I updated the game server for Been There this week.  It now supports chat commands from an administrator account to kick and/or ban users from the game.  If you kick a user, it immediately logs them out of the game servers.  When you ban a user, they can’t log back into the game until re-enabled by an administrator.

In order to support the above, I had to finish handling the disconnect event in the client.  Now when you loose connection to the servers it shows a lost connection screen, with a quit button to gracefully exit the game.

I finally fixed a nagging bug in the Been There Game client that has been around for a while now.  On rare occasions, the client would crash and you couldn’t see the error message unless you used Alt+Tab first.  Well, with the help of a minidump file (a useful subset of information normally found in a full crash dump file), I finally found out what was causing the crashes!  The modifications that I made also fixed the issue with avatars not appearing sometimes.  To fix the problem with the prompt to create a crash dump file not showing up, I now make sure that the application is not running in a full screen window before trying to show the message box.  I was trying to display it over top of the crashed window, but it would not always show up reliably.

I decided to work on the game for a little bit, for a change of pace.  I added a few new beta testers the other day.  While watching the logs, I noticed some issues with the chat server that were kind of weird.  I’m trying to track down a nagging little bug that I’ve just ignored for a while.  I also discovered that if an error message is displayed, you have to Alt+Tab to dismiss it when running in full screen mode.  So when a fatal error like this is displayed, I need to make sure that the full screen game window is closed first.

Anyway, I still need to finish the mesh skinning code that I’m going to use to render the avatars and monsters.  I think I just need a short break from it, then it will be easier to finish.

I kept finding bugs in the effect system; they were keeping me from getting the game servers back online.  I wanted to at least have something new to show, before introducing a new patch.  With the latest fixes, the new skydome looks better than ever!  I went ahead and added the skydome to the game demo.  It looks awesome!  I’m going to leave the game servers up for a while I think.

I need to get back to the character animation system again very soon.  It would be cool to update the avatars in the game!

It sure is hard trying to make an indie MMO (massively multiplayer online) game on a shoestring budget.  I still need to find people interested in helping; like an artist, a tool developer, or a web developer.  If you are interested in helping, then let me know.  Also note that the message forums for Been There are currently open, if anyone would like to chat.

The servers are all back online.  We are going to do some more testing again for a little while.  I finished a lot of stuff in the game’s user interface.  I’m really close to actually being able to engage in combat in the game.  This will be a very cool advancement, no doubt.  I think I’m going to start working on some of the missing collision detection routines.  Another thing that has been bothering me is how poorly my “dead reckoning” algorithm is working.  Dead reckoning is used in our game to deal with the high latency issues that plague all networked games.  Anyway, I believe I’m going to work on that soon also.

It’s about time! After several weeks, I finally figured out what was causing my servers to crash. The shared code that makes the application run as a background service had a very obscure problem, one that proved to hide itself very well. When you combine client-server networking, multi-threaded code, and background services all together, it makes debugging extremely hard! Stay tuned for more updates.

I have all of the game servers running as a background Windows service now. Well, except for the Gatekeeper server, which I already had running properly as a Linux daemon. I don’t have to keep the desktop logged in while I run the servers anymore. Even more cool, is I can view the output from all of the servers in one place now, using the Server Manager program that I have been working on! Server output can also be forwarded to a “logs” database, which can be easily queried for specific problems.

I still need to work on the server multi-threading code some more, it’s not yet ready for prime time. There is also a weird bug that causes the authorization server to crash when you stop the service. I’ve been trying to figure this one out for a few days now. I need to find the time to really dig into the code, but I’ve been busy lately trying to make some money to keep my head above water. No matter what it takes, even if I have to starve, I’m going to keep rapidly moving forward!

The server manager application that I’ve been working on for my indie MMORPG is just about finished. I finally worked out a bug that I was having with the internal server to server communications. Let me tell you, it can really be a pain in the you know what, to debug network code sometimes. The issue proved itself to be an extremely challenging one to fix. Anyway, I’m no longer stuck, and am now making a lot of progress finishing the remaining changes to the server code. I hope I can bring the game servers back online soon! I’ll post more updated information here in a few days.

I’ve finished all of the MS SQL Server database code changes that I wanted to make, including the database integration with the Server Manager. I’ve temporarily put a screen shot of the Server Manager on the main Been There Game web page, if you would like to get an idea of how complex it has become. The cool thing is, once I finish it, the Server Manager will be able to control everything that I’ll need in order to maintain the game on a large scale. Next, I’m going to finish the code needed to make the servers run as applications (easy for debugging purposes) or as background services (i.e. so the server will still run after the client logs out).