Birth of Legends

The UPS guy was attacked by a trunk-monkey and it is now very uncertain as to when the server will be back up. Please send all your complaints and flames to Jon, who doesn't have work tomorrow. Other news:

-Site no longer has that annoying grayed out horizontal scroll bar, score!
-Computer still is slow but situation has improved somewhat with my remote possibilities.
-I'm having lots of fun coding (not so much right now) and have put in some "new" features that for now will remain classified.
-The Boxer by Simon and Garfunkel is currently playing on my computer.
-Lordclark.com has a link on the bottom of it's homepage with links to what I've been working on. Feel free to find all the bugs that I know are there (I'm just to lazy to fix them right now).
-In case download page is wrong and I don't feel like fixing it this is the most recent version I think, though that link might not be right since I wrote it off the top of my head.
-I finished watching season 3 of stargate sg-1 today.

:Mark

Hey everybody, I have great news! If you want to help BOL come out faster you can donate money using the donate button! The new donate button can be found at the bottom of the links thing to the right. So, now even if you have no time, ideas, nor artistic talent you can still help the Birth of Legends cause. Horray!

-Mark

Remember the really old forum that had over 3000 posts and was full of useful information? Well, that site never allowed me to create a copy of the database but I've decided to make an archive of all that information anyway. Using internet explorer's (yeah I hate to use it) option to make websites availible offline I'm creating an entire copy of the old forum. So, the good thing is that we'll be able to talk about a lot of the old discussions. The bad thing is now I have to sort through 500 megs of junk that IE decided to download to find what we want. So, it will take some time but I wanted to let you all know that it was in the works. If anyone has a lot of free time and would like to help me sort through everything I'm more than willing to give you a folder. So that's what I felt like saying today.

-Mark

As those of you who read this know I'm not very consistent with posting here and/or updating the site. So, I've figured out a fairly good way to change this. Basically, instead of have the last five posts on this page what will be displayed is all the posts from the last week. This means that I'll have to post at least once a week for something to be displayed, which will force me to create news even if there isn't any. So, that's good news for everyone because I'll be working on the site more, making updates frequently, overall working more on BOL. Oh, and also as a side note, today during school a few of my friends pointed out some spelling errors I had made on one of the information pages. I tell you this because that is something I like to see; people who actually read and care about what they've read. So, if anyone finds an error in what I've written somewhere on the site please tell me as it's nice to know that you've read it and it's also nice to know that the site is accurate and free of mistakes.

Something else that was brought to my attention today; Should there be any incentives within the game to donate? That's a good question and I think the answer to that is yes, there should be. So, I'm still deciding what in-game rewards there should or shouldn't be for donating money, and I'll tell you once the server is back up and playable. For anyone who donates before the game gets up and running again, you will recieve access to unreleased content, special demos, unreleased demo movies, and also will gain a place in the credits for donating to BOL. So tell me what you think of this whole idea, and I'd like to say that I've already recieved one donation!

-Mark

Today I've worked a little on fixing errors on the archive pages. So, now hopefully you'll never be taken to a page that doesn't exist, or to a page your not supposed to see. In other news, I finished a basic database of the old forum (or a forumbase). You can download it here. It's a 30 meg download but when you unrar it it gets to somewhere around 200 megs. Those of you who originally posted on that forum will probably have the most laughs when reading through some of this, if you choose. I'll be trying to fish out the relevant information about BOL that isn't already on the site and add it. I once talked about putting the entire archive online here, and I still plan to, but that will take a lot more time. If anyone wants to now help me find the relevant information in here then go ahead, do it, and I'll be more than happy to transfer what you've found here on the site. One thing I realized was missing from the site was a basic FAQ about BOL. That can now be found by one of the links on the right entitled: BOL FAQ.

Server update: It will be up monday or tuesday. In the meantime I'll work on getting something new compiled by then. Until then, I hope to hear some feedback.

-Mark

The forums are starting to come back to life, slowly but surely, now that it has been cleared up that the forums are not currently locked as some of you thought. Some have asked why I haven't posted much recently and said that that was a reason why you hadn't posted at all. Well, it's mostly because I haven't thought of any good topics to discuss, nor had any questions to answer. So if you have a question or a topic you'd like to have discussed either write a comment here or, even better, post it on the forums.

-Mark

Yes, you read that correctly, I'm about to attempt to revive the old motherboard in the craziest attempt every attempted. For those of you who've seen my current setup, with a motherboard out side of the case, that's nothing like what I'm about to attempt. I'm going to pull in a third motherboard, a second power supply, three additional hard drives, a lot of wires, and a few prayers that I don't blow anything up. So, basically I'm posting this message now just in case it doesn't all go well. This computer will have to be turned off for a few minutes though should be turned back on five minutes into the surgery for moral support. Wish me luck.

