January 26, 2004
Some shopping is always nice
Since my car got cleaned out by theifs a few weeks ago I finally got around to buying a new car stereo, was a nice shiny little thing from Panasonic, so now i can yet again have my fav MP3’s playing loudly when i cruise up and down our long little nation ;9
just waiting for a copy of my reciept from the sales guys at xybernaut.com till i know if i get a new Nav system covered by the insurance as well… Just noticed today that the buggers had broken my mobile handsfree as well :/ damn it sure is a waste of time replacing stuff…
Still no word if they will cover my tools i had in the car… ah well…
January 24, 2004
January 23, 2004
Thouhgts about the future
Been spinning the Future of ME in my head for a few days now while trying to get together even an ounce of inspiration to continue doing what needs doing to preserve the beast we lovingly named Merchant Empires-
There seams to be no lack of ideas and suggestions HOW to do things… just seams to be a lack of clarity of WHAT needs doing…
Well that i am pro a client server model comes to no suprise to any of you I am sure ;) Question is… what should be the platform… should we be innovative or go with already establisged standards… there are client server engines out there, even opensource ones.. should we reinvent the wheel to try to find a wheel that fits our car?
Ah well… I’ll be back on this I am sure.
January 15, 2004
Middy Personal Log part 4
Well Frederik was by today. We talked about Extorris. He had tons of ideas. I was proud to say “thought of that, already thought og” to much of his stuff. He is great at math and physics will help us trememdiously with the engine.
I think when we have something to show we should seek sponsorts. If the call of warlords can get close to a mill dkr, then we should too.
I have decided to clean up the code. its done VERY easy in Java using eclipse. Lots of refractoring functions in eclipse.
Also I want to use junit. Junit is a libary used to test classes with. It works as this. Whenever U write a class you also write a test method for it. So you can test that the class work. Junit keeps track of all these test classes. later in the project you always end up breaking something when you add new stuff (LIke Ragnora and Hawklan). The junit will tell you if U managed to break a class, so there is no exscuse (unless you write bad tests ofcourse)
Btw I need to get hold of smork…. damn that
January 14, 2004
Sure we'll let you build a base on our planet...
Well would you? Would you let just ANYONE build a base on your planet? A military base?
Bases are by themselves a military installation. They house ships, they have defenses… Would any sane populace invite potential war and destruction on themselves by allowing this alliance or that merchant to build a base on thier planet?
Maybe we have it the other way around, maybe we shouldn’t allow people to build bases on ‘inhabited’ planets but rather on ‘uninhabited’ or ‘non-habitable’ planets, planetoids, moons or asteroids.
Hmmmmm…
January 09, 2004
Project with Call of Warlords in place - Middys Personal log part 3
Well I talked the call of warlords guys today. Regular students like me. One was a medicine student the other a student from MY university (I had not noticed him before. Anyhow the Call of Warlords was a game made with support from Danish technoliogy institute. they got 850.000 dkr to make it. Thats about 14100$. When it was at its top they earned 12.000 dkr a month, thats about 2000$. Anyhow they lost most of their customers in a HD crash… So that sucks
They dont host the game themselves but get it hosted in US, for 100$ a server. I think thats a bargain. A big server park somewhere, with techs monitoring and restarting.
Anyhow the deal was. I work for them as a student - consultant and I get 10 point at school. Its a course where students can try “real” life for a change. Actually its kinda cheating, cause this wont be much different than ME devlopment. Actually it wont be different at all, just another game. I could have chosen ME. I bet Wiz would have loved 200 hours of work from me. But ME is not a company AND I need to learn to know people in the danish game devlopers community. Its nice to have contacts. I think they are happy to have sombody to DO their game while they work on version 2. So I abuse them they abuse me… :)
The meeting was all in all very pleasant. We exchanged ideas and experience from the two games. It seems that they have the same shit as we have. Their admin part is MUCH mroe organised though. They have developed an entire admin/bug system I was very impressed. Modified phpmyadm to admin needs (no updates/inserts/delets). Also their design was much more detailed than ME. Well they actually had one, filled with numbers. Talked about extorris as well, they seemed interested and agreed that most of the ideas was good.
