Darkstar based chat now online!

Networking & Multiplayer
#1

Some of the details can be found here: http://www.darkstarusers.com/news/2007/03/30/darkstaruserscom-project-darkstar-sun-game-server-based-chat-now-online/

In a nutshell, it is running on the current 0.9 release and is vaguely MUD/MUSH/MOO/M**-ish. Aside from chatting, you can create/destroy inspect objects and interact in a limited way (dropping or taking items). I believe there are a total of about 15 commands currently. It uses the database custom authentication I posted here last week, so you can see that in action.

I have almost finished adding scripting , and when I get that working, I will be posting a tutorial on how to integrate that with SGS as well. I hope you all check it out, and hopefully hang around!

Oh, one other note, I probably spent more time this week deciding how to write the client than working on the actual engine. I tried various web based techniques with AJAX and such, but I could never really avoid having to do polling, which I felt was kind of gross. I ended up just writing a simple java applet. In a fit of nostalgia, I also wrote a pure telnet gateway which is what I will probably use most of the time.

#2

Cool. How are you doing scripting, all in the ManagedObjects?

I’ve had on my back burner to do a scripting service, maybe around Groovy.
Course if YOU want to do that once the extension manual is released, all the better!

#3

Heck yeah!

I’m using groovy right now, mostly because I wanted an excuse to use it since I never have. Basically you can interact with managed objects on the command line. In my simulation, everything is based on a SimObject (extremely original I know) so you can look them up by id, bind them to a variable and kinda play with them. In theory I could bind a script to the object right now, but I have not yet added any sort of events to cause the scripting to fire.

#4

Hmm.
Getting a security error trying to connect. are you serving that page from the same machine the server is on?

#5

Hmm… Yes the page is served by the same server that the chat instance is living on. I tested it on Firefox and IE7. I imagine there could be a problem if you cannot directly connect to the port that the Applet is requesting (ie, if you are behind a proxy of some sort).

Alternately you can telnet to darkstarusers.com 4000 for an incredibly old-school experience. I don’t really have any decent terminal emulation implemented, but it does work.

#6

I bounced the server, the process may have died when I logged out and failed to nohup the process. I am able to hit it remotely via the Applet.

#7

Maybe my sun firewall is screwing it up. Ill try it tonight from home!

#8

Bummer! I see a ChrisM in here but he is not very talkative :slight_smile:

#9

Some folks seem to have been having problems with the authentication not working properly. It is disabled at the moment, so just make up any user/pass combo and it should work. I have my first round of scripting support completed and it should be up and available to play with in the morning!

#10

I was able to connect. I am eager to hear about scripting support. I hope to build a similar system that supports client-generated scripting, but this would be much easier if someone else provided tips regarding security issues. Looking forward to the next version!

#11

That is a pretty good point. Right now the answer is I’m not exactly sure how to reconcile the javax.scripting stuff and the way Groovy handles the security manager. In the case of interpreting a script that does not come from a file, The native groovy interpreter allows you to pass in a namespace for the script to execute under, so you can set the normal SecurityManager restrictions. With the javax.script stuff, it does not appear you can do that, so I’m not exactly sure how to handle this case. ( I just spent last evening converting the thing to use the javax.script instead of the native Groovy interface).

HMMMmmmm!