Light And Shadow / News: Recent posts

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Forums quote message (here is a message selected by the team) :
Aaron wrote in Forums/Open discussion :
So, if you are new to WoTLaS or simply returning to us from the mist of time, we hope to see your hand in the massive development effort to raise WoTLaS from its ashes. Whether you're an end-user testing or a Java developer writing code, you're wanted! We hope to see new leaps and bounds in the coming months and you as a part of it.
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Wheel of Time Light and Shadow is a Java Persistent Universe based on Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time book series. For now it's more an online virtual community than a multi-user dungeon, but we are working diligently to change that.

Less than a month ago, I was raving about our newest developer, Sleeping Owl. Our goals were united. We wanted to see WoTLaS succeed in more recent java environments that it was not fully compatible with at the time. Through Sleeping Owl's help and determination, the WoTLaS team has been able to push out the first fully functional and out-of-the-box-playable release of WoTLaS in more than five years.... read more

Good Morning,

It has been nearly a year since the last discussions on this project have taken place. As you know, I came to this project a while ago to give it new breath and let the community know that the world of WoTLaS is not dead. Since that time, several developer requests have come in, code has been meddled in, and discussions of modernization have been key.

It is my pleasure to announce a new player that, I suspect, will have an integral role in the latest, and most stimulating, development the WoTLaS team has seen in a while. Oliver V. (SleepingOwl), Welcome.... read more

If you are not already aware, the biggest problem with the old version of WoTLaS is its FontFactory. It is not compatible with the newer versions of Java, namely 1.5.x and 6.0. I have been implementing mocked-up workarounds in the code. However, the FontFactory in the engine needs to be fixed.

The second issue is configuration files. It seems that when WoTLaS attempts to write configuration files for the client or the server, it's having issues. It will create the necessary files, but then it leaves them blank. Again, this is an issue with users of Java versions 1.5.x (later versions) and 6.0. Earlier versions of 1.5.x wrote to the config files, but usually created them in the wrong location.... read more

I went ahead and put up an Alpha server. It will be listed as OpenArmy under your game server menu. For most of you, that will be the second server in the list. For some it will be the first. Please report anything (successes and failures) in regard to connecting with this server. As an alpha server, I expect a lot of feedback.

To Java 1.5.x and 6.0 users, be patient. I know your clients aren't working with the Alpha server. I'm building new clients for you as you read this. For developers or users of the correct version of Java 1.4.x, enjoy.... read more

WoTLaS community,
Please join me in welcoming our newest developer, jrgryph. Jrgryph is an intermediate Java developer that comes to us in hopes of expanding his knowledge of Java technology. I'm sure that he'll be a great asset as we move forward with solving compatability issues and as we look to the future of WoTLaS.

Welcome.

-Aaron

I am releasing an Alpha version of WoTLaS that includes sources and bytecode. To run version 1.4.1, start scripts are located in the build/bin directory. The server is functional. I am still working out some basic bugs in the client.

In past releases, full sources and files have not been included in the archives. In this release, Alice Program D version 4.1.4 is being included from http://aitools.org/Downloads Also, all imagery and other pertinent files have been included from CVS.... read more

We aren't finished by any means, but I do need a bit of time. I didn't reach my latest goal in the project because I've been tied down with government work for the past several months. I will be clear of all of these projects on December 13th, however, and I plan to resume work on this project just before Christmas.

Perhaps we'll see a functional beta at Christmas time. Make a wish!

-Aaron

Hi folks!

I'm looking at our site statistics every single day, and, each day, I am surprised and overjoyed to see consistant through-the-roof readings. Hundreds of users are visiting our home-page, each day, in search of a playable and enjoyable java game with a rich history.

It has been nearly a month since I took over this project, and I am still working with every bit of my free time to adapt, what I am calling, an "age-fixed" WoTLaS release. I have set a goal, for myself, to have this release completed by the one month anniversary of my joining-up with the WoTLaS team.... read more

Thank you, Elann, for the warm welcome. I'm glad to announce that this project is once again active, and I'm overwhelmed to be the one leading the way. There have been many great developers on this project before me, and I don't plan on letting them down.

My first plan of action will be to perfect and pump out a Java 5.0 compatible version of the Wotlas client and server and to setup an active Wotlas server for gameplay. This will make certain that everyone will be able to, once again, enjoy what Wotlas currently has to offer. Once Wotlas is up and running again, we will finally be in a position to continue pushing active development for the first time in more than two years.... read more

Aaron Belovsky is now officialy the new project admin of Wotlas. We welcome him and wish him good luck !

Elann

There is a new member in the project ! His name is Diego and he's from Italy. He is working on tile and isometric maps for the moment.
This means the project is starting to wake up :-)

The members of the wotlas team are now working on other projects... This doesn't mean the wotlas project is over, just in a sleeping state. If you want to continue it you can, just mail an admin.

Wotlas Graphics is a flexible 2D Graphics engine you can use in applications that need 2D side-scrolling display. It mainly works around a GraphicsDirector that displays Drawable objects and uses a WindowPolicy to scroll the game screen in an appropriate manner.

In this release we added :

- a pop-up menu system : menus are transparent, animated, draggable and can possess a high numbers of items.

- a brightness filter hability for sprites, enabled the use brightness masks. This filter can be mixed with the ColorFilter.... read more

An overview of wotlas is available here :

http://wotlas.sf.net/overview.html

The main new features in v1.3 are :

- Java Web Start support for installation ( http://wotlas.sf.net/download.html ). You can now install/uninstall wotlas very easily.

- Bots in the game : we use alicebot ( http://www.alicebot.org ) to make our bots able to talk with players. We'll greatly improve the behaviour of our bots in future releases.... read more

This patch corrects bugs found by users in v1.2.2.
v1.2.3 and v1.2.2 are now incompatible but we'll try to keep a v1.2.2 server running for some time.

This is the last v1.2.x version we release. Next version will be 1.3 and will contain AIML bots (http://www.alicebot.org), objects, etc...

For more information on wotlas please refer to our sourceforge.net web site : http:// wotlas.sf.net

Light & Shadow is an online virtual community based on Robert Jordan's Wheel Of Time books.

More information on our web-site :

http://wotlas.sf.net

Light & Shadow is an online virtual community based on Robert Jordan's Wheel Of Time books.

In this new version of wotlas you'll be able to play aiel, asha'man, white cloaks, warder, Aes Sedai, wolfbrother, ... We also added lots of new maps ( White Tower, Shayol Ghul, Braem Wood, etc... ) and new features ( fake names, fanfare sounds, chat commands, etc... ).

For more information on wotlas ( and game screenshots ) please visit our web-site :... read more

Wheel Of Time -Light & Shadow v1.0 and v1.1 packages have been deleted as v1.2 arrives on monday. V1.2 greatly improves all the features available in v1.1 and add new ones. Go to our web site for more info : http://wotlas.sf.net

We released some technical documentation on our project. This is especially for wotlas developers but you can take a look and send us your suggestions/ideas/comments.

http://wotlas.sf.net

Small fixes & some new features can be found in this patch that also contains the previous v1.1.1 patch.

We released our 2D graphics engine in a separate package. The package contains the full source, API documentation, JAR file of the compiled classes, a small demo and scripts to rebuild the whole.

A patch that fixes a small amount of minor bugs has been released today. The patch applies to wotlas-client-1.1 and wotlas-server-1.1 packages.

Our new version of wotlas is available ! the game server will start runnin 24hours a day on the 3th of december.

http://wotlas.sf.net

A new version of wotlas that corrects the numerous bugs of v1.0 will be released mid-november... we'll also add new maps...