Author: XCompWiz

Mystcraft Bukkit & General Update

Hello, all.  I’m still sort of off in limbo at the moment, but I wanted to give a brief update.

First, many of you have requested that Mystcraft have a Bukkit port.  davboecki has answered that request.  Many thanks to him for doing that! 🙂
Get it here: [url=”http://www.mcportcentral.co.za/index.php?topic=3541.0″]Topic[/url] [url=”http://mcportcentral.co.za/wiki/index.php?title=Ports_for_1.2.5″]Bukkit Ports Listing[/url]

Secondly, the design work for spaceman is going well.  I’m looking to start on the implementation of the architecture soon.  Most of the game concepts have been nailed down and I’ve solved most of the points I was concerned with, like how certain mechanics would behave while allowing for user created and controlled content.
With that the architecture needs to be refined a bit and I probably want to do that a few times until I have a solid description of how things will work together and what handles what.  I’d also like to do a few in-depth designs for how major interactions will work; tracing the interaction from menu to logic and back to the interface.  Just so I can see for certain that the design will work right in theory.  Then I’ll have to code the real thing and see how it goes.

Lastly, I’ve been waiting on Forge to update to 1.3 and I believe that it reached that point earlier today.  This means I can pick Mystcraft back up.  However, to be perfectly honest, I am enjoying my break.  This has been my first real holiday in years.  I will return to Mystcraft soon enough, never fear, but I’ll probably be taking another week before I start back up on it.  The first goal will be a 1.3 update with existing features (though maybe a few bug fixes) and then I’ll start on development proper. 🙂

Hope everyone has been enjoying their Summer! 🙂

All’s Quiet

Sorry for the general silence. Since we’re waiting on Forge to update to 1.3.x I’m taking a break from Mystcraft. I’m still answering questions and active on the Bug Tracker and IRC, but I’m not working on Mystcraft at the very moment.

Designs for spaceman have been moving along. Lots of things to decide on. Some of the ideas in the project are a bit ambitious and I want to design it so that they can be done either simply at first and improved upon later or simply done later without needing to rewrite everything else later, too. 😉

The plan for spaceman development is as follows:

  • Main Designs – try to get everything specified and planned out as best I can.  I’m paying particular attention to having a discrete, modular, and maintainable architecture at this point.
  • Project Environment Setup – Putting together my workspace and procedures.  I want to try to get most of the workflows laid out at this point, including the testing and build systems.  Focus is on automation of workflow and project structure.
  • Initial Test System – Build the base architecture and communication systems.  This is the framework and core phase.  Mostly interfaces and abstractions.
  • Initial ‘Playable’ – Hopefully the result of the previous phase is a ‘playable’ system which can be used to start testing mechanics and content.  If not then that is the goal here.
  • Game Content/Mechanics – Start work on the heart and meat of the game.

At this point I switch to a very iterative model where I basically continue adding, reworking, refactoring, and revising the system.  I’ll try to give updates as stuff happens at this point, and there will probably be screenshots/casts of the first playable. 🙂

Hope you are enjoying the Summer!

Update And Bug Tracker

I’m currently taking a small break from any major Mystcraft development until MCP for 1.3 is up and running. In the mean time I am trying to get some bugs in the current build fixed. I’ll put up another release in about 24 hours that fixes the chat and bedrock issues. I’m waiting to see if anything else needs to be fixed at the same time.

Note that this is a bad place to come for general support. The forums are much better if you have a question to be answered or an install problem.
If you find a bug then you can use the now public Bug Tracker system! This should help a lot with people trying to understand bugs and in reporting bugs.
At this point all bug reports should be handled through that. 🙂

Enjoy!

Mystcraft 0.9.1.00

Client 0.9.1.00
Client 0.9.1.00 Forge 152
Server 0.9.1.00
Server 0.9.1.00 Forge 152

The forge edition is confirmed to work with 164. 🙂

The current symbols are temporary and randomly generated, so be prepared for them to change again in the future.  The style won’t change, but the randomly selected lines will go away in preference of designed patterns.  This should be the last major change to them. 🙂

Change logs will be up later.

Enjoy!

Mystcraft 0.9.1.0 Tonight

Testing is going well for tonight’s release of Mystcraft. I’ve fixed most of the priority issues for the moment and we are looking into the last big issue.

I want to try to get better distribution system for Mystcraft up. The current methods are too manual for me. I want something I can automate and control easily.
The release won’t be delayed for this, however. I’ll publish manually if I need to.

In other news, I’m announcing that I am not going to be picking up the other mod I had been planning. Since I did most of the designs for that mod with Exotria and Greychapel I’ve given them the idea to do with as they please.
Instead, I’m looking at picking up a project I have wanted to do for the past 10 years. Not a Minecraft mod, obviously. I don’t want to give out much information on this project yet, but I’ve codenamed it Project Spaceman (or just spaceman). More info will come as soon as more of it is done.
This new project will take some time away from Mystcraft, but not end its development. The other mod would have done the same, though perhaps not to the same extent. I should have enough time for both projects, though. Once school starts up both projects will get even less time, but such is life.

Anyway, release is soon! 🙂

Release Soon

The next release is targeted to this week. I wanted it out LAST week, but the symbol representations have taken longer than I’d hoped (and I’ve been doing other things as well).
At this point the symbol sprites are cleaned up and I only need to to assign actual component sets. I’m setting a hard deadline of Wed for the release, though. This has delayed things long enough.

