Chris Gayle's site

Server to Local communication

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 04:51:54 +0000

Is it possible to send messages from a hosted server, or even from a local game to another local game provided that the address is known? I have been trying to do this, but with no success. I have succeeded in having a local game send messages to a hosted server and had hosted servers communicate between one another but I can't get a hosted server to message a local game.

I am trying to design a system where there is a central server that serves save files to multiple games, whether hosted or local. I haven't moved to actual moving of save files as yet, i'm using Export to just share messages between worlds to be able to test that the communication is occurring.

Idea of implementation
1. Game server is hosted and alerts the central server of it's existence.
2. Central server keeps a record of the address of the game server.
3. When something is said in a game server, it is sent to the central server and printed to current world.
4. Central server cycles through all recorded addresses and mails out the message to all excluding the original and prints to central's world.
5. Game servers receive message and print to their worlds.

Hosted servers function perfectly, local games do not.
Central Server: http://www.byond.com/games/ChrisGayle/SpiritAge

Generate Turf Edges

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 16:00:15 +0000

http://www.byond.com/games/ChrisGayle/GenerateTurfEdges

I promised some time ago that I would release this demo, so here you all go. Basically what it does is remove one of the most tedious task of mapping by doing it for you as soon as the game runs. You lay down tiles, whether water, sand, grass, etc and assign them a turf_weight and voila!

SA: Beta

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 06:57:45 +0000

It's been quite some time since I last posted an update on progress for Spirit Age, but Zane & I tend not to get too excited and announce much at all, but we have moved forward a great deal.

With the basics for inventory, equipment and market down, we just crossed a mile stone and I think we can officially consider ourselves in beta now that we are tackling character progression and other less fundamental features.

So! If you have not already, go to the game's hub and follow the game, http://www.byond.com/games/ChrisGayle/SpiritAge

Once we get the interface for the Character Progression in, we'll announce our test dates.

Also! Thank you all for the immense support, advice and criticism over the last five months has been extremely helpful and motivating, and we have really enjoyed this process so far and we are look forward to the end product and working with the BYOND community to polish and make it the best we possibly can.

Note however, to participate in our beta tests you will have to download the beta version of BYOND, you do this however at your own risk as there may be bugs with this version which you may encounter.

Download: http://www.byond.com/download/build/BETA/

EDIT! Character progression background is almost done, spent a lot of time during the school day today working on it.

Jubilation!

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 23:16:47 +0000

http://www.byond.com/games/ChrisGayle/SpiritAge

If you aren't already following, i'd suggest you start now, I have finally finished just about every major back end piece for SA, save maybe one to three pieces to the final puzzle, to me it feels like i've crossed a major threshold and we're onto adding content :D

Memory Lane

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 03:16:50 +0000

Zane & I are on a little trip, http://www.byond.com/games/ChrisGayle/MemoryLane come and join us :D

Question?

Sat, 17 Dec 2011 19:31:29 +0000

Could someone give me a simple answer as to why BYOND makes my computer scream when running a BYOND game in fullscreen?

It doesn't make sense to me that 3D is easier to process than 2D with no lighting, shadows, reflection or complex collision. (Comparing Spirit Age to Lineage 2, City of Heroes, DC Online, Champions Online & Perfect World)

Check out Chromium

Sat, 19 Nov 2011 15:14:22 +0000

There hasn't been that much done as yet for Chromium, but the basics are there. We will be working on it on the side and updating it frequently, so it's good to get it out there and have people mess around and check it out when it's updated. Here is the link to the hub: http://www.byond.com/games/ChrisGayle/Chromium

It is a side scrolling platformer that pits you against waves of enemies whom you must defeat in order to progress (in the current version there is no limit and the waves are endless, so there isn't that much to do than kill a few moments.), when we're decided on the story i'll make a post to let you guys know.

Movement: Arrow keys.
Combat: Q & W

and as always, we are open to your suggestions :]

Spirit Age - Project Update

Sat, 05 Nov 2011 01:38:08 +0000

Auto Map

We want to include a really large map, five different major land masses and various other small islands. A big issue with this is the time it would take to map all of this, a huge time waster when it comes to mapping is the laying down of edges to get rid of or reduce the 32x32 grid feel from the map.

To solve this I took the time and wrote a system that laid down turf's edges automatically saving Zane & I hours, probably days of potential time wasted.

Depending on the turf's weight it's edges will be laid down in preference of another.

Pathfinding Alternative

Most games employ pathfinding, the only issue faced on BYOND is that after a while, with many players, the frequent loops and checks for multiple mobs may cause the game to slow down.

The movement in Spirit Age is actually based on angles, even the movement for the user, so that gives us 360 different directions for a mob to move in, instead of the standard 8 cardinal directions.

Now, with angle based movement the x change in step and y change in step is derived from the angle, chances are, even by walking in a straight line if a mob bounces into an atom it will simply slide along the atom in a timely manner and continue on it's way to it's target.

Now, I have even taken it a step further, if a mob is moving towards it's target, but sliding ceases to work as the obstruction lies in a perfect line between the target and the aggravated NPC, the NPC will simply jump over the obstruction and continue on it's merry way to attempt to take your life.

Benefit: By cutting down on the checks for a available path by a path finder, I hope to achieve some better performance. However we are still going to use a path finder as some parts of the game will actually require it none the less.

Recent Inspiration

A few days ago, SuperAntx made a blog post (http://bit.ly/ucEQLS) about this video

(Certainly worth watching, whether you want to make your own game or not.)

After watching it I decided that I wanted to make the story really tie in with the game play, so in future test and future project updates I will make sure to include little glimpses into the story as we move along with development.

Started an Internet Radio

Sat, 29 Oct 2011 03:28:15 +0000

We've been planning this for while, and finally produced it, the genre is centered around pop culture so its a little bit of just about everything especially music us islanders love, so if you're a fan of Caribbean music check it out and if you really like it, continue to tune in.

Facebook Application: http://www.facebook.com/ourdancehall?sk=app_138331759579080 (Some people have complained of blank pages loading, it should look like the image bellow.)

Direct Link: http://www.livestream.com/ourdancehall

Thanks for reading =] Back to programming [=

Spirit Age - First stage of test.

Sun, 09 Oct 2011 19:26:39 +0000

The first stage of the test will be a showcase of some of the systems in Spirit Age, you'll be able to see some of the back end systems and in this first session we'll explain certain aspects of our vision of the game and take suggestions from participants.

However after we've done that "Look at how we did this" kind of lesson test, we'll take the server down and later today (around 6pm giving us just enough time to polish things.) we'll upload an actual PvE environment for people to play, I hope it's stable enough to be kept up until around 12am. So a few hours of game play for our players :)
Cancelled. Since we're in alpha, we'll update further before we release anything "playable"

So, look out for the server within the next 30 minutes!