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[pspeed]

I know it has been a while for a release so I wanted to keep you all in the loop.

I've been kind of jacked up at the day job lately trying to get ready for a release this Monday.  And now we are in "death march" mode trying to get the last bits ready so I won't be able to work on Mythruna this weekend and haven't been able to touch the code in more than a week already.

Hopefully I can use the extra hours I spend on the day job this weekend to offset some "me time" later in the week and get back to fun-work.

Some have asked me when the next release will be and what will be in it.

I need to get one out soon because it has been too long but for the length of time, it will be kind of a lame release.

There have been a few bug fixes and performance fixes.  The player avatar now has hair and the head no longer stretches like an alien when you look up or down.

Also, the code has been reorganized so that I can provide separate client and server downloads... which means the server is easier to run.

And, I finally updated the starter spawn town to not have blocky trees, added a building, and upgraded some of the existing stuff a little.

In the past two months, I've mostly been working on physics and the combat prototype.  I was really hoping to have a first version of that on the one year anniversary of Mythruna's first release but I don't think I will be ready.  Physics is not ready to go into the main game, partially because of stability (though I could deal with that) and partially because the networking has not been optimized.

It's easy for me to develop physics locally because I run client and server on the same machine.  I prefer to get the physics working and then fix the networking... so even when physics is "good enough" there will be at least one more week of work just to get it ready for release.

For the upcoming release, I still plan to try to get the following in (in addition to what has already been listed):
-simple GUI for the stand-alone server
-more unified scripting environment between single player and multi-player, and the beginnings of the plug-in framework.
-the ability for a server to specify its own world seed other than 0. (I don't have time for the designed user interface for single player seed selection and I don't want just a lame edit field.)

I have a list of half-a-dozen other things I'm going to try to get into it, also but I'm keeping those to myself because then only I will be extra disappointed.

When...

The very first Mythruna release was on February 14, 2011.  That's what I'm targeting for the next release, also.

[FutureB]

Haha cool thanks for telling us that and YAY finaly no bald women XD

[Trecool]

Paul,

You have a family, a work and you have worked on Mythruna since the beginning in solo.

I understand (we?) It's very difficult to publish release (stable or no) every month..

I (we?) prefer a stable release with no bug than a release "speed scripting" look like Minecraft for example..

Seriously, take your time to publish quality release. No problem. I believe in this game !

[Gfamad]

Do you really need physics in your game ? It seems like a bad question because if you are working on it, the answer is "Yes".
But think about it:
-First a real physic engine is a pain (If you know, remember the time it took to the Blender team to have a decent GameEngine with physics...) and a perfect 3D physic Engine is out of reach. Little Big Planet has a nearly perfect one because it's a 2D engine... And synchronizing all that stuff with server-client model will be a challenge !
-Second, in a cuboid world, is it necessary to have a physic Engine ? A cube location is either free or not, and that's enough ! If you really want a physic engine, the bounding-box of the shape should be enough ! Look at Cube world for example (You see I didn't mention Minecraft (Ooops, I mention it...))

Of course, you have probably some thought for using this physic engine in the game, and that's cool. But maybe you should push this after major GamePlay elements like quests, complex underground, tools, etc...

Thanks for reading, and again it's only my humble opinion. A physic engine won't sell your game but some real gameplay elements will IMO. For example, I bought Miner wars when the first mission prototype was in the game ! At this stage, we can say "Now it's starting to be a game, not only a demo"

Anyway, good luck and congratulation for your work man !

Gfamad

[pspeed]

I sort of disagree. I let players make whatever object they want and if they only behave like holograms then that's not really any fun.

Besides, this is one of the few things Mythruna has the no other block-world game really does.  Physics is sort of the corner stone of every thing else that will come.  Otherwise, I have to fall back on a 3x3 grid where you randomly place materials to make a handful of premade shapes.

Flexibility requires some expense up front but it pays off dividends down the road.

Besides, physics is already really far along.  Check the videos out if you haven't already.

[pspeed]

-the ability for a server to specify its own world seed other than 0. (I don't have time for the designed user interface for single player seed selection and I don't want just a lame edit field.)

