[Latest] Biocross RC1 - it`s back!
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BIOCROSS IS BACK!
After an admittedly depressing start to BETA…
Where large reports of numerous crashes and what not made me cry repeatedly and hit my head of the wall, whilst screaming WHY!?..
I am very happy to bring you the next step up - in the words of some famous rapper - it’s harder, better, faster AND stronger…
So strong, hard and fast in fact that I have dubbed it a Release Candidate - (although I know somebody will find something especially FF, he always has something to say >.>)WHAT TO EXPECT?
I have decided to withdraw my statement that Biocross is IFSO’s replacement as that is not explicitly true - Ioncross is perfect for lightweight servers, who have a minimal player base of around the 100 - 200 mark. When it gets higher than that things can begin to get sluggish and painful, which is where Biocross steps in…Biocross is backed by the powerful MSSQL Server (supports 2005 and 2008) as it’s data source, long gone are ini files! XML has replaced TXT and VB.NET has replaced VB 6.0 - but these are all empty words - let me take you on a journey (through time and through space) to determine just what it is you will notice as an avvid IFSO user in the past, and just what you will notice as a newcomer:
SKINS:
First and foremost you will notice it is shiny, not important and completely irrelevant to running a server but it is more approachable for new comers and can perhaps even help the old IFSO users out a bit, I have made it as ergonomic as I possibly could (as a student programmer I am yet to fully understand ergonomics to a prestigious level) and I also tried to add an extreme amount of variety, there is certainly over 10 skins to choose from, from what I remember all of them have their differences as you can see above this one is VERY different!
Additional Features:
I designed Biocross with inexperienced Server Operators in mind and as such numerous features popped up which provided a simple GUI for common tasks an Admin may have to  perform:
This is the multiplayer character editor (don’t worry people this is NOT the main player editor :P) you know your MP Startup char file? This is designed to edit that quite easily, if you have enough courage you can add your own lines, and once all the percentage markers have been removed (- the name of course) you can have a go at editing it in the BIG player editor
This one is a mass character editor, what it does is asks you to select as many players as you like, then to select one player to act as the template - what then happens is all the equipment, location data, cargo and everything else except the name is grafted onto the select players. The scenairio I designed this for was [SP] creation and [Admin] char management - everytime you get a new admin you don’t want to have outload them with the same equipment over and over again manually right? Only suckers do that now biocross is here
Extensive Searching:
Everyone knows Ioncross’s player search and organisation lacked any kind of REAL data management at all… in fact you had to KNOW the players name you wished to look at word for word to be able to acquire his data pretty much…Biocross’ search feature now allows for Wildcards, advanced filters, AND, OR, OR NOT, OR ELSE statements and a few more - you can filter by multiple conditions, you have sort by system, base, rank… whatever the hell you want:
http://forge.the-starport.net/gf/project/biocross/frs/
Good luck - check back as an updater application will be available soon which means no more having to manually download patches (yay!) -
F*cking great ;D
Im lookin forward to host a server^^
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ITS WORKING!!! Â ;D ;D ;D
Awesome… Thanks a zillion for whatever ye did Hazzard… will play a bit
and report anything “bad”… hopefully i’ll have nothing to report
Sry for me delay… RL being a a$$
now time to make a XLR skin… hehehehe…
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I’m happy for ya Xarian
glad to know everything is going ok 
and the pansy skin is a joke and didn’t actually make the final release
- Snake has it however over at Freeworlds as a small thank you for letting me test it over at FW’s (oh, and he really likes hearts…) -
You know, when you ‘vanished’ I was really worried we would never see this completed. I am glad you ‘returned’ and completed it. It’s a wonderful achievement.
Great work! ;D
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(although I know somebody will find something especially FF, he always has something to say >.>)
He gets kind of repetitive like that after a while, doesn’t he?!
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Apologies for the double post but:
http://forge.the-starport.net/gf/project/biocross/frs/?action=index
the updater application is here - I recommend during RC1 you run the application at least once a week to make sure you keep getting the latest fixes and additions…
good luck guys
Major respect to Grimmjow who’s code went into a lot of this updater application
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Imgetting a 'missing entry 0’when trying to import an XML set, any ideas?
