mote-dev

[Mote-dev] Mote meeting

[Stephen Q. <st...@ja...>]

Hi All,

Seeing as Trev is in Durham this weekend we decided to meet up and
talk about Mote stuff. We're going to meet in the Swan & 3 at 2pm this
Sunday (2nd December). Basically, we want to talk about Mote-XML
stuff, if anyone wants to come along and talk about this or anything
else Mote related they are more than welcome to join us.

Hopefully see all the Durham-bound Mote people there,

Stephen

[Mote-dev] Mote website inconsistency

[Paul T. <p.m...@du...>]

Currently, the most up-to-date page is at

http://compsoc.dur.ac.uk/mote

and hasn't been mirrored properly to mote.sourceforge.net.....

This is probably a Good Thing To Do, as I imagine more people are likely to
look at the sourceforge site rather than the compsoc site. Well, I was,
anyway!

Paul

Re: [Mote-dev] Error on build

[Stu T. <st...@dr...>]

On Thu, Aug 16, 2001 at 11:36:13AM +0100, Edwin Brady wrote:
> On Wed, 15 Aug 2001, Stu Teasdale wrote:
> 
> > I've just grabbed the latest Mote and an attempt to build it on moose
> > yields:
> > 
> > ./lib/libmoteutils.so: undefined reference to `fntTexFont::load(char *,
> > unsigned int, unsigned int)'
> > 
> > This is with plib 1.4.1
> 
> *cry*
> 
> I'm fed up with this error. I fix it, it comes back, I fix it, it comes
> back. There is no rational explanation for it. Anybody any ideas?

What about asking the plib author?

Stuart
-- 
From the prompt of Stu Teasdale

"Engineering without management is art."
-- Jeff Johnson

Re: [Mote-dev] Error on build

[Edwin B. <E.C...@du...>]

On Wed, 15 Aug 2001, Stu Teasdale wrote:

> I've just grabbed the latest Mote and an attempt to build it on moose
> yields:
> 
> ./lib/libmoteutils.so: undefined reference to `fntTexFont::load(char *,
> unsigned int, unsigned int)'
> 
> This is with plib 1.4.1

*cry*

I'm fed up with this error. I fix it, it comes back, I fix it, it comes
back. There is no rational explanation for it. Anybody any ideas?

Edwin.
-- 
Edwin Brady - http://www.dur.ac.uk/e.c.brady/

[Mote-dev] Error on build

[Stu T. <st...@dr...>]

I've just grabbed the latest Mote and an attempt to build it on moose
yields:

./lib/libmoteutils.so: undefined reference to `fntTexFont::load(char *,
unsigned int, unsigned int)'

This is with plib 1.4.1

Stu
-- 
From the prompt of Stu Teasdale

Sigh.  I like to think it's just the Linux people who want to be on
the "leading edge" so bad they walk right off the precipice.
	-- Craig E. Groeschel

[Mote-dev] Stuff

[Edwin B. <E.C...@du...>]

Hi,
I did a bit of fiddling recently, and got some effort at torpedoes
working. They look really bad, however, it is a start. Still just printing
out diagnostics rather than actually blowing anything up, but we'll get
there. I've done some fiddling with configure too so it does more sensible
things with plib.

Edwin.
-- 
Edwin Brady - http://www.dur.ac.uk/e.c.brady/

[Mote-dev] XML Schema for plot definition

[Stephen Q. <st...@ja...>]

Hi All,

In an attempt to get things moving at a decent pace for the Mote plot
definition code i am looking to get a prototype app out reasonably
quickly. With this in mind i am looking for volunteers to help me get
a basic universe schema developed and an app that can read this schema
and interact with a user to create a valid XML document that can later
be converted into the Perl code.

Right now i know a bit about XML but very little about schemas so i am
going to spend a while getting up to speed with things. The best
resource page on the web seems, unsurprisingly, to be the W3C site:

http://www.w3.org/XML/Schema

I would think that anything linked from there comes highly recommended
but in particular i would like to point out the W3C tutorial and
specification pages:

Part 0 Primer     - http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-0/
Part 1 Structures - http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-1/
Part 2 Data Types - http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-2/

Anyone who is interested in helping me really should be reading these
3 documents.

