Progress

[20 Ton Squirrel]

I've set up the initial objects on the engine to handle incoming connections.

I've also set up an example movieclip in Flash that contains a XMLsocket object. Red Penguin, I believe this will be of use to you. I'll e-mail it to you upon your request... I don't feel like posting it here cuz all the pinheads out there would download it and ping-bomb my server.

Both ends of the spectrum are VERY bare-boned, but this is where it all starts when it comes to client-server applications. I've given you guys two shores and a bridge to cross the murky depths. Now you gotta figger out what to do next... which is a login sequence.

Maybe scheduling a meeting of sorts is in order this weekend, for all who are interested. I've set up a nice environment on the engine for us to have a discussion... an Actionscripts.org Corporate Building! Yes, that's right, you enter the lobby and can explore from there. Heheheh, it's cheesy but fun. I'd be happy to set up offices for anyone interested. And, Vile, I'm making koosh balls to toss at people. The fun never ends!

[20 Ton Squirrel]

I've set up two user objects for the chat (you are currently logging into the engine using GMUD as a $user, not a $flash_user).

The first type of user will be the standard user. The second type will be a moderator. Note the trend? JUST LIKE HERE! The exception is that there will be administrator/programmers on board like m'self that have the god-like ability to do... uh... god-like stuff.

A thought for the wish list (not here) - what kind of abilities should a moderator have? The ability to boot people? Mute people? BAN people? I think banning should be reserved for administrators.

Anyhow, I'll continue setting things up server-side. I'd like to schedule a meeting on the engine for this weekend... Saturday or Sunday at a time where even Pengie can attend. Nothing serious, I just wanna keep the communication going. I was thinking 11:00 AM CST... not too early for us lazy Americans and not too late for you fereners. Whatcha think?

[vilehelm]

I can easily do anytime saturday again US EST i think the squirrel is 2 hours behind me. Australia is approximately 15 to 16 hours ahead of him. hmmm

as an example

houston - 8am sat
atlanta - 10am sat
paris - 4pm sat
australia - 12 midninite sat/sun

is that right?
Jesse do you stay up late?

ps didn't mean to leave any countries out in between just giving everyone a feel for the times

http://www.worldtimeserver.com/

[20 Ton Squirrel]

I'm down widdat if we have a general consensus on the time. 8:00 AM CST Saturday. No guilt if you can't attend, I just wanna coordinate on a time we can all get togedder.

[Ricod]

Okay ... can u people fill me in later ? (I have no internet during most weekends) I guess the important stuff will end up in one of these threads right ?

[20 Ton Squirrel]

Yes, of course. I can copy up a log of the WHOLE thing once it's done. Not a problem. I understand that internet costs moolah-per-minute to you people outside the US, so don't sweat it if you can't make it cuz yer broke. I know the feeling!

[red penguin]

You've got my address, yeah? I'm waiting for the file for my hungry hands. I look forward to it.

As for me...if it's Saturday at 4pm for me, I'll be there...with bells

I just came from Vile's thread with the flow chart and the first thing I thought of was getting something down with the XMLsocket...But, hey, you've got something already! Great!

[Jesse]

With daylight savings that makes it 1am Sunday morning here.... Ahh I'll do my best but I've got places to go Sunday so I can't stay up too late :)

[20 Ton Squirrel]

Heh... only Red and Pink showed up, so we just messed around on the core after convincing Pink to sign up for Beta Testing. So if you were worried about missing anything important, get over it! If you were worried about missing out on the fun then... HA-HA-HA!

I've made offices for those who dare show up and participate. You can make them look like whatever you want... just check out the tutorial for instructions on how to do it.

I've e-mailed the socket object I created to Red and he's gonna vivisect it this weekend when time allows. I'm coding up some objects engine-side that will help articulate how this client-server communication stuff works. Red, expect another e-mail soon.

Come on, folks! We had so many of you sound off on the original post about this! Where, oh where, did you go?! Arrooooooo!

