Saturday, December 31, 2011

Updates 12/31/11

  • fixed a long standing bug with room descriptions
  • implemented the hacking framework
  • populated up to 1500 wildlife without issue
  • added all buildings to structure crafting tool
  • added a new building: space complex, which will allow the construction & launch of solar starships
  • did some prep codes for solar ships
  • made corpses rot faster
  • added missiles to available turret weapons
  • implemented the invasion/turret defense framework
Players can hack things that have controllers, like buildings and vehicles, if they are uncontrolled, to take ownership.  Hacking has other effects when players hack various objectives, as well as modules installed in buildings and vehicles.

List the available hack nodes in our location, then choose a program and target:

Fight through the firewalls!

And, best case, accomplish the hack, gaining access or control of various game objects:


Worst case, welp~

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Updates 12/27/11

  • first NPC guiding quest completed

  • follow now handles exits, grid maps, vehicles, and buildings
  • robots are now craftable but do not yet have an order/programming interface:

  • The planet map after a couple days of resource spawns:



Thursday, December 22, 2011

Alpha Launch Roadmap

Some of these may be trimmed, for alpha (text only) launch.  The beta roadmap will be based on "game" aspects, such as loot, crafting chains, objectives, quests, etc.  Post beta I'll be focusing my efforts on the custom client and time spent on the server codes will be for bugfixing/balancing purposes.
  • NPC factions must be working (invading, colonizing, and building)
  • NPC AI must be "working" (travelling to destination, all basic actions available, driving/flying enabled)
  • Factories must be working
  • It must be possible to build and launch a solar spacecraft and travel between planets in the same solar system
  • Wildlife attacks must be complete
  • Player attacks must be complete
  • Skill rolls must be integrated into their respective actions AND
  • those actions must be complete
  • the biomes must be complete (wildlife, resources, artifacts, scavenger objectives, biohazards, weather)
  • major weather objects must be complete
  • backgrounds and reroll mechanics must be complete

12/22/11 Changelog

  • added a fuel tank display when in a vehicle cockpit or looking at it from the exterior
  • worked on sector center building interior - about 30% finished
  • replaced expiring sub sectors with expiring buildings - reduces pain in my neck and allows easier random dungeon generation
  • skillpoint awards now display name of skill awarding the skillpoints
  • several minor fixes and improvement to skillpoint awards and skill success rolls
  • background selection and reroll fixes

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Updates 12/21/11

Every MUD needs fishing.  It is non negotiable.



Totally not finished view from inside a turret building:





Latest and greatest (allow biome requirements - eg X% of area must be ocean):



Ran the new biome population codes, resulting in a much better planet map:


View from the sector:


The background colors represent biome types (forest, desert, silicate, mountain, etc).  This planet is rated "habitable" so it's pretty friendly as far as alien planets go.  The foreground characters represent certain kinds of resources present in a room, eg the green X marks on the red desert denote energy deposits.

A biome, if it has the proper setting, has a small chance to upgrade to a more extreme version of itselfs.  The black sections on the above map are silicate biomes, which upgrade from desert biomes 5% of the time.


Changelog:
  • implemented simple turret buildings
  • implemented randomly generated fish for all biomes
  • converted vehicle and turret targetting to an action
  • added progress bars here and there
  • added 12 additional wildlife for the new biomes
  • implemented module installation/uninstallation for vehicles and buildings
  • many related fixes to cockpits, dice, and attacks
  • update player and planet pages on the website to display the planetary map
  • bartender added to the sleazy bucket
  • a selection of excellent beverages has been added to the sleazy bucket thanks to DFP
  • added several new biomes



Updates 12/20/11

  •  skills and armor can now grant commands
  •  added authorize lists to buildings and vehicles, allowing players to let other players use their stuff
  •  added basic lock/unlock codes
  •  added collectible holovids
  •  added collectible holo profiles, which detail wildlife or player stats

Mini Hellcore tutorial - $lu:map_prop:

$list_utils:map_prop is insanely useful. Say you have a list of enemy species on your creature and you want to print their names. Instead of looping through the list and collecting the names, do this:

critter_list = {#123, #124, #125};
critter_names = $lu:map_prop( critter_list, "name" );
"now you could print the names with $su:from_list for example";
player:tell("This critter hates "+$su:from_list(critter_names,", ")+".");



