I’ve been continuing work on the in-game part of RTB4. I’ve had to spend some time doing a bit of framework stuff which is largely uninteresting. I’m working on finalising the chat window design for the chat client. I’ve decided to ditch tabbed chat windows for the moment because they’re just a pain to implement nicely.

I’ve implemented the “is typing a message” statuses and I’m working on getting some nice emoticons to use for the chat. The font size is 12px and most emoticons are 16px or larger so I’ve got someone doing some custom ones for us.

Mostly it’s just tidying up the code and interface for the beta now. There are a few more issues with usability that I want to fix and then we’re ready to go. I want to stress that the beta will be very basic - the initial download will only contain the chat client and nothing else. I’ll gradually re-integrate features in future betas.

–Ephialtes via the Blockland Forums

Beta News

We’ll start off with what everyone’s probably dying to hear about.

The beta will begin once the chat is working. There will be a short closed alpha before the beta release. The initial beta will be chat only, new features will be gradually reintroduced. The v3 beta unfortunately ended up with a lot of people who didn’t bother filling out bug reports or wrote very poor bug reports. The solution for v4 testing is that roughly a third of the initial beta slots will be filled by appointment. The rest of the beta should proceed normally.

Please do not ask to get in the beta. If you’re appointed you will know, if you’re not appointed you’ll be able to apply normally when the beta is open.

The beta should be opening fairly soon, so keep an eye on this blog, the Blockland forums, the RTB forums, and the beta site if you want to get in! Make it your homepage if you really want to get in. Slots are assigned on a first come, first served basis, so sign up as soon as you can!

Links:

Beta Site

http://forum.returntoblockland.com/beta.php

Beta Announcements

http://forum.blockland.us/index.php?topic=82529.msg2604343#msg2604343

http://forum.blockland.us/index.php?topic=82529.msg2614576#msg2614576

RTB News

There’s been quite a few updates to RTB as well.

First of all, a sneak peak at the friends menu GUI.

As you can see, a few new options have been added to it. As mentioned in a previous blog update, the info button will bring up some information like their current name, previous aliases, ID, what server they’re in, etc. Friends will have a status next to them telling you if they’re hosting a server or playing, and what server they’re on. RTB Connect be able to distinguish between LAN servers, single player, and various Internet servers so your friends will always know where to find you (if you want them to). However, you won’t be able to set custom statuses nor will there be support for any kind of status plugins (for example: mp3 plugins that tell people what song you’re listening to).

We’ll also be seeing the return of chat rooms, although they will no longer be IRC based and you will be able to create your own and control who can join them. That chat system will also be able to use any character that Blockland allows, so you’ll be able to name yourself ««§êå®GeåNt»» and have it show up correctly in the friends list if you really want to.

Ephialtes is currently working on finishing up the messaging system and the interface, once this is finished the closed alpha and semi-open beta will begin.

More interface changes have been made to allow the friends list to function and invites to work. I’m having some trouble figuring out how moving users between friend list groups should work and I don’t want to spend a whole lot of time on it so the initial release may just see all your friends in a single “Friends” group. I’m also starting to look more at the interface design - there are a few things I’d like to change to make it more intuitive. I’ve got a few sketches drawn up so I’ll pick one of these and roll with it.

Next step functionality-wise is the “Information Card” (accessed by clicking a friend then the Info button) which will show a bunch of details about the user, their name, ID, online statues, what server they’re in, how long they’ve been playing, their idle time, and maybe a picture of them. It could also supply a history of names much like the “View Aliases” functionality in the Steam Chat incase one of your friends changes their name. If you have any other suggestions about things that could go on the ID page feel free to post it on either the Blockland Forums or the Return to Blockland Forums. I’ll also be integrating support for the blocking/unblocking functionality I added to the chat server earlier.

It’s also worth noting at this point that you won’t be able to have two people logged into an RTB Connect account. There is one account per ID and that account may only be used by one person at a time.

–Ephialtes via the Blockland Forums

The IRC is on a different server, CentralChat, so you should not have noticed any interruptions in chat service.

In any case, it appears to be working smoothly right now. For more details, see the Blockland Forums.

July 11

So a while back I said I’d be experimenting with a proprietary chat server - I’ve pretty much finished this and got a proof-of-concept model working in python which has a significantly smaller CPU and memory footprint while also being able to happily hold >1000 concurrent connections which is likely more than we’ll ever need. From a load perspective this is really promising - I wasn’t too keen on increasing the server resources for the old server. Due to this, I think I’m going to go ahead with our own chat. A lot of time was spent with me trying to figure out how the XMPP protocol worked so it’ll cut out a lot of time if I just make up our own protocol. It also makes it much more extensible because I don’t have to learn someone else’s codebase. So the features I’ll be aiming to implement for v4 are:

• Friends list + presence
• Friend invitations
• Friend messaging
• Friend list management (groups)
• Blocking
• Status updates (away/busy/available)
• Join friend’s servers
• Invite friends to the server you’re on
• Private chatrooms (not sure whether I will allow people to make them whenever or whether they must be requested/registered)
• Private chat settings (admin/mod/access settings)

— Ephialtes via the Blockland Forums

July 12

BlockBot will be retired or atleast take a lesser role when the v4 chat system is out. At the moment everyone is shoved into a single IRC room - this was just a terrible idea to begin with because 32 blockland players in a single server is a nightmare, let alone 500.

v4 will not have a main chat area - you’re just going to have a list of friends you can message. As mentioned, there will be private chatrooms (and perhaps a public helpdesk/general chat) but ideally there won’t be 500 people in a single room at one time.

