How are people progressing?

[IBBoard]

How is people's work going on WarFoundry?

I've been busy with some work on phpBB MODs recently (I've got a bad habit of wanting to have several projects on the boil at once) and have been fighting issues with running code on two computers, so I've not been quite so active with WarFoundry development. Hopefully I'll be back in the next day or two and start to get some more bits tidied up now.

Also, if anyone has an suggestions on what areas need focusing on then please throw then in (either in here or by adding tickets or bumping their priorities)

[IBBoard]

I'll take that as "not" for other people then.

I've had what could be a very slow week this week, although that'd be an optimistic way of looking at it. The in-laws have been back in the country after being in the USA and have been spending most of the past week with us, with the mother-in-law annoying/stressing the wife while the father-in-law did some work on the kitchen. Luckily they have now completed on their house, so hopefully I'll be able to get some work done again next week (although work on the kitchen might still limit it a little)

[IBBoard]

It has been another slow week in terms of work. I've been side-tracked by projects for the wife (fixing things on her existing site and getting her new site set up, styled and running). I was hoping to get a new beta version released this weekend, but it looks like it won't happen because I've not had a chance to make much progress on my main target (the equipment slots).

As for "other people", I've not heard from any of the other developers since before the last post. Thanks to Snowblizz and Frostlee for testing, but you're the only ones who say anything (despite the 30+ downloads). I've tried contacting Warseer, but they haven't even got back to me after a week. I'll have to see what else I can do to drum up support.

[snowblizz]

Yeah, I wish I could do more. If only C# programming could be downloaded to the brain like in the Matrix.

I'm now basically waiting for the next release to see if you've fixed all the stuff I've been breaking.

You take the time you need though. I'm not paying you to do this after all. If I wanted something right now I'd pay WL and be done with it.

[IBBoard]

Or pay me to work on it, but that'd be more expensive Once we've got the extension infrastructure in place then people should be able to work in a range of languages, but I guess that won't help if you don't program at all

I had hoped to get a new beta out at the pace I was going, but the "equipment slots" was going a bit slowly and then my wife had her little project that she wanted to get running and set up. Hopefully it'll be this weekend now

[snowblizz]

I actually downloaded Mono and Visual C#2008 Express
if nothing else I would be able to run the code withotu waiting for you to compile it, right?

[IBBoard]

You'll need something like TortoiseSVN to check the code out of our Subversion repos, but other than that then yeah, you should be able to run it.

Depending on which version of Windows you have you might not even need Mono as you might already have .Net 2 or later installed anyway (I think it was an optional install as part of XP SP2, and Vista and 7 have later versions installed, plus Visual C# probably includes .Net 3 as well). I just use Mono on Linux because there isn't an MS .Net framework, and making everything Mono compatible means we can make it really cross-platform (including Solaris, BSD, etc).

[snowblizz]

You'll need something like TortoiseSVN to check the code out of our Subversion repos, but other than that then yeah, you should be able to run it.

Depending on which version of Windows you have you might not even need Mono as you might already have .Net 2 or later installed anyway (I think it was an optional install as part of XP SP2, and Vista and 7 have later versions installed, plus Visual C# probably includes .Net 3 as well). I just use Mono on Linux because there isn't an MS .Net framework, and making everything Mono compatible means we can make it really cross-platform (including Solaris, BSD, etc).

Yeah, I got hold of the turtle-thing as well. Of course, I dug up an Tortiose-extension for Visual Studio but it refuses to install. I have a sinking feeling its not liking my Vista. No luck getting it all together yet. Not exactly motivating. I'll see when I'm back from the weekend if I can hack it out.

[IBBoard]

I've just joined. My job involves lots of software testing so hopefully I can help out in that way. I also wrote an army creation spreadsheet (WAMIR) so I should have a good idea of features and suggest ways of implementing them. Although I've had lots of software writing training, I've not had masses of experience in actually doing a full-blown project like this, so I can help out in that way but I can't promise I'll be great.

I've poked around with the latest build, but the last of data files made it a bit more difficult to really do anything. I'll play with some of the things that other users have come up with so far. What should I focus on most?

[IBBoard]

Snowblizz: The extension probably won't install because you've got the Express edition. One of the things MS purposefully cut was plugin support to force people to use the full version. Well, I say "cut", one developer found that the API was still there to use, but the lawyers jumped on you for using it. Unfortunately you'll either have to download the projects with TortoiseSVN or download another package and use MonoDevelop 2.2 beta 2 (which now officially supports Windows) or SharpDevelop (which is what MonoDevelop forked from a long time ago, but which requires .Net 3.5 as well).

cornixt: Welcome to the project Suggestions for features are always good, as is any help in testing the tool and the file formats. We've got a ticketing system for bugs and an explanation of the file formats. The test files are a bit minimal, but I think Snowblizz attached some others to some of the tickets.

What you should focus on depends on what you want to help with If you want to code then focusing on the higher priority tickets for v0.1 is useful, although you'll need to learn the API and the app first. If you want to test for bugs then focusing on trying to break it is good - the standard test routing of throwing stuff at it and trying to do stuff in weird and unusual ways If you want to find new features then just play around and see what I've done that seemed intuitive enough to me at first but which isn't intuitive to users.

[snowblizz]

Snowblizz: The extension probably won't install because you've got the Express edition. One of the things MS purposefully cut was plugin support to force people to use the full version. Well, I say "cut", one developer found that the API was still there to use, but the lawyers jumped on you for using it. Unfortunately you'll either have to download the projects with TortoiseSVN or download another package and use MonoDevelop 2.2 beta 2 (which now officially supports Windows) or SharpDevelop (which is what MonoDevelop forked from a long time ago, but which requires .Net 3.5 as well).

Well, I guess you are right. The program has all the interfaces for extensions and stuff though, or so it seems. Though it really did sound like it should have worked. The fun thing is that the "installation" fails while running a VB script looking for a registry key or something.

cornixt... of CDO fame?

[IBBoard]

I think I've still got one of the old versions of TestDriven.net that works with Express somewhere. It does seem a bit stupid to put "thou shalt not extend the app" in the license but leave the interface there for it, though.

Hopefully you'll get things set up soon, although I don't blame you if you give up with the number of things you've downloaded already If you've got any "beginner's" insight in to setting things up then please feel free to add it to the Wiki (either updating the existing "getting started" guide or linking from there to a "Beginner's getting started" or "Testing the latest development version for non-programmers" article.

*wonders what CDO is*

[snowblizz]

Considering setting up to program is much more complicated than the act itself... I'm not surprised so few bother to try.

CDO= Chaos Dwarf Online, a site/forum dedicated to the "Big Hats".

One of the mods has the moniker "cornixt", and I figured the world of WH isn't that large.

[IBBoard]

I did a quick search and found CDO - hopefully it is some interest from some other forums

As for setting up for programming, it's not so bad when you know what you need, and Linux's package management with free, open source tools makes it easier than the Windows method of "download Visual Studio, realise you need .Net, realise you need an SVN tool...".

[cornixt]

Yep, that's me, I'm an admin on CDO. One of the members had a Warfoundry link in their sig and that led me to here. I've been sick for the last few days so I've not really felt like doing much. I'll have a bit of spare time coming up so I can get stuck in then.