so far i have downloaded the package and started to play with the client.Then i was able to get through the client only portion of the tutorial. i added my own small modification to allow esc key to exit the application since getting out of the first person view without was annoying.now i need a server so i am downloading centos. ı have an older laptop that the screen doesn't work on that i am going to install it on. it only has 2 gig of RAM and a single core CPU so I guess I'll find out soon what performance is like i hope that for a development environment it will be fine.
so as requested i will post my progress here for all to see. I know a lot of different programming languages (and I am a professional developer) but i have not yet used python. it doesn't look too hard to pick up though i already ran into an issue with my tabs I'll get it though.

you can use vmware which is free, runs great too. there is a vmware setup buried in the docs somewhere. good luck, great engine, the visuals are gorgeous, gotta love those weather effects.

Hi



Fyi: I am running my dev environment (everything including the webtools) on a tiny Acer Aspire Revo R3600 (Atom230 1.6) box with 2 GB ram (together with a Squeezeserver feeding the whole house with high quality .flac music) and it works just fine so far.

Cheers
gs

Awesome... well, I got my server up and running after a bit of trial. The first laptop I tried had some video troubles, and I didn't know how to do the install using only command line. So, I have another one, it's a little more powerful anyway. Got it up and running and tested my fantasy demo.

Next I am working on continuing with the tutorial, doing the client server part now.

Keep posting!

Ok, just got through the next section of the tutorial. Chat Console. Firstly, instead of using the files in the tutorial folder, I have started with a blank folder and have been following along. I have also been typing in everything from the pdf rather than copy and paste, so that I get a better feel for how the programming goes (of both Python and the BW Engine). It helps me to pay more attention to what is going on.

I ran into a couple of issues getting it running, first, I messed up a tabbing again (man, getting used to having my TABS matter is tough). Then I found that there is a piece missing from the tutorial pdf. This is where I am glad that there *are* tutorial files to look at. The pdf tutorial is missing the handleCharEvent function from both ChatConsole.py and BWPersonality.py (client). Once I added those, I was able to "chat". I was surprised when it just showed the text on the screen with no "console box" or anything and it's just right in the center of the screen. I'm going to continue with the tutorial, but I will definitely be looking into getting that sorted out soon. My mind has already been reeling trying to think of how I can have multiple channels and tabs and chat windows. (all the good things from normal MMOs)

Oh and the DetailDistance method LOD is really cool!

Next up is the Space Loader section, I will post my progress when I'm done.

Alright, well, I finished the tutorial. I did the SpaceLoader portion with no problems. Then I decided to push on ahead and do the last part, the NPC. For the most part that went smoothly. There were a couple of things missing from the tutorial again. One of them I actually caught on my own without having to look at the completed example. (They forgot to import BigWorld in one of the files) so I'm learning! The other issue was in the Greeter client side where they didnt mention that they were initializing some variables. But, with the help of the completed project, and the python.log file I was able to resolve them.

I also went ahead and stuck a tree in my spaces/main and got that to work.. it was just too barren

Next I will start working on the misc tutorials in the docs folder, and then start pulling in useful things from the fantasy demo. Oh and I need to make a map!

You have still alot of gameplay to implement.

yup, it is a very hard task to create a full game logic for BWT.

specially if only a couple of programmers, will take years I assume just to code the logic, + add the actual assets creation.

so for a 1 member is practicly impossible to do it alone, needs at least 5 to 10 members that knows what they are doing.

unless Josh Ritter comes aboard

it is Josh Ritter the developer of tmmokit, right?
I mean a single guy created a full blown mmo out of nothing, well he had torque engine, but practicly stripped it down since torque is a fps oriented engine, so it was more difficult. but in BWT case, the engine is mmo ready with the best networking server architecture outhere. if he built the whole frame in 9 months, Ill bet you working with BWT will take a whole lot less to implement game logic only, specially that the guy already have past experience. he would of make a killing selling a kit for BWT.

where are you Josh, here is your second chance with a AAA engine.

hehe, only if he was listening to our prayers, lol.

anyways, I would really like to see a kit for BWT, hopefully someone is already working on it to ease the pain and time for BWT projects.


keep up the good work guys and dont lose your hopes , since all is possible in this world, it is just matter of dedication.

An old thread with a post from John Ritter:

viewtopic.php?f=64&t=4919

Well, I didn't really accomplish anything last night. The "next step" after the tutorial pdf is somewhat elusive... I examined some of the files in the fantasydemo but I am still figuring out at what point I can break something off. There are a lot of files with a import FantasyDemo lib directive, so I'm figuring out where that comes from. I think that perhaps I'll try to write up my "next steps" into a tutorial also. The other tutorials in the docs folder seem to be for a few bits of specific functionality, like items, friends list, etc. They also don't seem to be nearly as step by step as the main tutorial.

I'm actually kind of surprised that there aren't more community tutorials yet, since I know that several of you have had the engine since March But ok, you don't want to share... I will.