Once we have a basic schema which roughly details our universe we can
look to writing an app that can understand this and interact with a
user. A user can use this app to create a universe definition,
populating it with solar systems, planets, ships, etc.. 

This app will probably be written in Perl as that is what i know best
and i am aware of a number of XML modules that are readily available
for Perl, we can also make use of the Perl Tk or Perl Gtk modules to
create an interface.

At this stage this is very much a proof of concept just to show that
it is vaguely possible. The final product may bear no resemblance to
this version but it will at least be a start.

All comments, criticisms and suggestions are most welcome as are all
offers of help.


Stephen

Re: [Mote-dev] Problems with build

[Edwin B. <E.C...@du...>]

On Mon, 16 Jul 2001, Stephen Quinney wrote:

> I have just checked out the latest source from the CVS and tried to
> build it, i have come up against a problem:
> 
> usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lplibul
> collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
> make: *** [bin/mote] Error 1
> 
> Is this a problem with my version of plib? I have version 1.1.5-6 of
> the plib libraries.

Yes, just take it out. My version needs it, but clearly the older version
doesn't. I'll try to sort out configure to do this automatically...

Edwin.
-- 
Edwin Brady - http://www.dur.ac.uk/e.c.brady/

Re: [Mote-dev] Problems with build

[David N. <da...@ev...>]

The spyglass revealed that Stephen Quinney said:

> Is this a problem with my version of plib? I have version 1.1.5-6 of
> the plib libraries.

I have 1.2.0-1 (plib1 from an older testing) and still have the
problem. According to the Plib site "plibul" is a utility library to
make some basic functions portable.

I'm currently compiling 1.4.1 from source; I'll let you know how I get
on.

Regards,

-david

-- 
Ah, in such an ugly time the real protest is beauty
           -Refused

Re: [Mote-dev] Problems with build

[Stu T. <st...@dr...>]

On Mon, Jul 16, 2001 at 09:41:19PM +0100, Stephen Quinney wrote:
> I have just checked out the latest source from the CVS and tried to
> build it, i have come up against a problem:
> 
> usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lplibul
> collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
> make: *** [bin/mote] Error 1
> 
> Is this a problem with my version of plib? I have version 1.1.5-6 of
> the plib libraries.

Given that the current version is 1.4.1 I'm guessing this is a version
issue.

Stu
-- 

[Mote-dev] Problems with build

[Stephen Q. <st...@ja...>]

I have just checked out the latest source from the CVS and tried to
build it, i have come up against a problem:

usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lplibul
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make: *** [bin/mote] Error 1

Is this a problem with my version of plib? I have version 1.1.5-6 of
the plib libraries.

Stephen

[Mote-dev] Checkin

[Edwin B. <E.C...@du...>]

Control panel improvements (accelerated mode only) and changes to the
display stuff so that it'll run nicely at higher resolutions. You'd have
had this this morning, but I had a weird bug which I've only just fixed...

Sorry for the month's quietness, but I've been having real work to do
instead ;).

Edwin.
-- 
Edwin Brady - http://www.dur.ac.uk/e.c.brady/

[Mote-dev] xshipwars

[Stephen Q. <st...@ja...>]

People might be interested in having a look at xshipwars:

http://wolfpack.twu.net/ShipWars/XShipWars/

It is a client - server model space game with many aims similar to
those of Mote, it certainly does trading. We really need to have a
look at it and see what we can learn from it and how we can make sure
Mote is better than it... ;-)

It is available as a set of Debian packages in version 2.2 and
above. Sadly my machine is not up to running it, i only get 2fps, so i
can't tell you much more about it

Stephen

[Mote-dev] [netgame-l] Half-Life Latency Compensation (fwd)

[Carsten G. <gr...@if...>]

Hi,

you may also be interested in this document. I certainly am. Netgame-l is
a list mainly for networking researchers who care about games.

