have them all implemented to a playable level for sunday but we'll need to wait and see.

Until then here is the mailing list address for any new viewers. Please send your friends here if you think they would enjoy the game.
http://groups.google.com/group/Dynamic-MUD?lnk=oa

This is the tester group address:
http://groups.google.com/group/Dynamic-MUD-Testers?lnk=oa

The tester group is pretty much an invite or permission only group. Anyone who is currently on the mailinglist is eligible to sign up. If you dont get in right away dont worry, I will need to approve each join request. I will probably accept everyone who is on the list but sign up quickly because if I do decide to limit it will be first come first serve.

Thanks.
-Toraux

Login Done

Gonna make this short because I need to go to my first day at work tomorrow and I need to get up early : (

The basic login code is done. People who sign up for testing wont be able to make their own accounts or characters but should be fine for testing. Found another bug tonight with the dataloading stuff, it might take the next couple of days to figure it out with my now more limited weekday schedule. Still have pretty much all of the tag code left too so I might not be on time to run a test next weekend, but this week will determine that. Think thats about all for now.

-Toraux

Data Storage

Data storage stuff is now probably about 60% done. I should have it pretty much all worked out by the end of tomorrow. If all goes well ill write the basic tag stuff this weekend and hopefully have all the simple bugs out of it before next weekend. Ill most likely post the link to the testers group tomorrow. Im still not sure how many I will accept but hoping a decent number will want in. This is a great time to tell your friends about dynamic and get them to visit the blog. The link to sign up for the normal mailing list is:

http://groups.google.com/group/Dynamic-MUD?lnk=oa

Anyway, im tired from being up coding all day.
-Toraux

Very Basic Items Done

Just a quick post tonight, need to get to sleep. I finished the very basic item stuff up tonight, just get drop exam and eq commands. Tomorrow I will start work on the data storage and retrieval system. If all goes well it will be a one day job and ill be able to get on to the rest of the preparations for testing soon. It could however take up to the rest of the week as well. Guess only tomorrow will tell.

I set up the testers group today. I will start filling it with basic info and posts this week and ill post a link to join it here soon. This group will be invite or approval only. My plan will be to only allow people I know are on the mailing list. I might only allow a limited number as well so keep checking often so you dont miss it. Anyway sleep time for me.

-Toraux

Holy Excitement

Got a lot done today, I really feel like im learning a lot of cool stuff now and im pushing the envelope. Highlighting on the map now works similar to how it did before with the added coolness of being able to see if the players in the room are friends or enemies. I also can now track the statisitics for all the commands, this should allow me to track down the problem areas and see what will need improvement. Tomorrow I will code up all the items functionality and then it will be time to get data sorted out. Once the data and login code is all set I will be ready to start some simple testing exercizes and maybe start work on the mini tag testing game. I will definately start accepting people for testing by the end of the week.

We had two more join the list today, if you have friends into muds or other similar games who you think might like the premise of dynamic then send them here so we can build up the potential tester base.

I really should get some sleep so I can get to work on the next set of code tomorrow. Later all.
-Toraux

Distractions

Everytime I turn around im distracted, seems like I could be much farther if I could focus myself and just sit down and code for like 6 or 8 hours a day but so far that seems hard to get done. Got the rest of global comms in, and I coded up some simple utility functions that will be needed for later. Tomorrow might be another busy day with rl but my primary goal is to complete the time class and the basic statistics stuff to show me a paged list of all commands and their usage stats. If I get that done in good time im moving on to the logger and system output but im not promising myself anything. Code is up to about 7200 lines. I have approx 45 classes as well. Cant wait to get to the data storage stuff and have that all done so I can move onto better things.

My long term forecast for the core code is shortening, I have a feeling that by the end of june it might be pretty much all functional. Tag should be ready by then and after a few weeks of good hard testing and tweaking I could be working towards content and real features. Once the data stuff is close to done I will create the tester group and extend an invitation to 5 - 10 people to help testing. Tell your friends if they might be interested, the more people we have the better things will go.

Thanks all for reading.
-Toraux

Code Moving

Code is definately moving again. Im trying to work it in around all the other stuff I need to get done now that im back from school. I got my sweet 3 monitor two comp setup again so coding will be three times easier then when at school. I added the first global comms channel tonight. Tomorrow morning ill add the other two and then lot of system utilities and behind the scene stuff to clear out.

If im lucky this will all snowball and by the end of next week ill have data storage stuff done and running pretty stable. Once thats done then the core is probably past halfway done and it will be mostly just cleanup and stability stuff to prepare for adding content.

Im tired but this is feeling good, ill be checking in more if I can get myself to do it. If I havent posted in a while IM me and get me to post!

Night all.
-Toraux

The System Works

It appears this design is pretty damn good... new features are coding up much faster then expected, the inherited nature of the design means I can add new commands in minutes. I added say, a basic prompt, and virtual rooms today. Tomorrow I will be coloring the prompt and moving onto global communications. I should get to sleep as I have two finals tomorrow morning. If I dont have time to code tomorrow I will for sure on thursday, and things will move fast. I will start recruiting testers soon. Anyway out.

-Toraux

Hell Yeah Dynamic Mud!

I would now consider dynamic coded enough to be considered a world.... People can log in, move in the four directions and look. Im up to 6200 lines including all the empty shell classes. As for testing im not sure when ill want people but maybe next weekend ill be asking some of the closer people to log on just to see if we can break anything yet. Next stuff to be coded is in room communications, virtual rooms, and the prompt. At some point I will be writting a team freeze tag game to run on the dynamic core. This will be followed by an eventual freeze tag based capture the flag. When these modules are ready ill be hitting up the forums and groups again to see if I can grow the reader base and get some more testers.

