Spring RTS Engine

I could finish the network handling upgrade I'm working on (fixes client limitation, slowdowns, and crashes), and add some proprietary code to authenticate accounts with PURE product keys...

could.

@Pxtl: hey, it's fine, I really didn't expect that to happen. Gotta live with what's possible, y'know?

@aegis: I've already said I don't have the kind of money that dev-time is worth up-front. You can do it speculatively, and we can negotiate a percentage and I'll hope it works when you deliver it, or pass until I have money to spend. I certainly am not asking anybody to work for free on something like that.

does this mean you will work on merc squad some more?

Maybe. But there are certain things I'd like to see added to the engine, first. More about that later, if it ever matters again.

aegis wrote:I could finish the network protocol upgrade I'm working on (fixes client limitation, slowdowns, and crashes), and add some proprietary code to authenticate accounts with PURE product keys...

could.

Out of curiosity, are there any API dox for [strike]TAS Server[/strike] uberserver? Just to see how feasible it would be - I assume it's all socket-based.

feasible what would be?

Argh wrote:

It's not a good plan to wait until pure has shipped live at stardock to announce to the world at large that you've gone commercial...

Well... again, this has to do with stuff I haven't been talking about, but let's say that while I haven't done a perfect job, and we haven't ever penetrated the largest online mags (no PCGamer article for us, yet) we've been trying to make all of that happen, with a patient strategy of news releases and such. And a ModDB announcement will be made over the next 24 hours or so, now that we have Stardock's official blessing.

I just thought that I'd talk to y'all first, before I go do that. You guys deserved to hear about it first.

Heh, ok, just thought I'd give you some friendly advice. I've been following the market trends a little bit recently and I just thought it might be useful.

Do the game trailers thing though, they're HUGE, they have a huge following, and they're relatively easy to pierce for grassroots studios.

If you explain the situation to someone in charge they're entirely likely to outright post your video. Meaning, for a short time anyways, frontpage exposure on a MAJOR gaming outlet.

Argh wrote:What I know is that they have a key that's generated for each order, as part of their GOO system of "portable DRM". I don't know whether they'd ever let me see that end of their operations, though.

What would you encrypt though? All code is opensource and could be rebuilt without the GOO, all game data must be unencrypted for the Spring engine (and I have a feeling that the decoder must be GPL if it's connected to Spring) and cannot be modified between clients or you get a desync.

Dunno, tbh.

I assume it's some sort of thumbprint, maybe a file or series of files that are basically just inert and don't actually do anything.

I don't care about any of that, tbh, and if I get a choice about it I'll leave the DRM off the game. Don't see any point, the only place I'm concerned about is multiplayer, where I don't want hacked copies overwhelming the server. Which assumes, of course, that the game's popular enough for that to be an actual problem.

your selling ca chickens huh?

Argh wrote:

you don't need multiple servers to run a lobby - tasserver doesn't support load balancing.

Tobi will have to speak to that, but basically he said that maybe you could do it at the switch- put the first X users on one server, the next X on another, etc., and do the load-balancing that way. Or am I just totally wrong, and there's no way to scale it without lots of static IPs? I'm a blithering idiot when it comes to that stuff, and I have never even seen the server software, so I have no idea what it's going to take.

Servers you buy have static IP (pretty much?) always.

And yeah, while TASServer doesn't support load balancing, you could - as a last resort of course, fixing your lobby server is a way better option - put up multiple servers and use round robin DNS to randomly put users in one of the two lobby servers.

Of course the users on server 1 can not communicate then with users on server 2, though you could set up a chat relay between some of the more important channels.

Besides that you'll have quite some issues to solve with keeping the accounts synchronized, I just realize... Making TASServer/uberserver faster/working is probably way easier in any case.

Anyway, congrats on the deal and gl selling stuff

So CA chickens is going to be included (because it cant) ??

aegis wrote:feasible what would be?

Just (a) locking down the Masterserver so that only a web-app could create new accounts, and
(b) creating accounts from the web-app.

that's really easy with uberserver

Except that it doesn't work properly, or we would have been on uberserver already

can you sell models that your already using in your commercial title

http://www.turbosquid.com/Search/Artists/xenoargh

Otherside wrote:can you sell models that your already using in your commercial title

http://www.turbosquid.com/Search/Artists/xenoargh

Depends how he's selling them. Exclusive? No. Usage rights? Yes.

That discussion probably belongs in another thread.

I guess it's time for me to quit posting about what I'm doing with P.U.R.E. here. It's kinda pointless, since now all of the favored mods + stickies get most of the screen on my window... I can't even see the topmost post in the Forum that this stuff is supposedly "sub" to. And I'm not willing to participate in this, either, for the same reasons that I've continued to boycott the front page. Lock my threads, I mean it this time. I'll be around for engine stuff and to help people, but I'm tired of this nonsense, and the views I get here are like 2% of my views a month now.

why isnt this locked yet. really

Tobi wrote:Except that it doesn't work properly, or we would have been on uberserver already

not completely accurate.