Screenshots:


* ACTIONS output
* crafting output for crafting guide






Thursday, December 15, 2011

Updates 12/15/11

  • implemented vehicle weapons
  • implemented vehicle modules & installation
  • implemented vehicle explosions
  • implemented simple shop rooms that sell a set range of items
  • updated craft to the final skill system
  • genetic material (DNA, bindings, and encodings) now populate with original creature data
  • several bug fixes and improvements

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Updates 12/12/11

* increase wildlife combat AI abilities
* several dozen new items and recipes, notably food and bandages
* implemented flying vehicles that travel through sector airspace -- up next is weaponry and combat for the flyers
* in progress: the machine arena, where the player can salvage parts from pit disposal chutes or enter one of their own bots in a match
* complex tickets and composite armor is available from the complex terminal - the ticket takes the player to the central complex hub and the composite armor is a reasonably-ish priced set of basic resistance armor

Friday, December 9, 2011

Updates 12/8/11

* added airboards. Watch out Marty!
* added research terminals, allowing players to turn rare artifacts into potentially lethal equipment
* added sector naming rights - the first player to enter a sector and send his buzzbot in gets to name the sector he discovered
* to go along with the naming rights, a repeatable sector mapping job
* a bevy of partially implemented and place holder weather fronts are now circulating through the planetary atmospheres
* added moons to solar system generation
* increased wilderness room generation complexity, especially the room names
* increased biome complexity and added more info to the biome guide
* implemented extreme/dangerous biomes that have a chance to occur if their parent biome is selected
* added the history log to record events in more or less real time
* jobs/missions can now cause historical events - in the future this will also occur with sector control changes, building particularly impressive things, murdering memorable numbers of aliens
* multiple bug fixes - thanks to Chimaera and Dibolcrif for testing (sploitin)

Friday, December 2, 2011

Updates 12/2/11

* added randomized armor in three tiers, with quality determining the types and weight of resistance

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Updates 11/30/11

* partial player corporations/guilds
* found a decent (uncustomized) flashclient that i'll add to the main web page sometime in Dec/Jan: http://wayfar1444.com/flashclient/

Monday, November 28, 2011

Updates 11/28/11

* added the rocket pack, which allows players to zip into sector airspace for a short duration; long enough to fire a rocket at nearby aircraft
* added reactive combat shields, worn in a gadget slot, that occasionally heal their wearer, or do damage to the attacker, or other such
* moved jetpacks to the gadget slot and jetpacked around a bit
* added a skill gain chance when doing actions that you have no skills in - allows skillpoint gain from harvesting, exploring, etc, since those actions don't require skills to preform
* player parties! thank to 0 over at infernomoo:


Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Updates 11/22/11

* implemented encounter rooms that spawn specific mobs on a cooldown
* moved dungeon spawning to the points of interest - 10 per sector
* finished skillbuy/skillsell commands for complete skill access

Score sheet:

Character status:


Skill sheet:

Skill group info:

Learning a skill:


* dungeon / blueprint spawning works reliably at last:

Monday, November 21, 2011

Updates 11/21/2011 - New guides

* New guides are now available: Crafting, Combat
* implemented armor and location damage
* fixes to weapon wielding
* partial implementation of the skill buy/sell system
* reimplemented wildlife nests - wildlife will establish a nest and defend it - players can loot the nests for various treasures:

Monday, November 14, 2011

Changelog for 11/14/11

  • due to a week in Vegas and then a busy week at home, I wasn't able to update the changelog for the last two weeks. How'd I do at poker? Very well.
  • integrated mysql with the moomail - this still has work to be done on it. But the upshot is that all the mail is stored in a mysql database instead of long lists in the moo db.
  • skills! You can view the list on the Wayfar Skill guide page.
  • new combat! The dice pool style of combat is finally implemented. Here's a little snapshot:





  • npc combat re-implemented with chance based attacks, allowing for rare attacks to be busted out by cool guys/bosses
  • Scavenger objectives appear randomly across planets, offering players who can find them a multiple choice decision:



Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Big Plans: social classes

Ever since playing Star Wars Galaxies, I've been keen on the idea of a skillset that lets players hang out in a cantina and roleplay a gay jedi disseminate news and buffs.