[vilehelm]

Hey Everyone, sorry i missed the meeting. Unfortunately i ate something bad and ended up in the hospital with foodpoisining, ugh. I'll spare you the the grim details but i'm swearing off hamburgers from now on. (could've been the balsalmic vinegar on the salad too).

I'm still pretty out of it. Nausea medicine making me sleepy. Let's try it again soon.

My girlfiend's a lawyer. Where gonna have a field day with that retaurant.

[20 Ton Squirrel]

Ugh! That's horrible, Vile. I've had samonella before, it is NOT fun. Hope you feel better soon.

[red penguin]

Okee-dokey...

I've made a prelim fla which is loosely based on what I got from the Squirrel.

Squirrel: How does the engine handle the data? Is it just a string? I think that is the thinking...How and what is returned to the client? Format? Might we be able to format it as an xml fragment?

Vile: The fla is really bare bones. As I am not in the "Design Dept.", this is all yours... You should expect a copy soon.

I've done some initial tests with said fla and it connects to the server and sends the data typed into appropriate textField. Squirrel has given me some "headphones" to hear what is said. I think it would be of interest for everyone to have a pair of these amazing headphones to get a feel for what's happening thus far. Squirrel, that's up to you to code that. heheh...

I believe that's the jist of things as of this posting...but I'm sure I'll be back with more questions as this gets heavier!

out.

ps. Vile: Sorry to hear about your bout with the porcelain god...

[vilehelm]

a white, shiny and horrible god it is.

starting to feel a little better. glad that the world has kept on spinning without me.

going to go pass out again. be back tomorrow.

[Jesse]

Well guys I've strained my left arm from too much LAN gaming earlier in the week so I'm still in but not for a few days. What is the speed of one hand typing? ;)

[Rupert]

vilehelm I'm glad you didn't get your fro stuck in the bowl.

I too went to a restaurant once that served me something "special" and after I recovered I went back. When I was taken through the kitchen we found the tub of food and it was sitting there bubbling all on its own - basically fermenting. They are now closed for business.

Anyway, watching this thread with interest - thanks guys for all putting the effort in to get this up.

Cheers, Rupert

[Ricod]

Actually 20ts, the internet costs aren't really the problem. I live outside a village and basically they told me I should be content with the fact that we received sewer access ! Anyway, they told me we'd get cable (for 3 years now) so never got a normal modem. I can only internet when I'm at work (luckily I'm there for about 14 hours a day, even though I only work 8/9 hours or so (hmm ... sounds kinda pathetic) )

Vile, hope u recover soon ! People that cook food oughta now it takes 10 to 15 minutes to kill bacteria in a burger ! Don't they watch Discovery Channel ?!

[vilehelm]

ok, feeling better today (although i'm still taking a short day at work ;) ) , going to take another whack at the login and the look at pengie's fla.

have we decided on what the scope of this thing is going to be yet? "scope creep" can be a real project killer. let's really try and hammer that down this week if possible. we don't want the squirrel completely out of his tree with last minute changes and add-ons.

[pinkaboo]

aw poor Vile, glad to hear you are feeling more healthy again.

If it's any consolation I was sitting here commiserating with myself for feeling the effects of eating too much aloo chilli and curry on Sat, then I read your post and thought, "at least I'm not that bad!"

;o)

Seriously though, glad to see you are bouncing back ok, food poisoning can be REALLY nasty. You take care.

K

[red penguin]

Couldn't agree more with you on that one there Vile...Nail it down for sure this week...I've got a bunch of questions for the fuzzy fella...Where is he?

[20 Ton Squirrel]

Oy vey, what a morning. Busy-busy. Got questions? Find me on ICQ at #131824847. E-mail 'em to me. Catch me on the engine. I'm up and open to answer (if I'm around).

I'm swamped so I may be in another window. Cover me, I'm going in!

