Archive for October, 2005

I’m really looking forward to December. If all goes according to plan I will probably be the recipient of a Broadband connection. Since I live in a rural area, I’ll use the term “probably” because such schemes have a habit of falling apart in small countries with telecom companies (well, company) that are only interested in giving the large dense population areas a chance at the broadband revolution (they cost less, can be charged more). It sucks really.

I can see it now; an always on connection, ICQ/Jabber running in the background, people actually having a half chance of catching me live online. I might even be capable of holding a live bug kicking session – something brought home after realising the turnaround period on fixing a simple bug can be 2 days for me – 1 to actually get around to reading the report, 2 because uploading a fixed version is painful (to say the least) using my current slow connection – and takes time to arrange (it’s really slow…not joking).

In other news, have 2 more design changes to make in the base QS code. Small ones, both related to some assumptions I made which aren’t entirely accurate. Matt (aka Mibocote) is back working on Q-LIB, so I need a new SF project to provide a segregated development location for it as soon as possible. When Matt works, he works fast – he already has changes to be committed. Erick (over on the QS forums) has submitted some QS logos. Along with Omega’s and mine that makes a grand total of three, well we have to start somewhere!

I’m also dried up on testing AA Traders. As some will already know, in keeping with the space theme I’s hoping to host something to complement QS when its ready. TKI has now vanished into a merger with BNT (probably be a while until Proton). So I thought about giving AATraders new release a walk on my server.

Unfortunately their recent release has a few questionable requirements which I’m not about to change my server simply to accomodate (if you think like me it’ll be the very first thing you notice – since it will simply refuse to install and suggest you alter your PHP configuration; like that’ll ever happen). I think it’s safe to say it won’t be hosted any day soon on a server near me – we’ll see how 0.30 goes. I think BNT will make a far better choice when Proton, the next version, is ready. I’m pretty close to drawing PJ’s attention to an oddity I discovered while trying to get that blasted ShoutBox working. I’d read more of the code but I had trouble keeping my gaping mouth closed the last time I peeped at it – I even wound up posting at their forums which incidentally do indeed exist. Based on that post even SE might be safer in the long term – something I suspected was impossible, but apparently isn’t.

That’s another weird thing – for some reason IE can’t ever seem to find the AATraders website on my home PC (least under Windows when I use it). Firefox finds it, and returns a page of garbage. Not sure why – first time I’ve experienced it on any website. Doesn’t seem to be GZip since its returning as chunked – then again maybe it is and the chunked return is an error. Have a feeling I have Norton to thank for this – warrants a little investigation to appease my curiousity I suppose. I tested at work and it was fine. Still very odd as to why it’s the sole exception…

Well, after a week delay while working on something else I finally get around to updating the CVS.

QS 0.13 is now on CVS. It can also be downloaded as a zip archive at:
http://www.quantum-star.com/quantumstar_phpsource.zip

This is the second primary reorganisation, so many classes are grouped with the System directory (representing Partholan). Also added is an installer which should work, full input filtering, the savant2 templating engine I may be switching to in the near future, and assorted improvements to the Request/Response MVC cycle.

This version also adds future support for multiple View Systems including Smarty, Savant and straight XML.

I appreciate even a passing test of this – it does very little (most of the improvements are as always transparent to users) but the installer testing would be nice. QS is now also no longer dependent on user defined paths – it should correctly determine it’s location using some very simplified detection.

I’ve also added in a place to accumulate unit tests – something I decided to use here since I seem to be putting serious effort into QS these days – might as well throw all the best tools at it. No tests as yet – I have these but they are still being written to account for a few expected changes in Q-LIB.

Next up is 0.14, an updated database schema, installer translations, internationalisation, and the start of an Admin Panel. Sorry if holding up gameplay seems weird but I tested it back in April and it worked fine – will get added back in a few weeks for a few Developer releases leading into a Beta Stage.

One day from releasing QS 0.11 to CVS. There are a few important improvements this time around. First of all the Installer Routine has been rewritten (no more ambiguous path definitions!). Because the QS2 installer relies on certain GPL code, I have also been pushed into writing my own SQL File parser. From what I can see it’s far simpler than the one we were using (sourced from phpMyAdmin) and it’s a lot faster – and I mean a lot! I had no idea the phpMyAdmin parser was so slow and bulky.

So 0.11 will see new installer, new SQL parser, new install theme, new Front Controller and View model, not to mention dozens of other changes such as our new Database Session Handler (we’re not using the ADODB one), Internationalisation Driver, and several other not so visible changes.

Still not playable – but adding that is so simple its frightening…

As it stands I grow in confidence every day that QS3 will absolutely rock…