StendhalDevelopmentBlog: Difference between revisions

== Year 2009 ==

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)

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)

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

== Year 2008 ==

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.

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!

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 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.

== Year 2007 ==

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.

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

I have started to extend Stendhal to make use of the new persistent zone storage feature of Marauroa 2.0. I am currently trying to understand it and polish some rough edges based on the prototype of ArrestWarrants. So that it will be possible of jail players after they logged out and more important to set them free again even in case the server is restarted. I picked this example because it seems to be the easiest one; not because there is so much social trouble that we need this feature. So stay tuned, once we have a working prototype lots of new things will be possible.

Players are now automatically saved every 10 minutes. So in the rare case of a server crash, only little progress will be lost.

An immense amount of work has been done making new maps and creatures recently. One of the new maps was a big city with many houses and these are available for players to buy. Having houses meant it was possible to open up the Pets feature to players, since now they have a safe place to leave their pet when they do not want it with them.

Most of the developers have started to backport some new maps and creatures from 0.70 to 0.62 so that we will have a new release soon. It has been delayed because we had a hardware failure which caused the database to get destroyed and we needed some time to restore it.

I have fixed the memory leak that was caused by a bug on the JVM.

At the same time and in the previously days too I have managed to fix several problem existing on server side:

Although 0.60 didn't bring the new RP System or Marauroa 2.0, as some had hoped, the new release was packed with features and quests. One of the features which made the most difference was to introduce a rate for weapons. The rate is a whole number from 1-15+. Low numbers mean fast rate jab jab jab while high numbers (for say a heavy weapon) mean you can hit only very slowly. Miguel came up with the idea and said it was very easy to implement. The quest of Marriage became possible, which I think must be a first for an RPG? When you are married, you and your spouse can be together whenever you like, with the help of a magic teleporting ring. The quest itself involves all the frills - wedding in a church, honeymoon in a hotel... I (kymara) worked on this, following specifications and ideas from lenocas.

* Code Freeze (bug fixes only) has be in effect for about a week(?).

* Plan is to fix significant bugs then Miguel will port stendhal to Marauroa 2.0; He has already ported an out of date branch to 2.0.

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.

We had a developer (contributor) meeting. Have a look at [[ArianneMeeting200704]]

Today we are the 3rd activest project (of 140,000) on SourceForge which get us to their front page.

== Year 2006 ==

Seems that actual way of working with NPC has reach its limit, as server already takes 21 ms of turn time with no players. We need a new way of running NPC or decouple logic so it is not run once per turn.

Now I will work on fixing bugs, because Sourceforge bug tracker already owns around 130 of them.

Most of the features are there, the game needs a serious rebalancing so monsters are not so easy nor so stupid as they are now.

I have added banks and it works! :) Yay!

I have added doors and keys to CVS.

Also I have started to work in our next step AI that will help us create different profiles of monsters, so that not all of them behave on the same way. Right now green dragon drops a key on death if the user need it and lich will summon on some occasions zombies to help him fight you.

We need to work a bit more on organizing stuff to ease content additions. It is going to be my priority.

I am really thinking about an automatic tool as it is really time consuming.

I have added several new features, mainly:

* Events API at client

I have added a very experimental support for Python startup script, so Stendhal can be configured fully using Python. If the result is possitive, we should think about porting actual XML system to Python.

Perception system has changed on CVS Marauroa, now we use around 60% less of bandwidth and make slots really private.

There is still room for improvements though :)

I have finally fixed the memory leak that was happening because of not closing Statements at JDBCPlayerDatabase class.

From now, we are going to use this blog to post development news to you can have a look to what is going if you don't visit us at IRC

see [[History]]

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