[vilehelm]

Well i'm going home to pass out again. Did a quick rework of the login scenario. I left it open to just dynamics rather than naming specific pages. I think there are times when we're going to have to jump out of the .swf and back to html but only when they don't have user name or password or nuttin

http://www.westwayne.com/interactive/experiment/aschat/login1.0_frame.htm

enjoy

[20 Ton Squirrel]

Perfect. That's exactly what I had envisioned, Vile. Koods. I'm back to the grind. Red, get back on the engine and we can chat. I'll keep an ear out for ya.

[20 Ton Squirrel]

Okay, I'm close to gnawing my own ear off trying to figure out how to get the site database and the engine to interact. In fact, I'm going to propose something a bit radical.

Sorry, Vile, gonna ask for another change in plans... I must preserve what little sanity I have left.

I propose this...

Since I'm too dumb to get the original idea to work, how about we put the link into the chat somewhere PAST a login? Or, alternatively, have the link redirect the user to a login if a cookie is not found. If they don't log in (or aren't registered) then they can't access the chat.

Another slight problem is that the cookie doesn't contain the user NAME, it has the user ID. Thus, without the site/engine interaction the use of the cookie is... well - USELESS. Ugh. Frustrating.

I'm at my wits end here. So, rather than froth and gibber, I'm going to code up the login procedure. Suggestions? Thoughts?

[vilehelm]

I'm not sure i follow the whole thing but the scenario is meant as a spring board. I assumed there were going to be changes. Roll with it my rotund friend.

Also, hit the forum board. You may find some flash/DB genius lurking there who can help us. Not that we all aren't friggin brilliant.

[Ricod]

I could be babbling here, but can't u just validate by ID then ? Or look up the user name that goes with the user id ? (the database IS relational right ?)

[vilehelm]

I think it will be fine for now. I don't think folks will mind an extra click as long as they know where they are going. (tends to be my experience).

My only other idea is to really create a second database that interrelates on some levels with the vBulletinDB. It would be smaller and probably only contain a few fields...that way you may be able to get it into a form that you could use. Not a DB programmer so i really don't know my ass from my elbow in this area.

woot

[Ricod]

I believe u mean a seperate 'table' within the database ? Its a bit redundant to communicate with multiple databases for something like that. If u need some database info, I have a pdf somewhere which is about mySQL, but contains useful info about database setups, the whole relational linkage, diff. tables and fields etc.
Do u want it ?

[20 Ton Squirrel]

I'm familiar with SQL given my hackish career, but I don't know much about mySQL... stuff like interfacing and querying the online database. I can speak the query, I just dunno how to set it up.

The other problem is getting the engine to pick up that query and read it. If mySQL runs on a port then I can interface with it and do it that way... otherwise I'd have to find some way for the engine to connect and speak to the HTTP server running on port 80.

Oy vey.

So, I'm moving forward. If you have any ideas or documentation that would help that would be cool. I'm gonna post up on the vBulletin forums out there about vBulletin user queries. Maybe someone will be nice enough to help.

[Ricod]

Well, apart from the online documentation (www.mySQL.com) I have a pdf concerning mySQL and PHP interaction (I still need to read it myself, but can't get myself to do it :( I'm having a fight with my home computer (it keeps resetting itself every so many seconds ...)) but I can't post it (3,52 MB)

Anyway, a lot of SQL queries work in mySQL with a few exceptions. (sigh) where are those database experts ? (I only now Access (yech ! ew ! arrgh !))

[red penguin]

Just going to pop my head in here for a sec to say I have a contact here who does this for a living. The mySQL PHP stuff that is. I'll pick his brain tonight/tomorrow. He did mention something about having a problem with the fact that the engine and the DB are not on the same server. DIRECT inquiry not possible. I think Squirrel knows that. But he mentioned a workaround that his company uses.

See if I can't get him to give me the answer....

There is hope.

But, like Vile, I don't know my ass from my elbow here either!

[20 Ton Squirrel]

Hey all!
Just wanted to make an actual post on PROGRESS... cuz we've made some.

Engine-side things are going great. As stated before, all of the initial objects have been set up and the engine can accept incoming connections from the client Red is building. We've done some testing on it and so far, so good! Way to go Red.

