My question is, is this an acceptable approach? One of the reasons I'm considering this is because it seems to be a pain in the ass in Unity to achieve this.

Let me know what you guys think!

But things are settling down and work is getting pretty interesting so I found out what I was allowed to talk about at work online and will hopefully be posting about that soon-ish (hope to get a real post out tonight).

My work keeps me primiarily in Flash/Flex and working closely with Electroserver so I will try to cover some of aspects of virtual world design and develop, multiplayer games and my new project, a Facebook game.

So check back later if any of that sounds interesting to ya and hopefully I'll have a post or two!

And this actually works really well for me and was fairly simple to set up, so here ya go:

1. Check out this post I already wrote on how to forward a port on your VM for the host to hit.
2. Download Cygwin.
3. Start SSH on your server - Google around that. Will depend on your distro
4. Open Cygwin and run this : ssh username@ipaddress
5. Using Filezilla, you can SFTP into your VM using the same username/password you used in Cygwin.

And there ya go. Sanity maintained.

lmaopirate has joined
[11:56]    lmaopirate: ARRR ME HEARTIES
[11:56]    lmaopirate fires a cannon at lolninja.
[11:56]    roflsamurai: ahhhhh!
[11:56]    lmaopirate has disconnected: Client Quit
[11:57]    lolninja: lol wtf

In case you are not sure what a MUD is, this is a brief description grabbed from wiki :

MUDs combine elements of role-playing games, hack and slash, interactive fiction, and online chat. Players can read or view depictions of rooms, objects, other players, non-player characters, and actions performed in the virtual world. Players typically interact with each other and the world by typing commands that resemble a natural language.

And if you don't know what Zork is... Leave. Just go.

Anyways, making the basic nodejs server to handle limited verbs was pretty simple. Ex:
Server:

[code]
var http = require("http");
var url = require("url");
var fs = require("fs");
var sys = require("sys");
var qs = require("querystring");
var send404 = function(res){
res.writeHead(404);
res.write('404');
res.end();
}

var server = http.createServer(function(req,res)
{
var path = url.parse(req.url).pathname;
sys.puts(path);
switch (path)
{
case "/":
fs.readFile('mud/index.html', 'utf8', function(err, data)
{
if(err) {
res.writeHead(500, {});
res.end();
throw err;
}

res.writeHead(200, {
'Content-Length': data.length
, 'Content-Type': 'text/html'
});
res.write(data);
res.end();
});
break;

case "/command":
var commands = qs.parse(url.parse(req.url).query).commands;
handleCommands(commands);
break;
default:
if (/\.(js|html|swf)$/.test(path)){
try {
var swf = path.substr(-4) == '.swf';
res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': swf ? 'application/x-shockwave-flash' : ('text/' + (path.substr(-3) == '.js' ? 'javascript' : 'html'))});
res.write(fs.readFileSync(__dirname + path, swf ? 'binary' : 'utf8'), swf ? 'binary' : 'utf8');
res.end();
} catch(e){
send404(res);
}
break;
}

send404(res);
break;
}
});

server.listen(8000);

function handleCommands(commands)
{
var commandArr = commands.split(" ");
verbs(commandArr[0]);
}

function verbs(v)
{
switch(v)
{
case "n":
case "north":
sys.puts("Moving north");
break;
case "s":
case "south":
sys.puts("Moving south");
break;
}
}
[/code]

Client :

[code]
$(function(){
var commandObj = {
commands: document.getElementById('commands').value
}

$.get("http://localhost:8000/command", commandObj,
function(data)
{

}
, "json");
});
[/code]

So that just handles north/n and south/s but you can see how it would progress. Which should lead you to the problem I hit when I added the "south" command block - That is going to be one massive switch statement. So instead of continuing forward with my massive switch I decided to think about it yesterday and I think I came up with a solution that I will use also in Lantern for my crafting system.

The system relies on the item know what is can do and containing all the information that would make it able to control itself instead of a large switch/case on my part. And this whole set up is made 100 times easier because I'm going to be using mongodb.  Here's some pseudo code to give you an idea of what I'm talking about:

[code]

{
type:"Room",
exits:
{
north:{desc:"You see an exit to the north",room:3242},
south:{desc:"There's a small door that seems to be locked",room:123}
},
description: "You're in a big room with two doors.",
items:"123,63,7456,34,99,4563,215789,45"

commands:
{
look:{desc:"The room you are in is stupidly large with only two tiny doors, one to the north and a seemingly locked one to the south."};
yell:{desc:"You shout at the top of your lungs and you just hear your voice echoing mockingly off the walls."}
}
}

{
type:"Item",
id:123,
description: "The rock is small and perfectly circular.",
commands:
{
take:{desc:"You take the rock and put it in your backpack.",callback:"addToInventory"};
}
}

{
type:"Item",
id:99,
description: "A small glass bottle filled with an unknown liquid."
commands:
{
combine:{desc:"Blah blah", callback:combineWith, ingredients:4345, creates:8456}
}
}

[/code]

As you can see with a system like this, each item is responsible for knowing everything about it and the other items it interacts with. While this make be more difficult to create up front, I feel that once the system is in place I could easily use this in Lantern, a MUD or really any game going forward.

