A pre-TBC WoW development adventure
I’d just like to remind everyone that my Twitter is going to be getting much more attention than my blog, simply because most news isn’t worthy of a long blog post. So make sure you check it every now and then and subscribe if you have a Twitter account. =)
You can visit my Twitter profile here: http://twitter.com/#!/Wolfydev
This post has been taken from my forum post, which you can view here: http://pretbc.com/viewtopic.php?pid=8784#p8784
My hope was that I wouldn’t have to reply, that this wouldn’t be necessary, because I would have everything on track by now and moving forward (actions speak louder than words, make efforts not excuses, etc, etc.) However, something is better than nothing, so here it is.
Basically me and Ophie have been working on another project (completely unrelated to WoW and this server) that would be, at least for now, a primary source of income for us. As such it’s taken precedence over this one and chewed up a bunch of my time that would have otherwise gone towards this, which is why I’ve taken on more of a reviewer/development support role than an active developer.
As a development project we have high standards, since this project is aiming for near perfection. This, coupled with the lack of branches being tossed in and fixes being shoved into the same branch (where a single questionable commit could delay it for a week or more) causes a lot of delay in the pipeline.
So, going forward, here are some things I’m going to try to accomplish:
– A new server homepage, with the status of the server as well as any changes made very clearly visible to anyone who visits.
– A guide to doing development on mangos, written so that anyone can learn how to help out from the development side instead of just the reporting side.
– More frequent updates, even if they are small things.
My personal goal right now is to make development accessible to everyone. I think you’ll agree that at this pace, we can’t meet our goal of having every bug fixed in any realistic amount of time. We have a very large amount of relatively small problems, and I believe that most of the people here are more than up to the task of tackling some of them.
Please don’t think we don’t care about you; we needed you very much to find every bug you’ve found so far, and we’ll be needing you in the near future to help us repair those bugs alongside our current staff working on them.
And we won’t be releasing the entire server now, chiefhundano is completely right. The original goal was to freeze bug reporting and development on one slice of the game so we can focus all attention on it for as long as needed; since the development part was unfeasible without losing all the bug reporters, we decided to just move on when all the bug reports were made. I hope we can get back to the original plan in the near future once we bring the community at large into the R&D game and ramp up the dev progress.
Again, would have made this all clear earlier if I thought it was necessary. Things have been slower than I’d hoped so I’m saying this all now before everyone loses hope.
A few days ago, the server went down, as it sometimes does when the server machine has to be restarted. However, I couldn’t seem to log-in to restart it that time.
After contacting the admin, he found there was filesystem problems. After restarting it and still having file problems, he traced the problem to a mechanical hard drive he had installed. The drive was responsible for the SWAP and it was failing, hard. It had been sending a flood of errors to the SATA controller, which had corrupted the filesystem.
After getting it sorted out, I could log-in again. However, attempting to restart the server was causing it to complain about the database being corrupt.
As it turns out, the characters database had been using InnoDB. Since our server admin had been backing up the raw database files, rather than the data (in SQL form) it was impossible to restore the characters database due to how InnoDB works.
So, we had to use a data back-up I had taken 2 days prior, as a precaution after another server problem.
The characters database now runs on MyISAM, so in case of failure it should be possible to restore it along with the other databases.
We’ve finally resolved the line ending issues. The server is now up to date (stay tuned on the forums for an updated changelog) and I’m planning to do weekly updates every Saturday.
Now that we have a stable development platform, expect more fixes rolled out in the near future, along with the leveling NPC.
Until next time, stay stable.
– Wolfy
Friends help friends ward off gigantic deadly spiders, as Evale will now demonstrate...
I wasn’t going to make this post. I was just going to surprise everyone with a bunch of new stuff, and let that be that. However, things haven’t been going well for a long time, so I figured I would make this post to fill the time.
Let’s begin with a story.
Once upon a time, there was a programmer at Digital Research working on an ancient OS known as CP/M. He thought it would be a wonderful idea if, instead of using a line feed character (\n) to end lines, they used a line feed character AND a carriage return character (\r) to mark the ends of lines. God knows why he decided to make this giant change in the way the OS processes text, since both IBM and Unix used only the LF character, but the change was made.
Microsoft, being the brilliant masterminds that they were, simply went along with this nonsense, because throwing away the basic standards everyone has all agreed upon is great!
And so, in the year 2011, us Windows 7 users STILL have to cope with the bullshit known as CR+LF.
So why is this important at all, you are by now wondering.
