Usurper Version 0.20e Install & GNU Sourcecode

[Lenny of Repan]

Long awaited, but here it is.
Usurper 0.20e the door game and the Source code included in the same zip file.

It's size is too large to Attach here. So I have uploaded it to my download directory
at my usurper website. The 3mb+ zip file is located at http://www.knaper.com/u/usurp020e.zip

[mroblivious1bmf]

i see the 5 mins + long maint issue wasnt fixed. ;[

hopefully someone can fix that up a bit.

i just created a fresh install and maint has been running about 8 minutes already.

AGH. now it appears usurper.exe /HMAINT has a pause in it.

those of use that use that as our nightly maint can no longer have it run unattended

[Lenny of Repan]

I didn't notice long delays in my maint runs. I just checked one with 2 players, and it took just about 10 seconds using /fmaint and with /hmaint. That installation is set to New mode.
I then did an /fmaint on a Classic mode and it took just under 30 seconds. That one was a version 20d upgraded, and has 170 players. It seemed the longest part was the relations maint.
Another /fmaint on a fresh classic installation with 1 player took 3:15.65 start to finish, with the NPC maint taking the majority of time.
That computer is running a Pentium D at 2.8Ghz wit 2 Gb of memory and Windows XP-Pro Svc 3.

As a note, I have not been able to get usurper 20e to run on my Atom powered netbook, with Windows XP home, svc 3.

Both of these installations ARE NOT connected to a BBS, but are used in Local Mode only.

As always, these times are not necessarily typical, but as observed on one or more of my computers. Mileage may vary.

[mroblivious1bmf]

I didn't notice long delays in my maint runs. I just checked one with 2 players, and it took just about 10 seconds using /fmaint and with /hmaint. That installation is set to New mode.
I then did an /fmaint on a Classic mode and it took just under 30 seconds. That one was a version 20d upgraded, and has 170 players. It seemed the longest part was the relations maint.
Another /fmaint on a fresh classic installation with 1 player took 3:15.65 start to finish, with the NPC maint taking the majority of time.
That computer is running a Pentium D at 2.8Ghz wit 2 Gb of memory and Windows XP-Pro Svc 3.

As a note, I have not been able to get usurper 20e to run on my Atom powered netbook, with Windows XP home, svc 3.

Both of these installations ARE NOT connected to a BBS, but are used in Local Mode only.

As always, these times are not necessarily typical, but as observed on one or more of my computers. Mileage may vary.

usurper has always had a reputation for having a long running maint, sometimes longer than 5 minutes. in most cases the user drops carrier and the maint is
terminated by the bbs software and is never completed.

this is if you have npc options enabled.
i've heard this from just about everybody i know that's running it, but my bbs computer is a 2.x ghz amd processor with 1.5 gig of ram

anyways, it looks like someone is working on a 32bit rewrite of usurper, so this means that it will be able to use less resources, and i hope some of these issues regarding cheating will be cleared up eventually

http://cvs.synchro.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs. ... ors/u32rr/ [as of 7-27-2010 this is abandoned!]

also someone is working on a facebook game [abandoned due to issues with linux telnet daemon]

still very early in development, of course.

[Ree2]

I've put together a very quick and dirty port to Windows and uploaded the source here if you'd like to have a look:

http://gamesrv.ca/doorgames.php
http://gamesrv.ca/files/usurper-cp.rar

I've included a list of what was changed, what compiler settings I used, and if you search the source for REENOTE or REETODO you'll find notes and outstanding items that remain to be implemented.

[BlaZZZe]

You are right. There ** is ** a pause now with the /fmaint switch. However, there is no pause if you run maintenance with the /hmaint switch.

Another problem I noticed is sometimes USURPER.EXE returns an error and quits right away. When I'm at home I'll find that error number and post it. In order to combat this new problem, I have changed my maintenance to run "usurper /hmaint" and also have the .CFG settings configured to run Automatic Maintenance. That way if the nightly cleanup attempt quits with an error, maintenance will still run when the first user of the day attempts to play.

It's a dirty fix, but it works.


Brian
BlaZZZe
The Penalty Box

[mroblivious1bmf]

You are right. There ** is ** a pause now with the /fmaint switch. However, there is no pause if you run maintenance with the /hmaint switch.

Another problem I noticed is sometimes USURPER.EXE returns an error and quits right away. When I'm at home I'll find that error number and post it. In order to combat this new problem, I have changed my maintenance to run "usurper /hmaint" and also have the .CFG settings configured to run Automatic Maintenance. That way if the nightly cleanup attempt quits with an error, maintenance will still run when the first user of the day attempts to play.

It's a dirty fix, but it works.


