Piscesmike.com is back!

Piscesmike.com is back!

PiscesMike 17 Feb 2016 02:24

Greetings all!

For some time, I have been thinking about and planning on setting up a server and website to host the games I've made here in the competition. I did have something similar set up a few years back, but things got shuffled around in the house and whatnot, and the server I had at that time ended up being retired. I recently found a computer in the parking lot at work, and it was decent enough to become a new server. So, after hours of reformatting, and installations, I now have a new server back up and running!

For now, the server hosts a simple website where you can watch youtube videos of my games, and download them via hyper link if you want to play around with them. These are the fully compiled executable versions just for those that want to play and/or beta test and provide feedback.

The plans for the future is to make the source code available as well - that will probably go on Bitbucket/Atlassian, implement a chat program using my personal server, and eventually set it up to be my 3D RPG server. There are any number of things that a server can come in handy for, and those three are just my starting plans. If you are trying to do some networking coding and need a server, mine is at your service. Just send me an email, post a reply here, or catch me in the chat room sometime.

So, enough blathering! The URL for my website is: PiscesMike.com.

If you go to download the games, be advised you should be running Windows 7 or better. I don't think there are really many other requirements but if you run into issues, let me know here. On that note, there are still a few bugs in these games as they were the final version for the competition and not necessarily actually completed. At some point, as the website grows I'm going to add a feedback/bug system there online so you can check the logs to see if something has already been reported/corrected or you just want to leave new feedback. Sounds like a have a full plate ahead of me!

As always, take care and good luck in your programming ventures!

-PiscesMike

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"May the mercy of His Divine Shadow fall upon you." - Stanley H. Tweedle, Security Guard class IV, The League of 20,000 planets

Last edited on 17 Feb 2016 02:27 by PiscesMike Show more

Re: Piscesmike.com is back!

PiscesMike 11 Mar 2016 11:28

For the last little bit, especially since I finally got the server up and working, I've been wanting to work on some networking stuff. Specifically, to start out I wanted to do a chat program, and reuse some of the objects later in game dev. On that front, I've been playing around with sockets and looking at a ton of examples and tutorials. I finally found what I consider to be a pretty great demo program, and hacked it up and repackaged a good portion of it for my own uses.

The original code and tutorial can be found at: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/questions/79274/tcp-chat-application-with-both-server-and-client-logic-in-same-application

There were some requests in the chat room for some examples or demo code so I've made the executables available on my website.

The client executable (which is basically a console window based on the original code at this point) can be downloaded here:
http://piscesmike.ddns.net/Downloads/OneApp%20(Client)Executable.zip

The 'client' side at this point is where I need to concentrate my efforts for the next couple days. It supports only the following
commands: -connect, which connects to the server and ServerRegisterUser@Username, which registers a 'User' with the server and displays the username in the online users display. Any other text that is typed followed by the enter key is interpreted simply as a text message and is sent directly to the server where it is stored in the server log(s). At this point, the log is just the display window in the server console. Eventually, I'll add the ability for it to preserve the logs in some sort of file.

The server executable, which is a little more robust than the client interface can be downloaded here: http://piscesmike.ddns.net/Downloads/OneApp%20Server%20Executable.zip

The 'server' sports an actual Windows form with displays for online users and a history log. Of course, the server has to be started before the client tries to '-connect' so the client has something to connect to.

As a last note: When I started messing around with sockets it became apparent fairly quickly that I would need to do some threading. There is, of course, a million ways to do any one given task. I found using the threading to be most efficient, since the server can simply 'spawn' off a 'client handler' to listen to each client and then the system can be free to do whatever else it may need to. Whenever the client sends data the server, the client handler can notify the main process and then the main process can take whatever action is needed or necessary. So this particular code, most notably the Client and Server classes, is pretty thread heavy. If you're not used to or familiar with threading, things are going to be a bit confusing. To be completely honest there is quite a bit in there that I don't understand completely but I was able to coerce things in a thread safe manner when processing input and displaying output. With that being said, I'm making the source code available below on BitBucket. If you want to expand or just play around with the code feel free. It should be fairly self explanatory but if you have any questions catch me here or in the chat room and I'll do my best to point you in the right direction. Have a great day, and good luck on all your projects!

Server source code: https://bitbucket.org/PiscesMike/oneapp-server
Client source code: https://bitbucket.org/PiscesMike/oneapp-client

"May the mercy of his Shadow fall upon you." - Stanly Tweedle, Captain of the Lexx

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"May the mercy of His Divine Shadow fall upon you." - Stanley H. Tweedle, Security Guard class IV, The League of 20,000 planets

Last edited on 11 Mar 2016 11:37 by PiscesMike Show more

Chat program update

PiscesMike 12 Mar 2016 09:44

So, got a decent amount done today.

Adjusted the user login form so you can specify an IP address for the server. That allows you to run your own server where ever you may be, instead of connecting locally to 127.0.0.1. Other, outside internet users can now connect to the server and you can actually chat between who ever happens to be logged on.

Also made some upgrades to the server itself. It now correctly displays a list of connected (online) users, and removes them when they log out or close the client app. Also, updated the server logging so it shows server start up times, user log on and log off times, and any and all text messages sent between users. Still haven't added the functionality to save the server logs and based on the amount of use this program will actually see, probably won't. If you want to do so, feel free to download a copy from bitbucket and modify for your own use as you see fit.

Since the download locations and names change rather often, I'm not going to post the links for the downloadable executables again. If you need those, the newest versions can always be found on the home page of PiscesMike.com near the bottom. The newest code can always be found on bitbucket, and those links are in the above post.

This is probably about as much as I'm going to do with the chat program… it works and is fairly flexible. The next step will be to refactor and distill things a bit into a class or set of classes that can be used for games.

As always, enjoy, have a great day, and good luck!

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"May the mercy of His Divine Shadow fall upon you." - Stanley H. Tweedle, Security Guard class IV, The League of 20,000 planets

Re: Chat program update

Brett208 19 Mar 2016 16:08

PiscesMike,

The website looks great! I have always found web development difficult because the way websites are designed changes so quickly.

I am interested in networking applied to games, so I may check your code out when closer to taking a hack at it.

Re: Chat program update

PiscesMike 19 Mar 2016 21:05

Thanks for the kind words, Brett208! I will be creating a streamlined file just for gaming stuff here shortly. When that happens, I'll keep you in mind!

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"May the mercy of His Divine Shadow fall upon you." - Stanley H. Tweedle, Security Guard class IV, The League of 20,000 planets