So, I've seen it talked about a couple times, and it's time to really face the music. I found some new drive to get some things done, and I'm going to try and drag that over here as well as for Elysium and SW:TSW. So here we go.

What do we want to do about the state of things here? THe Star Wars bases are very much neglected and in need of a good clean-up, but there seems to be an over all lack of desire to see it done. Most people seem more interested in what I'm going to do with the code from SW:TSW at the moment, then what needs to be done to SWFotEFUSS and SWRFUSS. Let me state for the record, that AT THIS TIME, I have no intention of releasing the code for SW:TSW. Does this mean it won't ever be released? No. There is a good chance that somewhere down the line it will be released. But that time is not now. Nor is it in the immediate future. I'm building 90% of the core "Star Warsy" features for that mud completely from scratch. It's using code copied from SWR/SWFotE atm, but that was to just get it running until I could actually finish writing the new stuff. (The staff, especially the wife, was getting whiny. >.>) So I need a consensus. Are people willing to help me fix SWRFUSS and SWFotEFUSS? Or should they be decommissioned, and put in an "official" inactive state? How many people actually want to see SW:TSW's code released?

On to the topic where I think I'll get the most input...

SmaugFUSS.

What should we do with this? It appears to be pretty much stable. Not a lot of bugs left to fix it seems. So what now? Do we branch a SmaugFUSS++ version and modernize it? Do we shift focus away from bugfixing and more onto modernizing? Embedding Lua? Maybe a general support for embedding languages? Maybe have support for Ruby, Python, and Ruby? Where do you guys, the community, see this project going?

And please, don't give me that cheap-o "Whatever you want." answer that seems prevalent among the staff of TSW lately. These aren't my bases, these are OUR bases. My bases are Elysium and SW:TSW. Those are the ones I get to make decisions about. The ones here are not. These are community maintained. Without a community around them, there's no point in it. So I won't be playing dictator. So toss me some input people.

Personally, my resolve to get more involved in SWRFUSS. I would like to see some big fixes done with SWRFUSS. (Feature fixes more or less - an overhaul of the space code - ie applying the vector code, splitting functions into more manageable pieces etc) Some new features would be great, removing a lot of the useless structures and functions. I'd definitely would like to see Lua embedded in SWRFUSS. I'd like to be involved in actually helping fix it up. I think the SWRFUSS base has a lot of potential at being a good stable base.

That's my input.

The best way to be involved is to find an post the things you can find that are wrong. As far as the other things you mentioned, I don't truely know that there is enough interest in the Star Wars side of things to justify the extra work of reworking the space code to use proper math, or embedding Lua. Any codebase out there has the potential to be a good, stable base. The problem is the lack of interest. Which seems to be SWRFUSS and SWFotEFUSS's biggest issues. And these are the hardest issues to overcome/fix. If people don't care, it's a lot of effort for little to no gain.

And let's face the facts here, we all do this as a hobby. There needs to be some kind of gain for it to be worthwhile for a hobbyist, and if no one cares, that needed gain isn't there.

To be honest I would be interested in a fix up verison of a good starwars codebase. I think the lack of interest has to do with the fact there isn't one out there.

But with no interest, There's no way to know what all is broken in the bases so that they can be fixed.

If no one tells me what is broken, How can I fix it? If no one uses the base, how are they supposed to tell me what's broken? I don't have the time or the patience to just sit down and rigorously test two full codebases for bugs and then find fixes for them. Not while I'm trying to write my own codebase from scratch, and keep my wife's mud running already.

Well the topic of the spacecode overhaul spiked some interested in alot of people, most of which said they wanted it done. Why not start there?

I know I'm pretty out of touch on things these days, but wasn't the biggest gripe with the SWR based the fact that they hadn't received the updates to be on par with SmaugFUSS? I feel like I've suggested this before, but, why not simply take SmaugFUSS and do whatever needs done to turn it into an SWRFUSS update?

dbna2 said:

Well the topic of the spacecode overhaul spiked some interested in alot of people, most of which said they wanted it done. Why not start there?

Because it's not a simple thing to just overhaul something as integral to the codebase as Space. Even just applying corrected vector math is something that will irreparably break the codebase as far as backwards compatibility goes. It fundamentally changes a core aspect of the codebase, in some rather extreme ways. This kind of change brings us back to the proposed Affects revision. If something changes a very core and integral part of a codebase, do the benefits outweight the detriments it introduces? In the case of Affects, it was going to end up changing the base in such a way that it was easier to start a new base from scratch (Which is where Elysium came from.).

With a Space overhaul, that same question needs to be asked, answered and weighed. Is it worth it to rework the space code to use proper math, thus likely invalidating certain bug fixes, trashing any form of backwards compatibility, destroying any kind of snippet compatibility, and likely changing the way the game interacts with players? For something like SW:TSW I'm free to make changes like that because it's for a game, (the space system for it is also written from scratch) and people expect it to be different. When people pick up SWRFUSS or SWFotEFUSS, most times they're going in with some kind of expectation of how it will work. And I'm still not convinced that repairing the vector math for the system is entirely worthwhile. I don't know that I'm completely comfortable destroying all expectations of how the codebase works, and has always worked, even if from a technical standpoint the math is wrong.

Samson said:

I know I'm pretty out of touch on things these days, but wasn't the biggest gripe with the SWR based the fact that they hadn't received the updates to be on par with SmaugFUSS? I feel like I've suggested this before, but, why not simply take SmaugFUSS and do whatever needs done to turn it into an SWRFUSS update?

Already done this. It was painful. SW:TSW is running currently on a SmaugFUSS 1.9 with SWR-esque qualities, such as the SWR Classes, and what was a from scratch space system which is now little more than a shell since I scrapped it and started it over... again.