Regards,
   Carsten


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 03 May 2001 11:42:31 +0200
From: Martin Mauve <ma...@pi...>
To: net...@pi...
Subject: [netgame-l] Half-Life Latency Compensation

Hi all,

I was recently directed to a paper that has been presented
by Yahn Bernier (Valvesoft) at the 2001 GDConf. The paper is 
very interesting to read since it describes in detail what 
methods are used by Half-Life to deal with network latency.

The paper can be downloaded from the GDConf web pages at:

http://www.gdconf.com/archives/proceedings/2001/prog_papers.html

cheers,

Martin

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Martin Mauve                               University of Mannheim
Praktische Informatik IV                  Phone: +49-621-181-2616
L 15,16                                   Fax  : +49-621-181-2601
68131 Mannheim/Germany       ma...@pi...
-----------------------------------------------------------------

[Mote-dev] Allegiances - alliances and maps

[Stephen Q. <st...@ja...>]

*** Allegiances - Defining strategic alliances and the game map. ***

One of the main parts of the plot definition that will be needed for a
game is the strategic alliances that will exist between different
solar systems, planets, space stations, etc.. These alliances will be
immensely useful in determining trade routes, the outcomes of wars,
and just generally whether a system will welcome a player's ship with
open arms or guns blazing!

The definition of an allegiance has a two-fold purpose. Firstly it is
to define the properties of this allegiance, i.e. what the people are
like, for example, who are their friends and enemies. Secondly, to
define the layout of the game map, if you want a map that looks like a
Monopoly board or a map of Britain, it can be done!

At this point i want to describe mainly how to define the game
map. Basically i am just doing this bit as i don't know too well what
the defining qualities of an allegiance will be, we need plot people
to discuss this, hint, hint...

Note that we consider our galaxy to be 2 dimensional, everything is
occurring in an X,Y plane. In the same way all objects orbiting about
another are doing so in the same X,Y plane. This may seem a bit boring
and unphysical but it isn't really necessary for the game play to be
able to jump out of the plane.

When you define an allegiance you list all the areas of the map that
are within this alliance. You do this by use of geometrical shapes,
such as ellipses and rectangles, or with a user defined shape where
you list all the vertices. If you want a complicated shape for a
region such as an 'L'-shape you can achieve this by defining two
rectangles that are contiguous. One of the nice things that comes from
writing this in XML and then converting into Perl is that all this is
done before game run time so there is no performance hit for having
complex shaped allegiance regions. So design away to your heart's
contentment!

When you define a region you also set the number of solar systems in
that region, thus you can control the density/scarcity of systems in
an area. It is also quite possible to define the same region or part
of it as having different allegiances, you will then get a blend of
solar systems in that area according to the numbers of systems you
specified. Thus border areas can become quite interesting with
regular small wars breaking out between the neighbouring solar
systems.

As the game progresses it will be possible for solar systems to change
allegiance either by choice or conquest. It will not really be
possible to have planets/moons with mixed allegiance. We are really
considering a planet/moon to be the smallest unit in this game. It
will be possible to have mixed allegiance solar systems, but no
smaller than that, think of a planet/moon as like a city on Earth. We
tend to expect all of a city to be one allegiance, think of planets
that way.

** Defining Regions **

When we define a region we use normalised X,Y (or radius)
coordinates. There is a standardised Mote length, which you can change
if you wish. This length equates to an X or Y offset of unity,
i.e. 1. You may wish to set the length so that -1 is one edge of your
square galaxy and +1 is the other edge. This is not required though
and a galaxy can be of any normalised size.

Regions are defined via one of five methods, either by specifying a
rectangle, an ellipse, an annulus, a slice or a general polygon.

*Rectangle*

A rectangle is defined by the range in the X and Y axes, so you
specify the bottom left corner (X1,Y1) and the top right corner
(X2,Y2). As stated above you could build up other shapes by combining
a number of contiguous rectangles, e.g. an 'L'-shape.

