first let me say that I'm very thankful for your ongoing support and interest in the mod. I constantly receive messages over YouTube, IRC etc. of users asking for assistance on setting up and running vaultmp, as well as users wishing the best for the mod (of course, special thanks fly out to all the active forum users: Farlo, Volumed, Tomo, Aleksander, just to name a few
). This is great motivation for continuing work on the mod!However, development of vaultmp requires spending a lot of free time, which I ultimately don't have (due to university and job commitments). The reason for 2-3 months of stagnation is basically that.
Now to the good news. As you all know, christmas holidays are coming and my plan is to focus on vaultmp again in this time (~1-2 weeks). Depending on how fast I'm able to get back into the business, this is quite a lot of time to make good and fast progress (in peak times, I've been working 16hrs a day on vaultmp, I feel I can do it again
).The current state of vaultmp is of course not satisfying. Not only is the functionality rather unstable, it also takes the average user way too much effort and knowledge to install and test the mod. Reasons for that are lack of documentation and software restrictions.
I've been making my mind up about technical stuff already. One major issue is the built-in asynchronicity, which is a relict of the time when I wasn't able to do it differently. I don't want to get into the details, but here's a quick explanation of the problem: vaultmp uses the script engine of the Bethesda games to access data, control actions etc. Currently the interface works asynchronously. That is, the code requests execution of a game function, and the result isn't directly returned to the caller, but to a listening thread (which leads to an insane amount of difficulties with game syncing and network communication). This was necessary back when the API was bad and slow. As this is no longer the case, I'm going to put direct calls in place, which should make the entire functionality faster, easier, and more stable.
If all goes well, I can perform this overhaul in a couple of days. I finally want a stable and 99.9% working sync, even if it's simple; this has highest priority. The next version will be released when this is done, followed by tutorials on how to setup a server and install vaultmp. (I will put the master server back online, too; at the moment I don't want to run the server because I don't see a point in testing the mod anymore, it's just too unstable).
Next goal will be to support The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim. I bought the game and I'm deeply impressed by it (although it crashes every 10-15mins, lol), and I'd like to add support for it. It isn't too much effort to do so: development of vaultmp is largely independent from the individual Bethesda games, as the script engines work mostly the same. The cost vs. benefit is just too great to not do it
That's the plan. Still, there is so much more to do: completion of the GUI and chat, adding more server-side scripting capabilities...the mod is Open-Source for a reason
I personally believe that Open-Source is the best way of making the software successfull and great in the long term, and I want this for vaultmp, too. For any developers out there: contribution is always appreciated (thanks to houstin!) and I'll do my best to extend documentation and answer any question regarding the source.That's it
I will keep you posted of the progress as soon as the holidays started. Seeing you in the forums / chat!Recycler
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