These professions will be represented in Wayfar with a set of skills, allowing the player to use the profession, and then increasing the power or duration of the buff.

Profession: Musician

A classic, the musician hands out battle and hunting buffs. Players listen to the musician to receive this buff.

* a player can sing/play once every 15 minutes. The sing/play action itself takes 10 minutes, leaving a 5 minute downtime.
* a player can listen to a musician once every 5 minutes, receiving a buff geared towards combat. Listening takes 3 minutes to receive the full buff.

Profession: Preacher

The preacher exhorts the faithful to do their duty, in good times and bad. This translates to an in-game effect of a single unit of "luck" - which is expended in special circumstances.

* a player can preach once a day for up to 60 minutes.
* a player can listen once a day for 3 minutes to receive luck.

Profession: Consultant

The consultant brings fabricators, scientists, and researchers up to speed with the latest developments, buffing crafting skills.

* a player can run a consultation session every 15 minutes, with the action taking 10 minutes.
* a player can listen to a consultation every 5 minutes, with the action taking 3 minutes.

10/25/11: The Return of Minimap





Thanks to 0@infernomoo, the minimap makes a glorious return. This first draft produces a map based on terrain and biome type.

* added the maker block (thanks Spider). This generalized crafting station is used to make domestic goods, refine raw resources, and even, when equipped with a black market AI, produce illicit goods.




* implemented the colonial rifle (created by DFP) - get yourself a kit from the complex and whip up your first ranged weapon

Friday, October 14, 2011

Updates 10/14/11

* implemented weather. Every real hour, weather patterns across the planets are checked, updated, and if requirements are met, dissipated.

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Updates 10/13/11

* my brother did the graphic for the main page and you can view his society6 page here
* minor additions to crafting content
* added cameras
* and small progress on farm buildings



Friday, September 30, 2011

Updates 9/30/11

* fixed movement room announces
* fixed npc wandering

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Updates 9/28/11

* one or two bug fixes
* implemented ranged combat on the simplest level
* implemented graves

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Updates 9/27/11

* added garage buildings, for constructing vehicles and tinkering with them
* implemented a new combat system based on dice pools (similar to tabletop game monsterocalypse)

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Updates 9/21/11: Blueprints and crafting

* implemented blueprints for spawning pre configured areas as well as building and vehicle interiors
* several bug fixes
* added more recipes for the first upgraded harvesting tool as well as the noble 12T-LL transport truck:


* and a utility or two to try to make the text entry less mind numbing:

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Updates 9/14/11 - 9/20/11

* A* star pathing implemented
* random treasure hunt events each real day, spawned in random sectors. These are broadcast to the sector channels and players have a limited amount of time to find the event - and then resolve it.
* Auto-travel system with random encounters added - in the future you might receive mission objectives here:

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Updates 9/13/11

* added survey tools, which equip to the special weapon slot. When exploring the tool can record data, which the player can then sell to the central complex.
* fixed up the FOLLOW command, so players can follow each other arround
* implemented the link-up terminal, allowing players to join another player's colony instead of founding their own

Friday, September 9, 2011

Updates 9/9/11

* bug hunting and fixing, including a very persistent matching bug. welcome back, sweet ass parser
* implemented TELL and REPLY, and a global chatnet
* upgraded the wildlife back end to increase the complexity and interesting... ness of wildlife spawns.
* wrote biome utilities to speed up biome customization:

Guide: Configuring Hellcore to route email through Gmail's SMTP servers -- TAKE TWO

After some testing I found out the Gmail configuration I had previously posted only worked to deliver email to gmail.com addresses. Kind of a major flaw. This took me quite some time to fix and should be useful for other applications, like using gmail to send email from a PHP script or C# program.

The problem with Gmail: Gmail expects you to use one of two methods to relay mail through it (for very good reasons). The first is a TLS session, navigated by your average mail program such as postfix or qmail. The second is an SSL session.

The problem with Hellcore: LambdaMOO doesn't navigate SSL connections, much less set one up mid stream for TLS.