As for the mailing list we now have 10 people signed up, I consider this kind of a minor milestone. Now if everyone on that list can find one person they know who is into these kind of games and get them to sign up we'll double the viewer base!

Anyway tired and need to study some more tomorrow.
-Toraux

Running Out of Cool Titles

Well I wrote some more code today. The command parser is pretty much functional now and I have code for the 5 most basic commands: north, south, east, west, look. On Sunday I will be writting the next big chunk of code to handle player interaction with a being.

By the way I got the job with verizon, starting June 5th, should give me about 10 free days before I need to go work after I get out of school.... do I smell typing?

I also found out this week that there is at least ONE person who would be willing to give money and buy into what would potentially be Dynamic MUD inc. or whatever I name it. I hope there are more out there. I also want to remind people to tell their friends and get them to sign up for the mailing list.

Point your friends here: http://groups.google.com/group/Dynamic-MUD?lnk=lr

I hope to report in again soon, and the tester's group will be put together soon too, ill start inviting people for that possibly late next week at the earliest.

Out all.
-Toraux

Coding

Ok so im definately making progress. Items, Beings, Rooms, and World are coded and untested. Next I will implement the command parser, player controller, and some basic commands. When all of this is done I will write some test code to allow connections and maybe open it up for some quick testing some weekend. Ill see how long it takes but prosepectively ill be letting some people on to test on saturday. I will send a message out to a handful of people based on when they signed up and get them on to help test stuff. Core might be complete much sooner then expected.

I might be looking for artists soon if my current prospect turns up null. If your interested in doing some artwork let me know and ill take a look at your previous works. Excited as all hell about all this... as always.

-Toraux

I Broke Down

Well there goes my planning everything idea. Got frustrated it and started coding. Being and Room are pretty much coded but untested so far. I also decided against using JUnit as heavily as I originally planned. A lot of this stuff is just too hard to write tests for because of the complexity of it all. My next step is finishing these two classes. Then ill be moving on to coding up Items then the World. Ill hopefully have this stuff then tested soon after, which will be my goal for the week. Then after that I will be spiraling around the remaining classes until it all works well and the core is done. Towards the end of the core development ill put together a mini tag game package to give it some playability with the simple stuff that is coded.

On that note please send my cool ideas to make tag more interesting. Ill post again tomorrow.

-Toraux

Variables and Functions Done

I think im pretty much done adding variables and functions. Added the 30th class today: Virtual room. I did some thinking and basicly decided to redo how I was using rooms and mapping etc. Im well over 4k lines now. Been trying to get the CVS repository working tonight and back everything up but it seems like its a bit of a pain at the moment so looks like that will be tomorrow/sunday. Next on the list is pseudocoding, should go a bit faster then this last set of work : )

Anyway need sleep, test tomorrow.
-Toraux

Raising Capital

Im wondering how feasible it would be to try and raise capital by selling the inital shares of dynamic when and if I incorporate down the road. This would allow people who believe this game will take off to help us get off the ground with a chance of making some money off it in the future. Im starting to do the research into costs of forming and maintaining a business. I would appreciate comments... if anyone has input on what would influence their decision to get involved and purchase shares I would love to hear it.

Almost done with the vars/functions phase. Just some cleanup and finishing of a couple classes and then ill be moving onto pseudocode. So id expect Sunday to start the pseudocode process. I now have 3824 lines of code... all of them comments, function names, or variables. I expect this to expand to 6-7k lines at least by the end of the pseudocode process.

Anyway gotta sleep, give me input!
-Toraux

Class Definitions Almost Done

Almost finished the class definitions. Got two more to do and some cleanup and then ill be moving onto the pseudocode phase.

Verizon hasnt called yet, but it sounds like theyre just waiting on approval from human resources before they can send me an offer *fingers crossed*.

Ive been thinking about how to handle the financial side of things. Ideally I would like to launch the whole game at once with a server and all that fun stuff. Right now it seems like getting those resources might be hard, and even if I want till after graduation im not sure ill be ready to throw away a few thousand on a server and hosting before I know ill have players.

One option im considering is making a cut down derived version of dynamic called dynamic arena which would involve a much smaller map and a focus on fast paced action. Players would be placed into two teams and would battle each other until a team is eliminated. The teams would each have a base and territory as in dynamicmud, and the world will be deformable etc. This will allow players to seige each other for hours or even days before a victor is declared. Then the world will reset or be randomized and things will start again. This will allow us to test features and help build up the user base before the final release.

If anyone else has ideas feel free to comment or email me.

-Toraux

Getting Closer

Blog traffic is up these past few days, and the mailing list is starting to grow. If everyone on the list right now could get one or two of their friends who are into games to check out the site and join the list we'll be even closer to our goals. The more people we get now the easier life will be down the road when its time to test and launch. Also if anyone with a decently active website wants to swap links let me know.

I got seven more classes specified today: Command, CommandParser, PlayerController, AIController, Prompt, Faction, and FactionManager. This leaves 9 left to do and some other fixes and idea development before I can move onto pseudocoding the classes. Were up to 3195 lines of code now in the files that have been written. Thats all comments and function/variable definitions by the way... none of it actually does anything yet.

Storms, Weather, and Maps are on the docket for tomorrow, given I can get it all done in time. Also supposed to hear from Verizon Wireless tomorrow on a possible job offer for the summer wooo.

Ok im sleepy, out.
-Toraux