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If you have used your data gen to make your XML GAMEDATA (I forgot to tell you) it does not work perfectly yet as it leaves *'s in the XML file which the language of XML doesn’t like in itself…
There are 2 other possible explanations, one being a bug in the software (which I have not yet experienced) OR 2 you have a GAMEDATA file which is empty because you have no mines or no torpedoes in your mod (which some mods do). In either case you should be able to continue as errors are skipped per file - check your drop down combo boxes to make sure everything is there, and if one is empty and it shouldn’t be then that is your issue…
An alternative for you would be to convert your IFSO text files using my converter (found on my FLForge page) until your data generator has the ability to remove *'s.
I think that is the final step in your data generator until it achieves perfection
EDIT:
Before reporting bugs I would like you to check the Bug Tracker page over at the Forge (which I believe I have set to public) just so you don’t waste your time making a detailed bug report when it is already known (Lancer Solarus this was not aimed at you don’t worry it’s just a general message and didn’t want to double post ;))
EDIT 2:
Those who have already downloaded the auto updater PLEASE download the patch and also the source code is available for download for anyone who would like to point out a few bugs of their own - or add features
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I guess that one’s on me, I’ll fix that tonight and upload a new version.
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I have now released the Language Importer tool which allows you to edit the language that Biocross uses - obviously because I am so lingually stupid there is only one language file at the moment (English (UK)).
Download the program and start translating
Use the English UK file as a template - for those wanting to import the file into another program it is | delimited
PLEASE distribute your language files out to others if you make any
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Oh Dear… a triple post :S but this IS important for the (1) person who downloaded the language importer (maybe FF :P) the english text file is slightly misformatted through Exporter error, the new language file is here:
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I checked and the latest version already had that fixed. I am compiling a new list of xml files and testing them out….
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Development of my FLHook GUI is going well just to document for those out there who care what is going on, I will pencil in what I got going on in here….
FLHook GUI Design Concept:
There will be two flavours of my FLHook GUI - one that is released with Biocross and one that functions on it’s own, essentially both will do the same thing however the Biocross one will be for the server admin’s to use when using a Remote Desktop Connection and the other (standalone) one will be used by people without RDP access. Perhaps I should describe a little about the interaction of the GUI with FLHook…
How Remote Access Works:
FLHook was coded with a remote socket layer, this basically allows anyone to connect to the FLHook console from pretty much anywhere, you MUST have an authorised password and account however!
Biocross and the standalone version will use this socket layer to connect to FLHook - meaning you can download the standalone version to your local computer and still modify the server in a huge way, basically anything FLHook can do you will be able to (you can also set user permissions in the FLHook.ini to prevent people doing some things you wouldn’t want them to, for example SP’s should only be allowed to remote connect to beam kick and ban).
Note that Biocross will use the ANSII port for connecting to and that UNICODE is NOT supported at this time, nor do I see it being supported in the future…
Also note that plugins will be supported in a small sense, which brings me onto how it will look
How it will look:
Essentially I was aiming for the majority of a GUI element as I could, but due to all these plugins floating about and some different FLHook versions and whatever I decided on another approach, I GUI’d the main elements you see in nearly all modern FLHook installations (beam, kick, ban ip, message, add player cargo, delete admin and so on) but also included an MSN kind of interaction with your FLHook, haha very badly explained let me try harder.
The ‘MSN’ interaction is best described if you simply imagine MSN in your head when I am saying this, imagine the send button and the text box and the list of everything that has been “said”.
You type in your command and it shows up like so:
(DATETIME) Admin Said: Â
<plugincommand>After however long it takes for FLHook to process this command and send it back to you this will show up:(DATETIME)The Hooker Said:
Plugin command could not be accepted as parameter {0} was missingand yes it WILL say The Hooker
Out of interest is anyone out there running this on their server yet?</plugincommand>
