Posts by Miwarre

Preparing for dungeons?

Quote from red51

Thanks for the feedback

Yes, that will be possible

[...]you can move and rotate the model, so for example a rotating windmill will be possible, or doors which can be opened etc.

[...]you can use auto-completion and see the javadoc directly (which makes life a lot easier).

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Hurray! (Or did I said that already?)

Thanks for the videos! It is true: one always learns something new!

About "oceans", you may find some useful info in this post (by me, shameless plug... :evil: )

Without any specific info, it is just a shot in the dark, but: any possibility it is something in the XML contents/format/syntax which blocks the loading?

Quote from zfoxfire

...we probably should start contacting mod devs to see about writing new mods.

Or we could start making mods...

Quote from zfoxfire

Most of the parameters for the game are stored in database files which are game assets. All recipes are stored this way as well. If the new framework gives us easy tools to to override default values then we could easily write a tiny mod to alter the drop rate of saplings from trees or altering the growth time.

I didn't investigate these specific points myself and you may easily be true. Granting access to the game data bases is potentially very dangerous (I saw access to the world data base is announced in the new API post and I assume the dev team knows very well what they are doing; I would be more than a little scared...). Also, default value changes may require world reload or even programme restart, who knows. We shall see...

Quote

So yes "Which kinds of problems your proposal aims to overcome" is the core question to ask. I see managers and developers fail in their projects because they don't ask this question up front. They want to change things just for the sake of it without giving good reason why.

Glad you agree! I forgot who, but someone said: "Finding the right questions is more important than finding the right answers" And I would add: "sometime, even more important than finding any answer at all!".

Quote from red51

Plugin API
We are also working on a new, Java based plugin API, [...]:

• Take control of various events
• Create custom gui elements, including images
• Place and move custom 3d models in the world
• Get full access to the world database
• Query keyboard events of a player
• Spawn items and modify player inventories

The new API will have a proper documentation from the very beginning, unlike the current Lua API.

Hurray! Hurray! Hurray!

The list includes practically all the things I was hoping it would and which I need for some ideas of mines. This is going a BIG help for scripting!

Another useful addition which does not seem to fall into any of the listed categories is the possibility to add a player to a group programmatically, in practice a script equivalent of the setplayergroup command.

And another "Hurray" for the documentation!!!

As with many (most? all?) scripts, commands are issued in the CHAT, not in the CONSOLE!

Open the chat, type the command(s) with its initial '/' and parameters as needed and press [Enter] to execute, as if you were telling something in the chat.

To open the chaT, the default key is [T]

I have never played Minecraft (yes, I didn't, believe or not...), so what might be obvious to you, perhaps it isn't to me. In particular I have not understood:

*1*) What this Extender would do and what kind of "configuration" it is supposed to allow. I can speculate that it might:

1a) allow to turn on / off individual scripts, which would SURELY be useful, but I would expect the RW own script framework to have this functionality built-in

1b) change some kind of settings / parameters passed to the scripts by the 'official' API. This would seem quick a disputable hack to me and, assuming is it possible at all without hooking very deeply in the core code, it is likely to raise conflicts and/or to increase the load on user support (the dev team is small and has already a lot to do).

*2*) Which kinds of problems your proposal aims to overcome.

2a) "When you start stacking scripts (mods) sometimes you might encounter errors because of a configuration error." As far as I can tell from my own experience and from forum posts, errors are encountered not because of some system-wide configuration error, but because this or that script has not been installed properly.

2b) Allow a better interaction between different scripts. This also would be useful and I already hit use cases for this, but I suspect it can hardly been provided by a middle-ware, if the base API does not support it in the first place.

2c) Provide some general routines to be used as 'building blocks' by other scripts. Also potentially useful, but the same observations as in 2b) also apply.

So, I suspect there is something important hidden here, but I am not able to see it. Can you elaborate a little?

Oh, hmmm... welll.... Those of you who feel of kind of another time because born in the '80s could be my sons/daughters... I was born in 1954, you do the calculation...

In the first decade of my like there was not even the TV! Well, TV in Italy was born the same year I was born, but it took years to become common, for quite a while you could only find it in bars or public places and it was definitely expensive, so families might easily have other priorities. My last surviving TV set broke down two years ago and my wife and I found unnecessary to replace it: it is kind of become useless and/or obsolete. So, I myself witnessed the whole life cycle, from birth to death, of a thing which marked and shaped a whole era, as TV did.

My formation is in Humanities (Latin Palaeography, if you are curious), but I spent most of my working years (I am now kind of retired) as a network admin / programmer / software engineer and, again, I have witnessed things coming hailed as the "definitive" answer to this or that question to disappear after a while.

I personally feel little yearning for phone books or other stuff described in the OP video. And, no, early 1900s were not "simpler times" at all. I have not experienced them directly (I am not THAT old!), but my parents and grand parents described those times at length and they were tough times, if anything.

But speaking of the past in general, each of us has his own tastes and may like or dislike the general appearance of this or that time or of this or that object (personally. I am fond of late XVII - early XVIII century style, music, architecture, ... and definitely dislike most of the '60s and '70s stuff).

What I learned ( !?) however is that each time was mostly a self-consistent and coherent system; even conflicts and struggles were consistent with the context. And things which we may find absurd, incomprehensible or ridicule today, in most cases made perfect sense at their own time and in general they were the best possible solution at that time. And also vice versa... (as a caveat to us ageing peoples...)

What you are looking at is an archived and compressed file. Much like trying to read with Notepad a .zip or a .7z file.

Also, a .tar.gz file looks much like something primarily intended for Unix/Linux environments. You have to UNzip and UNtar it before doing anything with it. Of course, it is possible to Un-tar a file under WIndows too, but the choice seems suspicious and chances are it will not run under Windows at all.

