Wurm Team Blog » Client and Server Development

Epic completed and Cryptik joined

rolfjan — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 08:44:13 +0000

I have some good news, and those are that the Epic code has been finished for something like a week. I still have to debug it but it’s all there and it’s ticking and humming nicely when I run it. We won’t be releasing it before the summer but you’ll get a date after the vacations. The closer we get to release the more I will explain it.

The client code also supports the Ericsson in-game voice communication system. Together with Ericsson we decided to wait until after the summer to release that as well but it will happen pretty early in the autumn.

Also, Cryptik joined the client development team. The more the merrier!

Some java ssl nerdity

rolfjan — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 12:05:29 +0000

Like I’ve previously hinted, I’m coding support for Ericsson In-Game Communication.

It will mean that we will support proximity, p2p, team and lecture voice chat. We have to select the business model to use. I think it will be an interesting experiment to have instant voice chat and automatically hear the players close to you. Apparently the sound may vary with the environment but I don’t know how well it’s supported in Wurm.

I do the server side, and have no idea how it sounds yet. The guys at Ericsson has implemented it in the client though and says it works fine. They are finishing off the code now and hopefully we can launch it before I take some vacation.

Now, here comes some technical stuff for all you java and maybe c# developers. Hopefully it helps in case your application has to communicate using https with some other server.

Our server talks to their server using a REST interface over https. Their server has a self-signed certificate. Our server doesn’t trust that certificate because it can’t be verified in the trusted certificate chain, so our server refuses to communicate.

The normal solution would be to get hold of their certificate somehow and import it to the default keystore cacerts using keytool. My problem then is that I have to do that on all machines, and also not forget it on any future machines. I resent that. I want things to be automated. I am pretty scared of all things that has to do with certificates or SSL especially with java or in any sort of code. To me the whole signing/encryption certificate situation on the internet is a big disaster with lots of incompatibility, misguided paranoia and special cases. Or I am ignorant.

In any case, I found that people have figured out a way to add those self-signed certificates to the keystore automatically and programatically! Which means you can too!

The post that explained it to me is here.

Basically, take this class and change the main method to a normal method with standard arguments. Remove the code that tries to create a special keystore. Instead, make sure that the cacerts keystore is used using the password ‘changeit’ which is default. Remove the command line bufferedreader and add certs[0] to the keystore file.

Now, before making your https Url connection or the first time you connect to a new site, run the method. It will import the cert to the cacerts keystore.

But alas! Your connection may still fail because of

Caused by: javax.net.ssl.SSLHandshakeException:
    java.security.cert.CertificateException: No name matching whatyou.connectto.com found

Where whatyou.connectto.com is the host you are trying to connect to. Their self-signed certificate doesn’t match the hostname I think.

However, that also can be solved. Here I found this solution:

static {
	    //for localhost testing only
	    javax.net.ssl.HttpsURLConnection.setDefaultHostnameVerifier(
	    new javax.net.ssl.HostnameVerifier(){

	        public boolean verify(String hostname,
	                javax.net.ssl.SSLSession sslSession) {
	            if (hostname.equals("whatyou.connectto.com")) {
	                return true;
	            }
	            return false;
	        }
	    });
	}

Make sure to set it for only the connection you make to that host or all your other Https connections will fail. Good luck!

Budda joins the team

rolfjan — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 09:17:14 +0000

Today I received the Non-Disclosure Agreement from Budda who will be joining the client team. He lives in Australia and has already contributed to the project by creating a couple of tools for Wurm: the WStats that keep track of skill progression, and the WPlanner which is a more modern mapper.

You can find them on his website at http://buddat.net

There he also features this timelapse of Wurm which shows off a lot of the games’ features:

I really like the choice of music for that one.

Personally, I’m finishing off a couple of things: the integration of Ericsson In-Game Communication support, and the Epic code. Not much work remains on either. While debugging those things (in a week or two) I’ll get to work with Haradur on the new animation system.

Various projects

rolfjan — Wed, 18 May 2011 09:34:08 +0000

In case anyone’s wondering what’s going on, these are the things I’m currently (man)handling:

I’ve finally managed to clean my desk enough to start getting some time to continue the Epic coding. Right now I’m finishing a “random massive mission” generator that creates kingdom wide missions. An example would be to build a Shrine in the northwest. The Shrine must be on a flat, slabbed area at least 200 meters above sea level. Another example would be to cut down a specific tree outside an enemy village. Stuff like that which makes more or less sense (aiming for as much as possible). At least they are one-timers and won’t have to be done over and over.
Coding support for Ericsson In-Game Communication
Finishing off the shares issuing to team members. I made the payment for the shares yesterday and need a special receipt from the bank to send to the proper authorities.
Preparing for Alexander/Haradur who will become an employee of Onetoofree on the 1st of June!
Playing table hockey
The usual bugs/payment support/general problem reports

I don’t know when we’ll be ready to release something big new and shiny. A lot is sort of 90% done. History has taught me to stay away from ETA’s.