  • Redid the disarm book effect
  • Changed some flags on crystal and glowstone crystal generation
  • Fixes transparency for disabled link panel
  • Renames the ‘colorized’ symbols to ‘chromatic’
  • Changes Normal Sunset to Red Sunset
  • Changes Normal Clouds to White Clouds
  • Remaps symbol identifiers accordingly
  • Adds Environmental Effect symbol: Accelerated
  • Adds Weather symbols: Always, Overcast, Fast, Slow
  • API improvements

I’ve updated the Minecraft Forums post and gotten (nearly) everything cleaned up over here. Still want a better downloads handler, but everything is functional. 🙂

Mystcraft Update

So, since I haven’t been updating my blog due to the system instability of the machine it was running on I’m very behind for updates.  Let’s see if I can rectify that.
I’m not sure where my last updates cut off so I’m just going to do a general update on everything since 0.8.6b.

Here’s what I’ve been working on in basically the order I completed it (though I moved a few things around for easier reading).

  • First off, I’ve got a completely new project environment.  I rearranged everything to make life easier.  This includes making code into client, server, and common branches, cleaning up the build system, and changing Version Control software. This has gone well and I am pleased with the new system. 🙂
  • Mystcraft Forge Edition has moved up to 152.  If there happens to be another recommended build between now and the release I will update to that.
  • The first couple builds to the .9. series put in fixes that went into 0.8.6b.  Since I had branched my environment already they were now two separate tracks and the fixes needed to be copied in.
  • Many of the early builds also fixed things that got lost or broken by the new code architecture.  That should all be cleaned up now.
  • I’ve extended the lifetime of the book entities by a factor of 10 (in reference to the break down caused by exposure to air).
  • I fixed the blinking weather on SMP and all the weather sync issues for Ages.
  • Server loads got lifted by my removal of the chunk preloading system I had for my hotloaded worlds. Additionally, ChickenBones has written code to unload chunks/worlds which I put a slightly modified version of into Mystcraft.  My version only includes some fixes in terms of keeping dimensions registered but not loaded.
  • Changes odds for chance to add environmental effects from 2:3 to 1:5
  • Fixes some config options not showing up (minimum age id, I think)
  • Adds mod_Mystcraft to Forge Edition (so it will show up in the mods list).
  • The API is very nearly complete.  I’m still cleaning it up and getting feedback on it, but it’s looking good. 🙂  Thanks to ScottKillen for his help on that!
  • The symbols now have a new rendering system.  Instead of single icons they can construct their appearance using predefined curves in any color.
  • Symbols currently have deterministically random draw components, meaning I didn’t pick them but they are ‘fixed’.
  • Fixes config class in Vanilla; Allows block ids > 255 (unsure if affects Forge Edition.  Reports indicated that my configs weren’t allowing ids > 255)
  • Adds lighting scaling to Lighting Controller (so actual block light level can be controlled)(Bugged?)
  • Bright symbol now scales lighting to range within 7-15
  • Dark symbol scales lighting between 0-7
  • Remaps NativeBiomeController to BioConLarge internally
  • Renames Medium Biomes to Large Biomes
  • Adds Huge, Medium, Small, and Tiny Biomes
  • Adds extra debug message info for Packet handling error outs (on FE)
  • Fixes Logger time output
  • Disables Spawn modification logic element (Because it isn’t fully specified it seems better to disable it for the API right now).
  • Renames options.instability to options.decay to prepare for more instability types.
  • Changes default entity ids to avoid conflicts with ModLoader
  • Forge Edition better utilizes Forge (meaning I’m starting to register things properly through forge, meaning fewer class edits on the FE).
  • Adds later biome symbol adding (for ex. Extra Biomes) on Forge Edition (on ModsLoaded)
  • I at this point updated my MCP environment.  This was interesting, but means more of my code is the same across the Editions. 🙂
  • Cloud Colors
  • Completes Sky/Fog/Cloud/Sunset Color grid
  • Adds block for setting linking properties (temporary debug block)
  • Rearranges how link properties work to be more generalized (to be added to API)
  • Modifies link code to be more generalized across client/server and to handle link listeners
  • Improves SSP link code to reuse world if already in target dim
  • Force closes GUIs on linking
  • Changes linking items to use the book GUI (unslotted)
  • Changes book entities to use the book GUI (slotted)
  • Adds packet for handling item activation on server by client command
  • Adds basic render effect for Disarm book to linkpanel
  • Greys out link panels when link is impossible
  • Removes enchant glow from descriptive books
  • Adds enchant glow to following books
  • Improves BookGUI internals
  • Improves Mystcraft GUI handling internals
  • Makes disarm prevent linking of item entities and book entities
  • Removes superfluous saving on SSP intra-age linking
  • Changes item textures

Along the way I’ve managed to inject and fix other bugs, but those are less interesting, generally.

The debug block deserves a bit of discussion.  It is currently in so it is possible to play with the linking mechanics properties without the full crafting system.  Since the crafting system and tech stuff isn’t finalized I wanted something that would allow for testing of these features and to allow you to play with them.
At this point the block has buttons for different properties, a slot for the item, displays the linking item’s linked dimension id, and a box to rename the item with.

I realize this post is very long, but hopefully it will show that I have been working and haven’t just been sitting around. 😉

Enjoy!

New System, Same Old Music

Since the old server was having issues and my family was complaining about the loss of bandwidth I’ve moved. 😛

Dinnerdog has been kind enough to provide mirroring for the downloads in the past and is now hosting this new server for me. Thanks, Dinnerdog! 🙂

I decided this was a good time to look into using pre-established software for my site, rather than writing my own.  Not enough time and it’s simply not worth the effort.  I could be doing much more useful things, like working on Mystcraft. 😛
I’m in the process of getting most of the old posts copied over to here and getting this all set up and pretty.  You should see the switch very soon. 🙂