Brian
BlaZZZe
The Penalty Box

yeah but if the maint takes a long time [like with npc actions], the user will drop their connection and usurper will be terminated.
this means maint hasnt ran and god knows what has gone on with the data files ;[

[drcorey]

Whats the command line to compile this?
I tryed tpc -l -b -$d- -$g+ -$o+ -$v- but my exes won't run,
and crash with miss. errors. but the 20d exes run fine in the same setup.

Corey

[blakdeth]

Another problem I noticed is sometimes USURPER.EXE returns an error and quits right away. When I'm at home I'll find that error number and post it. In order to combat this new problem, I have changed my maintenance to run "usurper /hmaint" and also have the .CFG settings configured to run Automatic Maintenance. That way if the nightly cleanup attempt quits with an error, maintenance will still run when the first user of the day attempts to play.

It appears I am having the same problem.

I wouldn't mind switching to automatic maintenance if it didn't take five to ten minutes to run the NPC activity. If I disable NPC activity, what does the game lose and will it need to be reset?

Thank you.

[drcorey]

it is needed to do all the daily functions that go on in your world.
I am looking at the source code to try and see where it is taking so long. I don't know why jakob never fixed it. maybe it's the way a file is handled or something. untill it's fixed we are stuck with it.

[Ree2]

I got bored today so had a look into doing a proper Win32 port of Usurper (the last one was rushed, and sucked). Things are going good so far, but for a break from rewriting the DOS specific stuff I thought I'd look into fixing the problems that I read in this thread. What I found is:

Neither FMAINT or HMAINT have a pause, unless something goes wrong, so I'm not sure why anyone is encountering one. Can someone post a screenshot of the pause, so I can see what the prompt is?

Also, the slow maintenance is caused by the "Allow NPCs to marry and have kids" option. Change this to NO in the config (it's option #153), and your maintenance should be MUCH faster. If you want to keep this option enabled, I don't think there's much that can be done to speed things up as the whole marriage + kids thing involves a whole lot of nested looping. And as time goes on, more kids will exist, so the loops will only get larger and larger.

[drcorey]

I got bored today so had a look into doing a proper Win32 port of Usurper (the last one was rushed, and sucked). Things are going good so far, but for a break from rewriting the DOS specific stuff I thought I'd look into fixing the problems that I read in this thread. What I found is:

Neither FMAINT or HMAINT have a pause, unless something goes wrong, so I'm not sure why anyone is encountering one. Can someone post a screenshot of the pause, so I can see what the prompt is?

Also, the slow maintenance is caused by the "Allow NPCs to marry and have kids" option. Change this to NO in the config (it's option #153), and your maintenance should be MUCH faster. If you want to keep this option enabled, I don't think there's much that can be done to speed things up as the whole marriage + kids thing involves a whole lot of nested looping. And as time goes on, more kids will exist, so the loops will only get larger and larger.

Great!
that was the huge slow down. I wonder how we can optimize that routine so it dont do it anymore.

[Ree2]

So I finished off most of my outstanding TODO list items, and have packaged up a new v0.21 release. The only fix I remember making is for backstabbing by assassins in classic mode, other than that the only new thing is the Win32 port.

It's important to note that the Win32 and DOS versions ARE NOT COMPATIBLE with each other. Virtual Pascal changed the data types for Word and Integer types, which means data files written with the Win32 version will be slightly larger than the DOS version. So only use Usurper32 and Editor32 in a new installation, don't try to use them in an existing game or you'll probably experience crashing (or even data corruption).

(I know it's possible to have VP use the old data sizes, but a lot of procedures/functions would also need to be updated, and since there's no reason to run both DOS and Win32 out of the same directory, I didn't bother with this).

So here's the download link: http://www.randm.ca/files/usurp021.7z

Last note: I put a very minimal amount of testing into this release. The DOS version should have no issues, since it was largely unchanged, but I have no idea how well the Win32 version will function (if at all!)

[mroblivious1bmf]

So I finished off most of my outstanding TODO list items, and have packaged up a new v0.21 release. The only fix I remember making is for backstabbing by assassins in classic mode, other than that the only new thing is the Win32 port.

It's important to note that the Win32 and DOS versions ARE NOT COMPATIBLE with each other. Virtual Pascal changed the data types for Word and Integer types, which means data files written with the Win32 version will be slightly larger than the DOS version. So only use Usurper32 and Editor32 in a new installation, don't try to use them in an existing game or you'll probably experience crashing (or even data corruption).

(I know it's possible to have VP use the old data sizes, but a lot of procedures/functions would also need to be updated, and since there's no reason to run both DOS and Win32 out of the same directory, I didn't bother with this).

So here's the download link: http://www.randm.ca/files/usurp021.7z

Last note: I put a very minimal amount of testing into this release. The DOS version should have no issues, since it was largely unchanged, but I have no idea how well the Win32 version will function (if at all!)

thanks for taking the time to work on this, the last official version w/source code was really a disappointment and had no redeeming qualities. ;[

[Hawke]

Has anyone thought about setting up a git repository on github or something similar for this?