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Incoming Test Server, Server Documentations, and More
Posted by PunkBuster,
20 October 2014
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1076 views
I have about 30 minutes before this week's maintenance begins, and thus I've decided it was time I made another entry to this blog. It's bee a while since I've last writen for this, so there's plenty to write about.
First of all, and this is old news by now, we finally have our new website online!
http://avalonro.net/
Big thanks to all the Yoshu Design and Rahul for the design and coding.
Since then, I've spoken with Maever about getting us some advertisements for the server. We expect to have those in place in short notice. It should give our population the boost it needs.
Second on the news is the long-promised AvalonRo Sakray. Many players are still confused about this, so I decided to write about it in detail.
----------------------------------
Sakray and Server Updating
Back when we were making AvalonRO3, I had A LOT of help from the server's most experience staff. Maever, Borf, and Klut were all there to pitch in help and advice. Without them, there's no way our current server could exist the way it does now.
However, in the end, the one doing the actual keyboard smashing in order to get things going was me. Inexperienced as I was, everything I did took forever. For instance, I recall the day I was working on creating AvRO3's first client. Converting the item images, sprites, and descriptions took well over 10 hours. Since then, I've gained a lot of experience on running Hercules, and the server as a whole.
The reason I am bringing this up is because the amateurish manner in which I created the server caused a severe problem that I only really noticed many months later. I made custom changes to the configurations and source directly on the files, which means that if I attempted a server update, everything would ge overwritten. In other words, everything would have to be done over again. Even worse than that was that I never really documented anything I did, which would make everything that much harder.
To solve those issues, and to prevent it from happening in the future, I decided the best course of action was to re-do everything again.
I mean that quite literally. On Maever's test machine, I downloaded and installed a fresh version of hercules. Then, I reapplied every single custom change in a way that would not get overwritten in case of a server update. Finally, I transfered and converted every single custom script again. By "again", the meaning is that, the first time, I had already checked over every custom script on the server to make sure everything was compatible. We're talking about well over 300 files of coded text. It was by far the most lengthy part of the process, but thankfully not many things had to be changed.
Over the course of about 3 days, I completely recreated AvalonRO3 from scratch on a separate machine. Except this time done correctly, and with proper documentation(more on this further down). The server is about 95% done, with the exception of a few things not working correctly/as intended. Soon, Gurrath and myself will begin studying on how to convert the database from the current avalon to the sakray avalon, which is when the trial period can finally begin. I had promised it for last month, and then by the first half of this month, though now I have no timeframe for when the last 5% will be finished. Everything has to work perfectly, else there's no point.
The transitions will be quite simple. First, it'll be open as a test server for players to try out skills in it. Once we've confirmed it's stable, we'll completely transfer the database from the current AvRO3 to the *new* AvRO3. The hastle for players should be minimum.
The purpose of this is but one: to guarantee that future server updates can be done automatically, just by pulling newer files from Hercules' main trunk.
-------------------------
Server Documentation
Throughout the years, Avalon has had several Developers, Head Developers, and Admins. Most players will recall Zarnox being the head-figure for a very long time. During his time, and even before him, many different people have *touched* Avalon. Browsing through the script files, I have seen scripts being signed by at least a dozen different people. This make our server a very special place, because it's not the result of any single person's effort, but rather, the result of a community of Developers and Game Masters.
Unfortunately, all of the previous Developers have one thing in common: none of them left any documentation of what they did. That was one of the reasons AvRO2 was rather difficult to work on, because nobody on the staff really knew what custom changes had been made before. The only things we could go by were server maintenance logs, but those often don't include everything. Without knowing, I was heading in the same direction.
Fortunately, with the opportunity to recreate the whole server from scratch, also came the opportunity to properly document everything. And thus was born the Dev Bible.
The Dev Bible is a .docx file which I've created that's half-guide, half-changelog about everything we've done in AvalonRO3. It looks something like this:
It details everything I've done to the server's root code, so that everything that quickly be re-applied in case something goes catastrophically wrong. Every single server parameter is listed. In other words, it's the "recipe" for making AvRO3. Right now, and for the foreseeable future, I'll continue to be Avalon's head Developer. But perhaps many years from now someone else will be sitting in my chair, and he/she won't have issues with past documentation thanks to this.
