Superbike32's site

Server Re-Direct - Players Online

Tue, 18 Jan 2011 19:08:49 +0000

Now the answer is probably No, but I am going to ask anyways, is there any way I can make the players that are re-directed to other servers from my game show up as online on the hub still if my game re-directs to other servers during normal operation of the game?

Like I have 2 servers for each "instance" of the game & to stop having a mass of entries including each part of the game want only 1 entry showing all players in any of the servers of that "instance" of the game.

So basically this would stop me from showing 4 different game entries on the hub for 2 different servers up of the game & show only 2 since each "instance" of this game is on 2 different servers.

---Maybe your asking why do you have 2 different servers? The answer is because my processor is slow on each core & there's no way in BYOND to code for processing stuff on another core, so I want to offload it over the 2 servers so things are sped up overall.

I know there are other ways to speed things up, like re-coding things to offload some processing to the clients or just better code in general, maybe even make custom communication between each individual & my server but this last one stops people from showing up on the games hub too which I wouldn't like.

As for offloading some processing to each client well I am working on some things that may offload some more processing to the clients but I have done quite a bit already & due to how slow each core of my PC is it probably wont be enough which is why I needed to split it up into pieces.

Medals

Sun, 02 Jan 2011 20:35:25 +0000

I have a few things I like like to discuss about the medals system of BYOND.

1.GetMedal seems badly documented for trying to pass extra arguments like the hub you want to get the medal for.

2.GetMedal shouldn't need a hub-password nor should one being there or not affect GetMedal in any way, currently unless the password is set to something other than null it will be unable to contact the hub(the same value at least is returned) even a blank string for hub_password which would be an in-correct password for that hub makes GetMedal works as expected. (Also trying to pass in a hub_password of correct hub password or blank fails to make it work, world.hub_password must be set to something, it wont let you push that extra variable to force it to work even though the value shouldn't matter.)

3.GetMedal sent with a medal name where a medal with that name doesn't exist should return a seperate value so you can add error-handling for when you accidentally type the medal name wrong or your letting people check medals themself. Currently it returns the value for you having not earned the medal even though no medal with that name actually existed.

Find+Replace in BYOND

Mon, 29 Nov 2010 08:13:15 +0000

Well I have a unique instance of find & replace that I want to use in BYOND.

I want to make it so once it find instance X it will replace it with instance Y and instance X, basically effectively adding instance Y to the square. Is there a way to quickly do this on large maps? I know I can probably edit the map through notepad & add instance Y to the list of things to the square but is there a way through the actual interface, I tried using instance Y, instance X but that just makes it replace with the second thing never adding the first.

Medals

Sun, 21 Nov 2010 17:31:08 +0000

Well I created a hub for a game, people played, earned medals, etc....now I decided to delete the hub, I figured the medals would dissappear as you know, theres no hub, meaning no medals anymore....how do I get rid of those old medals so for the new hub or even if I just removed medals in general those medals won't be there anymore?

Is that possible, and as for general sake, why doesn't it get rid of those accompanying medals when the game dissappears completely? Those medals would be ir-relevant at that point, or at least give the games developer a way to get rid of said medals, since the hub is gone even if there was a way I think an admin must possibly do it now.

Sound

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 20:12:27 +0000

Is there a way I can play a sound at volume 100 then somehow disable them hearing the sound, or set volume to 0 or something so the sound still plays, but where they wont hear it anymore?

I want to have one sound always playing then when you do a certain interaction then the sound will no longer be heard, then after X time start up again.

I don't want the sound to start over again, so I don't want to just stop it, plus, I don't want to pause it, I want the sound to keep going, just where you can't hear it anymore.

Is this possible to do?

Room?

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 18:05:06 +0000

I have a room on the map I made, sized 100x100, I have a verb that should 'create' that room onto their screen allowing them to walk around it, but I don't know how.

I know I could create z-levels based on that z-level, but, is there a better way than creating those z-levels?

