YUP Status Report
YUP Idea
Both Adam and Aglanor had Crystal Space in mind to develop a 3D client. There was some concern about starting another client, because there are already so many, but we still think this is a good idea for several reasons.
- YUP is not a one-developer work. Well, in fact, Adam has done almost all of the coding so far, but the code is easy enough to understand and anyone can jump on to the development wagon (as long as they keep writing clean and well documented code).
- YUP (should) also provide a learning tool for aspiring programmers who don't have much experience but wish to have a real C++ project to work on.
- YUP relies on other programs (thus Yup Uses Programs
- yes, we know it's silly.) So, even if we did nothing but update API and library calls, YUP would improve with newer versions of Crystalspace, Eris, etc...
- YUP can be developed at least under Linux and Windows. Thus, we may get help from both worlds. We encourage this portability and feel very happy about it.
- YUP er, huh, like works. Or so. Thus it is easier to keep developing and tweaking a client that does things.
Crystalspace and Eris
These two libraries provide all the needed functionality for a 3D client. Eris talks to the server and Crystalspace paints pretty pictures. With both of them we have a working Worldforge client that does a lot very quickly.
For instance, we are planning to integrate Janus in YUP, but until then, CSWS (Crystalspace Windowing System) will do the trick. We will also use CS's 3d models until we can integrate Cal3D.
This means that we can always add pretty stuff but it works with a lot of features right now, out of the box, which is very rewarding and useful.
YUP Features
At the moment of writing this article YUP already has a nice feature set. You can always check the latest features here.
YUP starts and doesn't crash too much. It can connect to the metaserver and query for game servers. The user can then pick a server and YUP can login into it. YUP can enter chat rooms and the user can chat in YUP while navigating in a nice 3D environment.
Future of YUP
YUP will be evolving one step behind STAGE. We'll be trying to use in the client all the functionality that the server provides.
On the other hand, YUP will become prettier. For instance, we'll add client-side neat-looking features like a lot of transparent windows for different things (character sheet, inventory, configuration, etc).
We are also planning to add multilingual support to YUP. We'll read the texts from files, which can be chosen for any specific language (or should the server have language support built in?)
A crazy idea that perhaps will be implemented is to use a free audio-conferencing library to add in-game voice chat. This should be peer-to-peer to spare the server from such load. You should be able to chat with your buddies in your game party from YUP.
And, over all things, we'll try to keep this creature understandable, with clean code, readable doxy pages, easy-to-grasp architecture and ease of downloading and installing under windows and linux.
| Current Issue: February 2003, Recent Issues: January 2003, November 2002, October 2002 |