boardwalk / bzr Goto Github PK

Also running it with the CI build would be a useful double check.

Depends on #12, since animations have the "hooks" that create particle emitters.

The meaning of the fields, particularly particleType, for particle emitters, will need research. My guess is that "parabolic" particle types apply an ax^2 + bx + c equation to the particle. My other guess is that L = local, G = global, V = velocity, A = acceleration, R = rotation in the enumeration. I have no idea how a "non-parabolic" particle behaves, or "swarm", "implode" or "explode".

We need to either choose a GUI toolkit or write our own.

Homogeneity in how binary data is formatted may make generating code to produce and consume it beneficial. This includes on-disk formats (portal.dat/cell.dat) and on-the-wire formats ("messages.xml"). See 2d85920 for previous research.

Getting physics working correctly will be critical to having the client not fight with the server over object's position. There are various interesting questions, such as the shape of hit boxes, and the meaning of elasticity and friction in PhysicsDesc.

It may be useful to write unit tests for certain subsystems, such as file and network message parsing.

Support model, texture and palette swaps specified in an object's ObjDesc.

Support network messages that update an object's ObjDesc.

The current model rendering pipeline is very chatty with the graphics card, with a large amount of state switches and draw calls.

It needs to be rewritten to batch mesh rendering by geometry, texture and distance for translucent objects. It needs to use instanced rendering to render multiple instances of a mesh/texture with different transformations in a single draw call.

This may enable #1.

Apply tracked head position correctly. Try using the latest SDK. Try combinations of regular mode/direct mode and Mac/Windows.

Various intricacies of the network protocol need to be researched and finalized in code.

By the time this is complete, bzr should be able to stay connected on the character screen and in-game for long periods of time.

See the Travis CI documentation.

bzr_launch_hook currently needs to be placed in AC's directory after the AC launcher is logged in. We may be able to add a version resource to the exe to prevent this.

Ultimately, especially for platforms other than Windows, reverse engineering the launcher so it is no longer necessary would be very nice. Unfortunately, the variant of Asheron's Call's protocol used by the launcher is mostly an unknown.