Well, there is a certain piece of software we use for managing our source code, called Git. Git is a little picky when it comes to line endings, and likes to mess around with them, and then complain when you don’t commit its changes. Suddenly, entire files appear as modified, and when you try to view the difference, there appears to be none, since the line endings are invisible in the majority of text editors (whether it changed them from LF to CR+LF or the other way around, I have no idea still).
After fixing some settings in Git and getting everything on track, it seemed as though it was all going perfectly.
That is, until I tried to compile it on the server. See, even though most Windows programs deal with different line endings nicely, a lot of tools on Linux will commit suicide on the sight of a CR+LF (not that I really blame them). Yes, tools that have been a staple of C++ development for about almost 40 years STILL DIE WHEN THEY SEE THE WRONG LINE ENDING.
So, in short, that is why the server hasn’t been updated in a while.
TL;DR: Evil gremlins live on the end of every line of text in every file on every computer, and if they are the wrong kind everything can blow up.
Until next time, stay line-fed.\r\n
– Wolfy
Sorry, I dropped a carriage return back here...
We are now into phase 2. Thanks to everyone who reported bugs, and a huge thanks to Sinoxan and picard for helping fix them.
Unfortunately I will be going on a trip and won’t be coming back until Friday evening. In the meantime, I trust Ophie to handle any urgent problems we have.
The leveling NPC is still being worked on, but I won’t be able to continue it until Friday. Thanks for your patience.
Until next time, stay wild.
– Wolfy
I regret to inform you, sir, that your totem is illegally parked.
It’s been a while since I posted anything, so this one’s for the fans.
We were having issues getting our server updates in due to an outdated version of CMake in CentOS’ repository. This has now been resolved and we now have an update to date server. Thank you to Matt, our system admin, for coming through eventually.
We also have two new faces here at Project Westfall; welcome to picard and Sinoxan. These two have demonstrated their understand and skill in regard to mangos and how servers work and are now helping us at this very moment solve some of the many issues you all have brought up. Thank you to picard and Sinoxan, and to anyone else who is interested in learning the arcane ways of the bug fixer, I have no problem giving any help needed; patience and time is all I require.
I am also proud to say that phase 2 will be beginning very shortly. Though not all the issues of phase 1 are resolved, for the most part we can test whatever fixes we come up with. I am finishing preparations to phase 2 at and am taking a short break to write this post. Thank you to everyone who tested the server and reported all the quest issues.
Until next time, stay hypnagogic.
– Wolfy
To the best pet cactus a worg-person could have.
I had an exam today, and had to spend the rest of the day sleeping studying for my next one tomorrow, which (unfortunately) meant I didn’t have time to seriously investigate any quests. I will have a day off after tomorrow’s exam. Wish me luck. 😉
Until next time, stay tested.
– Wolfy
Now where did I put Hamlet...
Today I finished doing some important updates to the server. Every time I tried to get a move on some of these quests, new updates would be available, and I’d spend my time running the upgrade cycle. Our upgrade cycle in particular is a very delicate and complex mess of branches and updates, especially with problems from porting it from one platform to the other (I develop and test on Windows, the server runs a flavour of Linux)
When I went to restart the server, I noticed that we have had the server online for almost 17 and a half days.
Aha!
It’s nice when each class only has about 5 spells and there’s a maximum of 10 people online. 😉
Anyway, I’d best be getting back to studying for my exams. Tomorrow I promise I will begin looking into some of the quests that need love.
Until next time, stay flavourful.
– Wolfy
"Very good, my minion. Leave no witnesses." (Now guess which one is my minion...)
We’re going to switch a different DB. Right now there won’t be any huge changes, so it’s safe to assume all the bugs reported still exist.
I cleaned up my computer to make things easier. When I have a lot of old stuff lying around, it gets quickly confusing as to what is old and stale and what I’m working on. I’ll be starting with a fresh copy of all the source code we use for the same reason.
I spent the better part of today working on updating everything and getting everything organized and working. Unfortunately I didn’t really get a chance to start looking into the quests. Thanks again to Ophie for preparing the list of all the ones that need attention.
I was looking into the quest Ammo For Rumbleshot (http://old.wowhead.com/quest=5541) and the scripted event in it. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any sources for the dialogue. If anyone finds any, let me know. The spells used in it I am also not sure of. Recording the event is now impossible thanks to Cataclysm.
A more structured development process means less days like today. Hopefully I’ll be able to do more meaningful work tomorrow.
Until next time, stay sharp.
– Wolfy
It seems Bob the Trogg has been murdered! You wouldn't know anything now...?
August 28, 2011
Wolfy
Wolfy's Development Blog 