Walking

Sat, 01 Aug 2009 12:10:46 +0000

Any alternatives someone can think of?

I set pixel_step_size to 12 because I want people to slide on ice, now, with this, I wanted to make them move 3 squares on ice each time they try and move, and since the default value is 4, and I wanted them to move 3 squares, I multiplied by 3.

Anyways, I wanted to keep it so it would look smooth over 3 squares as it does on 1, proportionally, so I found out it takes 8 ticks to move and finish animation over one square, but, 8/3 is not an even number, and when I set it close, to 2 or 3, well, it does not gain the desired effect, it starts looking rather choppy. Is there a better way to get this effect that I am looking for, moving 3 squares with proportional animation playing, while still keeping it so if animation is not done, like if your holding the key, you will appear with finished animation and keep on walking?

Javascript/Time

Sat, 01 Aug 2009 11:49:54 +0000

1.Being able to pass out variables or set variables for things like time or something directly instead of it calling Topic() would be nice to do, if you already can, please tell me how, i've looked at the demos, but they all seem to call Topic().

2.Something similar to display=0 that will stop the browser from appearing. If you use display=0 then the javascript code does not run. I want the browser not to be displayed but still the javascript code to be executed.

3.The main reason for javascript is to get the current users time from their computer, so no matter how far off their time is from what it should be, and even if they change the time while the game is running, then the time will be accurate.

This is used as a basic indicator as to when the message was received. I don't want a button or something saying how much time was passed by the message or anything like that, just a basic indicator.

The reason to get their time from the computer clock is so that they wont get confused when their time is off 2 hrs from what it should be and so then they will likely get confused as to when they received the message if it showed what time it should be in their timezone, which is why I didn't get the timezone at first boot from javascript and set a variable to hold that information.

Also, a reason for not storing a time offset variable is because I want an accurate timestamp from their computer, so if their clock gets changed while the game is up, all the new timstamps will show this.

Map

Sat, 25 Jul 2009 03:52:50 +0000

1.When you compile a map it should use uppercase and lowercase letters, and numbers.

The other one about insane map sizes and such was just an example. Besides, it would never let you make a map that size anyways, if you tried you'd get an out of memory error, or a not enough memory type error.

However, I can tell the difference in my maps when they are loaded up from the original DM save versus having used my program on it. It loads much faster after having used my program on it. (Loading and all, I am not talking about hosting the game, i'm talking about opening it up in DM.)

Just Read...

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 23:33:12 +0000

1.I have edited maps and such created by Dream Maker. It seems it doesn't use quite A-Z at times when creating maps, so it switches to two letter combinations a bit too soon.

Also, it can use numbers in place and still read it fine, I tested this even. If Dream Maker could make use of this, that would be great, because, the size of it should be smaller as well because you might wanna share your source with people, and because the clients who connect to the game got to download it too.

2.All network commands should be streamlined, as low as possible characters sent through so that it won't use many network resources. If not already completely streamlined.

3.The .exe creation in dream maker is quite weak and doesn't do much, basically it's a link to a game with a custom icon, which downloads byond if not installed.

What it should do is basically remove all support for anything not used by the game, so if the image() proc is unused, basically it will create Dream Seeker without support for the image() proc.

If enough commands are taken out, it should help loading times, performance, and also, it should help with networking, the less commands needing support for, the shorter the commands have to be sent server>>client and client>>server.

Of course, with custom .exe you have to be able to support it, and, how dream daemon and all works now, it wouldn't support probably this out of the box.

You would have a special compile mode, maybe like #define DEBUG to specify like #define EXE-CREATION which will tell it that the .dmb it creates and all will be that of the streamlined version.

I don't know if this is possible at all, or how hard it would be, I am thinking though it would be very hard, if possible at all.

---

Number 1 is a good possibility, I see it as the easiest of the three, I know it's not entirely easy, but making it use numbers too shouldn't be that hard.