I can say for certain that this will be in the next release because I just finished it... and now I have a completely new way to waste time exploring different worlds.

P.S.: World seed=100 has tons of caves and stuff right around the default spawn.  Fun to explore.

[pspeed]

-more unified scripting environment between single player and multi-player

Event hooks, tool scripts, and shell commands all use the same environment now... and it's the same in single or multiplayer.

In addition, script variable access has been standardized...
-playerData: simple persisted data associated with the player
-session: runtime in-memory data associated with the player

Near the release, I'll post better documentation on this to the scripting forum.

[Sunjammer]

Not sessionData?

[pspeed]

Not sessionData?

I can change it if you don't think typing an extra four characters would matter.

[Sunjammer]

I can change it if you don't think typing an extra four characters would matter.

It doesn't matter to me as a scripter, in fact I would prefer the consistency/symmetry if it is appropriate. However I can't say if it matters to the system/server/virtual machine: you're the expert there! Ultimately I guess it comes down to what the session method represents/returns. Does it represent the actual session (IP address, connection time, etc.) or does it represent a bunch of ad hoc variables?

[pspeed]

I can change it if you don't think typing an extra four characters would matter.

It doesn't matter to me as a scripter, in fact I would prefer the consistency/symmetry if it is appropriate. However I can't say if it matters to the system/server/virtual machine: you're the expert there! Ultimately I guess it comes down to what the session method represents/returns. Does it represent the actual session (IP address, connection time, etc.) or does it represent a bunch of ad hoc variables?

Ad hoc variables.  sessionData is definitely a better term... and it makes no difference to the JVM.

Currently we have player and playerData so it makes sense to have "sessionData".  Though on the other side of it, I could merge player and playerData to be the same thing, too... as well as any future "session".

Truth is, after you mentioned it, I already renamed it to sessionData.

[Moonkey]

Do you really need physics in your game ? It seems like a bad question because if you are working on it, the answer is "Yes".
But think about it:
-First a real physic engine is a pain (If you know, remember the time it took to the Blender team to have a decent GameEngine with physics...) and a perfect 3D physic Engine is out of reach. Little Big Planet has a nearly perfect one because it's a 2D engine... And synchronizing all that stuff with server-client model will be a challenge !
-Second, in a cuboid world, is it necessary to have a physic Engine ? A cube location is either free or not, and that's enough ! If you really want a physic engine, the bounding-box of the shape should be enough ! Look at Cube world for example (You see I didn't mention Minecraft (Ooops, I mention it...))

Of course, you have probably some thought for using this physic engine in the game, and that's cool. But maybe you should push this after major GamePlay elements like quests, complex underground, tools, etc...

Thanks for reading, and again it's only my humble opinion. A physic engine won't sell your game but some real gameplay elements will IMO. For example, I bought Miner wars when the first mission prototype was in the game ! At this stage, we can say "Now it's starting to be a game, not only a demo"

Anyway, good luck and congratulation for your work man !

Gfamad

By the way, Paul just said making the physics engine was easy. And if you watched his videos the engine has progressed a little too much.(Hehe Paul you cease to amaze me) C'mon Paul you're teasing me with the Combat Physics update! You're driving me mad 

[pspeed]

By the way, Paul just said making the physics engine was easy. And if you watched his videos the engine has progressed a little too much.(Hehe Paul you cease to amaze me) C'mon Paul you're teasing me with the Combat Physics update! You're driving me mad 

I may be being misquoted or taken out of context.  In truth, writing a physics engine is easily the single hardest thing I've ever done in my entire software development career (20 years, that).

But the really "hard" parts are already done.  It's technically working enough to include in the game with some limitations but I need to finish the more optimized physics networking first.  And really, it works enough to prototype combat-related UI stuff locally so that's what I was going to do first.  But physics requires many dedicated days in a row to make any progress and so is not well suited to my current work schedule.  When I get to the point where I can again take the occasional 3 day weekend then we will see physics progress again.  In the mean time, I may implement the networking so I can include some of what I already have.