--------------------------
That's all for today's blogpost. Please continue supporting our server, and thanks for reading.
-Xan Kriegor, Head Developer/Head Game Master
First of all, and this is old news by now, we finally have our new website online!
http://avalonro.net/
Big thanks to all the Yoshu Design and Rahul for the design and coding.
Since then, I've spoken with Maever about getting us some advertisements for the server. We expect to have those in place in short notice. It should give our population the boost it needs.
Second on the news is the long-promised AvalonRo Sakray. Many players are still confused about this, so I decided to write about it in detail.
----------------------------------
Sakray and Server Updating
Back when we were making AvalonRO3, I had A LOT of help from the server's most experience staff. Maever, Borf, and Klut were all there to pitch in help and advice. Without them, there's no way our current server could exist the way it does now.
However, in the end, the one doing the actual keyboard smashing in order to get things going was me. Inexperienced as I was, everything I did took forever. For instance, I recall the day I was working on creating AvRO3's first client. Converting the item images, sprites, and descriptions took well over 10 hours. Since then, I've gained a lot of experience on running Hercules, and the server as a whole.
The reason I am bringing this up is because the amateurish manner in which I created the server caused a severe problem that I only really noticed many months later. I made custom changes to the configurations and source directly on the files, which means that if I attempted a server update, everything would ge overwritten. In other words, everything would have to be done over again. Even worse than that was that I never really documented anything I did, which would make everything that much harder.
To solve those issues, and to prevent it from happening in the future, I decided the best course of action was to re-do everything again.
I mean that quite literally. On Maever's test machine, I downloaded and installed a fresh version of hercules. Then, I reapplied every single custom change in a way that would not get overwritten in case of a server update. Finally, I transfered and converted every single custom script again. By "again", the meaning is that, the first time, I had already checked over every custom script on the server to make sure everything was compatible. We're talking about well over 300 files of coded text. It was by far the most lengthy part of the process, but thankfully not many things had to be changed.
Over the course of about 3 days, I completely recreated AvalonRO3 from scratch on a separate machine. Except this time done correctly, and with proper documentation(more on this further down). The server is about 95% done, with the exception of a few things not working correctly/as intended. Soon, Gurrath and myself will begin studying on how to convert the database from the current avalon to the sakray avalon, which is when the trial period can finally begin. I had promised it for last month, and then by the first half of this month, though now I have no timeframe for when the last 5% will be finished. Everything has to work perfectly, else there's no point.
The transitions will be quite simple. First, it'll be open as a test server for players to try out skills in it. Once we've confirmed it's stable, we'll completely transfer the database from the current AvRO3 to the *new* AvRO3. The hastle for players should be minimum.
The purpose of this is but one: to guarantee that future server updates can be done automatically, just by pulling newer files from Hercules' main trunk.
-------------------------
Server Documentation
Throughout the years, Avalon has had several Developers, Head Developers, and Admins. Most players will recall Zarnox being the head-figure for a very long time. During his time, and even before him, many different people have *touched* Avalon. Browsing through the script files, I have seen scripts being signed by at least a dozen different people. This make our server a very special place, because it's not the result of any single person's effort, but rather, the result of a community of Developers and Game Masters.
Unfortunately, all of the previous Developers have one thing in common: none of them left any documentation of what they did. That was one of the reasons AvRO2 was rather difficult to work on, because nobody on the staff really knew what custom changes had been made before. The only things we could go by were server maintenance logs, but those often don't include everything. Without knowing, I was heading in the same direction.
Fortunately, with the opportunity to recreate the whole server from scratch, also came the opportunity to properly document everything. And thus was born the Dev Bible.
The Dev Bible is a .docx file which I've created that's half-guide, half-changelog about everything we've done in AvalonRO3. It looks something like this:
It details everything I've done to the server's root code, so that everything that quickly be re-applied in case something goes catastrophically wrong. Every single server parameter is listed. In other words, it's the "recipe" for making AvRO3. Right now, and for the foreseeable future, I'll continue to be Avalon's head Developer. But perhaps many years from now someone else will be sitting in my chair, and he/she won't have issues with past documentation thanks to this.
--------------------------
That's all for today's blogpost. Please continue supporting our server, and thanks for reading.
-Xan Kriegor, Head Developer/Head Game Master