-Mark

(the participants of this surgery have signed many papers so I can't be sued)

Well, luckily for me and possibly unluckily for everyone else there was no explosion. Yet, I haven't tried turing it on yet because I feel a need to look over all the wires a third time to make sure nothing will explode. One other aside before I tell you the details of the surgery is that there was a computer from California that was claiming to be a relative of one of the patients and tried to sue me. Luckily he had misplaced his papers and brought no evidence to court. So I wasn't sued.

The surgery was very intense. It took me ten minutes before I could safely turn this computer back on (if having an entire computer including the power supply and excluding the hard drives outside of cases is safe). After another ten minutes we learned that one of the main arteries (the aorta to be exact) was too short. Then when relocating the heart to a better location there was a kidney failure (floppy drive) and a liver (power button wire) problem that we hadn't diagnosed before. Luckily for our patient there was a liver availible from a patient who had died many years ago. Unluckily, this new liver wasn't a perfect match, and it was very old, but it looks like it will do for now. About the right kidney, well I rewired his brain (bios) so he no longer thinks he needs it. I think if we pump a constant supply of medicine (software) into him he'll be alright. He is currently recovering in stasis and I think he'll be alright, but I think I may want to take a picture before I jumpstart him (press the power button), just in case. So, wish me luck.

-Mark

p.s. The server computer is back up, and I'm working as fast as I can to set up the fixes, but it will take some time with all this thanks giving activity that is taking place right now. Hopefully I'll have it up by tonight.

[Edit:]Old edit deleted: Server is online and ready for testing![/Edit]

Hello everyone! Now, I can't test it, but I think that BOL might be working properly now, so if people could test it that would be great. If things are working properly you should be able to throw a snowball and also be able to talk in the chat box. If you can do one and not the other tell me. If you can't do either, tell me. If you can do both tell me. What ever you do, tell me, because I like input and need help :) . Oh, yeah, and yes this means that the server is back up.

-Mark

So, two people tested the server, I think. I heard from one of them, and everything worked. They were able to throw snowballs, talk, the works. For some reason I noticed that a part of the server crashed when they logged out, but it didn't affect others who were coming in. So, we'll see how that turns out.

-Mark

Yay! Everyone celebrate by logging in, shooting snowballs, and taking screenshots! For those of you who haven't already you can download the client here. I figured out what was up with the whole crashing thing, fixed the code, recompiled it, and even tested it so I know it works. So, go on, play!

Now that the network is working fairly normally I need to figure out which one of the things I said I'd do next, that I should do first. So, here's what I think the choices are: Npcs, new models, actual physics, or better fighting/a real weapon. Or, if I had said something else, which I probably did, and didn't list it here, and you'd rather see that, then tell me. I'll need some input of what's wanted the most before I start doing it. So, leave a comment here, or post it on the forums, or email me.

-Mark

So, I'm now working on a proper login screen for the client. I thought that it shouldn't be too hard and that it'd be done yesterday, but I was wrong, as always. For some reason the screen comes up but it never actually connects to the server properly, so I'm still working on it. For those of you who care though, the old launcher has been fixed up quite a bit and is now in the download. So, I'm really wishing that my good motherboard worked again so it wouldn't take so long to do anything. But enough of that, I'll get back to work.

-Mark

News: I'm very sick. I did little work on the game today but I did upload a patch to the server. Now for the explanation:

As far as I can tell from the logs no one experienced any problems but a part of the server software crashed again today. Luckily, today I also figured out what was wrong with (wow alliteration) part of the server in the first place, and I even knew how to fix it. This was the first time in many days that I wasn't confronted with any errors trying to fix something. Awesome. I have a really big headache right now. Ok, so, so far no two people have logged into the server at the same time, though there have been four different people who have logged into the server in the past two days. I'm sorry for the lack of new things but I have made some huge advancements with the server, so thankyou guys for testing it out. I have some ideas for how to get my login screen to work (what I only told Ix was that I programmed a login screen but for some reason it wasn't displaying properly). Though, I barely have the energy to respond to email and write this, so I won't look into it again till tomorrow. For character selection I'm going to add in something I think, if I remember to code it tomorrow, because it shouldn't be too hard to do a basic selection. And now I can't think straight anymore, so goodnight, and I'm going to bed...

-Mark

[EDIT2:] The problem with the cooler launcher has been eliminated. By the time you read this it will have been uploaded here.

[EDIT:] So, there was actually nothing really wrong with the server. I improved it further, found the fix not to work and then realized what had happened; the new launcher that I had made which looks so good doesn't actually work. See, I hadn't bothered to test it because I really can't, and so basically if anyone had downloaded the new version it won't work. So, I'll upload a new working version of the better looking launcher in the next 24 hours if I can't get this blasted login screen to work first.[/EDIT]

What I tried today went down in flames with over 100 errors. So, I have no binary updates for today. Yes, there is still time today but fixing all those errors tonight seems unreasonable. What I did accomplish today was I updated the MySQL tables so that it's ready to deal with character customization, though I haven't finished with the 3d content yet. One bad thing that I discovered today; somehow in yesterday's update I messed up the service that I fixed, so logging in doesn't seem to be working properly. I'm working on that now. I'm still tired.

-Mark