*Ellipse*

An ellipse is specified by its central coordinates, (X,Y), the lengths
of its major and minor axes, A,B, and it's position angle, W. A
circle is just a simple example of an ellipse.

*Annulus*

An annulus is specified by the central coordinates, (X,Y), the lengths
of the major and minor axes A,B and the position angles, W, for the
inner and outer ellipses. An annulus is basically the bit between two
ellipses. This could be very useful if you want to define a region
that is located around the rim of an elliptical shaped galaxy. By
having total freedom to define the two ellipses you could of course
create even stranger shapes...

*Slice*

A slice is, as its name suggests, like a slice of pizza in shape. You
define the starting and finishing points of one straight side of the
slice (X1,Y1) (X2,Y2) and the angle through which to turn to get to
the other straight edge, W. You could use this, for instance, if you
wanted a circular galaxy that is split into four quadrants.

*Polygon* 

This is the most general shape of the lot and lets a writer create any
crazy shape they like. You just make a huge list of all the vertices,
i.e. X1,Y1,X2,Y2,X3,Y3,X4,Y4,...,XN,YN. 

I will sit down with xfig and make up loads of examples to demonstrate
the use of these different styles, and also show how to combine them
to make the sort of maps people will want. I will then stick them up
on the Mote website alongside these notes.

By using these regions a map is built up of the various
allegiances. This is the map of the universe in which the game will
take place. You can thus create any shape or design of map you
like. If you want to create sectors of space that contain solar
systems that belong to no-one all you have to do is create an
allegiance type of "none" and define the regions where no allegiances
apply.

**Some example code**

OK, so we have stated how to specify regions of allegiance in general
terms, now let's see how to specify them via the XML.

Here's a simple example set of allegiances:

<ALLEGIANCE NAME="Wales">
<FRIEND NAME="Ireland" LIKE="5"/>
<FRIEND NAME="Scotland" LIKE="5"/>
<ENEMY NAME="England" DISLIKE="10"/>

<REGION TYPE="RECT" X1="0" X2="-1" Y1="0" Y2="-1" NUMBER="8">

</REGION>

</ALLEGIANCE>

<ALLEGIANCE NAME="Scotland">
<FRIEND NAME="Ireland" LIKE="6"/>
<FRIEND NAME="Wales" LIKE="4"/>
<ENEMY NAME="England" DISLIKE="10"/>

<REGION TYPE="RECT" X1="0" X2="1" Y1="0" Y2="1" NUMBER="12">

</REGION>

</ALLEGIANCE>

<ALLEGIANCE NAME="Ireland">
<FRIEND NAME="Wales" LIKE="6"/>
<FRIEND NAME="Scotland" LIKE="7"/>
<ENEMY NAME="England" DISLIKE="10"/>

<REGION TYPE="RECT" X1="0" X2="-1" Y1="0" Y2="1" NUMBER="5">

</REGION>

</ALLEGIANCE>

<ALLEGIANCE NAME="England">
<FRIEND NAME="Ireland" LIKE="4"/>
<FRIEND NAME="Wales" LIKE="4"/>
<ENEMY NAME="Scotland" DISLIKE="10"/>

<REGION TYPE="RECT" X1="0" X2="1" Y1="0" Y2="-1" NUMBER="20">

</REGION>

</ALLEGIANCE>

This specifies four allegiances, one for each quadrant of a square, i
have defined how each allegiance feels towards the others. We have two
types here FRIEND or ENEMY, along with each is a LIKE or DISLIKE
indicator which shows the level of this friendship or enmity. With
this you can see that friends do not have to feel the same level of
friendship towards each other, 0 would be "no thought on the subject"
and 10 (the maximum) would be "absolutely".

You will notice that REGION is set up as a container, this means it is
possible to add many other things into this region. For instance AI
ships, plot devices, etc.. All that will be covered later on when i
get around to writing that bit up.

The NUMBER attribute for REGION is the number of solar systems that
are contained within that area of that allegiance type.

Here endeth the lesson, or somet' like that...

