I would like to say that I’ve been working on TBDMMO, but I can’t aside from that I’ve looked a bit at the RakNet code reference and the official Ogre3d manual to set in my mind how I want to code this. I have also (unfortunately) thought up of two cool game ideas I’ve spent a little time on.

All I’ve done in the TBDMMO respect is convert the example code into solid, my-standard following declare-in-headers, implement-in-.cpp code. It’s really just a bunch of copy+paste, so I’m not claiming it to be work. However, it will give me a base to work off of, that base being what one can see if they run any of the Ogre3d demos (FPS counter (albiet broken because of a missing font or something), mouselook, and window-closing).

My school’s starting finals in two weeks from now, so I probably won’t get any more done until after then. But THEN I’m going on vacation to Florida, so… well… I’ll have my laptop but less than optimal internet if any. I might get something done, but that’s unlikely.

I hope the other programmers have better luck.

31ee384 said the following in a comment. It’s important everyone reads it, so I figured i’d post it here for your benefit.

“I’d just like to say one thing about streamlining the source code: making good source code is not only a necessity if you’re going to show it to other people—it also helps down the line in all phases of programming a successful project. Modularizing code makes it easy to compile for multiple systems, swap out core elements of networking/rendering/physics code, implement new features (!) and most importantly exterminate bugs.

My job is essentially to make the code more organized, but if you’re more technical you’ll understand it when I say that I’m writing heavily-commented header files with a plaintext prefix. This is a bit more than originally planned (I should be doing pseudocode) but I thought it would make the process just a bit faster. My pseudocode wouldn’t have many fewer lines, so it really doesn’t make a difference when I write it.

So far what I’ve done is think up an xml-based format for creating various complex models for use in the game world. Eavan should be working on making a graphical editor for these files, so the artists don’t have to muck around with it. This editor will hopefully take longer to make than it takes me to plan the TBDMMO source, so we can immediately switch to TBDMMO development when it’s finished. (For those of you who are freakishly anti-xml, I’m going to look into the possibility of having “compiled” object files, where the editor exports the file as non-xml, getting rid of needless tags. These will be 100% non-human-readable, but with a proper editor readability won’t be necessary. This also makes the client graphics more or less encrypted, which is (at least for me) freakin’ sweet.)”

Well said. :D

Since his comment here, we’ve decided to abandon the XML format. Instead we’re just going for a straight-up graphics thing. (I’m so eloquent.)

Hooray. Development is going to go faster now, now that we have a ‘Code Archetect!’

Basically, the new member of our staff, 31eee384 from GalacticGaming.net (Click it, you know you want to.) has joined the team in hopes of streamlining and commenting our source code (We might make it open source someday. :D) and creating templates and whatnot.

In a nutshell, he makes sure my ideas are feasible. He also knows lots of game terms and has corrected a number of these posts. For example:

• When I said ‘buildings are fully destructible’ I meant killable, not destructible. Destructible apparently means you can rip in apart because every part of the building is a physics object, like it was made of building blocks. While this would be awesome, it’s just not possible. What I meant was each building has a set amount of HP. As HP decreases at set points shrapnel falls off the building, and once it reaches 0 it dies. So not fully destructible.
• 31eee384 made me realize that I’ve been really ambiguous with my references on ‘phasing’ or ‘sharding’. Phasing or Sharding is when something changes JUST from your point of view. (If you burn a village for a quest, it’s just burned from your point of view, everyone else sees it normally.) We will not do phasing or sharding at all. If you burn a village, it burns for everyone.

GMs play the rarely-seen gods of the TBD world. Each GM is themed to their personality and can ‘bless’ items with their power. To start the game, there will be three gamemasters. Though their names are unknown as of now, they each have a theme. We only have two themes ready, the third gamemaster is yet unknown.

The two themes we have are ‘justice’ the patron saint of paladins and preists, and ‘entropy’ the patron saint of hunters and geomancers.

Justice favors order, and gives blessings to cities that thrive in diplomatic relationships. Justice also defends weaker players and the innocent.

Entropy wants return to the wild. Entropy targets cities and attempts to reclaim the land for forests. Entropy grants boons to those who are unaffiliated with large organizations.