The game system won't change much in few incoming days because we are struggling with other critical problems.
Basically we have 3 critical things to do atm and that is:
1) making client a Vista/7 compataible - this is already done. New client does not require admin rights and should not crash on certain machines. We also introduced icons and made installer for updater, it should now be better.
2) optimizing otsystem - this is being done atm, the attack-loading system is being redone and thus we can reduce an "event check interval" because we are using ticks now. still its better to compare few int64's when player/monster is attacking than checking every creature each 0.25s. in this way we can force "onThink"-s much more rarely as one event per 2 seconds / creature is more than enough with new system. the downside is that sometimes monster need more time to "sense" target within screen, especially when wild pokemon spawns on our screen.
also we have altered an updaterate of client, all functions like getting current health and such are now based on delta time, with being flushed every 2 s. if pokemon was regaining at rate 7 hp per second, now it will look like <2 sec delay> -> +14 hp -> <2 sec delay> -> +14hp etc, but in server its all based on delta times so if u got +14hp already and u will got attacked after 1,2seconds, server will calculate that 1.2s was passed before last flush and give u a part of hitpoints you would normaly get during those 1.2 s.
we have also altered few functions, its no more checking if all player pokemon is fainted every 0.25s, instead its now checked when pokemon that is owned by somebody faints or is killed by poison.
this patch will be applied today.
3) dealing with crashes
there is a crash on certain situation and i'm not sure what causes it. too bad i cannot manage gdb to work, it generates a core file but stacktraces are weird - there are like ~3 pointers on stack and noone is resolved as function so basically it does not work as it should. after I will do optimizations for server, I will handle a debugger to work or write my own class for debugging. i'm not asking here for help, i know that i have to handle it by my own, but perhaps someone did have problems with gdb as well?
Code:
This GDB was configured as "i486-linux-gnu"...
warning: core file may not match specified executable file.
Core was generated by `/bin/bash ./restart.sh'.
Program terminated with signal 6, Aborted.
[New process 24737]
#0 0xffffe430 in __kernel_vsyscall ()
(gdb) bt
#0 0xffffe430 in __kernel_vsyscall ()
#1 0xb7736833 in ?? ()
#2 0x00000000 in ?? ()
(gdb)
executable of course has debugging symbols and is not stripped nor optimized.
===============
to community:
yes we already know that we have failed but we are not giving up. atm we are struggling with many things but I believe that most new projects have same problems. we WILL manage all to work 100% correctly and we WILL make gameplay intresting. I'm sorry how this one has turned out, but we are working to get it working perfectly.
I think that I have the most work 2 do, cuz i'm programmer and at moment sleeping 2 hours per day is a luxury for me
)
thanks,
Larva