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Archive for February, 2009
Thursday, February 26th, 2009
So things have been busy at work recently and I haven’t had much time to do RTB. However the GUI Downloading is now complete and also allows for input boxes to send back simple things to the server. I need to work out a few more issues to make it more safe though. On the flipside i’ve been working on styling the ingame mod manager which is looking much nicer and easier to use/browse with. I think I mentioned using Torquejax in an earlier post so i’m working on the backend for that to be easy to use. I’ve also been optimizing the queries in the api that the mod manager uses which means faster page loads for you guys. Release is obviously still a way off, but i’ll be talking more about my plans for the ingame buddy list system (i’m thinking it’ll be called RTB Connect but if anyone has any better ideas, drop a comment) in my next post.
So my general aims for the rest of this week/weekend are to get more of the ingame mod manager done then re-visit the online system and continue to work on that. Here’s a shot of how the ingame mod manager looks at the moment:
 RTB3 Mod Manager Preview
Tags: api, mod manager, optimization, rtb connect, rtb3, torquejax
Posted in Development | 4 Comments »
Sunday, February 22nd, 2009
Basically I was testing an idea I had for RTB 3 using the RTB 2 codebase and left a bit of code lying around which has broken the part that tells your game when you’ve downloaded a new file. I don’t know how many people have noticed - only a few apparently, according to the number of bug reports about it - but all it does is prevent new files appearing in the MyMods area after downloading a file (and closing/reopening the game will make it visible). I don’t know whether its worth a whole update for so I think i’ll probably leave it until RTB 2.03 which will be available for download when v11 is out, to fix a few compatibility errors.
Alternatively if you really want it fixed you can download the fixed RTB 2.02 version here: http://returntoblockland.com/downloadRTB.php
Tags: bug, downloading, rtb2
Posted in Bugs | 1 Comment »
Thursday, February 19th, 2009
Originally RTB3 was intended to be a general overhaul of our existing systems however I have decided to include the greatly anticipated GUI Downloader in this release. The initial version will only allow clients to download static guis and allows the following controls to be downloaded:
- GuiWindowCtrl
- GuiBitmapCtrl
- GuiBitmapButtonCtrl
- GuiSwatchCtrl
- GuiTextCtrl
- GuiButtonCtrl
- GuiMLTextCtrl
And buttons are only allowed to perform commandtoserver commands with an optional flag to close the gui after clicking that button. I will be writing up a specification for usage with this but with simple GUI all you’ll need to do is throw RTB_registerGUI(path) into your server script for whatever you’re using GUI for and all clients with RTB will download it. There will also be custom commands for opening and closing those gui from the server. Finally there are restrictions in place as to how many custom GUIs a client can have, and how many elements each GUI can have. Currently it is set to 10 guis with 50 elements on each gui. All custom GUI will be destroyed upon leaving the server.
This new feature will add a new mission loading phase (phase 0) to the mission load, before the “DOWNLOADING DATABLOCKS” stage. I’ll be posting more about this as I finalise all the features it’ll contain.
Tags: custom gui, gui, gui download, mission load, rtb3
Posted in Announcements | 3 Comments »
Tuesday, February 17th, 2009
Well, here’s your “regular” RTB development update. The new forum is really coming together at the moment, there’s some substantial work left to do on the downloads system portion however reputation points are essentially integrated now and there is a bit more styling to do with colors and icons.
I have also been continuing work on the ingame portion and i’ve just finished the framework for the new mod manager which I have to say is looking extremely exciting. I will also take this opportunity to boast our high speeds (thanks to our new dedicated server and my pro query optimizations) which manage to load each view in under 2 seconds - which is faster than iTunes. The whole thing is much more fluid too - I don’t know if you know what I mean by that but allow me to elaborate. Things are dynamic, instead of reloading the page to submit a rating or comment it’ll use Torquejax (i made it up on the spot) to alter the page to reflect your changes instead.
Anyway thats my progress update, You should expect RTB3 to be out at some point this year. The actual release date is actually hidden somewhere in the HTML of this page.
P.S. - Also we have setup RTB on Google Analytics so we can track your movements and see what you’re doing.
Tags: analytics, download system, forums, framework, progress, reputation, rtb3, speed, stats, styling, torquejax, tracking
Posted in Development | 7 Comments »
Monday, February 9th, 2009
So i’m still trucking with RTB3, so far i’ve been working on the new forums and the new online downloads system which are much easier and more fun to use, and definitely more helpful to people submitting add-ons. Now that this section is nearing completion there are a few little things to tidy up on our new forums like getting the reputation system back in again.
The next step is to overhaul the in-game system and especially the Mod Manager to be easier and faster to use, it is also being re-styled to look more similar to our new forums. I’ll make a post later about the new cool things you can do with our new downloads system.
One final notice, When we do move over to RTB3 we will not be transferring existing add-ons to the new system so authors will have to re-submit their work. Files from the old version will still be available via direct link for a few months so you’ll have plenty of time to get anything from it that you want to keep and maybe re-submit.
Tags: changeover, mod manager, rtb3, style
Posted in Development | 4 Comments »
Saturday, February 7th, 2009
RTB 2.02 is now available on the auto-updater, just open Blockland to get it. This update is another bug fix and addresses issues like the notorious IRC user list problems, and a few less obvious bugs that were causing some issues. You can view the changelog in-game or by visiting the RTB thread in the Blockland Add-Ons forum. If the auto-update doesn’t work for any reason, just use the downloads link at the top of this page and grab it manually.
Change Log: http://forum.blockland.us/index.php?topic=49524.msg972111#msg972111
Tags: 2.02, bug fix, irc, update
Posted in Updates | No Comments »
Saturday, February 7th, 2009
RTB is now officially on our new dedicated server, which is actually coping very well with everyone at the moment. You will notice there are still a few slow areas (like the index page of the forums) which are caused by some large nasty queries, however our new forums will sort that out. As you can see I have stopped trying to fix bugs with our old systems because the new one is just too cool.
Some parts of the ingame system are running a little sluggish too but again this is due to some horrible system design on my part for RTB 2 and the resultant monster queries of that bad design. Its not something I can fix until we move over to our new system so you’ll have to hang in there!
All our new DNS names have propogated successfully so you should be able to get to http://wiki.returntoblockland.com/ etc. and http://forum.returntoblockland.com/ (our new forum - not done yet though so you can’t see anything!)
Tags: dedicated, dns, lag, new server, queries, rtb2, slow
Posted in Announcements | 1 Comment »
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