XXZ Re-Release, Advanced Systems, and My First Project

Time certainly flies by, and all of the hard work we've done so far seems like it's been hit with problems after problems, but now that nice light at the end of the tunnel is beginning to shine for us here at PGD. Good for us, and for you as well! why, well, glad you asked, let's just take a look under that focusing lens.

1. A re-vamp of our XXZ568 authentication package, version 1.4 as it's called by me (and a few of my friends who are helping with it :P) is already coming together very nicely. It features a lot of optimizations to the current code, while throwing in some pretty new GUI screens for your viewers to look at. I still admit it's not the optimal system, but it's getting very close. I believe by the 1.5 version of it, this package should be pretty much baseline for authentication in all of our projects. So far you've seen "our" and "my project", but what about you? worry not! I'm still going to resource it, but it's going to be another good week or two before every rework is completed. And then the testing sessions of creating 100's of test accounts, logging them all in and connecting to servers with them will begin. Once that's done, I'll package it all up, and release it to the public. Good, now that I'm done typing this ridiculously large paragraph, let's move on.

2. I've been working with torque's data types for quite some time now, and I think I've got them all figured out. However, don't be expecting any String or S32's thrown in XXZ any time soon, that would take me too long as I would have to re-write most of (if not all of) crytpo++, and as my many code comments state, I am sorta lazy-ish when it comes to C++, and don't feel like doing so.

But enough of that, let's talk some of the neat-o stuff that comes with the XXZ re-vamp. The current server model I built in XXZ is "sort of" flawed in a way when it comes to parties and multiple transfer connections as it can sometimes interrupt data between clients. This next version I'm working on addresses this. When I release this I will also be releasing some pretty nifty side resources that I'm sure you'll love to see in action yourselves.

Basically, I have a connective server setup. When the client fires up his game, a virtual server is started (but a mission is not loaded). This allows all auth checks to hit immediately on login, and be done all at once (+1 for all of us!) basically you get a massive optimization of load handling when the server loads the client for the first time. Now the neat part provided by torque comes into play. You can have people "join" this virtual server, which will act very closely to a friend/party system to which can then connect to other servers, and voila basic matching system. Throw a server layer with playlists over it, voila! advanced matching system! You can expect a good 1-3 resources documenting and presenting my results on these findings.

3. And now I get to talk about our first project! Well, as you can tell, we have a nice hefty load of powerful systems at our disposal (including my prior resources), and I intend to use all of them. Now, I'm sort of pulling a nice little delay on my project, as I want to incorporate all of the 1.2 features and bug-fixes before loading in all of my auth stuff (don't worry, I'll do it in 1.1F as I'm sure not much will change there).

So basically I'm planning on a near Christmas time beta release for the people who wanted to help provide ideas to get my game dev group/company going, and I figured that an early beta followed by additional feature loads would be the best route to start community building. FPS games are kind of tricky to top only because they usually incorporate similar methods, I've found a couple of nifty ways to tackle this problem, and it rhymes with game modes, oh wait...

Instead of going the typical CoD everyone vs each-other route, I have decided to throw in some tactical game modes as well, such as "Tunnel Escape", where a team of 5-6 must destroy barriers and other obstacles while avoiding enemy AI that grow in numbers every time a player dies, or "StormFront" a strategic defense game of survive with defensive objects (turrets, airstrikes, ect.). I'm also going to do some very nifty in game community features (kinda tribes-like) but not quite the same to sort of establish our model of a good FPS.

Lastly and most importantly, it's the community that builds you,and they can certainly end you as well! so we will be listening very closely for improvement suggestions that are commonly liked by everyone.

So, hope this was semi-informative, or interesting! Thanks for reading!