Samson said:

I know I'm pretty out of touch on things these days, but wasn't the biggest gripe with the SWR based the fact that they hadn't received the updates to be on par with SmaugFUSS? I feel like I've suggested this before, but, why not simply take SmaugFUSS and do whatever needs done to turn it into an SWRFUSS update?

If the SWRFUSS and SWFotEFUSS codebases are going to get any attention this should be it. As to anything beyond that - who knows. There are a lot of things I'd like to see. Mostly features added, however I lack the skills/knowledge to work them into something usable. But then again - we are getting away with 'Fixed Up Stock Source'.

Now here's the next problem and Kayle has hit head on. Interest. A quick look on mudconnector found 13 SWR and the likes muds (Only looked for Star Wars in the name mind you). Most of them are not very active. I know for a while I was running perhhaps one of the most popular FotEish muds but as we all know, quickly things change. Lack of interest. Seems people are moving on to more modern codebases, players float from one mud to the next, to yet another. Always seems like its the same group of players too. Maybe it's different in the SMAUG side of things.

The next problem I've found with people in working on the SWR's is the lack of sharing. I'm not talking about sharing snippets, or ideas's but bugfixes. I've fixed some of the same bugs that everyone else is going to have to fix. I tried posting what I could where I could here, but my code isn't FUSS.

Just my thoughts.
ayuri

I forgot to answer your questions Kayle:
I'd like to help fix up the code. I'd love that chance however, I feel that I don't have the skills. I mean right now I'm stuck trying to get do_look to print out ship descriptions if your in space and you want to 'look ". I'm sure 87% of the people here could hash that out in 10 mins. I also don't build so areas are out of the question.

As to seeing your SW:TSW being released - I was just wondering if you had plans to release it in the future as the new and improved, fixed up, SWR code. If it was to be the 'savior to the Star Wars' codebases.
As to why we are interested in it, we all know you have the skill's and drive (ahem - wife) to do something truly unique and amazing to change the whole landscape that is the current SMAUG style Star Wars. Or, so that is our hope.

ayuri

I know several coders who have updated the vector math. It took a matter of a few hours and it doesn't destroy backwards compatibility per se. I think it just would require a little work and updates to the snippets that are available.

Besides that, most of the snippets available don't require any of the math. It's just fancy stuff. Some do however, and they would be easy to modify. My problem is I'm just not sure where to begin with the vector math.

The math changes fix a few issues, but it definitely does not drastically change gameplay.

Keirath said:

The math changes fix a few issues, but it definitely does not drastically change gameplay.

The math changes will drastically change gameplay. Distances will be calculated correctly. The math changes a lot about space travel. Combat dynamics will change. Anything that involves moving the ships will change. Doing things correctly, changes things. A lot of the changes will not be immediately visible to players. But there will be people who notice them. The space system I wrote for TSW used proper vector math. All of my staff who fiddled with it, immediately recognized the differences. They all noticed that things were different. They've all come from an SWR background.

I'm not saying the math doesn't change things. I noticed the changes as well. What I'm saying is it does not change it drastically enough to totally destroy what players are used to. I honestly think this is one of the big things that needs to be fixed. And it really sounds like a lot of people in the community are anxious to have a release with the vector math fixed.

On another note, regarding SWR, it would be nice to go through and clean up a lot of the useless/unused data. ie the senate_data struct etc.If for no other reason just to make it look better. Converting areas to KEY'd file format like SMAUG would be nice. Really, in the end, bringing it up to par to SMAUG. One of my big struggles has been rather to base my MUD off SMAUG or SWR. SMAUG has a lot of fixes and stability that SWR does not. However, I do not feel my coding skills are up to the task of writing a from scratch space system.

While vector math would be nice, and I think for the most part Caius had it worked out(No clue if he still does). Backwards compatible with space snippets is moot as if we keep doing things to maintain compatibility, nothing will ever move forward.

However, I do think that a general cleanup of unused functions and structs would be worth while.

At this point my idea would be to start from getting the code inline with SMAUGFUSS 1.9 - and then working though crap that's not needed then onto vector math.

ayuri

What should we do with this? It appears to be pretty much stable. Not a lot of bugs left to fix it seems. So what now? Do we branch a SmaugFUSS++ version and modernize it? Do we shift focus away from bugfixing and more onto modernizing? Embedding Lua? Maybe a general support for embedding languages? Maybe have support for Ruby, Python, and Ruby? Where do you guys, the community, see this project going?

We need to start modernizing it. Especially the prog system. So that would probably mean adding something like Lua in and letting that handle progs.

It's just so frustrating to have a prog setup in Smaug that is suppose to mposet an item in the mobs inven and yet the code prioritizes the items on the floor first, so suddenly the mob is mposetting the item that is on the floor. That is my most recent annoyance I discovered in Smaug progs. That and it can't even do any basic math (which I added to BIYG).

Oh and I think it would be neat to re-do/finish the virtual room stuff. Exit distances and the such.

Can someone explain to me what Lua does

I'm willing to work on Lua-in-SMAUG if there is enough real demand for it. I don't have a timeline for it (my time is extremely limited these days) but it wouldn't be that hard to do, since I've already done things quite similar to this on my own MUD.

ayuri said:

While vector math would be nice, and I think for the most part Caius had it worked out(No clue if he still does)

I did have a version of SWRFUSS with a few space-fixes at some point, but I believe it was lost in a hardware crash with my old VPS provider.

Speaking of snippets. There is one snippet that would be nice to add into SWR/FotE, and that is the Replacement Shuttle System. It does not change the gameplay, but it makes creating and updating shuttles and turbocars much nicer for the imms by making them OLC'ed instead of hardcoded.

dbna2 said:

Can someone explain to me what Lua does

Lua is a programming language.