Re: [Mote-dev] The checkinfest continues...

[Stu T. <st...@dr...>]

On Tue, Apr 24, 2001 at 09:31:23AM -0700, James Quinney wrote:
> This might sound twisted to you, but is it possible to
> integrate shockwave flash and a viewer into mote? It
> would mean that we could save loads of programming
> time as i could do all the in-game menus and stuff as
> flash interactive animations and then just import them
> into the code. I know that the file spec is well
> documented and there is quite a lot of articles about
> integrating it into c++.

Direct integration is likely to run into licence problems, so to do this
we'd either need to get an Open source implementation of flash or use
something similar that's already open (e.g. SVG?). Are we going to have a
lot of pre-game menus, and therefore do we really need this?

Stuart 

-- 

Re: [Mote-dev] The checkinfest continues...

[Carsten G. <gr...@if...>]

Hi,

I have to admit that the idea seems weird to me ... but if you consider
it, this link may be of interest:
  http://www.swift-tools.com/Flash/
It was on the KDE mailing list. It is a GPL'd flash player that supports
much but not all of Flash4. Likely that it is easier to understand and
integrate than Macromedia's plugin.

Regards,
   Carsten


On Tue, 24 Apr 2001, James Quinney wrote:
> This might sound twisted to you, but is it possible to
> integrate shockwave flash and a viewer into mote? It
> would mean that we could save loads of programming
> time as i could do all the in-game menus and stuff as
> flash interactive animations and then just import them
> into the code. I know that the file spec is well
> documented and there is quite a lot of articles about
> integrating it into c++.
> 
> James

Re: [Mote-dev] The checkinfest continues...

[James Q. <j_q...@ya...>]

--- Edwin Brady <E.C...@du...> wrote:
> Perl improvements - now creates the whole galaxy and
> instatiates models
> from the galaxy data. Now would be a good time to be
> thinking about that
> XML spec...
> 
> Perl bug fixes too. Better reference handling. I'm
> still not convinced I
> understand the reference counting internals though.
> Still, at least it
> doesn't crash ;).
> 
> Also, I've gained a huge speed increase (at least on
> my machine) by the
> curiously simple tactic of not drawing things that
> are too far away or
> behind. I've always been going to do that, but it
> has become necessary
> since I've added two more random planets. I could
> take it a bit further
> too, so that's good.
> 
> Finally, F7 gives you a "Local System Details"
> screen. Not that there's
> anything on it yet, but I will be using that as an
> initial navigation
> system. It'll show a graph of what planets are in
> the system, what's
> orbiting what and so on. We could do with some nice
> planet and space
> station bitmaps/icons for it, I think. The section
> at the bottom is for
> displaying more wordy information about the system,
> if it exists, and
> statistics.
> 
> Edwin.

This might sound twisted to you, but is it possible to
integrate shockwave flash and a viewer into mote? It
would mean that we could save loads of programming
time as i could do all the in-game menus and stuff as
flash interactive animations and then just import them
into the code. I know that the file spec is well
documented and there is quite a lot of articles about
integrating it into c++.

James

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Auctions - buy the things you want at great prices
http://auctions.yahoo.com/

[Mote-dev] The checkinfest continues...

[Edwin B. <E.C...@du...>]

Perl improvements - now creates the whole galaxy and instatiates models
from the galaxy data. Now would be a good time to be thinking about that
XML spec...

Perl bug fixes too. Better reference handling. I'm still not convinced I
understand the reference counting internals though. Still, at least it
doesn't crash ;).

Also, I've gained a huge speed increase (at least on my machine) by the
curiously simple tactic of not drawing things that are too far away or
behind. I've always been going to do that, but it has become necessary
since I've added two more random planets. I could take it a bit further
too, so that's good.

Finally, F7 gives you a "Local System Details" screen. Not that there's
anything on it yet, but I will be using that as an initial navigation
system. It'll show a graph of what planets are in the system, what's
orbiting what and so on. We could do with some nice planet and space
station bitmaps/icons for it, I think. The section at the bottom is for
displaying more wordy information about the system, if it exists, and
statistics.

