I'm still here.  Shoring up what I can.

I had my church pray for you yesterday. I want you to know that everything will be good, Just Believe.

Thanks for the kind words.

Yeah, Rayblon kind of has it right.  I'm trying to optimize my time as much as possible.

Oh dear. Has there ever been a slump in activity like this before? ._.

Probably not.

How're things progressing with the networking and Death March and such, Paul? It's been a while since someone dropped the question.

I finally polished up the SimEthereal library and released it.  That was supposed to be step one for Mythruna network integration while my wife and kids were out of town... but that took me longer than expected and day-job work encroached more than I wanted.

I even documented it and stuff: https://github.com/Simsilica/SimEthereal/wiki

There is a rather large (in number of online players) commercial space MMO project that is using SimEthereal which is nice validation.  He has a _ton_ more users than I'd ever expect on a single Mythruna server.  So that's nice.

As an example app, I've made a really really simple space game to fly around in.  (Not the 2D ESpace because I needed to test some 3D specific issues)...
https://hub.jmonkeyengine.org/t/simethereal-basic-example-plus-public-server/36636

I've recently started a fork of that project that incorporates my other entity system library... since most people will probably want to use them combined and because it's the easiest way for me to add a bunch of objects to test message splitting:
https://hub.jmonkeyengine.org/t/simethereal-example-with-es-blog/36853

Neither of those is supposed to be real games so will generally only get features that test some specific networking thing.

Basically, I'm doing what I can to get my ducks in a row for next time I have a large chunk of time.  I also need to reorganize the Mythruna code to use the newer build system.

re: DeathMarch, it's on hold until I can get some time to add multiplayer.  I've gotten a lot of design feedback on it from some guys who will likely help work on it and resolving most of the 'this or that' style issues is going to require head-to-head play testing.

So my free time is being devoted to shoring up my tech and cleaning metaphorical house.  Doing projects that are easily definable, finishable, and with side benefits.  For example, I already get some nice bug reports and patches on my open source projects and that's work I didn't have to do myself.

Hi pspeed ever consider using unity instead of jmonkey engine ?

From what ive seen unity is much more easier to use and comes with alot of awesome features that help in development times.
It's just a thought , and from what i see networking is difficult in this engine , its no picnic in unity but its fairly easy if you got experience .

Any thoughts.

Hi, have you considered writing your posts in Hindi instead of English? 

That's the equivalent question, really.  Since Unity is not Java and I'm a Java developer.  Personally, I'd rather have my toenails removed with rusty pliers before I'd work on C# or whatever scripting language they have without getting mad $$$.

Unity would either lock me into a specific mode of development that would make Mythruna's goals impossible or I'd have to write a bunch of stuff myself anyway (in a language I find extremely displeasurable).

Implementing networking using jMonkeyEngine is no harder than any other engine.  (BTW, I _wrote_ the networking support in jMonkeyEngine.... and I'm a core dev there.)  Mythruna has some specific issues that make it trickier.  For example, your average Unity game doesn't have to deal with networking synching physics across a whole world that is 100% modifiable by the players.  Things get tricky.

I'd have network integration issues no matter which platform I use.  The difference with jMonkeyEngine is that I can fix the limitations I have right in the engine.

Not really sure at this point.

I don't know.

Proper weather models require simulating a whole planet, basically.  I can't do that because my planet isn't even round.

So I have to base things off of various fractals and layer them appropriately.  I'm not saying that some of your ideas are not already on my list but it's a tricky thing.  Some of it may be impossible.

What I mean is that if you plop someone in a desert and they walk in one direction for X hours and only see desert... they might turn off your game and think "Man, these graphics suck... everything is just sand all the time."

Same with winter.  If winter lasts more than a few hours real time  "Meh, these tree graphics all suck."

It's just something I have to be aware of.

uh Paul... there's a tidal wave of shoe advertisements.

Yeah, always great that nothing happens until I'm away from my computer for a few days.

By the way, if you don't want to pollute the forums with posts about the pollution of the forums then you can simply flag the posts with the "Report to moderator" link.  You don't even have to do all of them as one is enough to get my attention and then I will ban the spammer and delete all of their posts.

I really liked No Man's Sky.  It's my current go-to game.

It's kind if funny because I think it does suffer somewhat from what I always feared from procedural generation.  The first three planets or so that I visited were variations on the same idea.  Different colored ground, a few different shaped rocks, and some random plants and animals but mostly similar terrain.

One night I was flying around one such planet and showing my son the game and pointed to what looked like a moon hanging in the sky.  I told him "And we can fly there if we want to."  So he said "Let's go".

Now, let me interrupt for a second to say that as an explorer-minded person, that's just a really cool thing right there.

Anyway, that planet was as different from the others as can be.  There was GRASS!  This was the first planet I'd ever been to with real grass.  It was also red and the trees were blue.  But maybe even more importantly, the terrain was bonkers.  Big squared topped mountains and strange giant rock "growths" that looked kind of like big mountain-high snakes forming weird arches and just generally odd raised ground.

Since then, I've also hit a planet that was mostly water and completely devoid of any life except the random "in order to have a playable game we must at least have these things" plants.  (ie: you can't  have a planet with no carbon or thalium else a starting player would be stranded there forever.)

The thing I always worried about with Mythruna is what would a new player's perception be if the first time they played they were plopped in the middle of a desert that was miles in all directions.  Or if I had longer seasons, what if the only thing they saw was winter?

NMS definitely suffers from this.  It's one of the reasons that so much of the basic mechanic is set to keep you moving forward.

There isn't much depth but initially it feels like there is.  And still when I find some new bit of information on the back story of the sentinels or the history of the Gek, I always slurp it up.

I think they probably said they'd deliver some things that they didn't but I think mostly it's a) a lot of misunderstanding, and b) the publisher saying "Ship this game now!"

But for a consummate explorer, it's a really beautiful game.  (I've taken so many screen caps of cool looking scenes that it's crazy... rivals my Mythruna screen shot collection.)

Items can already be different scales.  It's unclear how free-form this will be in-game as without limits you might as well just kick your machine until it crashes.  It will be only slightly more rewarding.

I got on runescape after god knows how long... and wow. It's not even the same game anymore.

In a good way or a bad way?

Never played it but I looked in on it from time to time way back in the day.

I sure hope that chemo helps a bunch.

Thanks, me too.  Hopefully it keeps the tumors from growing anymore at least.