News

News ::  Nov 18 2009 5:30:29 pm  -  We did not forget about the shard
I know it's been very dead lately. It's been months since we've had even a small update. I apologize for that and hope to make up for it sooner or later. Here's the scoop on what has been going on, some may already be aware. 1: shard revamp started - plan to totally redo the shard's content and some back end changes. The biggest back end change being the SQL. While there is still lot of quircks I say it's a success. 2: OSI research. There has been lot of background research done using various resources and there are some plans to change certain things to be more like OSI. With the SQL project alone, we've grown far behind schedule as while it is working, it was not easy and took much longer then expected. I've also run into a major barrier with it, given the way things are coded are not really meant for real time saves. The issues are mostly null checks that are missing in areas where it would never be an issue with snap shot saves. I've come to the conclusion that even though the SQL saving itself pretty much all works, there will be TONS of figuring out to do as there are lot of very nasty weird issues. I decided to take a break and start working on another of my projects for a bit, then come back to the shard later (not really sure when tbh). So that said, and thinking of all the other issues with RunUO (the craft system... OMG code nightmare) I am toying with the idea of making an emulator from scratch. Sadly, if I do go this route it means we start at 0 and all the work we did is null. We could port lot of the logic but the code itself not quite. I am not dead set on this yet, though as it is a HUGE project. It would take at least a year to get the engine going to the point of making a pre-AOS shard. However if all the systems are done properly and cleanly, stuff like adding all the mobs should be rather simple and fast, just long and tedious. Now lets say I do go this route, we would become the official beta shard for the system, and it would be released to the public. RunUO competition, if you will. Now, if I'm going to do such a large project, I will do it well. It will be Linux 64 native, use some kind of real time storage system - maybe mysql, but maybe something custom, not sure yet. Also I would maybe even add some kind of load balancing mechanism of some sort. I would go for the gold here. But that's just a thought that came to mind, there is a lot involved in making an emulator, and I might just end up getting back to the grind and trying to figure out the RunUO issues. I just want everyone to know we did not forget about the shard, and we did not just leave it. It will just be a while before we do another update due to the state. I can't push out anything new until SQL is 100% stable for production.
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News ::  Nov 03 2009 4:24:06 pm  -  Shard revamp behind schedule
Just a quick note, we are quite behind schedule, so do not expect anything new too too soon. There are quite a lot of issues with SQL still to be fixed before we can update. There are lot of very weird crash issues that still need to be troubleshooted and fixed. The ones I've seen so far are not very easy to reproduce, generate useless log files, and are in different situations each time. Me and death have just been drilling through on TC1 trying to find ways to break it and we found plenty... so we need to fix these issues before we even consider a release of any kind. For the actual ML content that is left to do (what is not already on live), lets just say we did not even start yet. Also beta testing the engine on TC1 is crucial at this point. The more bug reports we can get, the better. Just keep them coming. So far I have not received a single player submitted bug report, and we need those. We can only think of so many things to test. There are systems we may use less then other people, as players, so we really need everyone to help test. I will be taking a break from coding for the shard for a bit as well. I just need the time to destress, and I also want to put some progress in my other project, Serverweave. I don't want it to end up being vaporware like Squirrelbbs.
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News ::  Oct 25 2009 8:40:44 pm  -  Beta Testing SQL Storage engine
Please test the new system on TC1 as the more feedback I get, the faster I can do this release. While there has been lot of background testing I'm sure there's still some bugs to sort out. Things to test are specialized situations that save and reload. For example, guilds, events, account changes (ex: change your password) and even items themselves. There are special stones in luna to force a server restart, feel free to use them, as if you make a certain change, then force a reboot, that's how you'll know if the change that happened really saved properly. Keep in mind that TC1 requires patch 7.0.1.1. Simply copy your existing client folder and then patch the regular one. In razor you can then select the patch you want to use. The older patch is still required for live so don't just patch, make sure you backup! TC1 is currently based on Oct 30 2009 7:00 AM backup. Please post any bug/issue findings in this thread. I will edit the post and add [fixed] as I fix issues.
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News ::  Oct 20 2009 10:09:30 pm  -  Mysql save system in action!
View video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipQTD4Xyf5o Be sure to select HD and let it load all the way through before viewing.
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News ::  Oct 18 2009 9:46:36 pm  -  TC1 Updated - Need intensive SQL Testing
I have done a fairly big update to TC1. The SQL system should be much more stable now, and detailed item info should now save when changed, such as x/y/z locations on moongates, teleporters, door states, item properties etc... Mobiles not so much covered. Still lot of testing needs to be done. Overall, everything does save,but lot of detail properties don't trigger the item to "change". At this point I need to test that all items trigger this at the right time. Base properties like hue trigger this, but item-specific properties may be missed. There is a server restart stone in luna, feel free to restart the server after changing something to see if it saves properly. Note the difference between the two, one does a proper restart (everything should save) and one does an improper restart (simulates a crash, or Xing out of the application).
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News ::  Oct 11 2009 10:47:44 pm  -  TC1 back up
My home server environment has been fully migrated to my new house and TC1 is now back up. Regular coding will soon resume. There are still some issues with SQL to sort out until I can work on the account management system.
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News ::  Oct 04 2009 9:08:52 pm  -  Suggest Donation Items Here!
Since I bought a house, the server payment is a really big dent in what I could be using to pay towards my loan. I could really use the donations so that we can come out even every month. Now I know the shard is practically dead, but I'm thinking of trying to revive it even before the revamp. That means opening up registrations, having a better donation system, and have more donation items. While we may have fallen behind in content, the content we do have is quite solid and bug free. What other shard has remain up as long as ours without any crashes? Shards like Demise have finally caught up to us after many years, but their code is not mature and crashes often. Some of the code was not even created in house, making support harder. This is our advantage, most of our code is done in house and all code is fully audited before going live. So that said, I want ideas for donation items that will not cause a imbalance or fairness issues but that you would buy. Once SQL is fully tested and deemed ready for live, it will be released and the donation system will come with it. I am hoping to make it paypal based and be fully automatic. You log in to a web based interface with your UO account, choose a character, add the items to cart, check out, pay, and you get the items. That's the plan, anyway... pretty sure it's doable. My home infrastructure is not yet in place so I can't do any coding now nor even fully access my email, but by the end of this week I should be fully setup and ready to start coding again.
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News ::  Sep 06 2009 10:53:19 pm  -  TC1 Updated
* Added latest data (currently syncing to SQL system) * Added fixes for server restart handling * Full saves now work properly (this is related to doing a [restart after adding a large amount of items - these items now get saved properly) Once the sync is complete I will be adding "restart" stones. One is a hard restart and the other is a proper restart. The proper restart should save everything while the hard may miss some stuff.
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News ::  Aug 26 2009 10:53:40 pm  -  TC1 down [back up]
Something has gone wacky and pretty much all the system has stopped working, I decided to propagate dev to TC2 and TC1 to see if it's a system specific issue but it refuses to run now. Until I figure out why it wont run TC1 will be down. Once I DO get it working though, it will be fit for some public beta testing. Think the issue is this system is a bit more ram hungry and my test environment is old and does not have much ram, and I can't afford to add more ram into live. (costs 25/mo/GB!) So I'll have to figure what's eating so much ram and fix it. C# / Windows memory management aint pretty.
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News ::  Aug 08 2009 9:38:53 pm  -  Downtime
More info can be found here...
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