Also Engine-side I've coded the login method and it works like a charm. I still need to work out a creation method, but that won't be a problem.

On the engine there now are all sorts of tools to monitor and manipulate connections.

We've made some great progress thus far. Stop by the engine some time to natter on about it or just to check the place out.

I'm out!

[red penguin]

Just thought I'd add on to what HE said above me there. You know who, the rotund rodent...

I should find some time to test/experiment/code today and tomorrow. If anyone out there has any experience working with the XMLSocket, now's your chance to shine like the sun! Anyone willing to help in this process? I welcome EVERYONE with open arms! As Squirrel said, so far so good.

And get yourselves over to the haunt! It's a great way to familiarize yourselves with what is trying to be achieved! It'll raise questions about what you want/don't want...ideas...etc...

So get your copy TODAY, while supplies last, and join in on the fun of Wayland!

get it here (http://www.actionscript.org/forums/showthread.php3?threadid=8716)

[vilehelm]

Plus it be lotso'funn too! We have mixed drinks, mop buckets, spiked knuckles and pink has a plush 20t squirrell toy...

I'd say I blew a good hour and a half just watching them work and throwing in the occasional unhelpful comment and koosh.

[20 Ton Squirrel]

I say even if you DON'T have any coding experience it's a good thing to test out the engine. That's what you'll see in the Flash client anyway, why not familiarize yerself with it? C'mon, c'mon, it'll be FUN.

[red penguin]

I say we have a party...

CAUSE I HAVE OFFICIALLY TOPPED 20 TON SQUIRREL'S POST COUNT!

zippity-doo-dah-zippity-ay...my oh my.....what a

WONDERFUL DAY

[pinkaboo]

WHOOOOO HOOO!
congrats to you Red!
you sure whopped that overweight critter!

I'll make sure to bring a bottle of whiskey to Wayland for you, help you celebrate!

K

[20 Ton Squirrel]

I salute you saaaaah... honestly I expected someone to beat me sooner than this! Can't think of a better person to have bested my postitude, though. Congrats!

[red penguin]

Yeah, I've been on your heels for a while and I'm sure it'll go up and down...

But...Billy's gonna get us both any day now!

Thanks Pink...

[Ricod]

R U guyz telling me the Penguin talks more than the rodent ? :eek: There goes my entire grasp on reality !!

Congratulations Red ! May your deeds be spoken of by generations to come !

[tg]

no... red keeps his answers short and sweet.
if we wanted to find out who talked more, we would need to start counting words, and the 20t would blow us all away.

[Rupert]

congrats to the penguin!

[vilehelm]

questions.

Pengs i've been looking at the client (very friggin organized for a flightless aquatic waterfowl i must say) and i'm assuming there won't be a problem with resizing etc...when we get down to design. if so maybe we should figure out the dimensions of this thingie now. is that the case?

I'm assuming that it's going to take up as much screen as possible.

also is there anyway to have the @who running in a window to the side all of the time? sort of like mIRC again where you have a running tally of what's happenin in the rooms at any point in time or do we just want to leave it to buttons? maybe the @who command can refresh every minute or so automatically? (me don't know arm joint from posterior).

also, just a question for me own stoopid self...

...what are we gonna call this thing! (http://www.actionscript.org/forums/showthread.php3?s=&threadid=8983)

hey how do you catch a penguin? cut a circle out of the ice on the frozen ocean, put a vodka gimlet in front of it, when the penguin goes for the drink...you run up and kick it in the ICEHOLE...nya,nya,nya

...bet 20 thinks it's funny

[Jesse]

Short comments:
- Version 2 of the flow chart is perfect by my mind.
- mySQL is easy. If we have the user ID we can get the name no problems (prolly), I’ll look into that.

[Ricod]

yeah ... Isn't that sumthing like :

SELECT rowname from tablename WHERE UserId = variable for User ID

Or sumthing like that ... I can't post the mySQL - PHP pdf cuz its almost 4mb, but those who want it, lemme know and I'll e-mail it to u.

