Dedicated server software

[TheDoctor]

Community is what we have. A dedicated community at that. I'm sure that given the program calls available that we can make a "wiki" that will do the job. For example, Tstar's TM Creative has done a good job with Trackmania. It is a comprehensive 3rd party effort. I mention it only as an illustration of what a motivated person can do with help. So I'm sure that we can make the documentation that "Our Friends Who Art Making the Game" don't have time to produce.

It would be helpful to get this Information ahead of time instead of figuring out everything empirically. I'm sure there will be some helpful disclosure during the beta. But I have faith that we, the trackmania/shootmania/questmania (TSQ)community, can come up with solutions and point out flaws. That is the point of alpha and beta testing is it not?

[Knutselmaaster]

The community of TM really is something special, and with these new forums and the information Nadeo staff is putting into it allready, at such an early stage, for me is a proof that they are eager to build a likewise community for ManiaPlanet and that they are trying to involve the actual TM community.
Maybe TMF won't be intergrated into ManiaPlanet, but just being able to login here with out TMU accounts shows that they want us to participate.

Knowing that the people developing for TM are going to help set up server control software for ManiaPlanet too assures me as they have so much experience and they know what we want to see in their tools. (at least for tm2)
I assume xbx is developing the dedi software again, and he has a lot of experience too by now.
I bet Nadeo has learned from the difficult start of TMF dedi software and things will be a lot smoother this time around.

[www.e-gekko.net]

Ahaha, i don't pray my ladder system, but pray Nadeo to fix their.
Anyway, i started 5 years ago on Fast (and i think Slig remember sometimes i asked him to explain me something about his code). After i learned on Aseco, looked at Xaseco, used it for 1 year, and returned to Aseco.
I was a C64 game coder, Basic 7.0 coder, Delphi, and never seen nothing on PHP, but when you wanna do your best, you do! And when you code, you code with EVERY LANGUAGE!! Coding is a life style!
I had a online store, working all days alone, and the night on the Xaseco, Aseco, Fast... deeply i thanks very much my php masters (Xymph, Slig, Florian, Jfreu) i learned by them.... each of us know something that the others don't know, together could be great, but....

I always wanted someone ask me to understand TPS.... is very strange, cause is the easiest script to understand, haha.
But, maybe it work toooo perfectly (i don't think), or really the TM-Forum was scripter forum.
That's why i asked a thread "TM-Forum will be integrated here?"....

Please ask us, and i think to say it in the names of script coders, how to do plugins, what is this, what is that!!!
Try to learnnnn!
We have all we need : documentation, friend like us, community, we always answer you, so come on boys, will not be a war beetween Fast, Xaseco, Aseco, TPS Gaseco, Gery.... but we want you do something, to help us, to code something new, that is not included by TM, QM, SM.....
(and let me say, aauhahahua the final stupidity after a serious moment is my standard).....
like TPS do!!!

[w1lla]

as stated before maybe its valuable to work together as one team to make a software app for tm2. In that way yo can add plugins and remove them.

Add a svn repository so people can add new functions and ideas. That way there will be a combinations of server software.

[Zooz]

Come on Gekko, 6 years ago TM didn't even have a dedicated server yet, so there can't have been any FAST

Actually, I sometimes see criticism from outside the community that Nadeo leaves so many things to the community... Many invaluable tools and applications were made by players, as well as by far most of the content of TM! So apparently not everyone likes that, but I think it's the right thing to do for a small company with such a customization-based game as TM.

It might suck if both the Aseco and FAST authors retire though

[w1lla]

well the first author of fast flo-schnell is retired assembler maniac is still trying to make aseco better.

Xaseco is still going strong, tpsgaseco is making a real nice whirlwind of reactions

mistral is a bit behind, and fast is still easy going.

So i think all these combined might make a one hell of a controller.

[tcq]

well the first author of fast flo-schnell is retired assembler maniac is still trying to make aseco better.

Xaseco is still going strong, tpsgaseco is making a real nice whirlwind of reactions

mistral is a bit behind, and fast is still easy going.

So i think all these combined might make a one hell of a controller.

Just ad the r2d2 know how and awesome

[Slig]

What I really don't like is that there's absolutely no reliable documentation when programming something for Trackmania. Sure, you can list all xmlrpc methods and get a short description of them but this is not always enough. And when it comes to callbacks, it gets worse. It's no problem to find out what you need for a simple serverviewer, but for bigger things, especially modifications on the server side you need to know much more. You'll end up reading code from FAST or (X)Aseco and start to wonder why these guys knew how it works.

The same way, by studying the methods/callbacks lists, experimenting, and learning from other people's code.

Exactly : experimenting all cases in game, looking at the same time what callback come when, and with what values. Testing methods and noticing their effects. Nothing more, nothing less.

The same applies for manialinks, I still don't know how the correct syntax and those style/substyle combinations have been found.

That would be Smurf's secret but ISTR it involved a lot of .exe searching and, again, experimenting.

That is not a secret.
Nadeo gave tmf manialinks syntax during its beta, and later i made a topic with all those infos on the public forum. However it's true that Nadeo lacked dramatically to give infos about style/substyle. So i first started to use some hack oriented program, to search in memory the strings looking like styles and substyles, then testing them, and made a first page to show their effect. Then Smurf took lot of time to search more (using the same tech), found many more ones, and made the nice style/substyle pages that you have actually on the 'example' manialink. So here again it is mostly by experimenting

[Xymph]

as stated before maybe its valuable to work together as one team to make a software app for tm2. In that way yo can add plugins and remove them.

That's a nice dream, but I don't think it'll happen. The differences between current TMF controllers like Aseco/Rasp 2, FAST, Gery, GAseco, Truck, XAseco, etc. illustrate the differences in views between their respective authors. Views on the architecture of such controllers, what they should do and not do, how their GUI should look, which plugins should be official or third-party, down to differences in programming and communication styles. It's not even a matter of egos, although that might also play into it, but unifying all those aspects into a single TM2 controller is nigh on impossible IMHO.

And even then, users have different preferences too, that's why all of the aforementioned controllers have a larger or smaller audience in the first place. This is how open source development works everywhere: if you don't like existing apps and have the motivation and knowledge, you make a different one.

Add a svn repository so people can add new functions and ideas. That way there will be a combinations of server software.

That would be essential for such a collaboration, but it also requires a lot of discipline and coordination to make that work, so I'm not sure it's feasible.

Come on Gekko, 6 years ago TM didn't even have a dedicated server yet, so there can't have been any FAST

Gekko likes to exaggerate.

It might suck if both the Aseco and FAST authors retire though

That's likely to be just a temporary problem, if at all. Just like I picked up Aseco/Rasp (later XAseco) for TMN after Flo abandoned it to make AsecoTMU (later Aseco/Rasp 2), someone else might come along to continue work on the existing controllers and add support for TM2. Or start something entirely new that's better and different, and quickly gets a big audience because of it.

That said, neither Slig nor I are planning to retire, but real life might slow things down.

[Knutselmaaster]

Still it could be a good idea to make something "dediplanet" where there is a commune basis that captures all callbacks, and saves relevant info to a database.
If every coder capable of establishing that would work together, there will be very fast a decent underground, that can be debugged very quick by means of a lot of man-hours that will be available.
After that the "personal touch" of each coder, working with different skins and mods.
Something you can see for example in the phpbb software, where users and coders share their skins and mods (for simple extra functionality, but also you can find real big addons.
I mean, you are almost all build around an aseco core with more or less different results for each one.