Their second version of the game seemed impressive. I wont tell details I am sure they would like to keep them for themselves.
All in all a nice day. This semester I will be working almost excluseively with Games.Thats nice.
The Problem with Acronyms
The new game engine the Universe Server® or US for short gives us a few problems with our press releases;
I can see the headlines on CNN now “Hackers rewrite the US economy” :)
or “Mr Due Billing was quoted today saying ‘Never before has the US infrastructure been so optimized’ and greenspan countered by saying ‘Well we tried for years!’”
or “President Bush today was overheard today asking the Secretary of State ‘Who the hell is these guys going over my head on everything?’”
Indeed :)
Blah Blog
So… Here we are… The long dark tea tie of the soul.. wait.. wrong book.
It’s the middle of the night (for most everyone involved in APME) and I’m sitting here at work (01:35 Local) trying to stay awake and motivate myself to work on my ToDo list a bit or at least something constructive. It’s not working very well.
I need a new job. Anybody hiring?
Quiet Time
Ahh quiet time at last…
Daughter put to bed, wife out at night school, I can finally sit in my chair with my feet up and notebook on my lap and think a little bit.
Long day today, it looked like it would never end. Finally got written approval for by Project Management certification training course, it starts on Tuesday morning, I love going to school for free and getting paid to go to school :). Finally decided to branch away from Windows Server support into Project Management full time. With any luck I will be able to branch further into software development projects, my experience gained with APME will start to pay off.
We still need to gather some momentum in our own project, things are starting to slow down and it can’t be allowed to, but a balance needs to be achieved so we don’t burn out as well. So many little problems to fix, I have overlooked them for now since they are small and there are so many larger issues that make the small ones a bit insignificant comapred.
January 08, 2004
Portable gun factories...
So I was so pleased at my deployable technology storage solution. It is possible to store any technology no matter the number of holds it takes to and from shared/personal to ship cargo…
What I forgot was that we transfer more than just technology to the hangar, and since all use the same code to remove, unload, store etc. my deplotable technology solution kind of messed up weapn storage. But all it required was a little change and all is working as it should.
Hurrah for w.bloggar
Well it works. So I guess I should blogg stuff :). I will have to remind myself to Blog stuff regularly when it’s worth blogging.
A Wizard In The Woods
Sitting in Orsa in the middle north of sweden and finding that they actually put up a 3G mobile antenna less than a kilometer from my cabin was a pleasant surprise (radiation aside :)) I get decent connectivity out here and my Motorola A920 with all it’s flaws works really well as a USB modem… I still have to figure out how the heck I get it to work under my Knoppix (Debian) installation however…
Been sitting and fiddling with the design of a new administration and player support system for ME, hopefully to streamline the workflow for our overworked game admins and thus offloading the support list.
Seams our emails generated by the game are all bounced by the ISP’s newly implemented smtp relay server, damn that thing has been a pain from the getgo… But not be all bad if it forces us to rewrite the emailing functions and their formating… I’ll take a look and see if I cant make it very RFC compliant ;)
Will be back in civilization on Sunday.
January 05, 2004
Protecting the flow of technology one mining station at a time...
So I didn’t want to code checks specifically for the mining station in ME_Base_Hangar class, so I did the next best thing… I added a field in technology_types for cargo_space and populated all the technology with a 1 and put 150 for miningstation. Then in the load_technology_array, I added the field to the query and array, then in the unload and store functions I just multiply the amount against the cargo_space and then apply that to ship cargo. It will work for any technology and even if we decide to make all technology take more than 1 hold of space.
My Playground
I tell my wife that I am going ‘down’ (my ‘office’ is in the lower level of our split-level house) to do some work. She invariably calls what I do ‘playing’. Funny how I like to refer the stuff I do as work when it’s fun, which really makes it play, and she damn well knows that I am not ‘working’ :).
Today was a good day, I was finally able to push the combat changes to the server to test. It isn’t easy to test combat on your own, I had to ask Sultans to give me a hand. But the small design changes to the behaviour of ship based combat drones work just perfectly. I even got to test the tractor lock break function I wrote to break any tractor locks on pods when ships get destroyed.
