Buckle in, this one’s gonna be anticlimactic. Essentially I took a 2-week mental break since I stared at my monitor for too long. In essence: I didn’t get much Rune Synergy work done. After my modeling spree, I hit a rut in motivation and energy. This week I’ve dedicated myself to “getting my shit together” by reanalyzing my priorities and tasks before diving back in.
After finally crawling out of my cave, I realized my lack of motivation was due to poor task tracking leading to feeling like I’m going nowhere. It’s super important for me to “gamify” the things I do, otherwise, I don’t feel like I’m making headway. Luckily GitHub has solutions for this.
Intermission
Before we move forward, I want to describe how I plan on formatting my blog posts in the future, so you’ll have a sort of logic to the mayhem.
I like the idea of having each blog post be almost a continuation of the previous, where at the beginning I’ll talk about the things I left the previous blog post on. Then talk about what I’ve worked on since, and finally what I’m planning on doing next. I think I’ve been following this roughly, but I want to make it more apparent this time.
With that said, let me address the last things I talked about: I mentioned processing models and getting some proper asset names for them. I had done plenty of it with success that can be viewed on GitHub. I also worked on converting item definitions into the intended script format. Shortly after this, I went on a model/animation conversion spree, which was basically a distraction from Rune Synergy’s development. I still haven’t started on the same process for NPCs or Objects, those are still on the back burner.
Right, let’s get back to it.
Priorities
One of the large dampening factors of progress was a lack of a functional game world. It feels almost like a real-world deadlock where I can’t do them both simultaneously, it’s one or the other. I’ve gotten a pretty sweet setup for the client but can’t get in the game yet. It’s very functional up to the login screen. So I have to decide between two choices:
- Get the server working for the standard Java Client
- Get the client rewritten for an existing server
They’re both simple enough options, but I like to think ahead. I’m planning on abandoning the standard protocol in favor of my “make a struct and send it over wire” solution. The reason is: the server is already using it and expecting networked messages to be formed this way. It wouldn’t make sense to make this layer and NOT use it. (Did I just make a problem for a solution? Maybe.)
Additionally, this gives me more time to organize my thoughts and ideas for how the server will be structured. Which I felt is even more important at the moment.
Anyways, so I’m going with Option 2. Luckily my good friends over at Scape05 are basically using an almost unmodified 317 client and the game supports almost every packet/engine feature. Projectiles, graphics, multiplayer, etc.
Although the client conversion won’t be very linear, I’m still going to give myself something to work with. I figured a task for each Java class would be the simplest start.
Luckily I’ve already created solutions for a bunch of things, I just didn’t have any tasks to quantify the work already done. Some super important things also being the spooky Synthesizer which I actually already converted to Go nearly three years ago. It’s public so check it out.
Serverside
I’m just one person and multitasking isn’t my forte, so I won’t be touching any server code until the client is complete! I’m still allowing myself to plan the serverside though.
I found that exploring the client yet again is giving me new ideas on how I should handle things on the server. Also talking to some cool people from the RuneScape Private Server communities who are super knowledgeable (or curious) on the mechanics of OSRS, which help directly!
There is still a ton of work ahead of me. As you can see, the server is 0% towards its goal of Minimal Viable Product (MVP). I’m confident that once I get the client written then server development will pick up substantially. Until then I’ll be working on getting these tasks assembled and designing this database, which I’ve done a little of:
(Schema is likely to change drastically)
I’ll be using PostgreSQL for my databases and sqlc to generate functions for accessing it. So far I’m enjoying the productivity with sqlc where I only write a query once and it generates functions based on that query.
What’s next?
The client of course! I started utilizing GitHub’s Projects to track progress and assign timelines. Right now it’s super empty, but I’ll be filling it out by the end of next week. I’m projecting to complete the client conversion by the end of this month. We’ll see what happens.
Those I am thankful for
In no particular order:
- Sir Polar of Rune-Server
- King Pazaz of Lost City
- King Kris of Blurite
- Ruler Devenir of Scape05
- Buddy matt123337 of Canada
- Söör Suic of Discord
- Lord LMP88959 of King’s Crook
