Normally I keep this sortof thing to my development blog, but I'm too excited not to share it. As of this morning, TankNet is officially online!

"TankNet" is what im calling the master server system im using for Tankz. It's a server browser so that you don't need to know the IP of the game you're joining.



I've added mouse support to the menus as well, so you can click your way through the whole thing. When a server goes online, it publishes itself to the master server. When you click "Join Via TankNet" in the main menu, it brings you to the server browser screen. It queries TankNet for a list of active servers. The user can then either refresh the server list, or highlight the desired server and click "Join".. and voila! Connected!



Normally I don't post development progress, but IMO this is a major milestone.

Yay!

_________________
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."
"Hope is the first step on the road to dissapointment." -Jonah Orion
http://tankzgame.blogspot.com

Awesome!

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10 PRINT "Bad Monkey ";
20 GOTO 10

Beautiful!
When will we able to play?

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"Life finds a way." - Ian Malcolm
My WebBlog: PixelDeveloper
English is not my native language, so excuse me for any writing mistakes.

Sweet
Just keep in mind that you still should support direct connectivity in case someone doesn't want to be connected to the net while playing on lan or something.

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Long pork is people!

wzl's burrow

That's what I'm thinking.

If you need any more reasons, consider what would happen if, at some point down the line, your server comes offline permanently (or switches places or whatnot) -- people would no longer have any option to play a match over the Internet, period.

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What most people don't understand about "enlightenment" is that it is not an end-goal; but where you find yourself just before taking a new "first step."

Whoops. I guess I should've mentioned that Direct IP connection is one of the other options in the main menu. That's been live for a while.

_________________
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."
"Hope is the first step on the road to dissapointment." -Jonah Orion
http://tankzgame.blogspot.com

Glad to hear that.
Just have Hellgate:London as a worst case example for this kind of server structure

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Long pork is people!

wzl's burrow

What happened with Hellgate: London? Was it serverbrowser only or something?
(Was it a good game, btw? i meant to try that one..)

_________________
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."
"Hope is the first step on the road to dissapointment." -Jonah Orion
http://tankzgame.blogspot.com

I've got a number of systems to implement, yet. It'l be a while before I'm at a point where I'm ready to release a beta. Don't worry though, you guys will be the first to know

_________________
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."
"Hope is the first step on the road to dissapointment." -Jonah Orion
http://tankzgame.blogspot.com

Hellgate was a thirdperson hacknslash with rpg-elements, set in apocalyptic london subways.

It was modeled in such a way you could only play it when connecting to said masterservers. You might have guessed it, just about a year after release the company went bankrupt, or sold out, and the servers went down. The game is not to be played by anyone. No hack, no custom servers. Not ever again will any person play a game of Hellgate:London.
Kind of sad, it wasn't even a bad game.

_________________
Long pork is people!

wzl's burrow

Oh wow. I'm glad I didn't get it then. Too bad, it did look kinda cool.

Well, Tankz has already avoided that mistake! lol

_________________
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."
"Hope is the first step on the road to dissapointment." -Jonah Orion
http://tankzgame.blogspot.com

Less work for you in the future in regard to that particular feature then, I guess.

_________________
What most people don't understand about "enlightenment" is that it is not an end-goal; but where you find yourself just before taking a new "first step."