[20 Ton Squirrel]

Woot. We've really made progress, this is great. To answer Vile's question, I had plans on making a persistant Who list and it won't be that hard to do, but that'll come later. To give you an idea, I figure that it'll update every minute and maybe whenever a user logs in/out... but that might get hairy if we have a lot of users.

The complicated part about getting the site database to interact with the engine isn't really the setup of the mySQL or such... it's getting the engine to read IN a HTML page to get the data. THe engine can be it's own HTTP host, 'tis true, but it wasn't set up to be it's own HTTP browser. Rather than trying to read in an HTML thang what I might consider trying is opening it up as a FILE... that might work. I'll have to consult the gurus who created this engine to begin with.

As for what we'll call it... ummmm... Not Wayland or Chimera, those are names for projects I'm still working on. Heheh... how about once it's all said and done we hold a contest? Make a thread where people can make suggestions and we tally up the best sounding ones and put a poll out on that?

[red penguin]

Vile...the design is all you, my mopping friend...oops, I seem to have spilled my drink, mind? I stuck with the original dimensions as they are easy to scale...But again, I am taking backseat concerning design. I added buttons to test...Do you have #2?

I like the @who as a side thing...but it might get mushy when there are a lot on...

out for now...But I'd like to get the SIMPLE login enabled this weekend...Also, have we nailed down the scope or are we just running upfield taking things as they come?

Meeting?

[vilehelm]

Originally posted by 20 Ton Squirrel
Make a thread where people can make suggestions and we tally up the best sounding ones and put a poll out on that?

Squirrely!

Already started it... (http://www.actionscript.org/forums/showthread.php3?s=&threadid=8983)

[Jesse]

Since the gine can handle XML (it can right?) we can make a PHP script which spits out XML if the engine can't 'read' HTML.

[20 Ton Squirrel]

When I first volunteered this engine, I was fully gung-ho about it's ability to handle HTML and suchness. Since, I've discovered that the engine can spit out HTML, but it wasn't coded to read it in... same goes for XML. Well, XML isn't coded on there either but it's no biggie to code a quick thing for that.

It's not impossible to get the engine to read in stuff... it just delves into an area I'm not experienced with: speaking the protocol of a HTTP daemon. I can make a connection object and have it toss a line out for 216.89.24.180 on port 80 (which is this site's address and HTTP daemon port). The problem is getting the engine and this site's HTTP daemon to play nice. I'm coding blind here.

I think all I gotta do once I'm connected is send something like:

GET www.actionscript.org/20stupidpage.php?user=Jesse

And that SHOULD tell the HTTP daemon to toss over the page. But alas, I just get disconnected. So either I'm sending the request in wrong or the engine doesn't like what it's getting. I think that it's the latter of the two.

I'm still looking into this on the side of things and I'm exploring alternatives as well. Anyone know anything about HTTP daemon protocol?

[20 Ton Squirrel]

Okie... I was going to be all clever and funny by posting up a humorous tale about how I got it to work... but I'm too hungry. So suffer with the gist of it (which I'm sure you all prefer anyway)!

THE ENGINE NOW READS IN HTML/PHP/XML

Powerfully wootie stuff, I gotta say. I consulted the Ancient Ones who developed the engine and they pointed me in the right direction. Truth be told, I wasn't too far off! Just was missing a variable on a specific object. A PATHING ISSUE! *snicker*

Okay, this means that we need to put up a PHP page that simply queries if a user has been registered... we'll need to do it by either User ID or User Name. If you look at your cookie you'll see what I mean. The call for the page would look something like:

http://www.actionscripts.org/userdata.php?userID=11323

OR

http://www.actionscripts.org/userdata.php?username=20 Ton Squirrel

It will need to return a zero if the user doesn't exist or the user name and encrypted password if it does. I'm pretty sure that including the password is going to be a major security issue, even if it IS encrypted. Thoughts, anyone?

This is a major hurdle here, folks. Yea!!!

Righto, I'm off to the local Chinese dive for a some celebratory cashew chicken. WERD UP!