Base hangar is bugging me, the mining station is an unplanned aberration that messes up the flow. The concept of deployable technology is a good one, but trying to implement it without properly designing how it will work within the system is just shy of being crazy. We can’t keep adding features to the system without properly planning thier implementation. Don’t get me wrong, the mining station is a great idea, but even the best of ideas need planning and design to implement. This system was not designed to be extendable. Too many repetitive bits and pieces of information and code all over the place.
Still working on project objectives and scope, I may have gone too far astray and need to re-factor it a bit. Everyday though, I think of something new that would mean another issue to deal with. Even tonight, WizardOne remarked that the Universe Server service requires more RAM than than the server it is running on has capacity to install. Which means if we are to realize the Universe Server service from more than a basic sector handling point of view, we will need to upgrade or replace that server. New servers cost money, money comes from donations and memberships, money is needed by WizardOne to pay bills (as we all know)… So we need a stable working game so a round can start and time to gather new players who will buy memberships or donate so we can procure equipment… It isn’t a vicious circle, it will just take time to get it all done right.
I go forth to try to get a sense on how the base hangar will recognize and handle the mining station…
Hawklan
January 04, 2004
Wizards Day
The ongoing saga of the Tje Universe Server continues;
Did some tests today and it crunched 700K requests without breaking a sweat so thats good
also did some mapping between sector id’s and the x,y coordinate sets, work like a charm.
Still have problem that the datasets of 1010000 sectors takes up one GB of RAM each time i load em…
it slows down testing quite a bit aswell…
Prepping to build a dedicated machine for the US so we dont have to bogg down the poor develpment server.
well thats about it for today…will go up north for a few days.. thats why i finished the mobile photo blog, lets see what popps in.
anyways if something breaks horribly (knock on wood) i’ll be 3 hours away… so lets hope it wont.
January 03, 2004
The Terror of The Universe Sniper!
From: WizardOne <wizardone@advancedpowers.com>
Now THIS puts sniper into a whole new light..
Dont you agree?
:)
Mobloging or Mobile Bloging
Just playing with a pop to movabletype perl thingy to accept and post entries from the mobile phone.
Was recked with bugs, so fixing that..
January 02, 2004
Middys log part 2
Well I kinda like this. I'll write down personal shit to public display.. great.. so when anyone asks how I am doing I just say "read blog"
Anyhow got a mail from Lars today head designer in the game company Gamalocus. They would like to see me next week. I applied in as a game coder because I was sick of my current job(booooriiing). Anyhow they are in the process of making a demo for some sponsors so they prolly wont have money to pay me (oh no), but they would probably need me later. But they have an old webgame they would like me to maintain (no pay ofcourse ), I told them no way unless I could make it part of my education. Its something called "Computer science in practice", it litteratly means i get to work in a real company and doing computer science stuff :).. That is if I can persuade the professor...
Well the short version is I meet with them next week and work out details... If it works out I get point for my education while making games.... GREAT fun
Frederik is coming by tomorow I will show him extorris hopefully he will agree to help me out.. Well I think he will, the guy is bored to death...
MovableType Auto Master Authors List
Using inspiration from scriptygoddess ® (great gal) i poked around a bit and came up with the following solution to automatically generating authors list and the entries by author page (authors.php)
I use 2 plugins MTCollate and MTAuthors. The MTCollate is optional i just liked it alot becuase of the added sorting etc.
Using this in any sidebars where i want to link to the authors page;
<div class="side">
<MTCollateCollect>
<MTAuthors>
<MTCollateRecord>
<MTCollateSetField name="name"><MTAuthorName></MTCollateSetField>
<MTCollateSetField name="nick"><MTAuthorNickname></MTCollateSetField>
<MTCollateSetField name="url"><MTAuthorURL></MTCollateSetField>
<MTCollateSetField name="posts"><MTAuthorEntryCount></MTCollateSetField>
</MTCollateRecord>
</MTAuthors>
</MTCollateCollect>
<MTCollateList sort="name:+">
<a href="authors.php?author=<MTCollateField name="name">">
<MTCollateField name="name"> (<MTCollateField name="posts">)
</a><br />
</MTCollateList>
</div>
and this code in authors.php since MTAuthors has the nice sideeffect of setting the MTEntries context to the current author being listed.
