Volity / News: Recent posts

The Volity Network's website is now live at http://volity.net . Jump in and start playing (and making) games!

New releases of Gamut, our official client, will always be available from that site. You can also find the latest releases of our development tools at our official development website, http://volity.org .

I'm going to stop putting releases on Sourceforge as it's just too much of a pain, quite frankly; we release often, and the file management tools here stink. But we continue to use (and appreciate) SF as our base for mailing lists and Subversion repositories.

I just released Frivolity 0.5.2, containing numerous bugfixes and tweaks that support minor changes that the Volity protocol has seen since October 2005. It also abandons the Module::Build build style for a more standard MakeMaker one. This should make it much easier to install.

We've had several Javolin releases since our last announcement about it here. In fact, so much work is going into Javolin that we've set up a nightly build system for it. Please see the relevant links on Javolin's homepage: http://www.volity.org/projects/javolin/

I just uploaded the first release of Testbench, an SVG UI file development tool for use with
Volity. It can help you create and fine-tune your game's
SVG/ECMAScript UI files or bundles offline, letting you simulate
incoming RPCs and notifying of you outgoing ones. Find it in our SourceForge file list under "javolin-testbench".

For full documentation, visit:

http://www.volity.org/wiki/index.cgi?Testbench... read more

Javolin v0.1.2 was released last night. While only a bugfix, I feel it's worth noting because it meets the issue that stumped a lot of new users when they first fired up the application: specifically, where one is supposed to obtain a Jabber account. You can now register new accounts with the Jabber server at volity.net through Javolin.

Zarf has also created a Javolin quick-start guide: http://www.volity.org/wiki/index.cgi?Javolin_Quick_Start

The Volity project is pleased to announce the very first alpha release of Javolin, a graphical client for the Volity game platform. It is complete enough to use as a Volity game development tool. Features include basic Jabber functionality, the ability to create or join Volity tables, and playing games using SVG-based UI files.

It's not quite ready for general release among the game-playing community, as it lacks many important features such as network browsing, the ability to invite other players to a table, and summoning bots. The core members of the Volity project will be working hard over the coming weeks to add these features, pushing Javolin from this primitive alpha to a truly user-friendly beta fit for public consumption. ... read more

frivolity-server 0.4.1 fixes some bugs found in the 0.4 version of Friv. It also implements simple player-to-player invitations; see the "invite" and "accept" commands in Friv.

frivolity-bookkeeper 0.4 simply brings that package up to date with the bookkeeper that's currently running on the volity network. It's still not really documented, and it's still true that you probably don't need to bother with it.

The Volity core development team has released version 0.4 of Frivolity, the Perl implementation of Volity, an Internet-based game platform ( http://volity.org ). The distribution includes several Perl modules as well as client and server scripts, for playing and running games, respectively.

This release implements all development that the Volity platform and its protocol saw during the summer of 2004, and fixes a few nasty bugs in the process.... read more

The Volity project's new and permanent homepage may be found at <http://volity.org>. Unlike the previous homepage, it endeavors to actually look and work like an informative and well-organized project website. Bookmark and enjoy.

It includes the official Volity wiki, found at http://volity.org/wiki>

Frivolity v0.2.2 is now available from the SourceForge site. It fixes a bug that would prevent the game server from successfully using any non-local Jabber host (um, oops?), and eliminates dependency on my well-intentioned but ultimately flawed Class::Accessor::Fields module. (It replaces it with dependency on two other Class modules, both available from CPAN, and checked by the Build script.)... read more

I just posted an essay outlining the Volity system at <http://volity.sf.net/overview.html>. (It's actually the first chapter of a book I'm writing, so apologies if it retains some chaptery artifacts.) Comments and criticism welcome.

I've released version 0.2.1 of the frivolity-server package, a.k.a. the "You can kind of see where we're going with this" release. It has enough attached Perl POD to start giving hackers at least a vague idea of what's where, and a test.pl file to prove that it does _something_, though knowledge of what this may be is probably still limited to the core Volity team. (For example, the POD variously refers the reader to http://volity.sf.net for more information, which, at the time of this writing, contains little more than a handwringing apology.)... read more

Just posted the first releases of the server and bookkeeper libraries for Frivolity, Volity's Perl-based reference implementation. Everything works as advertised, which isn't saying much, since there is very little documentation as yet. Really, this release probably isn't very useful except to the project's existing developers, but it's good to start somewhere, eh?

Basically, the "frivolity-server" package contains several Perl modules for running a Volity game server, including a (very very basic) programming framework for creating game modules. The "Volity::Jabber" class has lots of POD documentation, and the other classes have little to none (but I hope to change this soon). A server-running script and a bare-bones command-line client are also included.... read more

Still setting up. Props to SourceForge 'n' all that.

There probably won't be much in the way of news until the proof-of-concept release is done.