BLG (Unite) Development

[Scout31]

So they wont be a part of blg? It'll be a seperate add-on?

If not, it doesn't need a name.

It's just something to identify that set of features as. They tie together, so naming them by their description wouldn't work.

[Ad Bot]

[Scout31]

Back from my weekend in Atlanta. I only have one more rehearsal, and thats it for the season. That means I have tons more free time now, which will more then likely to to BLG.

[Scout31]

Mock-up:


Add-ons can hook in their own updates, so if Slayer were to utilize the system, then that would show up.

[Brian Smithers]

well
good luck

[Crêpe]

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[Kalphiter]

Congratulations, you achieved something Ephialtes is too stubborn to do!

[Cnaibedoge]

Congratulations, you achieved something Ephialtes is too stubborn to do!

[Greek2me]

Congratulations, you achieved something Ephialtes is too stubborn to do!

What did he do?

[Crêpe]

What did he do?

Add-ons can hook in their own updates

downloads updates on server and then updates the server with these updates

[Scout31]

I've been a little slow due to the fact that I gained a social life upon entering high school, and that I had 4 days to annotate all 500 pages of The Odessey, which is a big undertaking. Along with that, my parents are in Argentina, which leaves me alone to do chores and keep the house from burning down under the Florida heat of the winter.

Despite that, I've finished the server side of the updater. It works regardless of whether RTB is installed or not. All that's left is transferring the information that the client gets onto a GUI. I've also decided to add an option to have automatic silent updates.

I'm going to switch to a public beta and release more rounded updates. A larger testing audience would be better for this type of stuff. The first beta release will be out when I finish up the updater.

[Crêpe]

yah!

title change!

[Ipquarx]

yah!

title change!

why
Why title change
WHAT DOES UNITE MEAN WHEN USED IN THIS CONTEXT

[Scout31]

I have around a 8 hour bus ride up to Atlanta today, so I've done some thinking about BLG. Its focus is really mucky and unclear, so I've been doing a bit of big-picture thinking. Copying RTB is definitely not what we want to do. We do however have similar motives as to RTB. We want to make the Blockland experience more wholesome, user friendly, and clean. We have a lot of small features here and there, but nothing big that benefits the community. What were working on is pretty mucky too. It's like we're just trying to cram a bunch of APIs and tiny features into a package.

Remote control is a neat idea and all, but not exactly appropriate for Blockland at the current state. All the hosts have their own means of management, and everyone else usually has access to the device they're hosting on. So, that's suspended indefinitely.

I've come up with something big we can do. I've already hinted at this, but it involves better tying together different installations of Blockland, and bringing together all of it as the identity of the player. There isn't one huge feature that can do this, but it can be acomplished by a set of features with a similar goal. The first feature in the group is something equivalent to Apple's iCloud. It automatically transfers saves, avatars, and more between installations. There will be an API available to developers to utilize this too. Expanding on existing technology, upon downloading an Add-on via RTB, it will prompt other installations wether to install it too. The second feature has already been mentioned. Users will be able to download and update RTB add-ons to their server directly.

In addition to extending the personal account, the feature set will include sharing of saves and a social system. This will include long term groups (Clans, Servers), personal messages, and save sharing.

Instead of just calling it "the set of features", I'd like to come up with a name for it. My current ideas are "BLG Link" and "BLG Unite". If anyone comes up with something better, I may use it.

[Ipquarx]

That would require the transfer of files into a web server, which, given enough users, would take up a stuffload of space, ESPECIALLY if you're going to include addons in this.
It would also mean players want to have their stuff secure, so then you would have to pay a extra for a secure connection, and you'd also need some form of encryption scheme.
It would also be easy to inject a malicious file into the server if that was made, again especially if you're going to include addons.

And (correct me if I'm wrong) I don't think there's any consistent way of verifying the blid a key is used for, and verify that it is a valid and correct key, without actually looking at it, because players (and possibly players parents) would want the addon to not actually look at the key.

[Scout31]

Um, what? The only thing stored on my side would be saves and avatars, which the former can be compressed quite efficiently (Ephialtes' studies) and the latter takes up very little storage.