IRC log for #bzflag on 20150302

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08:12.56allejowas the ability to overload built in slash commands purposely removed in 2.4 (as this was possible in 2.0) or was it a mistake?
08:13.16allejoi.e. via the plug-in API
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11:05.27Notify03BZFlag:173.192.81.187 * 8853 /World_units:
11:10.58Notify03BZFlag:Blast * 0 /User:173.192.81.187: Spamming links to external sites
11:11.16Notify03BZFlag:Blast * 8854 /World_units: Reverted edits by [[Special:Contributions/173.192.81.187|173.192.81.187]] ([[User talk:173.192.81.187|talk]]) to last revision by [[User:Yrogirg|Yrogirg]]
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15:42.37BulletCatcherallejo, I see no obvious change in how parseServerCommand() works between v2.0.16 and 2.4.
15:43.39BulletCatcherbz_eSlashCommandEvent is still called before ServerCommand::execute().
15:46.46blast007how would you prevent the built-in command from executing?  looks like it would still execute in both 2.0 and 2.4
15:47.49BulletCatcherHe did say "overload" and not "replace".
15:48.28blast007generally when I think of "overload" I'd think of something where you wouldn't want both versions to still run, but instead run one with new options
15:48.43blast007like a new /ban type
15:49.14blast007(for instance, adding support for CIDR bans via a plugin while still using the normal /ban command)
15:52.05BulletCatcherRegardless of what it is called, it seems to me that the code works the same.
15:52.13blast007yep
15:52.58BulletCatchergit diff v2.0.16 v2_4_x -- src/bzfs/commands.cxx
15:53.26blast007anyone have any idea how difficult it would be to add grid layout support to our existing HUDui dialog system?
15:54.41blast007tried creating an application from scratch using that Turbo Badger library, but that was a bit beyond my skill level..  some part of it don't yet have built-in implementation (like some function for handling timing) and thus their demo implements it with the help of GLFW
15:55.00blast007there's also no documentation for Turbo Badger, and the API isn't yet stable
15:55.19blast007thus, might be a bit early to use that..
15:56.12blast007(we'd probably have to maintain our own fork of it as well with the demo stuff ripped out)
15:58.12BulletCatcherIt's easier to maintain a fork with Git than with Subversion, so that wouldn't be too awful if that's what we choose to do.
15:58.25blast007yeah
15:59.37BulletCatcherIf I understand what you mean, you would need a language for specifying grid coordinates, and some convention that accomodates different screen sizes.
16:00.29BulletCatcherIt doesn't seem like it would be very hard to implement a specific design.
16:02.02blast007this sort of thing: http://forums.bzflag.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=18957
16:06.53BulletCatcherYup.  The hard part will be the design.
16:06.54BulletCatcherAre coordinates absolute or relative?  Percentage of screen size or pixel counts?
16:22.10blast007the hard part is the fact that we also need it to be flexible enough that we're not hard-coding the layout on the client but instead sending the layout from the server
16:22.22blast007(or maybe I should say "the even harder part")  ;)
16:30.46blast007but as for the size, I dunno.. do we care about "HiDPI" screens?  I'm thinking we should..  So scaling it to fill the screen well would be ideal.
16:33.12blast007I'd want it to be a "flexible" grid of items that would adjust size and scale based on screen space and contents
16:45.53BulletCatcherThere are already a variety of tools that manage rectangular windows on screens.
16:45.55BulletCatcherI recommend incorporating ideas from one or more of these so-called "window managers."
16:47.01BulletCatcherFurthermore, there is a well-established system for rendering text in rectangles.
16:47.40BulletCatcherThat system even includes a client/server model.
16:49.25BulletCatcherAre we ready to include a web browser within BZFlag?
16:51.11Patlabor221you don't mean browser, you mean HTML renderer
16:51.18Patlabor221they are not the same thing
16:51.19blast007I've considered it, but no, I think that's a bad idea
16:51.36Patlabor221blast007: you should look into the concept of Anchors
16:51.48blast007Patlabor221: it would be more than an HTML renderer - it would be a web browser engine
16:51.51Patlabor221.net forms and Unity both use them, they work well for variable resolution displays
16:52.02BulletCatcherOnce we have an HTML rendering system, it is only a small step to let it render arbitrary URLs.
16:52.16Patlabor221at that point just redo the game in HTML5
16:52.23blast007and execute arbitrary code...
16:52.41blast007there's enough of an attack surface in what we already have
16:54.56BulletCatcherIt is a slippery slope from dialog boxes to web browser.
16:54.57BulletCatcherWe'll have to be careful about not sliding too far.