The solution (Hellcore Section):

We will setup a tunnel in the Server Section - for now make sure you don't have any smtp servers running. If you do, you will need to use a different port.

H1 @set $network.maildrop to "localhost"
H2 @set $network.maildrop_port to 25

H3 Run this command in your shell:
perl -MMIME::Base64 -e 'print encode_base64("\000yourusername\@yourdomain.com\000not.my.real.password")'

Replace the fake values with your own information, then save the string you receive after doing this.

H4 @prop $network.smtp_auth_plain "the string you received from the step above goes here"
H5 @edit $network:raw_sendmail
Around line 26, after this line:
data = {"HELO " + this.site, ("MAIL FROM:<" + this.postmaster) + ">", ("RCPT TO:<" + address) + ">", "DATA"};
Add this line:
data = {"HELO " + this.site, "AUTH PLAIN "+this.smtp_auth_plain, ("MAIL
FROM:<" + this.postmaster) + ">", ("RCPT TO:<" + address) + ">", "DATA"};


You keep the old line around in case you need to go back to sending via a local smtp server.
Around line 47, after this line:
expects = {"220", "250", "250", "250%|251", "354", "250", "221"};
Add this line:
expects = {"220", "250", "235", "250", "250%|251", "354", "250", "221"};

This tells the moocode to expect a sequence of replies that includes authentication.

More Solution (Server Section)

There are two ways to meet gmail's requirements for security. The first is to connect via an SSL encrypted connection. The second is to negotiate an SSL connection after connecting via an unsecure session. These instructions accomplish the first.

S1 Download, compile, and install stunnel manually or with your favorite package manager.

vi /etc/stunnel/stunnel.conf

Add the following lines to stunnel.conf:

cert = /etc/stunnel/stunnel.pem
socket = l:TCP_NODELAY=1
socket = r:TCP_NODELAY=1
client = yes

[ssmtp]
accept = 25
connect = smtp.gmail.com:465

If you changed the port in step H2, change the accept setting above to match.

As root, execute stunnel, or read this to start it as a service. It will now accept all connections to port 25, encrypt them, and then send them to gmail's SMTP server.

Almost Too Much Solution (Gmail)

The last, or first thing to do is set everything up with Gmail.

G1 Get signed up with Google Apps. Follow their directions to set up the appropriate MX records.

G2 Add an SPF record as follows:
@ IN TXT "v=spf1 ip4:AAA.BBB.CCC.DDD include:_spf.google.com ~all"

Replace AAA.BBB.CCC.DDD with the IP address of your moo server. This tells google to allow SMTP connections directly from the moo.

G3 (optional)
Follow this guide to installing ssmtp and configuring it for gmail. ssmtp is a lightweight relay that will allow you to send mail through gmail from your server. This step is optional.

The overall effect is that all your connections to smtp.gmail.com will be encrypted, removing the need to use the SMTP command STARTTLS. You will receive your email at your google apps page for your domain and send it through google's smtp servers in a secure way.

There's no joy like nerd joy, eg the joy I experienced when I finally saw this output after a couple hours of fiddling:

Thursday, September 1, 2011

Updates 9/1/11

Changes:
* exploration has been upgraded. As a player explores, he can find supply caches, downed vehicles, and randomly generated sub sectors (dungeons). Eventually some of these items will be generated by player actions, such as an exploded player vehicle turning into a future discovery for another player.
* very very basic loot tables for wildlife implemented (wild hides and meat)
* upgraded the crafting interface to look better:




0 kicked off his devblog here: http://infernomoo.blogspot.com/. This guy is brilliant theory and game mechanic wise. I recommend scoping out his updates, his MOO set in actual Hell is sure to be intense.

On a non MOO related note, I picked up the two books below and enjoyed both of them immensely. Antiphon is a fantasy/sci fi hybrid, and The January Dancer is a compelling sci fi story told in a bardic style.






Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Updates 8/30/11

* partially implemented the three basic backgrounds: retiree, ranger, and fabricator
* scavenging/foraging is now enabled
* finished the complex terminal functionality. colonists can now place orders for goods to be delivered from the central complex, in addition to being able to sell their spare materials
* implemented basic missions: