April 28, 2009
Thankfully, the addition of spam combating systems has proved successful in halting their registrations on the site. It’s blocked quite a few so far and I hope it continues to do so.
On additional notes, things are certainly moving forward with development. Astera is working hard on MuGears and making sure things are as good as we can get them right now… basically, nothing short of perfection.
Although we’re certainly not in a position to release details at this point, we’ve also worked on revamping our original storyline. This has produced very good things. I feel that we now have a very solid outline which we can build from. An outline which provides us the reasoning and the back story needed to fill in all the necessary gaps to provide a coherent, comprehensive, interesting and expandable storyline. Unfortunately for everyone following progress, I don’t anticipate us releasing any storyline information until we’re getting closer to the release of the game play itself.
Until next time, cheers!
March 13, 2009
Well, it’s definitely overdue for me to post some information up here. That said, I’m doing so now. There’s a few things that need to be announced.
The first, everything related to Covenstead: Land of Shadow has been moved to the new hosting platform in the new facility. This is certainly ‘very’ good news when it comes to having everything stable and running in a positive manner. Most of the actual site was moved with the last post but certain aspects of it had still remained on the old system until now.
We expect that the other server will be turned off and removed from production within the next 2 weeks, this will allow some time to ensure all the other sites hosted on this server are fully functional and there’s no big bugs that need to be worked through in the mean time.
Next, it’s looking more and more likely that my involvement in Rennaissance Festival activities will be significantly limited this year due to finances and time restraints. That said, I expect to have more time to work with Astie on getting all of our aspirations realized before another decade slips before our eyes. I will begin work on our database structure in in the next few days. Hopefully beginning with a light specification in order to ensure that things ’stay’ the same in terms of naming conventions and other little tid-bits which might not be a big deal initially but can turn into a nightmare later down the road if things are not adequately defined from the start; at least in my experience.
At any rate, I think that’s all I have time to update for now. Hopefully, I’ll be posting another with structure information or at least some little tid-bit of quips in the near future.
February 12, 2009
In the past week, I’ve been working on improving the network architecture, integrating an exception framework, planning out the scripting system and expanding on the application layer. The network architecture is taking me longer than I’d like, but I think that ultimately it’s best to put in the time to come up with something really solid.
Currently, I’m continuing to work on the network architecture and weaving in the exception framework. I’ve also been thinking on how best to handle scripting permissions (i.e. so a builder cannot access the class that allows them to say…shut down the game). Freyja and I have a few ideas that we think would work, which basically involves having several types of script and pick and choosing which resources we make available to that type of script.
Going ahead, I’m looking to finish up the network architecture, then move into the scripting layer. I’ve got a few modifications I want to make to the user settings to make them a bit easier to manage, and I also need to retroactively add the exception framework into existing code.
Short update today, but lots to do!
Thanks,
A
February 2, 2009
My intention is to provide a weekly progress update, roughly following the structure of “What I’ve done”, “What I’m doing” and “What I’m going to do”.
I’ve implemented the basics of a data storage system, I’m not entirely happy with it just yet and it’s definitely a revisit, but it is functional, just not as easy to use as I’d like! It’s currently in use to read in user settings, admitingly a relatively small task but I’m hoping the concept will scale up to bigger applications without too much trouble.
My time at current is being spent looking at the design of the network layer of muGears. We’re looking to create a design that is flexible, stable and not inherently tied to any protocol/method of communication. Freyja and I have also had some discussions on potential future applications of a flexible network architecture, and a few back and forths over a couple of gameplay ideas. I expect the network architecture will be completed and at least functional for the telnet protocol within the week. For now, we’re choosing to support telnet as our primary protocol until such time that we investigate the viability of writing our own client and subsequent protocol.
For the future, I’m looking to start work on the logic/scripting layer. I’m estimating it’s going to take a fair amount of time to implement something as solid as I’d like, but ultimately, I think the time investment is worth it. I’ve also got a couple of revisits and expansions on existing systems, i.e. the data storage system and error handling.
All in all, I’m fairly happy with the progress being made.
Thanks for reading,
Astera
January 26, 2009
Wow, 10 years already…
Some might say that Covenstead will never happen if after 10 years we still haven’t had anything to show for it I beg to differ, we’ve had ’something’ multiple times, at various stages of development, yet each time we’ve decided, “This isn’t good enough. We can do better”. Freyja and I have only grown more experienced over the years, and solidified the concepts of what we want to produce for the MU* community. I personally have grown from your atypical “learnt how to code by screwing around with SMAUG” ‘coder’ to a fully qualified Software Engineer with several years experience.
So; let me talk about where the Covenstead project stands from a development perspective. The new engine, MuGears, is already in the early stages of development and is currently partially functional. Where it differs to the other iterations is the application of professional software engineering techniques, making it by far the most efficient and impressive functionality wise of the Covenstead iterations. The design is also of a much higher standard, and we’re using well tested open source (and appropriately licensed for closed source development!) libraries to try to ensure our engine is as stable and as well tested as possible.
I’ll do my best to keep anyone interested up to date on development progress on this blog.
Thanks!
Astera