16:56.09blast007at this point I'd prefer it to be a game-protocol implementation since we're not even sure if we'll be keeping the HTTP API as it is right now
16:58.13BulletCatcherUsing existing web browser technology would be a reason to keep and even enhance the HTTP API.
16:59.35BulletCatcherOr maybe we just rewrite bzfs as mod_bzfs for Apache.  (only semi-kidding)
17:04.27BulletCatcherThe only thing that is new about the dialog box idea is integrating it with BZFlag.
17:04.28BulletCatcherWe might as well avoid reinventing too many wheels and reuse an existing framework for that.
17:09.40blast007I'd still not want to integrate a web browser
17:10.40blast007sounds great in theory, but I feel it wouldn't work as well as you're expecting in practice..
17:11.47blast007bugs like "The menu doesn't render correctly with the version of webkit in Debian X but looks right with the webkit in Debian Y" would probably be a thing :P
17:12.29blast007and then there's no vertical centering in CSS unless you use tables
17:12.48BulletCatcherYeah.
17:12.50BulletCatcherTo avoid having to directly support HTML We could use BBcode as the markup language between server and client, for example.
17:13.00blast007that's even worse...
17:13.34BulletCatcherThere *will* be a markup language.
17:13.43blast007not necessarily
17:13.58blast007unless you count a binary interpretation as a markup language
17:14.31BulletCatcherA language implemented in binary is still a language.
17:15.06blast007but not a markup language
17:15.31BulletCatcherI suppose not.
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17:16.14blast007I'd be fine with it being an object oriented system on both ends with layout and container classes
17:17.55BulletCatcherIt just seems to me to be a lot of unnecessary work to invent our own text formatting language.
17:18.31BulletCatcherUnless, of course, that's the actual goal.
17:21.18blast007I've had some experience with the web browser engine embedded in Valve games (specifically Left 4 Dead) and it wasn't all that plesent..  something as simple as this page wouldn't render right unless I initially hit content and then made it visible once the page loaded.  http://bzexcess.com/l4d2_servermessage/
17:21.52blast007hid*
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17:22.51blast007a web engine bring far too much complexity and is a huge source of bugs and glitches, not to mention bloat
17:25.49BulletCatcherHow much complexity do we need for BZFlag?
17:25.50BulletCatcherIs there an existing system that provides something close to that?
17:26.22blast007Turbo Badger might be enough, really, but again, it's a new-ish library
17:26.45blast007CEGUI is a dependency nightmare
17:29.10blast007a lot of open source UI systems are pretty bad though
17:30.00BulletCatcherI suspect that ours would be no exception if we were to write it from scratch. :-)
17:30.08blast007plus, our requirements are a bit higher than some games.. UTF-8 support, keyboard, mouse, and gamepad support (the latter of which we could probably emulate as keyboard if necessary), fancy layouts
17:31.02blast007well, our UI system is already better for our use than some of the open source alternatives since it ties in with the game already ;)
17:31.39BulletCatcherYeah, but now you want to enhance it. :-p
17:33.09blast007CEGUI, for instance, does it's own resource management (iirc) and because of that has a lot of dependencies:  https://bitbucket.org/cegui/cegui-dependencies/src/051a02c23494badfdf61ff02e3a694ac4e2fc1eb/src/?at=default
17:33.12BulletCatcherHaving looked at https://github.com/fruxo/turbobadger now, I can see that it is, indeed, the sort of thing we might be interested in using.
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17:38.22blast007yeah, I think Turbo Badger might be worth giving a try.  I started modifying the demo application this morning instead of trying to make an app from scratch.  Going to see if I can replicate some of our menus and get them to be navigatable with the arrow keys (the normal navigation is more like desktop dialog systems where tab moves to the next item)
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17:41.38blast007another reason against a web browser engine based system is that I'd want the server to be able to easily push out changes to the dialolgs (such as pushing out current player counts on the team selection dialog)
17:42.02blast007with web stuff you generally have the client poll periodically or do a long poll to emulate a push
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23:25.37allejoBulletCatcher, hmmm... Did anything change is bz_CustomSlashCommandHandler? I remember before you could do what blast007 said and make a new command replace a built-in one
23:26.32allejoI think I remember seeing a plugin replace /register or /ghost (I think?) and this wasn't down through the command event iirc
23:34.40blast007I didn't think that ever worked
23:34.52blast007or at least it doesn't look like it could have in the latest 2.0
23:39.28allejohmm would it be accepted if that were implemented?
23:39.56allejoImma try out 2.0. I swear I saw it working at one point :x
23:40.13blast007it's something that would need more discussion
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23:44.04allejomkay

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