Or maybe I'm brutally over thinking the problem. Is there a better way to handle item relations and verbs?  Would a massive switch/case with all the different verbs I want be the way to go?  Even if I got that path, I need a similar structure to above just for the content. And then added a simple onetime use command like "lick" or something would require new code instead of just text.

Let me know what you think. I will be starting on code like this soonish for Lantern and would like to have a method pinned out. Right after I figure out the mapping issues I'm having ^^

A feature that hasn't been fully scoped out yet, but roughly exists in my head is the crafting system for lantern (another post later) which will rely heavily on a rather different stat system, but that's another post as well. The crafting system will be similar to that you find in many other games when it comes to the end result. Players will be able to create items from raw materials to sell. The big difference is if I make a sword and you make a sword, these swords could end up being very different.  The quality of the sword, it's bonuses and other attributes will depend on the maker. For the market this means that items won't all be priced the same and players will need to figure out what is attributes are  valued when making and buying certain items.

The next interesting note is there will only be a handful of NPC's that sell items. Most of the items in the game will end up being player made.

A third factor is that this game will maintain a living universe. This means that rare drops from a certain boss/challenge will likely only happen the once. This means there will actually be items in the game that only one person will ever have.

Fourthly with monsters having limited to no drops a player will almost be forced to play the market to make money. That's right. No grinding for loot. You can grind for everything else but that

And finally, markets will be localized. What I mean by this is that if you put an item for sale in a town 'a', those in town 'b' can't see it. The issue with this, if I want the system to remain logical, is how the player can have an item on sale in town if they aren't there? A few story idea's have crossed my mind, but the one I think I'm going to go with is a group who offers you handle sales of items for a small percentage.

With all these different factors, my intention to allow the market to have the freedom to grow as it will (no imits on prices),  all players being able to craft to some extent and the ability to have players run a monopoly, I believe this could be a very interesting system.

Firstly, I am using JS on the front end for my map. I've decided to go with jQuery as my library since  I find it makes things similar to AS3 which is where I'm most comfortable.

Next, I'm using nodeJS for the server. I've never before used anything but apache and it's really different for me to handle the way it serves pages.

Since I'm using nodeJS and I'm trying new things, I decided to use mongoDB for the database. This is the first time I've used something other than MySQL so you can image the shock for me when I first started storing objects or when I had to set up a driver. The one that looked most promising to me and the one I went with in the end is Christv's node native mongodb driver.

Finally, since my map system for Lantern will have real time updates I decided to lean on socket.io to handle my clients/communicate. This sits nicely on top of nodeJS but was the one that gave me the most trouble. First with it's repo and the zip's not having all the necessary files and then trying to figure out where the hell all the files belong. The client folder belongs in the root of the file you are running in node just in case anyone is wondering.

And as it turns out, today I was finally able to get all these different components running through nodeJS on my Ubuntu VM. Over the next few days I hope to be able to merge all these different tests into a single working example that I can hand to a few friends maybe that will be interested in helping.

But anyways, this setup is coming along nicely and it pleasant to see all the pieces fall in line. Hopefully the login;register will be rewritten soon to use with new system without too much trouble.

v0.1

• Player creatation/login
• Some sort of design - rough
• A working home page - This break down into:
  • Inventory
  • Player stats
  • Equipable items
• A working map page
  • Players can see other players on the map and move around
  • Can engage in combat
  • Map will update as players move
  • Actual art and proper layout
• Admin tools for:
  • Item/NPC/Creature/Quest creatation
  • Map editting tool - Torn on how to make this tool. If I use AIR it would be much faster for me to make and would, I think, run faster with all the elements beinging on the local machine.  Web based has the bonus of access from anywhere. I'm leadning towards AIR but I'll put more thought into this after I get the map mostly working with nodejs

v0.2 - Private alpha

• Forum
• Parties
• A 30% (at least) complete map with art
• NPC with basic quest

v0.3

• player levels/skills/stats/crafting options complete

v0.4

• Complete implementation of the living universe quest system
• Game libraries - Records of the games history

v0.5

• First major story arch added.
• Creature AI
• Creature population

v0.6

• Map art 75% complete
• Market

v0.7

• Populate world with towns/npcs

v0.8- Beta

• Site's final art/layout
• Minor quests and major arch 2

v0.9

• Balancing
• Load testing / optimizations
• Bug fixing

v 1.0 - Launch

• Donatation page
• Site Ads
• Ad campagain
• Dance party

This is a rough map I made in a few minutes for my friend William aka jetfx (http://jetfx.livejournal.com/). William is a cartographer, a world builder freak and an aspiring author. He will hopefully be helping me with my maps and story for Lantern as we move forward. Whenever he has a better map that the pretty epic one I drew, I'll post it for you all to see.

*UPDATE*

William, being pretty damn quick, thought my map looked too crappy to share so he cleaned it up for me as you can see. I decided to leave mine so you can see how much better he is and why I'm pretty stoked he's agreed to help.