If there is something originally intended for Windows, take that and dump this one.

Quote from ArcaneDesmond

This however does work and is a nifty little tool. Had to screenshot the commands so I could use them. @Miwarre It looks good and yet I still wonder if the clock could be done in the same manner. Not complaining as it works unlike the Compass/Kompass Mod. Miwarre if you don't mind me asking can you add a command called /help that will bring up a list of all the commands? Maybe you do have it and I was just too anxious to try it out and overlooked it. Great mod

@ArcaneDesmond: thank for liking my little pet, I appreciate. Did you try /gps help?

I think the clock can be added; it is probably a little heavier in resources as it would use a timer, which are usually expensive. But possibly it would not make a big difference.

1) Do you think it as a separate script to install or an added function of the GPS? (I think I prefer the latter)

2) It would only display hours:minutes, as I do not think the in game time really have seconds!

3) In case of an added function, it would be nice to turn its display on and off (/gps clock as a toggle), wouldn't it?

4) I assume it should support 12h and 24h formats...

There is also this GPS script (by me, shameless plug...) which has some additional features, including a home and waypoint define / tp feature.

@Chrisx84: well, of course, I for one did not expect you saying that. But, in a way, it makes sense, exactly because you are the author of VorNet, and it casts some more light on the above.

As you wrote VorNet, you spent time thinking about it, its bases, its function and so on. So, you are in a better position than many other to say something about this topic.

Even if mostly expressed as a personal preference, the general consensus hints that a monetary system is probably not well suited to a context like RW (ok, only a very tiny minority of forum users said something here, but they are those who care about this topic nevertheless).

Which is already several steps further, as the script no longer complains about not finding listener/playerListener.lua.

Assuming your copy is the same which can be downloaded from the LUA scripting sub-forum, apparently one or another of the Groups/*.group files has a malformed ObjectsPlaceFilter property.

Quote from MommaT

"manipulating the game" I meant could you cause the game to spawn you in your new world in the precise world and location you desire.

Not that I know of. In fact, I am rather sure a new game will always spawn you at 256W, 256N coordinates. But if you know the xxx and yyy coordinates of the place you want to go to, by opening the console and entering the command:

goto xxx yyy

(first W then N) will teleport you to that location.

Notes:
*) better to activate flying beforehand, just in case you are teleported below the surface or much above it!
*) the command is often disabled on multi-player servers, but in single-player, there should be no problems.

Also, the next time you return to an already visited world, the programme should place you at exactly the point you were in when you left.

Thanks for the replies! They seem to me to provide some meaningful input, which I'll try to summarise into the questions listed above (when applicable), with my additional comments.

1) What a money system could make possible which is currently not possible in RW or at least easier which is currently hard? Possibly nothing or near to nothing, which I suspected since the beginning, but I refrained from venting at once.

2) Does a money system necessarily implies an economy? Apparently the replies seem to imply "Yes". I probably do not agree; given point 1) above, a money system is likely to be largely 'decorative' more than substantial, without significantly expanding the game mechanics or only (mostly) in things which could also be done otherwise, possibly better.

3) Does an economy necessarily implies a separate, abstract, money system? would be barter not enough? Barter seems strongly supported, either as a preference, as @ArcticuKitsu says, or as a more or less automatic consequence of player interaction, as @Geneo seems to imply. As barter is already explicitly supported by the game, there seems to be little need to add new kinds of economic interactions.

A small side note to Geneo's comment: "My thoughts: the last thing RW needs is an "economy" ". I appreciate the quotes around economy, but it seems to me that RW already has one, as an easy barter system is in place and it is actually used. This is an economy, a non-monetary one, maybe a small one, not much used (yet?), but an economy nevertheless.

For the other questions I originally proposed, there seem to be no specific replies. However, I still note a prevalence of what I would call State-centric economies, for the lack of a better name:

*) If I understand correctly, the "Store" Geneo quoted from Total Miner is in a sense a community owned and run agency, independent of any player (or groups of) and subtracted to any commercial constrain (it never goes broken, for instance); in the real life, this would approximate quite well a State agency (I never played Total Miner, so I might be wrong).

*) ArcticuKitsu's emphasis on NPC's shifts the accent a bit, but still supports a kind of actors (the trading NPC's) which interact economically with players but are not subject themselves to economic constrains (again, they never go broken and may implement whichever commercial strategy they like or the programme imposes on them, regardless of the end-of-year bottom line). If not of a State strictly speaking, they would act like emissaries of a sovereign Guild anyway.

I do not find anything inherently good or bad in this tendency (not in a game at least; in real life it would be different, but this is not real life...). It stirs my curiosity, though: why State-centric economies (or economic paradigms) seem to prevail in this kind of games?

Ah, for the record, I never played "that other game", which is one of the reasons I asked the opinions of other fellow gamers.

Quote from MommaT

Thank you for that info. Is there a list somewhere of "good seed numbers"?

A few are listed in this thread. Possibly other are given in other posts. I would try searching the fora for "world seed".

Quote

I'm still playing in Single player mode. Or can the game be manipulated in this way?

What do you mean by "manipulating the game in this way"? Which kind of manipulation? which way?

The "Global" numbers you see in the F3 output is NOT the seed of the world, they are the coordinates of your current position in the order West, altitude, North (yes, West, not East: RW uses a Westward pointing longitude).

The world seed is listed below the world name in the world list brought up by the "Single Player" button in the start-up screen. Each world has its own seed printed out under the name.

For multi-player servers, things are more difficult; the world seed is not listed in any easy place; rather, the server owner has to look for it in the log file which is created when the server is run.

thanks for the reply. Crossing fingers...