[Ricod]

I did a PHP tutorial on phpbuilder.net once, which tackled this by using a hidden variable in the call script, added the user name and hashed that. (or sumthing like that ...)

function UserSetTokens($UsrNameIn) {
global $HiddenHashVar,$UserName,$IdHash;
if (!$UserNameIn) {
$feedback .= ' Error - User name not init ';
return false;
}
$UserName=strtolower($UserName);
$IdHash= md5($UserName.$HiddenHashVar);
setcookie('UserName',$UserName,(time()+2592000),'/','',0);
setcookie('IdHash',$IdHash,(time()+2592000),'/','',0);
}

[Jesse]

Ricod - Where did you get MD5 from? I need that function to decrypt a string... Is it predefined in PHP somewhere? I hadn't considerred that.

[vilehelm]

I was going to email this to Pengs and then decided that it would be good to have this out for general consumption.

Hey Pengs, this sucker worked like a charm at home. I have a few comments...

Ignore my question about the buttons in my previous email, i get it. I wonder how my button labels got all out of alignment.???

I think the type size needs to come down a point or two. However i have on my redesign accomodated for a bigger window. This should solve a few problems. I like the readability of the return between things but It could get out of hand as far as adding lines to the log. It seems that the log begins to eat itself after a certain point. 20 is this true? If we have smaller type and a larger window we should be fine. Can we control letting in the output window?

Also ignore the file that i sent, I need to clean up the version that i sent to you. It was more of a working sketch.

I'm going to build the thing completely in Illustrator first and post a PDF for everyone to look at. Then we'll start converting it. So when you continue doing what you're doing just use the file you sent me previously.

the navigation worked like a charm! it seems like that disable direction might be overkill but if you want to go for it.

Also 20 that map looks good too, I think that we can make it a little more like an actual map (there be squirrels here!). Sort of a throw back to the RPG roots of the engine...ermm maybe that's another little side project that someone can take on...i know that Pink was itchin to jump in design wise.

right that's it, i'm gonna burn the midnite oil on this, fell asleep on the couch watching hockey and now i'm wide awake...

[red penguin]

As this is progress, and we have made some strides in the past week or so, I thought I'd take the opportunity to let everyone else who's following in on what Vile means by "this sucker worked like a charm"...

It is to the point where one can enter via a name and a password which has to already be existant on the engine. Once connected, you can do all you can do with the gMUD, but it's all from Flash. Toggle buttons allow you to shout, say, whisper, get your inventory, see who's where, look around...(mental note; make a look@ button...),there are simple directional buttons to move but we haven't yet put in the map...Soon...But, the point here is that it is working and we have successfully gotten the text to display and scrollers in place (...albeit the point problem, Vile...)

I guess some design will begin and as soon as Vile gets that PDF up for viewing, I suppose it'll be soon thereafter we should have something for Rico and his team...of which I am looking forward to anxiously!

Jesse: Can we have a look at this white board?

Vile: You said the "labels" were screwed up??? How?

[vilehelm]

I think I screwed them up. I was just assuming that the button labels woule be over the buttons and for some reason they where not. But maybe they're aligned dynamically. don't worry about it.

[Ricod]

Jesse, isn't md5 standard in php 4 ?

hmm ... Almost time ... must prepare for the coming battle :o hummmmmm ... a-hummmmmm ... a-hmmmmmmmmmmm .. .. ..

[Jesse]

Been busy, Will finish white board today.

[20 Ton Squirrel]

I checked over the build 5 today and loved it. Way to go Vile and Red. Looks great. I'll make some changes to the @who to make it more palatable for the client later on. I'm also in the midst of a feature to tell the client which exits are active each room you go into. Beyond that I'm tinkering with an automatic mapping feature. And, to address some concerns, I'm working some code up to make the engine a straight-up chat... just to see what it's like and stuff.

This is really shaping up nicely, folks. I didn't imagine it'd look so good. The client is better in many ways to GMUD and it seems stable enough to use in its stead. Way to go, everyone!