As for server invitations - you can only send them to people on your friends list so there’s no issue of spam (and if someone is spamming you, remove them from your friend list).

– Ephialtes via the Blockland Forums

July 14

I’ve been continuing development on the chat server and surprisingly this is nearing completion. Authentication is in place as well as private room persistance. I suspect the server will be complete in the next couple of days.

The toughest bit is the interface for the chat - It’s very interactive and looks pretty cool so far. It should feel like a proper friends list and not some hacky torque add-on. Here’s another example of the menu functionality (my bad for the jpeg quality):

V4 was originally going to include a lot more features but I’m thinking I might just cut everything out and release it as just the chat client (and then introduce the other features in 4.1). I think people have waited long enough for this so I don’t want to delay it any further. I will be aiming for a private/public beta of the chat client in roughly a month’s time and depending on performance we can then go ahead for a full release.

–Ephialtes via the Blockland Forums

July 17

To keep people from sending you random invites set “People who can send me an invite” to “Nobody at all…”

You can see in the earlier picture where the Invite notification bar is, and also in this one. When you click it you’re shown this:

–Ephialtes via the Blockland Forums (part 2), edited for blog post

July 18

I’ve finished the friends list and private room portions of the chat server now, and also integrated that into the RTB database. The things left to do are authentication (leaving this until last because I’m developing locally, but it won’t take long at all), sorting friends into groups, and messaging which is also relatively simple. Fun bits then include some security and secret management commands and then I’m going to profile and load test it and see where we stand after that.

Then we move onto the chat client which is a bit harder. The friends list part of the interface is complete and just requires a few small changes to get it working with the new server, then there’s just the messaging interface which shouldn’t be too hard. As you can see from the screenshots, a bunch of the work chat client is already done.

–Ephialtes via the Blockland Forums

July 19

Messaging is done now, along with authentication. Blocking/unblocking of friends as well as status updates (away/busy/available) are also implemented.

–Ephialtes via the Blockland Forums

Questions and Answers

Q: Will you be able to view things in the holding tank from the mod manager?

A: No.

Q: Are you hurrying up development of the chat client because of other similiar projects on the Blockland forums?

A: Sure, partly. I’ve thrown around a lot of ideas in this thread regarding a chat client and it’d be a shame if someone else implemented my own ideas before I could. It’s not like I’ve suddenly decided to make a chat client - this has been on the drawing board for atleast a year.

Q: What features will be in RTB 4.1 and later versions?

A: V4 will be containing RTB Connect (the friends list/chat system) as well as a few bugfixes for things and possibly the steam overlay to make it easier to chat in-game.

V4.1 is going to contain a total re-write of RTB to re-organize the code and optimize a bunch of it - this takes significantly less time than it sounds and is actually half-way done. There’s a design fault in the current RTB networking which causes your client to open about 3 connections to RTB when you open your game which I couldn’t avoid without an overhaul of some sort.

I think I listed it out somewhere, but roughly it was:

• V4 - Chat Client
• V5 - Gallery/Save Repository
• V6 - Clan Manager
• V7 - ???

Q: What’s all this about the gallery?

A: This is going to be v5 of RTB. A gallery is pretty simple so I don’t foresee v5 being very far behind v4.1 but it will include the following awesome things:

• Browsing of the gallery in-game as well as downloading save files if the submitter attached them
• Saving blockland saves to your RTB account (online)
• Loading saves directly from the RTB Gallery into a server
• Backing up your save files onto RTB automatically so you can load your saves on whichever computer you’re using, wherever you are.

Another cool thing is that since RTB keeps a catalog of datablocks and uiNames used by add-ons, it can also provide a list of the custom bricks/weapons/vehicles/colorsets you’ll need to load the save file correctly.

It’ll be an interesting one to develop because according to some research I did a while back - save files are pretty big. So managing those on the backend will be an exciting task. I’ve got a secret weapon, though.

Q: Will you be able to kick people out of chatrooms?

A: When a chat room is registered, the registrar is given ownership which permits them to give admin rights to other users. The owner and admins can then kick and ban from their chat room as they please.

Q: Why doesn’t RTB host music files?

A: We used to allow music but people would just submit full songs. There was also a lot of annoying code to make it dump the file in the Music folder instead of the add-ons folder. Basically it was just too much work for a few dumbasses to upload Justin Bieber songs.

Q: What will happen to the IRC?

A: It’s going away forever.

Q: Will you add voice chat?

