Saturday, March 29, 2014

Git Excited

Open Source

After much discussion and thinking on the matter we feel now is a good time to move our project from being closed source to being open source. YAY!!!!

This allows you to check-out our code, and make improvements as you see fit.
And request a pull request of your changes to have them reviewed and added.

You can check out the code here: https://github.com/LiamKarlMitchell/InfiniteSky

We have high hopes that by embracing open source, anyone can help improve the server code and use it as a resource to learn more about the exciting world of mmorpg server coding.

This project started off as an educational project, we wanted to see if we could make a server side emulator for Twelve Sky without the exploits and hacks to bring back the game that you loved. Little did we know just how much efort and work that takes. Totally difficult with 2ish people. So help out, get involved.

When the server is finished enough to be considered playable and enjoyable we will organize hosting servers so people can play. We have a few contacts who have expressed an interest in hosting servers when this is finished. So we will possibly be working with them for sorting something when the time comes.

If you want to talk about server side emulation and development of this project feel free to add me on skype it is mb10241, or to email me at liamkarlmitchell@gmail.com

Donations
Personally, I have been hesitant to accept donations even though quite a few people have offered. Because I did not feel I was providing the community with anything worth while. But since I am now providing all my work/knowldge free of charge, I am okay with this.

Working on a project of this size takes a lot of time and dedication.
The progress has been slow yes, but if you appreciate our work then go for it.
Maybe we could get enough to hire some developers full time wouldn't that be nice?

We are now accepting donations to go towards further development or hosting.
Feel free to leave a comment/request for us to work on.



Things on the way
I will be working when I can such as after work or in weekends to get these things done.
  • Implement world server so we can login to world again. (It works in my old code but this new code base solves a slight design flaw that we had.)
  • Clean up the code
  • Provide Documentation using jsdoc. This template looks really nice
  • Provide Launcher and DLL source code and instructions on building them.
  • Forums to communicate on better for developers.
  • Public read access with (trusted people) write access to our google docs which contain information/research we have done.
  • Google hangout talks with lead developers, ask questions, discuss bugs and plan what to work on etc

I suggest you learn to program JavaScript and help us, programming can be quite fun and rewarding.

http://www.codeavengers.com/
http://jessefreeman.com/game-dev/intro-to-programming-for-games-with-javascript/
http://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com/articles/how-to-learn-three-js-for-game-development--gamedev-11787
http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/javascript-ajax/the-best-way-to-learn-javascript/
https://egghead.io/lessons/core-javascript-function-scope-basics
http://codecombat.com/

Or see any more of the learn javascript online tutorials.
Best way to learn is to get in and make something.
A game of hang man or tic tac toe, black jack, guess the number/jackpot etc something simple.

Software you might want to get
Software we find great to use for developing a server side emulator: Totally worth the cost.
Sublime Text is A great source code/text editor you can get it here http://www.sublimetext.com/
010 Editor is the best hex editor I have ever used http://www.sweetscape.com/010editor/