Open Direct Connect / News: Recent posts

The next version of JoDC will be out in a week or so, with a much nicer UI system. For now, here's some shots of the new, improved settings dialog:

http://lalaland.ohflip.com:8080/default.jpg
http://lalaland.ohflip.com:8080/global.jpg
http://lalaland.ohflip.com:8080/hub.jpg

I've finally gotten around to implementing the public hubs list as well, so we're getting towards useability ;)

We have downloading and uploading ^_^

The only fly in the ointment is that the Huffman encoding used for the file lists isn't perfected yet, so we don't upload valid file lists.

Although the majority of the funationality is now ready, I don't recommend this release for general use. But take a look anyway, the more feedback, the better JODC will become

For your perusal, I have now added the jodc sources to the cvs, so that if anyone wants to keep themselves bleeding edge they can do so.

I didn't get anough done at the weekend, so the JODC release is more likely to be later this week. Most of the code is in, except for viewing file lists and viewing your download queue.

The reason for the delay has been in trying to get the passive to active user uploading working. No matter what I was doing, once the ReverseConnectToMe was received, the client would refuse to send a ConnectToMe to the sender. After this long pulling my hair out, I realised that I'd been parsing the ReverseConnectToMe wrong, and has been sending a ConnectToMe to myself.... someone lend me a brain will you? >_<... read more

I've had to do some work on JODC in windows, so I've finally started working out the problems with the networking. For the next release I should be able to get it working fine on at least win98se (The only windows version I have a license for), but once it's working there it should also work on the rest of the windows family.

I've also done some more work on file transfers. Next release I'm aiming to get uploading and the UI side of things done. Currently the uploading is working, except when the client gets the file listing the client suddenly closes the connection after the file list is finished (strange stuff...), but because there's no UI you can't cancel any uploads other than by closing the program itself.... read more

You got searching now

Gamma 3 has quite a bit of new minor features, such as a prompt for login when a password is needed (instead of having to specify the password in the URI) and the ability to type the | character in DC1 chats w/o breaking stuff. The Files Shared and Bytes Shared (and others) columns in the Userlists will only be shown if the protocol supports it. Active mode searching is now available for the DC1 protocol as long as your system has the correct IP address. Note that I know of the bug with setting the IP manually in settings and I am trying to fix that... In the meantime, router users will need to select the "use only these ports" option and not add ANY ports to the list. This forces DC1 protocol to use Passive searching. There's a bunch of bugfixes too, most notably the ability to connect to multiple hubs WITHOUT CRASHING.... read more

This new release features BZ2 DC1 hublist support and searching. Currently, DC1 searching is limited to Passive searches, but I plan to fix that up in the future. Also, Gamma 2 now allows you to choose a default protocol and configure protocols and server lists (although DC1 Hublists is the only thing to support configuration at this time).
Enjoy!

As I'm sure many people who have used ODC Gamma have noticed, any attempt to multi-hub even the slightest causes problems... In debug mode, it works fine. I have been unable to trace this problem so for the time being, ODC Gamma will continue to have this bug unless someone can figure out what causes it and/or how to fix it.
So if you happen to know what causes it, please send me an email!

It's managed to drag itself to another alpha release, this time supporting file list and selecting whether to use an active or passive conenction, among other additions and fixes.

Deadlines are made to be either broken or laughed at ^_^

More seriously, I'll have some more time to do work on jodc now, so hopefully we'll get to a good beta-ish stage very soon.

Err... Yea... Now it's a good op-tool :-P
Multi-servers still doesn't work too well tho...
Hopefully I'll get that fixed soon...
Read the ChangeLog for new features...
BTW, the new installer is cool...

I've finally gotten ODC Gamma ready for it's first release. It should be in the Files area in a while (once SourceForge does some update thing). If you were monitoring the OpenDC package, you will not be receiving any more update emails. You need to subscribe to the ' ODCGamma' package to receive them now.
Gamma 0 should have DC1 chat, userlist, and private message working...

Ok, we've had a few questions about the vb version... Luke-Jr is the 'admin' working on this version. As he's said earlier, he's doing a re-write, so when the next release comes is up to him. Questions on the vb version are best sent to Luke-Jr.

I'm the java version 'admin'. In fact, to my knowledge, I'm the only one working on this version. Questions on this version are best sent to me.

Hope that's cleared everything up ^_^... read more

Alpha 3 is out... multi-hub connect and (finally) the chat and pm should all work properly. I've played with it for a few hours, connecting to hubs and such... annoying a couple of ops in the process (sorry!) ^_^

I've released a Beta 15. It's not what most people expected it to have, but it will probably be the last release of this version. The rewrites will be Beta 1.0001 1.0002 etc...
Beta 15 features a faster DCList refresh and the OpenNapster protocol (chat only).
If anyone cares to finish the Queue and download system in it, feel free to do so and I will make it the official Beta 16...

The rewriting of ODC VB Edition is going good so far... I figured I'd post a screenshot every day or so as to the progress... The first one can be found at:
http://odc.sourceforge.net/devstatus/vb/
I plan on adding another screenshot every day or 2 so check back often (as I won't be posting more news for every picture)

I am considering rewriting VB Edition to be more modulated... All the protocols and some parts of the GUI will be modules. Basicly, I am trying to modulate it as much as possible to make it easy to add/remove components.

Bugs fixed, interface made nicer.

Windows users should not use atm, due to reports of abnormally high cpu usage. Am currently investigating.

This release is here to give people a taste of what's going on. Chat and Private Message functionality only at the moment.

Known bugs include key generation faulty, private messages get spaces ripped out, and main chat doesn't auto-scroll. All of these will be fixed for the next alpha. Some of them already are ^_^

Icons and such are under consideration. They may change - either using the ones in this release or the ones in the neo-modus client.... read more

I was hoping to get Beta 15 with downloading completed by yesterday when ODC was 3 months old, but I completely forgot about the Queue and the file list... Beta 15 will be delayed a bit more... Probably around a week...

Beta 14 is here with it's new Object Editor. Currently, the OE is only available for DC1 hubs with DCPlus 2 protocol extention support. It is quite useful as it allows ops to easilly manipulate the banlists, hub topic, and user visibility.
I hope to have DC1P2P file downloading completed by ODC's 3 month 'birthday' which is only 4 days away on the 27th...

Well, I released Beta 13 a few days ago and less than 30 minutes later it crashed on me. I tried to find the problem for a day or two but I couldn't... Now that I've rebooted it hasn't crashed yet, but it hasn't been running for too long so far... Anyone else had it crash on them? If so, plz submit a bug report (or if someone beats you to it, add a "me too" comment)...
Thx!

Beta 12 is the first release of Open Direct Connect to have functional file sharing. Hubs you connect to with Beta 12 will see the correct share size and users will be able to download from you.
Enjoy!

Open Direct Connect Beta 11 supports the new DCPlus extention features which currently allow Ops to boot (aka -dis) a user or get a user's IP right from the userlist with no spam to the main chat. The scripts which add DCPlus support to NeoModus DCHub can be found at the bottom of the downloads section.
Beta 11 also enforces the maximum slots limit and displays connections in the Transfers window.
The search window will now ping results and can be sorted by any of the columns, now including Ping.
Previous betas of Open Direct Connect all reported 0 bytes shared to the hubs. Beta 11 will instead report 3.1415926 bytes so hub operators or scripts can tell the difference.