Also, right now, yes I AM a one man band. But like you said, Josh Ritter did it. I refuse to believe in "you can't do it" so don't try to stop me! Muahhaha!

last night I started bringing things over from the fantasy demo with the mouse cursor. I got the mouse cursor to show up, but I haven't figured out yet how to use a key to turn it on or off. In doing this, I examined the code a bit further and I think that I understand it more. It's definitely tricky because they recommend to NOT use the fantasy demo as your starting point, but instead create a fresh project and use the fantasy demo as examples. This is what I am doing, but it's difficult to know what you should and shouldn't bring over. There are also a lot of inner dependencies that I have to trace to see what is happening. It's not exactly like I can just copy over the Avatar.py and instantly use the demo player. I am however pretty confident in the choices I have made so far. As soon as I get the mouse cursor part integrated into my tutorial app, I'll post the details of what I've done for others to see.

honestly if i were you, before you start on your game, i'd wait till bigworld 2.0 comes out. so many changes, changes are so large that they have made a converter. it is in it final testing stages as posted on the forums last week. probably will see it in a month. i suggest going through tuts,making assets until then

well, I am going to keep going I think. There's always a new version on the horizon. They don't give release dates and so who knows if it'll be a month or a year. I also think that no matter how large the changes are there is benefit to knowing the system. For example, even though there was massive difference between TGE and TGEA, it's still handy to know how things work in general. Plus I think that I already am just going through tuts, it's not like I will have completed all my game logic in a month or even 2, so it prolly won't impact me much. I suppose that explains why the most of the others who are indie users haven't been posting much lately if everybody is just waiting.

Ok, got my mouse cursor working. This "tutorial" starts from the end of the bigworld_tutorial.pdf.

The mouse cursor part of the GUI, so to start we make a folder in the /res/scripts/client to hold our implementation's GUI elements. I called my folder RpgGUI. In the demo, it's FDGUI. The name of the folder doesn't matter too much, but I think that mine is generic enough for most situations. Inside the RpgGUI folder we need to create a blank file called __init__.py (just like in the tutorial when we created the Helpers folder). Also in this folder, copy the Cursor.py out of the demo's FDGUI folder because we are just going to use that one. If we examine the Cursor.py file, we can see that it really just contains two functions to turn the cursor on and off. One important thing however is that it has a dependency at the top.

The package bwdebug is located in the common folder above client (so /res/scripts/common) in the demo application. Examining that file shows that it just contains some helper functions for debugging, such as the WARNING_MSG. It seems that we could just remove this functionality from Cursor.py and move on, but I've chosen to go ahead and include this file as well. So, create a folder called "common" in /res/scripts and then copy over bwdebug.py. There is no need to create a __init__.py for this folder as the engine seems to check this folder by default.

Next, we need to copy over the gui configuration and image files. In the /res folder, create a folder called gui. From the demo, copy the /res/gui/mouse_cursors.xml file into your own /res/gui folder. Looking at the contents of that file, you can see it is a resource file detailing where the images are, and the pixel location for the "hotspot". I believe this information is built into the GUI module. The folder indicated is maps, I assume this is short for texture maps. So create a folder in /res/gui called "maps" as well. In the demo, copy all of the files that start with cursor_ , there are .dds, .tga, .textformat files. You technically don't need to copy the .dds because the engine compresses the .tga files into .dds when they are used, but it doesn't matter either way.

Now we need a new xml file in the /res folder. Create "resources.xml" in the res folder. The demo has this file, and it has a lot of configuration in it. Rather than copy the whole thing, I just created what we need for the cursor for now. The file should look like this: We can see that the cursorsDefinitions has our path to the xml file that defines the actual images and hotspots. We could change this to whatever we wanted, instead of using the gui folder, but this convention makes sense so I kept it.

Finally, we just need to turn the cursor on. In the demo, the mouse cursor is always on, unless you press the right mouse button for free look. For now, the effect that I am going for is to not show the cursor until the player wants to do something that needs it. So I set it up to toggle on and off using the TAB key. One reason I am doing this is that I noticed when it is on, I lose the ability (as implemented by the tutorial) to move using the WASD keys and mouse look. In the future I will figure out how to have a cursor and still be able to move.

To turn the cursor on in the tutorial, we are going to modify the BWPersonality.py file in the /res/scripts/client folder. First we need to import the Cursor module, add this to the top of the file (after the chat console import): Next we need to create a shared settings class that all of the personality's functions can access. Add this above def init. I am calling my flag menuMode, it's a simple boolean flag to tell whether or not we are in a mode which we should be using the cursor. Now down in the handlKeyEvent function, add to the top. Somewhere after the global declaration but still inside that function add this: which will toggle the flag and set the cursor when the tab key is pressed. Finally, at the bottom of the file, create an instance of the shared data class like so . That should do it. Since all of these changes were for the client, you shouldn't have to update your server files at all. Just start up the client and it should work, when you press tab, you'll see the mouse cursor. And, like I said before, you'll lose the ability to move when it's out.

Ok, that's it for the first "tutorial". Questions/Feedback are welcome. I'll post more when I have it.