Subject: [Nel] Stability for at least a test product?

From: Tony Hoyt <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 16:25:31 -0400

How do things look at the moment for a stable working application? 
Perhaps someone could set up a simple virtual chat world, something
where people could at least walk around a open field and perform basic
interactions?  It would be nice to get some real deminstrations of this
available for the public to see.

  Plus I'm too lazy to do it myself :-/

  Tony

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From: "Vianney Lecroart" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 15:01:59 +0200

Hello tony,

You know, Snowballs is exactly what you want, it's a virtual chat in a snow
world where you can walk and throw snowballs and so on.

Vianney Lecroart
---
lead network programmer / nevrax.com
icq#: 6870415
homepage: http://ace.planet-d.net
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Tony Hoyt" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Sent: Monday, October 22, 2001 10:25 PM
Subject: [Nel] Stability for at least a test product?

> _______________________________________________
> Nel mailing list
> [email-masked]
> /mailman/listinfo.cgi/nel
>

---

From: Tony Hoyt <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2001 08:24:59 -0400

Last Night I tried to build the Snowballs client and ran into a wall
trying to build Nel.

  I built STLport-4.5 in C:\STLport-4.5.  And FreeType 2 in
C:\FreeType.  And then was ready to build Nel 3D only at this point.

  Now, What happened appeared to be an issue with redeclirations of
various STL types.  So I think the problem may be the Include and
Library directory listings for Visual Studio.  It was all durring the
compileing phase, right from the start.  Could someone go over the
INSTALL directions for nel because some of it does not make sence.  For
example

quote -------------------------
      Setup Visual C++ to find the NeL include and library files :

         - Add the NEL include directory to the "Library Files"
category.
           ex: D:/test/code/nel/include

         - Add the STLPort library directory to the "Library Files"
category.
           ex: D:/test/code/nel/lib

/quote -------------------------

I understand that D:/test/code/ is the root directory for my nel files,
which I grabed from the CVS just last night, but still those lines make
little sence.  Could someone please go through the installation again to
make sure that it's proper and that INSTALL file is correct. Thanks

  Tony

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From: "Vianney Lecroart" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2001 15:39:04 +0200

Hi there,

We made few clean up in services directory (nelns). pac_service, log_service
and time_service are removed from the CVS because they are deprecated.
You don't need them to run a shard anymore.
The universal time system was removed because it was too much game dev
dependant. We use NTP to sync our server and if a service need the time, it
uses CTime class in misc module.
If you want a specific game time management, you have to create your own
class.
So now a service starts, it doesn't connect to time_service anymore.
The file unitime.cpp is always available in the net module but the class was
renamed from CUniTime to _CUniTime and is deprecated so don't use it. We
planned to remove it in less than few month.

Regards,
Vianney Lecroart
---

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From: Cedric Valignat <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2001 18:51:42 +0200

Hello Tony,

> INSTALL directions for nel because some of it does not make sence.  For

In Visual, you heve to set up that option in the menu
"Tools->Options->Directories".

There you will see differents categories "Include Files", "Library Files",
 etc ...  and a list of directories for each category.

You have to make sure that the STLPorts include directory is BEFORE the
visual include directory in the "Include Files" directory list.

Otherwise there is an other mistake in that file:

   You have to add the NeL src directory in the "Include Files"
   directory list :

      ex: D:/test/code/nel/src

>          - Add the NEL include directory to the "Library Files"

Oops there is a mistake is not the "Library Files" category but the
"Include  Files" category ...

>          - Add the STLPort library directory to the "Library Files"

... and here, that's not "the STLPort library directory" but 
"NeLlibrary directory"

> make sure that it's proper and that INSTALL file is correct. Thanks

I will fix the INSTALL file, sorry about that.

Cedric.

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From: Tony Hoyt <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2001 08:30:11 -0400

Well I knew how to update my include and library paths so that they
included the desired directories in question BUT, that didn't seem to
help at all.  Here is a listing of my include and library directories
for your review.

Include DIRS
C:\STLPORT-4.5\STLPORT
c:\FREETYPE-2.0.5\INCLUDE
f:\WORKING\NEVRAX\CODE\NEL\SRC
F:\WORKING\NEVRAX\CODE\NEL\INCLUDE
c:\apps\DX_sdk\include
C:\Apps\VisualStudio\VC98\INCLUDE
C:\Apps\VisualStudio\VC98\MFC\INCLUDE
C:\Apps\VisualStudio\VC98\ATL\INCLUDE

Libary DIRS
c:\STLPORT-4.5\LIB
c:\FREETYPE-2.0.5\OBJS
F:\WORKING\NEVRAX\CODE\NEL\LIB
c:\apps\DX_sdk\lib
C:\Apps\VisualStudio\VC98\LIB
C:\Apps\VisualStudio\VC98\MFC\LIB

And attached to this document is a tar.gz of the errors I recieve with
Visual Studio 6.0 with SP5 installed.  Why is the errors file a tar.gz
you ask?  It's just a text file.. that's 257K big.  :-/  tar.gz makes it
3K.  So with that.  Let me know what you guys come up with.  I'll talk
to you later.

  Tony

p.s. DX_sdk is my directX 8.0 SDK installation.

