Support:About Arianne
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1. Description of project
(what is it, what does it do, what makes it unique?, project URL?)
TODO: The Arianne project is
Marauroa is an open source multiplayer online games framework and engine to develop turn based and real time games. It provides a simple way of creating games on a portable and robust server architecture. The server is coded in Java and can use Python for your game description, provides a MySQL backend and uses an TCP transport channel to communicate with the players. Our reference clients are coded using Java in order to achieve maximum portability and use open technologies too. Marauroa manages the client server communication and provides an object orientated view of the world for game developers. It further handles database access in a transparent way to store player accounts, character progress and the state of the world.
Stendhal is a fully fledged and completely free multiplayer online adventures game (MMORPG). It features a new, rich and expanding world in which players can explore towns, plains, caves and dungeons. Players will meet NPCs and acquire tasks and quests for valuable experience and cold hard cash. The character will develop and grow and with each new level become stronger and better. With the money acquired new items can be bought and armor and weapons improved. And for the blood thirsty ones out there; satisfy your killing desires by roaming the world in search of evil monsters!
Marboard is an early prototype of a vector graphics program allowing live collaboration over the Internet. While it is not ready for production use yet, it is a good proof that Marauroa is not only suitable for games.
2. Why and how did you get started? What was the date?
Arianne was born over ten years ago. According to records it started with a posting on Linuxgames about "What I'd like to see in an RPG" in 1999. When Miguel saw the posting he founded the Arianne project, unaware of other games like Nethack which may already fit the criteria. The first version of the website was in Spanish but it was quickly translated to English because of public demand.
Today Stendhal is the subproject most people are interested in. It is interesting to note that it started as a test case for multi zone support in our framework Marauroa in early 2005.
3. What is the software's intended audience?
- Game Developers
- Players
4. What are a couple of notable examples of how people are using your software?
There are localized version of Stendhal with local communities in among others Germany, Poland and Japan.
I guess most notable are the following two:
TODO: Krakow Online's domain was grabbed. I think there is another polish city with the game.
- Player-like world is a modified version of Stendhal used for online game research in a Ph.D. study: http://www.player-like.org
5. What are the system requirements for your software, and what do people need to know about getting it set up and running?
The Stendhal client just depends on Java Runtime Environment. So once Java is installed you can start to play without having to edit any configuration settings.
The Stendhal server does require a database. We got a lot of support requests from people trying to setup and configure MySQL. While MySQL is part of all common Linux distributions, configuring it on Microsoft Windows is not that easy. So in the last version we added support for the installationless H2 database.
Marauroa as a game engine is of course targeted at developers. So you will most likely need a Java Development environment and some experience with programming.
6. What gave you an indication that your project was becoming successful?
7. What has been your biggest surprise?
- Krakow Online
- Japanese version
8. What has been your biggest challenge?
- UDP and Cooperate Firewalls
- Changing the rules of combat
9. Why do you think your project has been so well received?
- KISS
- friendly community
- (for Stendhal: nice graphics and retro pseudo 2d feel, offering something different from other rpgs)
Perhaps see also Differences
10. What advice would you give to a project that's just starting out?
11. Where do you see your project going?
- Marauroa
- Asynchronous Database Access
- Stendhal
- More Teamwork, parties, class roles, guilds
12. What's on your project wish list?
13. What are you most proud of?
- Community
14. If you could change something about the project, what would it be?
- More developers?
15. How do you coordinate the project?
Most of our communication is done on irc (the freenode network.) There, we have meetings, discuss plans and support users. The support varies from people wishing to set up their own stendhal server, to those wanting to create a new game using marauroa. In the IRC channel is a CIA bot which announces commits to CVS, play-by-play, so everyone is aware of what is happening to the source code. We use sourceforge's trackers for bugs, patches, and feature requests. We also use hudson for continuous integration and testing, and another bot in the channel informs us of unstable builds and failing tests.
16. How many hours a month do you and/or your team devote to the project?
- Way too much
17. What is your development environment like?
Most developers run linux. In fact, the low Windows use has historically been a small problem - we use it so little we find it hard to support windows users wishing to install servers, and are less likely to spot Windows-specific client bugs in the testing stage. Most developers use Eclipse as an IDE, with the odd one sticking resolutely to emacs .... while the binaries for deployment and distribution are built using ant.
18. Milestones:
(Bullet points with past release dates, future plans)
- see history
- Marauroa
- Stendhal
- creature ai profiles like coward, aggressive, enabled
- new damage system
- grammar package
- parser - January 2008
- tile redraw?
- key repeat bug in linux handled
- website working with live game data from the server - June 2008.
- rated weapons - May 2007
- marriage - May 2007
- buddies - 0.48 April 2006
- bank - 0.47 March 2006
- money - 0.39 Oct 2005
- weapons affect combat - 0.30 July 2005
uncategorised, undated:
- periodic saves of player database every 10 minutes
19. How can others contribute?
(What tasks can they help with? Is there a talent or resource wish list? How can they to sign up?)
- Quests and ideas about the world history
- Graphics and Sound
- Testing
- and of course: patches
- Creating own game using marauroa as engine
20. Project Leaders and Core Developers
Please repeat the following section for each project leader or key developer
Project leader(s)
- Name
- Katie Russell
- SourceForge user page URL
- http://sourceforge.net/users/kymara
- Occupation
- Analyst/Developer
- Education
- PhD, Mathematics
- Location
- UK
- Photo
- http://cia.vc/images/db/a9/e-t128.png
- Name
- Hendrik Brummermann
- SourceForge user page URL
- http://nhnb.users.sf.net
- Occupation or experience
- Developer of University Management Software
- Education
- Diplom Informatiker (FH), Master of Business Process Engineering
- Location
- Germany
- Photo
- http://cia.vc/images/db/3a/3.png
21. Developers
Please repeat the following section for each key developer:
Key developer(s) Name: SourceForge user page URL: Occupation or experience: Education: Location: [Photo of developer - please attach GIF, JPG, or PNG file(s)] -----------------
24. Why did you place the project on SourceForge.net?
10 years ago, shortly after Arianne was founded, the hosting company for our (what?) went out of business and all work was lost. We think it was a cheap webspace provider or something like that. The project moved to SF.net and has been happy there ever since.
25. How has SourceForge.net helped your project succeed?
26. The number one benefit of using SourceForge.net is:
27. Name three projects you think deserve to be named POTM.
- Junit - http://sourceforge.net/projects/junit/
- Page layout (check are we using this now for client -ask kiheru) - http://sourceforge.net/projects/pagelayout/
- Tiled - http://sourceforge.net/projects/tiled/ but they recently dropped dev on the java version :/
- scalex - http://scale2x.sourceforge.net scalex is brilliant Seems to be dormant.
Feedback
(That's all the POTM questions for you, but there's one more thing we'd like to ask. How are we doing? You've got our ear, so let us know how we can make SourgeForge the best it can be. Go ahead, be honest. We can take it!)
- I am concerned about those ads asking for personal information when trying to download software
- More support for file releases of umbrella projects like Arianne