Latest News

Cleared out all (I think) of the spam
Posted by YellowPainting - February 19, 2012, 11:23:20 PM

So yeah, there were some topics that were hidden under tons of red topics that moderators wouldn't have noticed. I'll check the forums daily for spam.

Report if you see:
- Spam topics
- Spam responses
- Signatures that advertise a product

Alternative way to report:
- Go here: http://webchat.freenode.net/
- Type in a username and type in #evocri for the channel.
- Notify us if there's spam and someone will take care of it.

Yeah.
Posted by firetools - February 15, 2012, 07:11:33 AM

Due to college, work and a bunch of other leadership opportunities, I have been unable to be active lately, and I should be back for good. But coming back, I've noticed new spam (Yay?) So starting tommorrow I'm going to remove all the bad users and posts. Have A very nice day evocri :p

Your General Mod, Firetools

P.s. What admins are still around?

Development Status Report Week 42
Posted by Drawig - October 24, 2011, 10:12:23 PM

Hello community,

Week 42 passed and so comes a new development report.

I started work on NPCs.NPCs can now be defined using XML files. They are stored in a folder on their region's region server. The region server parses the XML files, validates them and creates NPCs from the data in the XML file. It then places the NPCs on the map they belong.

Next I will implement player interaction, that is talking, with NPCs.

There is also news on development I haven't been involved in.

First the GUI system we're using is now being co-developed by a small company consisting of roughly ten people based in the Netherlands. I hope this will bring new and exciting features to our GUI.

Second jMonkeyEngine, the engine we're using, has entered beta! This means that many bugs have been fixed and many new features are available. The map editor now works on Linux, yay! And by what the news say, it looks like we can now directly load models from Blender files.
I think after the NPC system I will take a little break from coding and create some real maps.

So long, till next week.

Development Status Report Week 40 and 41
Posted by Drawig - October 15, 2011, 07:23:53 PM

Hello community,

this time I will do two status reports in one post.

As I previously said, I have been doing much needed gui improvements. Error/Notice windows, which let you and me help debug the game better have been designed. However, they're not functional yet, because of little complications with Nifty GUI I need to resolve with the creator of Nifty GUI. But since he has been unreachable 3 days now and is rarely online, this takes quite some time.

The 2nd thing I added is a long overdue ingame menu. This can be brought up by pressing escape and lets the user leave the game without completely closing the client, as it happened before the addition of that neat little ingame menu. It also allows the user to change settings ingame. Here is how the ingame menu looks like:



This looks a bit packed because of the 800*600 resolution, which is a bit historic on home PCs (not on more popular forms of computers these days like notebooks, netbooks, tablets and smartphones), as most of you, I am sure, will agree. But you can always change the resolution to a higher one. In fact 800*600 is the lowest available (not counting Android, which will have a seperate client).

The next thing on my agenda is the first version of the NPC system. This means that in the next two weeks I intend to make the servers be able to read NPC data from files and load them and tell connected players about them. On clients I wish to intend that they're able to display NPCs and interact with them by right clicking.
In the first version of the NPC system NPCs will only be able to speak and stand around like trees.

But this is a crucial step to finally adding wild monsters, which are a form of NPCs, into the game.

So long till next week.

Development Status Report Week 39
Posted by Drawig - October 07, 2011, 01:06:47 PM

Hello community,

I'm back in business and so it is time for a delayed development status report for week 39. The chat is completed so far. It now needs to be bug tested. I will be posting a video soon™.

The next thing on the list are gui enhancements on the client. I will be adding windows to show error messages when the user makes invalid actions. So far no error messages are shown, which makes it a bit hard to follow why something didn't happen. I will also be adding a window which can be brought up ingame by pressing escape. This window will have options to leave the game and go back to the character screen and it will have an option to change settings. So far you can only leave the game by closing the game window. Which is not so good.

That's it so far.

See you on Monday

Development Status Report Week 38
Posted by Drawig - September 27, 2011, 02:23:15 AM

Hello faithful Evocri followers,

it's time for this week's development status report. As mentioned last week, coding the chat is finished now. It should be possible to chat now. We haven't tested it yet, so the next thing we will be doing is setting up a testserver to test this feature. After that is done, a new video on YouTube which shows chat in action will be released.

The next week will be the last week we will be coding chat features for now. What is missing are little enhancements to the chat. Such as when a client disconnects from the chat, it asks the user if he wishes to reconnect.

And after next week the next milestone will be GUI enhancements, mainly better showing of error messages. Currently error messages are not being displayed or are only being displayed as a little text in the window. This will be changed to popup windows. Also, I won't have access to the internet starting on Saturday. So there probably won't be a status report next week.

So long, till in two weeks from now.

Development Status Report Week 37
Posted by Drawig - September 19, 2011, 02:18:46 AM

Hello Evocri followers,

It's time for the last weeks' development status report.

As mentioned last week, I've started coding the chat server. The chat server is a seperate application from the game server. A game server can connect to it if it wishes to use the chat servers' services, which consist of handling all chat on that game server. After joining the game, the client connects to the chat server as well and runs all chat messages through it. What I'm going to code next is the correct handling of chat messages from the client and the various chat channels mentioned last week. This shouldn't take too long and hopefully you'll see ingame chat in action next week.

So long, till next week.