Roll out... Roll back... Roll out (repeat)

After 30 - 40 hours of rolling out, rolling back, rolling out, rolling back (repeat) different versions of Torque MMOkit (version 0.0.3 SP, 1.3 SP, 1.5.2 SP) and searching the forums for undocumented todo's and trying them one by one.... and for each change, recompile world, update server database, build new client, restart servers, try client locally, try client remotely.... I finally got an empty world running and could log on several simultaneous characters. (v.1.3)... More...

I have been working with a local server so far, and felt that if i don't have hands-on proof that i can run it as multi player i can't really relax. Now I can relax. About this particular thing. (after this I had to enter single player Civilization IV trance, the ultimate security blanket)

Single Sentiment - Sorrow

For the the guided paper prototype play i conducted some of the design for World of Minds, i used paintings by Bosch as inspiration when i made the single sentiment mobs. Here is an example:



it was relaxing to draw these mobs, as a break from designing game mechanics and worrying about coding them.

concept pic for playtest of wom

concept pic for playtest of wom
Originally uploaded by mimmi

josh and the owls

IPIP NEO you say?

IPIP NEO you say?
Originally uploaded by mimmi

Soon I will ask for test subjects in the lab.

There is a number of stages in the implementation that i need to paper prototype. Wizard of Oz, here i come.

Goodbye Libraries, goodbye time.

me at work,
originally uploaded by mimmi.

(testing to blog from flickr)
I just needed to face it. Log4cxx leaks memory. Libxml is redundant when i use the bettermudserver. It was a mistake to swig down the mind. It is better to implement the mind as a lib, and rewrite the server. Goodbye several weeks of dev-time. Well - if one is to change course its better to do it late than never.

Memory leaks

I have been fretting about mending the memory leaks in the mind module for a long time now, finding other seemingly more important things to do. Oh well all is important, but i have anyway not gotten down to the memory leak problem.

One of the other things i have stuffed around with is converting my code projects from vs2003 to vs2005, and one of the problems is that the libray i use for logging, log4cxx doesnt link properly in vs2005. And there are no new binaries since 2004 in the project. ...So i thought that well either i solve the problem, or i implement a simpler logging system, or i just go on using vs2003 where log4cxx works. But now i have one of those days where i couldn't concentrate on anything, so i thought why not instead use the time to remake the logging system. That's at least a comprehensible task.
...and ended up trying to solve the problem anyway - I'm so fond of the library so i think there is a case of separation agony.
In the midst of this though i stumbled on long threads about memory leaks! In log4cxx!

what if what if...
it would be too good to be true. Probably it's not true, i have probably been sloppy and have to mend those leaks anyway. But maybe there will be one less!

Otherwise it is still good in Tokyo. I had my husband visiting last week and this week i have had a flue, but im starting to feel better.

implementation note to self 051021:2

Oh, ok, no reason to panic. No wonder i had parallell tracks for the nodes since i must have a hybrid network. The mood nodes have to check the weightings they have to other nodes themselves i think, while the behavior nodes on the other hand should be recieving messages where a high enough level would trigger a behavior. Next week i probably need to think about whether i should have activation thresholds for varieties of behaviors of the same type in the same node or if i should differenciate between them. Back to the mood nodes.

implementation note to self 051021

So: in my executable network. Im am unsure of whether i should use message posting or attached proceduers for updating the mind.
As for now i have rushed away and made attached procedures, but im stopping now the see wheter i maybe should use triggers instead. Hmf.

I started stuffing around with the mood nodes yesterday, making them talk to the different emotion nodes that they are conserned with. (the intro mood and the extro mood will talk to different emotions, and have some in common. I tried to balance it so they both have same number of positive/negative/neutral emotions, but i will have to redo it anyway when its time for tweaking.) Anyway, it struck me just before i was going off to fly with Arne in that Cessna Skyhawk, that i really _should_ have message posting instead, in my mind i seem to have two system design working in parallell and thats just terrible. Cant have that, oh no.