Binary packages for Ember 0.7.1 available

Just a quick update that we're now providing binary packages of Ember 0.7.1.

We're currently providing these for 64-bit Linux, 32-bit Linux and Windows.

To run the Linux packages you must first make sure that the file is executable.

Ember 0.7.1 released

The Worldforge 3d client Ember version 0.7.1 has been released and is now available from the WorldForge download site.

Ember is a client for the WorldForge project. It allows you to both play in and edit virtual worlds.
This release focus on improving the editing capabilities, allowing for much easier world creation.

• Export and import of entities and worlds.
• Much improved entity editor.
• Ability to edit and debug entity minds.
• Detect local servers and connect as admin directly.
• Many bug fixes, improvements and optimizations.

This version can be downloaded from the sourceforge download site, at the following locations:

• ember-0.7.1.tar.bz2
• ember-media-0.7.1.tar.bz2

At this time we do not provide precompiled packages.

Note that if you compile from source, you will need to install the content of ember-media-0.7.1.tar.bz2 to PREFIX/share/ember/media or use the “make releasemediarsync” make target.

More information can be found at the Ember site.

All bug reports should be posted at the Launchpad.

Cyphesis 0.6.2 release

Cyphesis version 0.6.2 has been released and is now available from the WorldForge download site.

Cyphesis is a small to medium scale server for WorldForge games, with builtin AI. This version includes the demo game Mason which is currently in development. This release is intended for server administrators wishing to run a Mason server and World developers developing new worlds or game systems. It is primarily a bugfix release which fixes a serious crash issue.

Major changes in this version:

• Fix for a possible crash related to wielded entities and destruction.
• Addition of a new “spawner” property

Source code can be downloaded from here:

Source Code tar.bz2

Eris 1.3.22 Release

Eris version 1.3.22 has been released and is now available from the WorldForge download site. Eris is the WorldForge client-side session layer, used by many existing clients. This is a development release, as the API may change prior to the final release of Eris 1.4.0. However, any changes should be minor and easy to incorporate into clients; testing is recommended and appreciated. Changes:

• Ability to connect to a local socket has been added.
• Support for connecting using a “sys” account.
• Handling of the avatar being deleted.

Source code can be downloaded from the following locations:

• Source Code .bz2
• Source Code .gz

Google Summer of Code 2013 report: Samuel Kogler

The Google Summer of Code 2013 is now complete. Samuel Kogler worked during the summer on improving the terrain rendering component in Ember.
We've previously used a component called the PagedLandscapeSceneManager2 for our terrain rendering. This component however is both unmaintained and has some design deficiencies which makes it ultimately unsuitable for what we want to achieve with the worlds in Worldforge. Samuel's task over the summer has been to bring the newer and more flexible Ogre Terrain Component into Ember.
Apart from the work he's been doing on Ember he's also submitted many changes to Ogre, both to core Ogre functionality and to the aforementioned Terrain Component.
We're very pleased with the work he's done, as well as having to work alongside with him. It's been an absolute joy to see his progress.
Below is his own presentation of the work he's done.
As he's based his work on the not yet released Ogre 1.9 branch we haven't yet merged his code into Ember master; as soon as Ogre 1.9 is released we'll commence that work. Until then his code can be seen over at his Github fork.

Cyphesis 0.6.1 released

I just recently released Cyphesis 0.6.1. The official announcement is over at the Worldforge site.

This is the first release after I took over from Alistair as maintainer. The focus, as well as with the upcoming Ember release, is fully on implementing features to make it easier for world authors.

This follows the strategy I laid out when taking over maintenance duties in April. In order for Worldforge to attract new developers and world builders we must make it much, much easier to actually create worlds. A crucial part of this is making sure that any changes done on the server actually are persisted between server restarts. Previously this wasn't true, as no "minds" were persisted. That meant that all of the behaviour and knowledge of any creature or character was wiped out when the server shut down.
That of course made it quite hard to iteratively construct an interesting world. Not so anymore!

But not only that; it's now also much easier to both alter and inspect minds. This was also a source of frustration previously, as there was no good way as a world author to interact with the minds. While a crude mechanism for inserting new goals was available, this didn't really cut it. Especially when goals malfunctioned or behaved in non-intuitive ways. Trying to figure out why the woodcutter wouldn't cut down the tree one meter in front of him was nigh impossible.
All of this is now improved as it's now possible to add, delete, alter and inspect goals. The latter feature is a god send when constructing behaviour or implementing new goals, since it's now easy to see exactly what a certain NPC is thinking.

However, in order to fully use these editing feature you must run the latest version of Ember. There will be a 0.7.1 release shortly; we're currently working out some final issues. In the meantime, if you want to try these new features out you should run Ember from the Git master branch, preferably through the Hammer script.

Exporting and importing in Ember

The last couple of weeks I've been working on improved authoring capabilities in Ember and Cyphesis. One of the most important features is the ability to both export and import entities from and into servers.

This allows a world author to save a snapshot of the world to local disk, and later on restoring the world as it was in the snapshot. There are multiple usage scenarios, but one that immediately springs to my mind is the improved ability to perform iterative world editing. By being able to reset the world back to a known working state it's much easier to try out new configurations and behaviour.

All work is currently being done on separate branches of both Ember and Cyphesis. The following video shows the status of this feature some weeks ago; it has progressed even more since.