Hey
I just thought I would say to everyone that I do plan to start working on the recoding, I know a lot of you have emailed me over the last year asking is this is really going to happen, a lot of you already know my health history etc so I won't go into detail about that.
A brief status about my health issues...
Health wise I am a lot better than I was several years ago, yes I have been ill for that long, I was just good at hiding the fact that I was getting worse, some people got the blunt end of it when I would just loose it and snap over something stupid, I know thekabal and I had a few blows over coding due to me just loosing it, so sorry about that btw.
I am not at the stage where I use to be when I would spend 60% to maybe 80% of my free time with BNT related stuff, but at least I am at a point where I feel ok looking at code, where as a few years ago I was in a bad place in life where I couldn't be bothered to do anything.
Right now that's out of the way...
I agree totally with you about the PHP version, sadly that's all I can install without doing a disto upgrade which "might" break something, I say it might due to a lot of stuff that we was running before that was very old is now using a more up to date version, grated it did break at first but ended up getting fixed and is now working better than before.
As you already know SSL is already setup, so that's something I need to think about when doing the recode, so it can handle that as well as Non SSL connections.
Or do I just allow for SSL, this will allow for people that already have SSL and people that know how to set it all up, which "should" reduce support requests a little.
MySQL, version 8.0 WOW, I wasn't aware of that
Mind you I haven't really been on my PC much compared to how I use to.
Just installed Ubuntu Server 16.04 LTS on my VM Box which is exactly the same for 16.10 which both have the following PHP and MySQL Versions:
PHP 7.0.8-0ubuntu0.16.04.3 (cli) ( NTS )
Copyright (c) 1997-2016 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v3.0.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2016 Zend Technologies
with Zend OPcache v7.0.8-0ubuntu0.16.04.3, Copyright (c) 1999-2016, by Zend Technologies
MySQL Server version: 5.7.15-0ubuntu0.16.04.1 (Ubuntu)
Sadly ours is only running 14.04 LTS (saves my brother - owner of server keep fixing stuff when they break) and also down to other stuff that cannot break, so we are getting a place for BNT for free, hence the no ad banners.
I do have root access to the server but that's if it boots up, my brother has full remote access so he can see if it doesn't boot up.
So where we are running 14.04 LTS we are limited to using PHP and MySQL versions:
PHP 5.5.9-1ubuntu4.20 (cli) (built: Oct 3 2016 13:00:37)
Copyright (c) 1997-2014 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.5.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2014 Zend Technologies
with Zend OPcache v7.0.3, Copyright (c) 1999-2014, by Zend Technologies
MySQL Server version: 5.5.52-0ubuntu0.14.04.1 (Ubuntu)
I would upgrade it myself, but like I said I don't have full remote access just in case I break it.
So, what I was thinking was I will code it to work on the version we are currently running and I used that version as an ideal version.
Option 1:
I will try and have it support 5.x up to 7.x using checks, granted the files will increase in size, but they "should" already at that point be all split up into their own classes etc.
Option 2:
Still cater for versions 5.0 (minimal), 5.5 (ideal) and 7.x (maximum) and have 3 lots of code to work with those versions.
As for Adodb, I am not even thinking about that, I am aiming to use PDO from the start.
At the time Adodb was good and worked very well for BNT, sadly the maintainer just seems to of lost interest in keeping it up to date with PHP and MySQL, mind you I cannot talk, I am the same with BNT LOL.
But Adodb was the main factor BNT use to break a lot, well that and when we broke it
, look at all those hacks I had to do to even get it to work as we wanted to do with schemas etc, very ugly.
At least with PDO all we have to do is mostly just change the connection information and that "should" be it.
Which I think is great
Well TBH, I haven't really played with PHP and MySQL since the last time we was both splitting stuff up, so I am assuming PHP and MySQL hasn't change that much, I know its going to be a little learning curve getting back into using them.
As for the MySQL Engine types, I will be taking my time choosing engine types for the tables, due to some tables might work better with one engine where as others might work better as another.
So I will need to look into that as well.
So what I "will" try and do is go day by day and if I am feeling up to doing some coding I will do some coding, at least I am actually thinking about it at this stage
so this "might" take a while.
I will also "try" and keep it the same as BNT Classic in the way it looks, so that should please most of the players.
TBH, I am not really sure how many users we have left, I might spend many months or even a year or two to end up having no players playing the game.
So, where all my development books say make a game that you like playing, I did at one point like to play BNT, but to me there was so much missing from the game.
So what I am thinking of doing is just get the game to a point where users can login into a sandbox and I will think about what to add from there, I know I am thinking to have loads more trading resources, a tech tree for character levelling and also R&D etc.
I have also been thinking about the universe in the game and the way it is all linked up, so that "might" change as well to more of a cluster of galaxies where we "should" be able to add more if we need to.
I will leave those ideas there due to I don't really want to promise too much and not be able to add them.
Well now to why I have been away on and off for the last few weeks, we have been having broadband connections issues for the last few years and have been in constant battle with our service provider for the last nearly 5 years concerning fibre, and finally our fibre connection is all up and running, so we now have a broadband connection of 300Mbps down and 30Mbps up, so that allows me to do more stuff my end.
So, as I am starting to get better week by week, I am "thinking" of giving updates on the progress of development in the forms of YouTube Videos, this is still just an idea at this point so this part might not happen.
Well that's me rambling done for now
Why is it I start to do a simple short reply and end up with a long reply LOL.