---

From: David Artiga Torrijos <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2001 14:42:03 +0200 (CEST)

Hi. I have the same problem. These errors doesn't appear if using STL-4.0.

---

From: "Vianney Lecroart" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2001 15:26:49 +0200

Okay,

In the 4.5 version STLPort decided to rename all there MACRO function so,
__STL_CALL macro doesn't exist anymore. It was remplaced by _STLP_CALL so, I
removed  STLPort macro in common.h and now it runs fine with STLPort 4.0 and
4.5
You can wait this night for the CVS update or remplace all __STL_CALL in
common.h by __cdecl
Thanks for the report.

Vianney Lecroart
---

---

From: Tony Hoyt <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2001 09:47:00 -0400

> You can wait this night for the CVS update or remplace all __STL_CALL in

  Thank you for the quick responce to fix this. I'm not going to get a
chance to look at this untill later today (I'm on East Coast USA, EST -5
GMT) so most likely I'll be able to just grab the lastest updates from
the CVS and try then.  Hoody hoo!  Now we just have to see how Snowballs
will run on a tnt2 Ultra. :-/  I hope my P3 800 will keep up.

  Tony

---

From: Tony Hoyt <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2001 08:15:06 -0400

Oookay, Well I got it to compile! I got it to run!  And then, a couple
of things happened. 

  One thing was I had to dig around for a copy of a 3d dll. I didn't
take down the information on the name of things this time like perhaps I
should have, but basicly it looked like it was looking for a nel 3d dll
and couldn't find it.  I found it in code/nel/lib and when I (hack)
copied it into my build directory everything was fine.

  Then it actuall ran! (After I found client.cfg too) But started asking
for data files... And in the end, the 0.2 data files didn't work with
it, so now i have to wonder, has ANYONE beyond the Nel team actually
have a working version of Snowballs?  I feel like i"m the first one
building this thing, But I can't be.  Well in any case, let me know
where I can get the latest data for Snowballs.  Thanks.

  Tony

p.s. I did end up haveing to do the following things to get the project
compiled.

  1) libXML is required.
  2) Needed glext.h
  3) Did manage to find a copy of OpenGL 1.1 headers and lib, although
I"m not sure if these where actually required.
  4) I did download OpenAL but didn't compile it, I did include it in my
headers list but I'm not sure what affect that had overall.  But in the
end, It did compile.

  Thanks.

---

From: "Vianney Lecroart" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2001 14:53:13 +0200

Yeah Tony!
Good job!

You re right, we didn't distrib (as I know) the data for the last snowballs
(snowballs 0.2 is the *old* version).
Anyway, you can download the *UNOFFICIAL* (there's no official one)
snowballs data on my website (there's also the .exe in the .zip ;)
You have to know that we are not sure that the client runs with older card
than geforce card and if yes, it'll be really slow.

The snowballs client runs at 12fps with a athlon800 with a geforce1 DDR
(yes, it's slow but our target is next year pc) and you could modify the
client.cfg to accelerate the landscape by decrease the quality.

Vianney Lecroart
---

---

From: Tony Hoyt <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2001 09:10:53 -0400

You've had a client all this time and.. and.. :-/  Well at least I
found some documentation bugs. Oh and btw, NEL does not compile with
STLPort 4.5.  Something about std::max. I'll get the error codes later. 
In the mean time I'm checking out the snapshots on your website.  They
do look really nice, But ya, I may have to 1) Lower my resolution and 2)
Lower the detail In hopes to keep the frame rate up.  12fps on a gForce
1 will most likely mean 4fps on a tnt2 if I"m lucky.  Looks like it's
time to upgrade to the new gforce 3 ti200.

  In the mean time I'll try and grab the data tonight and try again. 
HOpefully I'll actually run this time!  And I say keep it up on forceing
next years technology because it will mean in the end a more attractive
product.  While users may not like upgradeing, gamers are a breed that
are used to being low on cash :-)  So if I get this compiled, I should
also be able to build my own server and make my own world, correct?  Hmm
Time to look at the documentation on how to do that with little cash to
go on.  I notice a lot of 3d Max plugins and apps. I hope that doesn't
mean I need to use 3d max, but we'll see.  I am curious to see how it
all works with a huge landscape.  Say, one going on the size of AC.  But
first, Let's get Snowballs going! Thanks.

  Tony

---

From: Cedric Valignat <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2001 15:15:56 +0200

> snowballs data on my website (there's also the .exe in the .zip ;)

You can download the last (as far as i know) version of the Snowballs
datas in the lastest daily snapshot of our code :

    /download/cvs/latest/

These data were made the 29 august.

Cedric.

---

From: Gil Colgate <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2001 18:32:02 -0700

Yes, I have no time to compile and run Nel; I'd like to see it running before I
spend the time to get it to work. Does anyone have a zip of a working binary
version?

---

From: "EagleEye" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2001 23:01:31 -0500

I think it would be against the rules to distribute the binaries...
wouldn't it?

---

From: Guillaume Morin <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2001 11:03:42 +0100

> I think it would be against the rules to distribute the binaries...

No it is not as long you do not modify the sources.

-- 
Guillaume Morin <[email-masked]>

                       Sauvez un arbre, mangez un castor