Edwin.
-- 
Edwin Brady - http://www.dur.ac.uk/e.c.brady/

Re: [Mote-dev] More stuff

[Edwin B. <E.C...@du...>]

On Mon, 23 Apr 2001, Stu Teasdale wrote:

> On Sun, Apr 22, 2001 at 05:47:20PM +0100, Edwin Brady wrote:
> > I've been mucking about with the gimp and added a nicer scanner image. As
> > you can see, I can't draw, but it's better than it used to be.
> > 
> > Instead of the old elite-style scanner, it's a bit simpler. X and Y show
> > you where the object is in your X-Y plane, and the brightness of a blob
> > gives you the distance in the Z axis. Green blobs are in front, red blobs
> > are behind. I think freespace does something similar... I hope it's
> > usable...
> 
> Sounds very much like the X-wing et al scanner, except that was aligned in
> the y-Z plane and gave you forward and rear scanners.

That sounds unpleasant to me... could, of course, be optional if anyone
prefers it...

Edwin.
-- 
Edwin Brady - http://www.dur.ac.uk/e.c.brady/

Re: [Mote-dev] More stuff

[Stu T. <st...@dr...>]

On Sun, Apr 22, 2001 at 05:47:20PM +0100, Edwin Brady wrote:
> I've been mucking about with the gimp and added a nicer scanner image. As
> you can see, I can't draw, but it's better than it used to be.
> 
> Instead of the old elite-style scanner, it's a bit simpler. X and Y show
> you where the object is in your X-Y plane, and the brightness of a blob
> gives you the distance in the Z axis. Green blobs are in front, red blobs
> are behind. I think freespace does something similar... I hope it's
> usable...

Sounds very much like the X-wing et al scanner, except that was aligned in
the y-Z plane and gave you forward and rear scanners.

Stuart
-- 

[Mote-dev] More stuff

[Edwin B. <E.C...@du...>]

I've been mucking about with the gimp and added a nicer scanner image. As
you can see, I can't draw, but it's better than it used to be.

Instead of the old elite-style scanner, it's a bit simpler. X and Y show
you where the object is in your X-Y plane, and the brightness of a blob
gives you the distance in the Z axis. Green blobs are in front, red blobs
are behind. I think freespace does something similar... I hope it's
usable...

I've also added settings for an 'image path'.

Edwin.
-- 
Edwin Brady - http://www.dur.ac.uk/e.c.brady/

[Mote-dev] Checkin

[Edwin B. <E.C...@du...>]

More perl stuff (it's nearly possible to create the whole galaxy perl side
now. Well, actually, it is, it just doesn't appear yet. Shouldn't take
long.) - including having MoteWorlds for every star, not just the current
one, blah, blah. I seem to be getting an intermittent display bug which
puts the planet in front of the spacestation though. Grruh.

Also, I've added a "MoteThread" class for portability and neatness
reasons. It even seems to work...

Edwin.
-- 
Edwin Brady - http://www.dur.ac.uk/e.c.brady/

[Mote-dev] 3d game physics

[Stephen <S.J...@du...>]

I have come across a really good webpage with articles and references on
how to do proper dynamics stuff in games. People, in particular, the
physicists amongst us might like to take a look. The URL is:

http://www.d6.com/users/checker/dynamics.htm

There is also some sample code (using opengl for the 3d stuff), he even
references Feynman so he must be good... ;-)

Stephen

-------- "They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care; --------
            They pursued it with forks and hope;
          They threatened its life with a railway-share;
----------- They charmed it with smiles and soap." -----------------------

[Mote-dev] Checkin again

[Edwin B. <E.C...@du...>]

Perl tweaks. Added 'Celestial' bit of hierarchy for storing whole galaxies
and planets and stuff.

Um, this is all still working for everyone isn't it? Please tell me if
it's not working the way you think it should...

Edwin.
-- 
Edwin Brady - http://www.dur.ac.uk/e.c.brady/