news from the weirdo

[Pierre-Marie Baty]

Well just so that you know why there seems to be no progress on RACC for a few months...

A few weeks ago I was saying that the release of the template 3 (with full navigation) was not far away, unfortunately it seems you'll have to wait a few months again
Getting things done in time in my real life work is becoming impossible these days, not counting the fact that restoring the BU server ate a lot of my time last week. I have a deadline for december (which was already reported from july) which I feel I am unable to meet as far as things are going.

To clarify, my real life work is programming. I've been hired by a small firm producing wooden doors and windows, nearly 6 months ago, initially to draw technical stuff with AutoCAD (because the boss knew I knew computing a bit and he neeeded someone for the job) but later on I convinced them to let me develop software for them. I already did a relatively big first app for them that saves them a lot of time, it tooke me a few months, but now they agreed to move on the bigger stuff, an app that will be the link between the windows the boss imagines on his desktop with a mspaint-like thingy and the automated production machines. Quite a big thing.

I'm under pressure until new year day at least, and will probably be a few weeks later too. Thanks God I have Bots United as an escape field

Back to RACC, I did not work on it for more than one month now, and I left it in such a state that it's a big mess inside. Lots of blocks commented out, quick and dirty coding, no commenting... I was still in the middle of navigational experiments and the bot looks much like a lab mouse at the moment. I'm not even sure it compiles anymore. This and that summing up, I'm not sure you can expect a release of anything before 3 months at least, for I'll have some hard time for sure getting my head wrapped around it again to take things back from the point I left them.

If you're interested in the source code in the meantime, I can send large parts of it to those who request it, but some parts, umm.... I'd like not to disclose yet, at least until I see how good/bad they turn out... and I sincerely hope they'll turn out good!

Anyway, I hope the HL2 SDK will be out when I'll be back to coding the bot. The work I've been doing regarding portability makes me think it'll be very easy to port it to HL2. If this happens, future developments will take place on this platform.

So, I was just putting this as a notice. Don't expect progress during the upcoming 3 months. Things might turn out better anyway. Who knows

[Exilibur]

sounds pretty ineresting, your real work... good luck with it. Don't press yourself too hard, i'd rather wait 2 years than see you suddenly give up or something like that

[MarD]

Heyyo,

Well, we've already waited a couple of years, so I'm sure a couple of months won't kill us.

But hey, you gotta nice job workin on coding, and yep, BU will always be around here (as long as the server remains).

Just remember, in the words of Mike Bullard (ahh man, too bad his show's cancelled, it was like, semi-funny talk show..) "Takin' it eaaassy..." so don't be goin' off bursting brain vessels, you'll wanna save them for later once you start workin on RACCbot, lol.

[botmeister]

It would be so nice if your bot programming could be used for your job programming and visa-versa. Almost never works that way does it?

Just wondering, is the programming for your job done in C or something else?

[Pierre-Marie Baty]

yes it is I had the choice of the language, actually, since I'm in charge of everything, sort of being the "Mr. Computers" there.

I'm having fun programming Windows apps in ANSI C, without ever using the Microsoft Classes

But the whole world seems to league against me these days, just yesterday my main hard disk died abruptly >
Never buy Maxtor. I usually fry two or three of them a year.

[sPlOrYgOn]

uhh I have 2 maxtors for a while now..
1 for about 2 years and the other for about 1 year..

[Huntkillaz]

i never heard of ppl frying so many each year

1-2 in 3 yrs yes but not in 1 yr o_O

[Pierre-Marie Baty]

I have several PCs tho

and don't worry for the bot, I make backups now 9_9

[botmeister]

I'm having fun programming Windows apps in ANSI C, without ever using the Microsoft Classes

Since you are programming in C, you could share at least a library of general routines between your job coding and your bot coding. You may as well double up the effort if you can, that's what I'm trying to do. The only C++ work I can do for $ at the moment will be in Linux, so I'm converting everything I did for the mEAn mod to work with Linux and then I'm writing a generalized library that can be used for any project (both windows and linux). Meanwhile the regular work I do for $ is written in the SQL database world, so it does not apply back and forth. I'd much rather be doing C++ work, so the push is on.

ps good idea not to use the MS classes because your code won't be easily portable otherwise.

[Pierre-Marie Baty]

Well since several people are asking me for it I have found the time to pack the whole RACC stuff in one big zip file which I am currently uploading to my site.

I have not spent one hour, though. I have removed useless stuff && too experimental things, and fixed one or two oddities. It DOES compile, but I make no guarantees on whether it will run or not. It's much more than a work in progress, it's a test lab, and a complete mess in some places (like the navigation). But I think some parts of the code might be useful to other bot makers.

It has plenty of server commands
type "racc help"

When it's uploaded you can get it from the filebase.

*edit*
here it is:
http://filebase.bots-united.com/inde...on=file&id=219