Messages

151

General Discussion / Re: Blockland: Community Edition Proposal

« on: July 12, 2017, 08:34:17 PM »

Depending on the complexity of what you're trying to make a mod and how high quality, then it could take from 2 weeks up to 6 months. For a game, including updates, it takes at least 3 up to 10 years to make. There is of course exceptions on both parts. Even porting a game from one platform to an another may take several years if it was poorly coded.

This is because a game includes so much things that modders does not need to think about, like: input, rendering, sound, drivers, networking and even physics. All those things takes more time to make than the modding system itself.

Of course, if taken an engine that already have those things implemented, it still will take time to implement all the functionality using those functionalities. And most of the time you need to make workarounds to make your game work correctly with the engine as good as possible. Sometimes it takes more time to fix your game than what it took creating it.

In conclusion: Creating a new game takes in most cases more time than modding an existing one due to that it requires to create or manage the engine behind it.

152

General Discussion / Re: Add-on Making Academy (Google Classroom details in OP, new poll)

« on: July 11, 2017, 05:13:44 AM »

I plan to go through my lessons and revise them. Removing redundant information and add things that I missed. Also remove or replace the assignments. Then I'm going to put it into LaTeX, put in on github and lastly publish the generated pdfs. Whenever that will be, I don't know.

Until then, if you register yourself as a student, then you'll get access to everything.

153

Modification Help / Re: add all bricks to brickgroup_#######

« on: July 11, 2017, 03:46:35 AM »

Change Ownership

It's not script based, but at least you can do it pretty quickly with no to minor lag. Of course, you need to do it on all brick groups manually.

One other solution would be to save the bricks with no ownership and then load them.

154

Add-Ons / Re: Blockland Glass Chat Recorder

« on: July 10, 2017, 05:54:48 AM »

A useful tool for sure. I do remember you made an in-game chat recorder as well. With this, would you be considered the master of recording chat?

He might be working for NSA.

155

General Discussion / Re: Blockland: Community Edition Proposal

« on: July 01, 2017, 05:34:31 PM »

• Entirely fresh UI (not just a skin change)

pictures please

Visolator made a nice one and I'm currently using it: https://forum.blockland.us/index.php?topic=276870.0

• Server-sided gui support

Greek2me made a proof of concept with the current one. Of course, by making the system more robust, it's possible to add more enhanced version. In fact, I think the current GUI system is a bit old and that the text display should support HTML and JavaScript if specified.

• Chunk-based real-time autosaver

Again, Visolator made a better saving system: https://forum.blockland.us/index.php?topic=285601.0
It does not save in chunks, though, but if there will be better file tools, then it could be possible to enhance it further.

• Easy packaging of maps and gamemodes, Halo 3 style

I think the new GameMode system is quite alright. Sure, there is always ways to improve it further.
When it comes to maps, though, it's like Add-Ons, but unless packed with a GameMode, then it is just an another hurdle to copy it to respective folder.

• TCP-based (or otherwise optimized) save loading

So much yes! In fact, in addition I would like to have support for binary files. Or at least a way to tell the file reader where to load from instead of iterating through the whole file. This could of course also be achieved if adding other script engines like Lua and JavaScript.

• New staged add-on loading system

I believe that the current system is intuitive enough. There is of course several issues with locating the folder and the mix of archives and folders that makes this a bit harder, but I see your point.


Before Minecraft added support for mods, people found ways to automatically inject their mods into the jar. They had a executable that would check for all classes in minecraft.jar and validate how much changes have been made to it and then attempt to inject the code needed.

This might be a bit trickier for binaries, not only because it's frowned upon to do such a thing to them, but also due to the fact that most Virus Protection Systems would block that kind of functionality. If I remember correctly, when you want to inject with the current system, you need to disable your protection programs as they will otherwise block it. I might be wrong, though.

This sure is an interesting idea and I'm all in to help if there is need for it. Using dlls might be bothersome for most people, but if they are only added specifically by the community, then there is those other scripting languages that could add what is lacking.

156

Add-Ons / Re: [Event] Apartment - Landlord like a boss

« on: July 01, 2017, 03:37:42 PM »

Code: (Changelog) [Select]

Added method addApartmentOwner to ease the usage for the scripters
Edit: Fixed an issue with newly planted bricks

157

General Discussion / Re: Blockland Apocalypse Contingency Plan

« on: June 30, 2017, 12:51:50 PM »

Unfortunately, there probably is not, as Badspot need to enable it himself. It's sad that he haven't, as it should be pretty easy due to the current state of the Add-On system.