A: The version of TGE that Blockland uses has no support for microphone capture (or any support for anything else voice chat would need) so voice chat won’t be happening. I doubt I’d want to inflict such a thing on the community either.

Q: Will beta testsers be listed in the credits for RTB4?

A: No.

Q: When the master server goes down I the chat system will go down too. I found it useful when the master server was down occasionally to check what was going on and some people gave server IPs to connect to manually. Do you have a plan for this?

A: I’m designing a contingency system which RTB Connect would put in place if it lost connection to the master server. It will essentially allow people to login to RTB Connect as “guests” (you won’t get your friends list) and will be auto-joined to a central chatroom. There are a few things to consider here but I feel it’ll meet the requirement you mentioned above.

Beta Testing Information

Every major release there is typically a beta testing period spanning several weeks. Beta testers are selected by a simple first come, first served selection policy. Fairly soon beta testing will be open for registration at this link. Make sure to bookmark it if you’re interested in testing and check daily!!

Typically beta testing is opened to 100 people. After that, as we need more testers and others get bored and stop testing, more positions are opened. Again, it’s a first to register, first to test policy. If John Doe is the 100th person to sign up and <insert the name of your favorite person here> didn’t sign up yet, too bad. John Doe tests and the god of Blockland mods does not get to test.

Your job will be to test the game and report any bugs to the beta testing forums. You will be given access to these forums upon being accepted into the program. Beta testing is a thankless job, you will not get paid, you will not get put into any credits, we won’t make you an admin on the forums, nobody will remember you. All you get is the smug satisfaction of getting something before everyone else and/or the warm fuzzy feeling for helping make the mod better for everyone else in your small way.

Mailbag

Have any questions about the development and future of RTB? Questions about Blockland in general, or the forums? Any questions at all for the staff? Email them to the following address:

The best will be featured in a periodic blog update!

You can post any bugs/issues/questions in this thread or on our forums.

Change Log:

- Fixes issues with content downloading:
- Content updates replacing full-content add-ons.
- Add-ons disappearing.
- verifying add-ons getting stuck.
- Timeout functionality added to networking.
- Fixed comment pagination making red screen of death.
- Added new pagination for mod manager to cope with large number of add-ons.
- Fixed rtb breaking matchmaker connections from non-rtb users.
- Removed hacky font downloader.
- Fixed groups in mod manager and made them more reliable.
- Added dedicated server support without the need to enter a command.

Content Downloading adds a new phase to the mission loading when you join a server - your client downloads all the shapes/sounds/textures/bricks (but NOT scripts) in all the RTB add-ons on the server for you. This drastically reduces your overall loading time when joining a server and also allows you to make sure people playing on your server have all the bricks that you have.

You can post any bugs/issues/questions in this thread or on our forums.

Change Log:

Fixes:

- Content Downloading (when you join a server you'll download all the server's rtb add-ons and these are then put into a new category of the Your Mods window)
- Unban button on the unban screen for super admins

The main new feature is the add-on grouping. This can be accessed either via Start a Server > Add-Ons (the Groups button) or by clicking the “Groups” tab in the Your Mods section of the Mod Manager. Grouping allows you to create a group which contains specific add-ons and you can then enable/disable these groups from the Add-Ons menu as usual.

Just restart/open Blockland to get the update.

You can post any bugs/issues/questions in this thread or on our forums.

The Private Files features the following:

• You can specify up to 20 BL IDs that are allowed to view/download your file.
• When you add someone, your add-on will be visible to them both in sections/search results but also in the Private Mods category.
• Users will also be informed that you added them in their activity stream on the FCP, as well as via the News Feed.
• Private Mods do not have to be approved before they can be downloaded, since the risk of something dangerous spreading is minimal - and people accept this risk when they download unapproved private mods.
• Mod Reviewers will have access to your private mods - this is something you’ll have to deal with. We’re not going to let you upload stuff to our service without us knowing what the hell it is.

Enjoy, and please report all bugs or issues you find on our Forums.

We would like to invite the community to come help set it up. This isn’t for general use yet- there’s lots of rough edges. We’ve got a skeleton main page, no help section and only a couple of articles. You will need to use special pages and the search tool to navigate, we don’t have a finalized structure yet.

If you have a skill you think would be valuable, please mention it. Include a sample of your work: links to tutorials you’ve written and would like to upload to the wiki, any work you’ve done on other wikis, or if you’re interested in layout, a website with a nice table you made using CSS. However, you are not required to have any of these skills in order to participate, if you’re interested in just writing some articles and helping out in general, you’re welcome to apply.

At the moment we are only looking for around ~5 people but we will slowly expand this group. Eventually there will be a beta to invite the general community to come and upload their own guides.

Your job will include writing articles, templates, and tables. Your work will ultimately determine the organizational structure and the look of the final public release.

When your application is accepted you will be added to the RTB wiki usergroup, gain access to the RTB wiki sub-forum, and get permission to view and edit the rtb wiki itself shortly afterwards.

To apply, please post in this thread.