StendhalDevelopmentBlog: Difference between revisions

== New Home ==

<div style="border: 2px solid green; padding: 1em">We have moved the development blog to the [https://codeberg.org/arianne/stendhal/src/branch/master/doc/CHANGES.txt changes.txt] file and the [https://mastodon.social/@stendhalgame @stendhalgame@mastodon.social].</div><br/>

== Year 2009 ==

'''Database maintenance'''<br/>

We are going to convert all MySQL tables from MyIsam to InnoDB. MyIsam is the default table engine in MySQL but it does not support transactions which sporadically leads to failed account creations. Several database operations are not possible at the moment because MyIsam always locks the complete table for concurrent access which in turn causes huge lag in game.

--[[User:Hendrik Brummermann|Hendrik Brummermann]] 10:30, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

'''Hudson used for continuous integration'''<br/>

Since this summer we use hudson for regular building of stendhal. You can find it [http://stendhal.game-host.org/hudson here]. A documentation on how to configure hudson is placed [[HudsonTestServer|here]] in the wiki.

--[[User:Madmetzger|Madmetzger]] 19:44, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

<br/><br/>

'''NPC available on the web'''<br/>

Information and pictures of NPCs are now available on the [http://stendhal.game-host.org/?id=content/game/npcs website]. It is now possible to include information and pictures of NPC (like <npc>Margaret</npc>) into the wiki as well. Thanks to Hamtaro, most of the quests on the StendhalQuests page already contain such popup.

--[[User:Hendrik Brummermann|Hendrik Brummermann]] 10:30, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

== Year 2008 ==

'''[[User:Hendrik Brummermann|Hendrik Brummermann]], 20 Sep. 2008'''<br>

The wiki is now hosted on the game server. Apart from it now being much faster and more responsive it allows us to integrate it with the normal game server web site and the game itself. As a first step it is now possible to include data about creatures (like <creature>bear|bears</creature>), items (like the mighty <item>rod of the gm</item>) and players (like the dutiful <player>postman</player>). Have a look at the test page [[Sandbox/StendhalDataInclude Test]] for more details.

'''[[User:Kymara|Kymara]], 20 June 2008'''<br>

We got the http://stendhal.game-host.org/ working with live game data from the server. Players love looking up the stats of other players! The new Hall of Fame categories have been well received too. Players can login and change their password, before this could only be done through mysql, i.e. it needed a server admin. Oh, and ignore what I thought below about the News and Events - I was confused. We fiddled the permissions and now *game* admins of adminlevel >= 400 can login and edit the News, Events, etc. This is great, it means we can easily announce raids and meetings. We also decided to add the detail of 'Server time' to the website to make it easier to specify what time any event occurs.

We're experimenting with a new planning tool called plone. At the moment we're using it to decide what should be in the next release, 0.69. It's at http://stendhalxplanner.homelinux.net/ though please note only logged in users with sufficient permissions set can really see the plans.

'''--[[User:Kymara|Kymara]], 12 March 2008'''<br>

We recently appeared on the front page of [http://sourceforge.net sf.net]!!!

Our [http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=785542 news article] for the release of 0.67 was featured as a project news. If you go to [http://sourceforge.net/news/index.php?group_id=0 the news headline summary] and then click Older headlines you will find us.

Over the last year we've been consistently in the top 20 of [http://sourceforge.net/top/mostactive.php?type=week Most Active Projects] (out of 170,000 projects) per week. Congrats all!

'''--[[User:Kymara|Kymara]], 4 March 2008'''<br>

The release of 0.67 was a success, with some nice new quests and maps. Players have adjusted well to the removal of underscores in item and creature names. The new introduction quest and tutorials has also been well received, certainly there are less clueless newbies around.

As for future directions, I have been working on getting the stendhal_website which miguel started ready for release. It links to the stendhal game database, meaning that the hall of fame can be sophisticated. The events and news sections would only be editable by server admin rather than project admin/those with access to the sf shell services. I'm not yet sure how much the news sections will therefore be used - perhaps only links to arianne.sf.net when there are updates? Finally there are many content sections which are empty and for now I have linked these to wiki pages. If they ever do get filled we may then have two places to update information and I'm not sure this is ideal, either. kiheru has suggested editing the wiki stylesheets to reproduce the look and feel of the website.

As for the game itself, map making has been slowed down because the server is already at the threshold of what it can handle in the buildPerceptions phase. This means it is preferable not to add new instances of creatures or zones. I have been culling some rats and other weak creatures from areas which are not highly populated by newbies - after all these weak creatures take as much CPU as stronger ones (of the same size.) Still, I feel creativity is being curbed. Contributors tend to want to make new quests and so on for new zones rather than adding NPCs to old ones. mental note: do what you can to encourage development of existing zones.

'''--[[User:MartinFuchs|Martin Fuchs]], 1 January 2008'''<br>

Work is going on to make conversation with virtual in game characters (NPCs) more flexible. Previously NPCs could only understand a very limited amount of predefined commands like for example "buy banana". They should also be capable to understand sentences, which are worded in a more natural way of language.

Currently (in release 0.65) the server code can already parse expressions containing verbal amounts with singular and plural nouns like "buy two bananas".

The next stage of conversation parser will also be able to understand sentences like "Can you give me three bananas, please?". To achieve this, it will be based on a list known words with associated word types. If an user speaks to a NPC, the sentences are parsed into grammatical expressions like "SUBJECT VERB OBJECT" and matched with predefined expressions to model the character response.

(see also the related [http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1851849&group_id=1111&atid=973767 Developer Track entry].)

'''--[[User:Hendrik Brummermann|Hendrik Brummermann]], 28 December 2007'''<br>

We had bug with the banks which allowed item duplication. Unfortunately this happened during the Christmas holidays so we could not fix it immediately but needed to deactivate the banks as an interim solution. The bugs have been fixed now and we implemented an item log which makes it very easy to detect abusing of bug like this in the future even if the duplicated items are handed to socket puppet accounts.

'''--[[User:Kymara|Kymara]] 02:50, 19 December 2007 (PST)'''<br>

We had a meeting for developers and contributors, see [[ArianneMeeting200712]]

We put some infrastructure in place to monitor memory usage (which has been the cause of recent lags). Gripnir fixed a bug which prevented the daily mayor quest to accept kills done in deathmatch.