Lunar progress thread.

[TinyTerror]

I've decided to push back this week's release until next weekend. I am working on some fairly major changes to the lunar load/unload code as well as the scriptrunners. The plan is to add structured exception handlers to every part of Lunar. These should catch and fix illegal operations before they can cause Lunar or FFXI to crash.

Another week will also give starhawk some more time to work on his new memory library. This is going to be really cool. I am expecting to tripple the amount of game elements that can be obtained with this new code, but its not quite ready yet.

For those that are having trouble with the current lunar build, I may make a bug fix release sometime early this week.

[TinyTerror]

I'm working on the input library for Lunar at the moment. It should allow keyboard and mouse input for scripts. Please note that this is only for the 1st mouse and keyboard attatched to the system. If I can get it working, scripts will be able to get keyboard input, and detect where and how the user is using the mouse.

[petar113507]

What would the Mouse and keyboard input do with a script? How would it interfere with a script?

[TinyTerror]

Uh, you honestly can't figure out how mouse and keyboard input would be used in a script? Lunar is about user interfaces. It's not that hard to figure out.

[petar113507]

>.>

Once more My inabillity to elaborate throws what I'm trying to say at fault.

ok:

I mean, Is there a way you can set up a user interface that will be dependant on situations? So prettymuch oen dependant scenario, and one that avoids the rest... Simple IF and ELSE stuff.

... OOps.

[TinyTerror]

Uh, I don't see why not.

[TinyTerror]

Sorry if I haven't been as active as normal working on Lunar over the past week or two. I'm in the process of getting a new job and looking for an apartment, and my spare time is taking a hit. Hopefully once things calm down a bit I can get back down to business.

[TinyTerror]

Ok, here is a bit of an update on the next version of Lunar. I will be releasing it within the next day or two. The changes are mostly bug fixes, and some code to catch illegal operations and runtime errors before they happen. I don't know if it will work, but its worth a try.

After this release, it may be some time before the next version. I am planning to move to 0.2 with the next release. This means major new features. My goals are to integrate starhawk's improved FFXI library, add sound support, and also some basic input capabilities. Another major feature will be the addition of a menu driven script loader and console. It should make controlling Lunar alot easier. All of this depends on me being able to get everything working, so I can't promise anything. I'm expecting it to take about 3 weeks to a month of coding and testing before anything really new is ready for public use.

[TinyTerror]

Well, I'm almost done researching for the new GUI stuff in Lunar. I settled on a library called Crazy Eddie's GUI system. It's already got full lua scripting support, as well as a renderer for direct3d. You can't make it much easier than that. I'll be starting work on integrating it this weekend. Here are some screenshots from the cegui website that might give you an idea of what Lunar scripts will be able to do with GUI's in game:







Unfortunately the GUI system will not really be something novice scripters are going to want to mess with. The documentation for the lua binding of cegui is not very good, and the mechanics behind setting up the GUI in a lunar script will be a little bit more complicated than what most people are used to. This is due to some restrictions in the way cegui has to be used. I think it will all work out in the end. Its going to be a lot of work to get it all integrated into Lunar, but the payoff will be really sweet. This will be a massive step towards completely replacing the FFXI GUI with Lunar

[TinyTerror]

The next version is going really well so far. I got cegui compiled and integrated, and the new ffxi lib is getting added today. I also found a major bug in the way the lua libraries were handling thread contention. This might have been the bug that was causing random crashes in lunar. Unfortunately I cannot add these fixes to a release because they are a bit involved. The next version will have them, and will hopefully be less prone to explosions.

[TinyTerror]

I added a new lua lib called PipeLib. It will allow scripts to talk to each other while they are running. This feature was needed before I could start work on the new GUI stuff. I hope it will work right without too many bugs.

[TinyTerror]

Things are getting nuts again at home and at work. I'll code for lunar when I can, but I'm short of spare time these days.

[TinyTerror]

Development will resume after christmas.

[TinyTerror]

Looks like I won't be able to get a new version out by new years. I need 2 or 3 weekends to deal with the large number of bugfixes and new features that are comming.

[TinyTerror]

This is pretty frustrating. One of the changes I made to Lunar over the past month of untested tinkering has managed to make it not load in the windower. Unfortunately, the changes are sort of scattered throughout the entire codebase, so I have no idea where to look. Normally this would be a snap to fix because of the CVS repository that starhawk was kind enough to set up for me. Using that, I can track all the changes I made in the code by date, and hopefully figure out whats wrong.

At least in theory anyway.

Starhawk is currently moving into a new house, and is unrechable. I can't seem to access the change tracking stuff either. Sigh. I guess I'll write support code today -_-