158

General Discussion / Re: Add-on Making Academy (Google Classroom details in OP, new poll)

« on: June 30, 2017, 12:48:56 PM »

This was almost falling into the void.

On-topic: I removed students that haven't made the first assignments to reduce the work that is put on us teachers. If anyone feel they are unfairly treated, then be my guest and rejoin and mark the lessons as Done when you have read and made them.

159

Modification Help / Re: [BL SOURCE CODE/REFERENCE] ServerLoadSaveFile_Start/Tick/End/Color Data

« on: June 30, 2017, 12:20:41 PM »

What's the problem with storing the string tables?

My guess is global variable. Also could be due to no knowledge of std library with map and unordered_map.

160

General Discussion / Re: Blockland Apocalypse Contingency Plan

« on: June 30, 2017, 12:15:58 PM »

We just need to get the obnoxious loving spam cleaned off the first page

I'd say Add-Ons and Mod. Discussion is absolutely paramount, everything else would be nice, except for off-topic and drama. I'd legitimately be happy if everything in those boards vanished overnight, needs a fresh start

Yeah... Maybe we should start a petition to just archive/delete everything in the current Drama and start one that's a bit more civilized (less name-calling, more actual problem-solving) and archive the current Off-Topic section (except major threads that would get re-created anyways, like day/night discussion, anime megathread, etc.)

I don't think that cleaning out the forum from dirt, dust and "toys" will keep the users from starting new threads. People are people, and if you want a clean forum, then one needs to deal with them first.

161

General Discussion / Re: Blockland Apocalypse Contingency Plan

« on: June 29, 2017, 02:00:55 PM »

Scraping the forum for files is not illegal, but it sure might put a strain on the server if not limiting the script. Therefore I made a scraper for the sake of caching and downloading Add-Ons from any subforum you point it to that is basically looking like BLF. I also added so it can store forum profiles as well.

https://github.com/McTwist/Blockland-Forum-Add-On-Scraper

I tried to avoid posting it here due to the shadiness of this script, but now when people might demand it, I'll put it here.

Sadly, I haven't added much support for indirect downloads. Mostly because it's a hassle to implement and keep up to date without downloading invalid files.

The biggest feature is that it will avoid bashing sites, only downloading after a certain interval. Currently it can traverse the whole Add-On section in about 12 hours on default settings and 2 cores. Downloading files is not included. Succeeding run will only download the newest posts. When downloading, it found 484 valid archives. I intend to optimize it a bit as it happens that the queue locks as it waits. That will, however, change the script quite a lot, so it's not anytime soon.

If people are interested, I'll add more features. My next move might be to modularize it a bit as the main file is now quite big.

162

Modification Help / Re: [BL SOURCE CODE/REFERENCE] GameConnection::onDeath, Armor::onDisabled

« on: June 13, 2017, 03:21:11 AM »

Am I the only one that get bothered that the source uses float as index?

163

Suggestions & Requests / Re: Addon system similar to Apt, Yum, or Chocolatey

« on: June 09, 2017, 04:49:42 AM »

The biggest change would be to add a way to remove functions, as you're disabling Add-Ons. There's several problems with this, though:

• The game have no clue what function is for what Add-On, leaving them in the open.
• Other Add-Ons don't know that an Add-On was removed, thus their check when starting the game is wasted, even though those Add-Ons should be removed as well.

Basically, we're making a new game engine by adding this single addition.

Edit: But on topic: Making this Unix-like system actually already exists, sort of. First we got the Updater to download the required files. This is although restricted to that you already got the Add-Ons. Then we got the internal system to load an Add-On. It's quite crude, but it's workable.

Actually, I have my LoadAddon, but it was failed on this forum as it screwed up Badspots new content download system. It worked perfectly fine, though.

164

Suggestions & Requests / Re: Addon system similar to Apt, Yum, or Chocolatey

« on: June 08, 2017, 06:07:50 PM »

[...] removing datablocks while the server is active is impossible as far as i know, at least without a dll

One basically needs to notify the clients to invalidate and remove the datablock and then remove it on the server. I would recommend the approach of Unity: Layers of loading, and then remove layers and reload them on top of the other.

165

Suggestions & Requests / Re: Some type of addon that can reduce brickcount

« on: June 07, 2017, 02:21:21 PM »

We asked zeblote for a brick merging script like stated earlier, and he said it's not worth the effort. Idk yo

I think it looks too realistic. If you went Blockland style, then you could reduce the brick count significantly.

Also, I saw that there's a road in there. Do you intend to drive on it with a jeep? If that's the case, then good luck.