Bristlecone's RPI Codebase Project
 

I'd like to give a bit of exposure to Mary Hudson's (A.K.A Bristlecone) project to create a new RPI-based engine from scratch. She's been a passionate supporter of Shadows of Isildur's own RPI Engine projects for as long as I can remember, and I, as well as many other people, are looking forward to the results of her labours in this regard.

She has set up a coding blog here: and her main project link can be found here:

She deserves all the support she can get on this project, so I thought I'd provide these links for those who are interested.

Re: Bristlecone's RPI Codebase Project
 

Sounds cool. Argila has been in development for a while though, right?

I'm curious how the full 3D grid with rooms structure will play.

Re: Bristlecone's RPI Codebase Project
 

She is a superb coder. You can certainly expect for it to be of top-notch design.

Re: Bristlecone's RPI Codebase Project
 

I used to use Argila but I'm not sure where to go with my codebase now, the latest release of Argila won't compile on the latest mysql-devel for some reason. I'll have to check out her newest release soon.

Re: Bristlecone's RPI Codebase Project
 

Argila was based on the RPI Engine released by Traithe from Shadows of Isildur game back in 2005. It was in C, and I spent a lot of time cleaning up memory leaks and generally tidying up the code. I started adding in LUA support, but when I join SOI as a developer, I stopped work on Argila. I am only aware of two games in active development that use the Argila Engine, and a couple more than are little more than hobby games.

What was released by SOI in May was called the RPI++ Engine. It was the result of 3 years of active development, including a conversion to allow it to compile as C++ code. During the time I was on the development team, I created or modified over 100 commands, and increased the capabilities of the game in many ways. Crafting, healing, and teaching, are the main changes visible to the average user. Staff has an increased number of tools available to them as well. For those who have downloaded the RPI++ Engine, the main problem is in-compatable MySQL versions. RPI++ requires 5.0 to work properly. I think there is still an issue with one table that is not properely defined, but once you get past that, the game works just fine.

However, the RPI++ is not Argila. It will not work perfectly with worldfiles created under Argila. LUA is not implemented with the RPI++ Engine. I will not be converting the DIKU code into a new version of Argila.

What I am calling Argila++ is a completely new code base, written from scratch. It will be designed specifically for the needs of RPI games. It is open-source and freely available. That is what you will find at . The world files will not be compatible with any previous DIKU based game. It will take time to develop and code, but I hope to have a specialized MUD engine, that anyone can install and run, and one that will take advantage of internet technologies unknown to the developers of DIKU.

Re: Bristlecone's RPI Codebase Project
 

The links in this thread (except for the Blog) seem to be blocked -- atleast to me. Not sure if anyone else has had this problem, or if the project was moved/set private.

Re: Bristlecone's RPI Codebase Project
 

The blog is the only active part of the project right now. It isn't even that active, mostly related to excessive code burnout. After two stressful years as coder on a successful RPI, I am now facing an enormous project, and it is likely to take several years to complete. However, the RPI community and MUD coding in general seems to be slipping. RPIMUD was down for nearly a month before anyone mentioned it here and was barely active before it lost it's domain. MudMagic and it's code depository and forums have been gone for even longer.

I am not certain if there would be any use for "Yet Another Game Engine". A great game can be made using any engine. It just takes the right people. Without the right people, all you have is 30,000 lines of code that just takes up space, and a dozen people who can't stand the sight of each other after a couple years.