Aww Easter postponed

rolfjan — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 10:20:22 +0000

Like I’ve written earlier, the server has undergone changes that requires a client update and vice versa. The client issues are pretty much sorted out but there may be something left with full screen modes.

I’ll get up to date about that on Monday and hopefully we can update both the server and client early next week.

Anyways, this means that the current Easter dates in the server code are from last year and the Easter Bunny still thinks Easter is over and won’t show:/

I’m thinking we can have a pseudo Easter the weekend after we update the code instead. It’s not a good idea to make a major update just before a big weekend like this one.

Enjoy your Easter anyways!

The New Wurm Team Blog

jsanglier — Sat, 30 May 2009 20:47:10 +0000

Okay, listen carefully!

This will be the new home for the output of the Wurm Team – from Rolf all the way down to a small mouse that lives at the back of the team forge. This will allow all the developers and the GMs to give you information on what is being planned, what we are up to and what will happen next – or last, if we forgot to tell you about it.

At the moment I am still working on the layout and back end, bending WordPress to do what I want it to do, rather than what it thinks I should do, if you get my drift. Once that is done, I will open this site up to the team and they can sharpen their quill pens.

Wont be long!

Mount Code Coming Together

rolfjan — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 23:16:50 +0000

Yesterday afternoon I finally got the riding synchronized and the speeds are pretty good now so now I can move on to equipment.

You can add a saddle, bridle, (and horseshoes to horses) and your mount will move a bit faster. This equipment side could be made very intricate using all sorts of equipment and requiring horse grooming equipment etc, but that would just make it a hassle to ride.

Some equipment used as a bonus is good because you can ride without it and it will add to the economy.
We’ll probably see these changes coming in a week or two.

The big discussion now is about the survival of HOTS because of dwindling numbers. We’ll see how many players stick around until I can make the kingdom work properly.

Player of the week is Phennexion who wrote about his experiences with trying to play HOTS in a very good way and also came to say goodbye in irc afterwards.

Team member of the week is our lead designer Mortimar. He’s been under a lot of pressure these last months with work and studies but is rounding up his team for a push. Good luck with that and everything else Mortimar!

Nice end of the Week

rolfjan — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 23:14:30 +0000

Well, this week has seen some nice progress at least on the test front. In production, shield skillgain has yoyo’d in speed which has been frustrating for a lot of people. The whole shield skillgain situation is a bit embarrassing I must say but I think that it works ok now.

The test server is up and running with a large cart that looks like a sack. You can however hitch a bull or two in front of it and drive it around, provided that you tame and lead the bulls first.

You may also ride certain tame creatures. After some convincing I allowed crocodiles to be ridden as well. Most weird creatures require a lot of body control to be ridden though.

You can download the test client and try these features out at http://www.wurmonline.com/testclient/wurmclienttest.jnlp

That client used to go to the production servers but now it goes back to the test server for mount tests.

Team members of this week and last week are Pryath and Niobe. Niobe is a fantastically good GM and gets the award for last week since she had her birthday then. She was the mastermind behind the new Newtown design.
Pryath is her husband and helps out with client development. He is working on icons and spell effects showing in the client.

Week Summary

rolfjan — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 22:59:00 +0000

This week ended in a nice way. These last hours I got footsteps working in the client again (not the version you use but the development version) and the ambient sound system that I’ve been working on seems to be taking shape as well.

There has been some progress in other areas this week as well, especially when it comes to some old bugs that were taken care of.

I’d like to appoint the player of the week this week to Posteh, who returned to Wurm after waiting for several months for a working Macintosh version of the client.

Kilean receives the Team Member of the week because he made the client more compatible with linux and I suspect that was the reason that it started working on Mac again as well.

Enjoy the weekend. I really start to see the end of the sound development and this means that hopefully mid next week I can move on to more server coding!

Increased Decay

rolfjan — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 19:41:26 +0000

Yep, again. Bleh. Nobody likes it and that makes me feel bad, so I’m sorry.

The game is supposed to have the capability to handle 500 simultaneous players. I wrote some about it here:
http://wurmonline.com/forum/index.php?topic=8361.180

Been renovating the kitchen 24/7. Pretty exhausted and battered. I expect to get the furniture up on monday so that we can move in. Fetching it now from IKEA. Only the floor remains now and it should be laid down on sunday by Rickard Nyren the floor expert.

Don’t panic over the decay. At least you’ll get skills getting new items. The big difference is that you have to use them up more quickly and that goes for everyone so at least its fair.

Enjoy the weekend!