<MTAuthors>
<? if($author == "<MTAuthorName>") { ?>
<h2 class="date">
<strong><MTAuthorName> (<MTAuthorEntryCount> posts)</strong>
</h2>
<MTEntries>
<$MTEntryDate format="%x"$> <a href="<$MTEntryLink$>"><$MTEntryTitle$></a><br />
</MTEntries>
<? } ?>
</MTAuthors>
Hope it helps someone.
MovableType aint so
easy to extend as might be expected, they have a peculiar way todo things…
Well it’s a learning experience thats for sure…
“hello”
Code
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use Text::Textile;
my $textile = new Text::Textile;
my $str = <<EOTEXTILE;
This is a *test*!
EOTEXTILE
print $textile->process($str);Other tests
<div class="side">
<MTCollateCollect>
<MTAuthors>
<MTCollateRecord>
<MTCollateSetField name="name"><MTAuthorName></MTCollateSetField>
<MTCollateSetField name="nick"><MTAuthorNickname></MTCollateSetField>
<MTCollateSetField name="url"><MTAuthorURL></MTCollateSetField>
<MTCollateSetField name="posts"><MTAuthorEntryCount></MTCollateSetField>
</MTCollateRecord>
</MTAuthors>
</MTCollateCollect>
<MTCollateList sort="name:+">
<a href="authors.php?author=<MTCollateField name="name">">
<MTCollateField name="name"> (<MTCollateField name="posts">)
</a><br />
</MTCollateList>
</div>Working on dynamic lists of authors and other things...
There are a few tricks in the book about how todo this... just that when MT compiles the pages the PHP or whatever can be applied aftre its build which is a bit backwards from what i am used to...
Well we'll see what popps up...
January 01, 2004
Middys personal log
First entry into log. I only see one category though. I think this should go under personal.
Oh well a nice and quite new years eve I dont like to drink much anymore, I get reminded every year at this time why :)
Kid slept most of the day so did.
I...heh. Now I constantly get MSN messages from all sort of people wishing me happy new year and ofcourse their drunk stories.. sigh.... Well it seems my kid brother got laid.. again..
ANYHOW back to buisness
DB-Tuning
I'll be defining my DB tuning project this month as well as preparing for my two exams. I have been thinking of doing a little pre- experiement as part of the assignment. It is obvious that I cannot tune the Db to the whole project (I wont have time for that), so I should do it where it has most effect. To this effect I need two sets of data.
1. usage statistics, what pages are used the often (obviously its current_sector.php but I must have data since is a university report)
2. load statistics. What kind of tables, queries and more important query times are used in the the different scripts. That way I can see where to focus.
I am sure I wont be surprised at all, but I need data. Guessing wont do. I can do the experiements easily. usage is recived through firewall data and load I just use the excisting log feature on app server. Sure I get NW load in as well but its to give a general idea.
I also need hardware specs from wiz. Everything from network to disk(including type and manecfactuerer). What kind of linux thats installed etc etc.
When I have that stuff I can formulate a two-page project paper and hand if over to Phillipe(my professor, yes he is french)
Extorris
vrm just wrote and he wont be around until the 7th of January. I must remember to call my friend Frederik, he has shown intrest in the project. I have a 1000 loose ends atm I need help. It also aggrevates me that I cannot show my design and ideas to others, get feedback remind me of loose end. This suck badly.
I sometimes wonder if its worth the trouble making it a client server solution in JAVA. Yes you have much freedom but you have also tons of work before anything can be shown. Java and LWJGl does not have any avaliable game engines. That means we have todo everything by hand. My spaceship currently flies like shit...
Fix to permit installation of Battle Systems Computer on ships
It seems I had omitted the Battle System Computer from the list of installable technology. Since both the technology shop and the base hangar both use the same ME_Technology_Installer class, all that was required was to add two lines to the installable technology array and it works.
Testing w.bloggar
Trying a desktop app i had for the old tiki blog
w.bloggar seams to be working fine with MovableType blogs.
You should get it if you work on this blog! Get it here
/Wiz
Testing the 2nd
The ultimate 2nd entry with some texts and a happy new year to you too thingy...
Happy New Year!
We Wish you a Happy New year folks!
And hope you'll get a great 2004.