Dragons Reach (Dungeons and Dragons) News

I ripped out the old state machine controlled protocol processor in the server and replaced it with a mechanism similar to the signals and slots. A protocol unit registers a set of elements it can handle and elements of that type are forwarded to the handler. When the protocol no longer needs to process those types of messages the protocol unit is unregistered, and those commands are either handled by another handler, or returned with a protocol error.... read more

The Dragon's Reach graphical client now connects to the server, and the server sends player info and the map to the client so that you can wander around.

I'm currently working on the server code (the code that I wrote for the terminal interface is too modal.) After that is done the client movement commands can go through the server so that more than one player can walk around on the same map at once.

I've checked in a string buffer class and modifications to xdrxml (and the addition of xdrxmlsb) to convert structs into string buffers (which automatically expand as they are written to.)

Just starting on the client/server protocol work, I estimate a week or two and I'll be able to put up a limited demo.

I just committed the source code for the map editor that I've been working on for the last
week. Right now it uses 'vi' commands to edit graphics on the screen, so it obviously isn't finished, but it is much faster for building a new map than editing the text file.

I've also been working on XDR routines for serializing the map objects so that they can be transmitted to the graphical client for display, and those changes have been integrated into the map class in the graphical editor directory.

I've added a couple of test files including a test map that you can move around in, but that isn't
yet linked to the server (but stay tuned...)

You will need SDL to build the graphical client.

I've finally finished the rewrite of the game interface to client server. The server code is a multi-client select based non-threaded server. Client context is restored by jumping to the last point where the client was executing.

The client is currently just telnet on port 2300.

I'm not entirely happy with the way the server code looks; it feels far too much like programming in Fortran. To restore state within a function I use a switch statement to break the function into chunks, but as a result each section has to fully exit its lexical scope before continuing to the next section, so loops and conditional branches end up looking like goto's.... read more