0.9.8 progress report

[Kendaer]

I figured it'd be nice of me to keep you folks updated on what's been going on in the code.

There's been a fair amount of churn recently as MightyE added a new (and what looks to be better) translation system.  This is still in progress though the guts of it are now there.

On my side of things, I did a lot of tinkering with various bits generally (such as logdnet) cleaning them up and finally got around to setting up the new event system and am in the process of converting all existing specials over to modules which register as events.  As part of this, I am adding hooks to the forest (obviously), the village (you're welcome Strider), the Inn and the graveyard which will allow 'something special' events to occur in any of those locations!  For the moment, the forest (only) still handles the special/* style of events, but once all of those are converted on the dev site, those will go away for good!

Part of our goal with this module system is to make it much less necessary for anyone to every modify the core code which means that work you do now won't get obsoleted or need tons of reworking as we release 0.9.9, 1.0.0 and beyond.  With this in mind, we might delay 0.9.8 a bit farther so we can add easy ways for modules to handle races and the standard skills/abilities (This is NOT a promise, just something we (well I) am considering.  With this in mind, I would really appreciate PM's from people who have made modifications about places they *absolutely* need to be able to hook into just so I can make sure there are hooks there.  The goal is to allow every page to be hooked either pre output (which can also intercept the page entirely!) or post-output (so you can insert text as part of the description as well).  In general this is for putting output or navs onto the pages in order to add features.  Things like Dag and the Inn drinks are modules.

[Kendaer]

Eric made races into modules last night.   This means that you will be able to
add or remove a race as simply as dropping in a new module.

Additionally, along with this change comes racial villages!  More details as soon as the code is actually running on something other than Eric's own private dev server.

[Kyky]

Do you need help with the racial villages? I had started those before the server I was on went Kapoof! If you need help with them just ask and I will help as much as possible

[strider]

Greetings JT, thanks for the update. . . I'm curious, when you say "Racial Villages" do you merely mean optional villages OR do you mean starting points for each race when characters are created of that race. (I've played with both on my servers)?

[Kendaer]

Greetings JT, thanks for the update. . . I'm curious, when you say "Racial Villages" do you merely mean optional villages OR do you mean starting points for each race when characters are created of that race. (I've played with both on my servers)?

It's the second.. The village exists as soon as the race does. (Races are now modules as well btw -- in case you didn't catch that)

[strider]

Okay, very cool... Races being modules is very interesting indeed. How will that affect the Race array I've been using in my modules. Is the "Race" entry on the "accounts" database still just a number using the standard array of LotGD races, but now you're adding new ones that increase that number. . .

Or are there more perimeters going into the accounts table depending on race? OR, is there now a "races" table that keeps track of the particulars of each race (which sounds like a good way to go. You'd be able to take a lot out of the Newday and such by going that route).

[Kendaer]

It'll completely break it.
Race is now a string variable in the database.
Racial mods are now buffs. (they have the same effects, just implemented in a different way).
Race modules add their stuff to newday via the hooks provided.(chooserace, setrace, and newday)

It's all pretty straightforward and you should have no real problem setting up any of your new races as an equivalent module.

[strider]

::mutters something about "Work Work" then gets out his tools to start learning::

I liked my little race array...::mutter mutter:: bloody new system ::mutter:: more work.

::offers a roguish grin::
Just joking. I actually really like the race modules from what I've seen of them. VERY cool, but it will be a LOT of work for us all.

[Kendaer]

but it will be a LOT of work for us all.

All things worthwhile require effort Strider.  I think you'll agree that 0.9.8 is worthwhile  And trust me, the work you'll put in converting things to the framework will pale in comparison to the work we've put in creating that self-same framework

[strider]

::smirks:: Tis a point I've never disputed. . . in fact. . . I think I've toted that line once or twice before m'dear sire.

Seriously  though, I think it shall certainly be a massive edition to the gameplay and I'm really enjoying what I've seen of it thus far. It shall be a lot of work, but I think we're all looking forward to it.

[zousug]

hehe im looking forward for it thats for sure

(dont ask me why just from what i have read its going to be good so lol)

[GenmaC]

Man hurry up with this shizat, I'm too lazy to make new mods under the old system (er the IGM mod I wrote) and I wanna write mods for the flippin' new one dammit ;p

[Kendaer]

Man hurry up with this shizat, I'm too lazy to make new mods under the old system (er the IGM mod I wrote) and I wanna write mods for the flippin' new one dammit ;p

We're working on it Genmac.  I've done over close to 75 seperate file checkins just the past 2 days alone (granted, most of those were related).

Just to give you all clues as to whats going on.
There has been more work on the city/village code which went in.
Drinks and mounts can now have attributes added to them via modules (needed so that you could define which drinks were available at the dwarven brewhall and to make things like the goldmine forest event cleanly seperable).

While those sound 'small' they really were fairly extensive changes codewise and seem to be working.
The last in specific will allow me to finish converting the forest modules (darkhorse needs a similar mount extension which now is about 5 lines of code )

In the 0.9.8 release weapons and armor will NOT be extensible in this form because there are just too bloody many of them, and I plan on revamping that entire concept in 0.9.9 with an inventory system (yes, the inventory system is getting pushed off at least as of right now)

[ATJ]

Pull a winamp and go straight to 2.0!

[Stonedale]

Pull a winamp and go straight to 2.0!

Lol!

Just a few questions here. So with the races havening they're own starting villages does this mean you will have to configure the weapon and armor shops for each town? Or will they just all be tied into the one main system?

And other then the stated above any new features to look forward too?

Also will you just beable to upgrage your current game to? If so how difficult will upgrading be asfar as overwirting, file editing, and database changes?