Tomorrow, the 18th of Feb, I will un-officially be taking a hiatus from all things computer related. I will descend upon the forest and rub two sticks together vigorously in an attempt to light a fire. I will then proceed to send you all messages via smoke signal. Catch ya Tuesday!

[red penguin]

Yes, way to go team! Looks great and works as expected for what we've done so far. Trying to integrate the @who but as is with BUILD_05, it doesn't display in the right textfield...However, just a question if modifying the return from the engine. Rico, is your team ready for the testing? We are quite eager to get some feedback! How many people do you think will be testing?

Squirrel: I'll be looking for smoke signals..Have a great day off!

[Ricod]

My dark minions total up to 11, so there will be 13 testers (including myself and I guess Mortimer will also test it at least once :) )

Where can we find what we need ?

* Vile, could u send me those pointers on beta testing ? *

[vilehelm]

RicoD - Yep, that was on the todo list today

By the way, what are the concerns about the straight chat environment? I never heard what those were...we can still throw things at eachother right?

Guess I'll have to wait till 20's back from playing Jeramiah Johnson.

[Ricod]

hmmm ... he might NEVER return ... for all we know he just found a squirrel paradise ... (like a cashew 'farm')

*throws a snowball*
-as the snowball flies through the air, leaving tiny flakes, an eerie sound can be heard. ffffffFFFFFFFSplash ! A direct hit !

[20 Ton Squirrel]

Jesse was wondering if there was going to be just a straight chat. I believe that he likes the environment but is concerned it's too obtruse for newbies just to ask some questions.

So what I'm doing is coding a toggle-feature into the engine. I'm putting all the communication for the chat on channels, which means that no matter where you are in the engine you can listen and participate.

[vilehelm]

That seems like it could be even more confusing but well see how it works out in testing. Probably the easiest thing to do is set up the lobby as the generic chat space. Frame that intro text in such a way that it explains the environment and gives them a quick intro. I was wondering if we we're going to have to tweak any text that way...

I understand the concerns as this is a little bit of a paradigm shift from a standard chat environment but it's not a huge one. in MIRC you have channels that you can jump back and forth from and in others you have "rooms" and in some others (like habbo and other graphical interfaces) you have physical navigation from space to space.

My concern is not to water it down too much as then it'll be just like everything else. We want to have some degree of differentiation product wise. Again I think testing is the key. If we see people abandoning the generic environment for something a little richer then I think the choice is clear.

One thing that we have working for us is that we already have a community in place to bolster the product. We aren't just sticking it out there and hoping for the best...we're already using this thing and are ready to populate it and welcome in the masses.

err, that's my three cents. This thing isn't "mine" obviously but i think those thoughts are worth considering.

[red penguin]

Well said, my friend...I'll see your three cents and raise you three...

I s'pose we'll have to get onto Wayland and have a meeting...Whose office? Or should we use the Conference Room for once?

[20 Ton Squirrel]

Red - quick progress update! I finished the code to send the client viable exits. It will receive the following each time a user moves from room to room:

CMND exits N,S,E,W,U

Naturally, you'll only get exits that exist. Thus if there was only an exit north, you'd get:

CMND exits N


And that'd be that. I've gotta run through what I've built for exits so far and change the secondary names to match. Even if an exit says staircase that can still be an up or down because of secondary names.

Foozle, I'm gone to fix them thar exits.

[Jesse]

Sorry team I know I'm what's holdin gus up partly. My whiteboard client is now basically complete except that I have no experience with XML Socket so I don't know how we're going to pass the XML over to the server... Who should I send the files to?

[red penguin]

Me..me..me!!!

Send the files to ME!

But to Vile and 20 as well...But I'll be trying initially the incorperation with the client, so...

MEMEMEMEME

[Jesse]

OK will do in about 30 mins.

[20 Ton Squirrel]

READ THIS NOTICE OR I'LL POKE YO EYES OUT! (http://www.actionscript.org/forums/showthread.php3?threadid=9873)