Recent Server Issues

Published on 09.09.2009 in General. 0 Comments

Unabashed Orxonox fans may have noticed that we experienced quite a lot of server issues in the recent past. This is a major problem for us as all our services are hosted on just this one server – except for this blog here of course.

Hosting has been a problem thorough the history of Orxonox. Since we’re totally non-profit and are working for free, we do not have the money to afford a proper solution for hosting. It’s not that there are not enough free possibilities on the Internet to host a SVN repository, own an IRC channel, host a website or a board, but that we are control freaks and want to have a server on where we have root permissions. We haven’t found anything like this for free yet. Continue reading ‘Recent Server Issues’

Orxonox Grillparty

Published on 20.04.2009 in General. 0 Comments

With the exception of last semester we usually organize an event for our students and veterans. As it is the spring semester at the moment we plan a Grillparty soon. Everybody will bring something so we won’t have additional financial chaos.

The location will most certainly be close to the ETH Hönggerberg as there are many fire places around and inside the woods. Since we were inside the woods last time and got into trouble when it got dark in the evening, this time we’ll be at the edge of the forest.

Of course the date will be found by using a doodle poll. As I write this we have already 13 participants. If this goes on like this we may have to extend our efforts to organize the event properly. The load will be a lot larger. Since we are very much dependent on the weather we have to decide spontaneously if we really go on the decided date. That’s why several dates are going to be chosen as potential Grillparty events.

Hopefully the weather is going to be nice. I’m really looking forward to it.

Earnings of a PPS leader

Published on 19.11.2007 in PPS. 1 Comment

The PPS is the practical course offered for students in the D-ITET (department of information technology and electrical engineering). Orxonox offers its own PPS course and is with this the only PPS course completely organized by students of higher semesters and without funds of any institute or group at the ETH. We only use the infrastructure which is offered by the D-ITET to all its students. Of course this results in some money troubles ones in a while, but Orxonox has a solid fan base and therefore we can gather money.

The PPS course is led by 3 to 4 PPS veterans or other students with a solid knowledge of some part out of game design. And those students are payed for the educational work they do. As a PPS leader we do not make more money than other students when they hold exercise hours for some lecture. The difference is, that we don’t get paid for ALL the work we do. We get paid for the three hours a week where we meet with the students and help them with their projects, but all the organizing of events and lectures and managing and merging of code is all up to us without any money for exchange. This is especially hard, if one works several hours per week just to be able to offer the students a better base to work on. The amount of time we spend with coding and look at the code of others is enormous.

So why do we do it? It cannot be the money.

It’s the fun and the sheer commitment to the project that makes us work hours into the night just to finish some difficult piece of code, that we were unable to let a student do it. And in the end, we earn the smiles and the shining eyes of the students and the guests at our presentation at the end of each semester. This sounds really cheeky, but it is in the end why we do it. And why Orxonox is the best PPS course one can choose.

Orxonox starts fresh

Published on 16.11.2007 in General. 0 Comments

Until last summer Orxonox was a game based on a engine we coded ourselves. This was not unproblematic as we had to find out. It is not only time consuming and – of course – a lot of work, but there are lot’s of things one can do wrong and thus we decided to start fresh, omitting most of our code.

After this shocking message the good one: We decided to use a graphics engine which is already out there. With this, we avoid major problems with the core engine and can focus on game development. It is of course also unfortunate, since engine development is quite interesting, but over the years our goals have changed and we’re more motivated to actually finish the project to a state where one can actually play it. This goal seems kinda obvious and a lot of people may think that when working on a game, this is the one and only goal. Reality was different and we came to realize, that finishing a game with a bogus engine.

Oh yes, the engine may be also of interest: We use Ogre for our project. We think that Ogre gives us the liberty we would miss after years of working on our own engine and now omitting it. Ogre is also a matured project where we do not have to be prepared for revolutionary changes from one version to another. For us, it is important that Orxonox is available for as many gamers out there as possible and we think we reach that goal when compatibility is one of our major interests.

Our Plan for this Semester

Published on 19.04.2007 in Projects. 0 Comments

I’d like to present you the projects we will work on this summer semester:

You can check them out on this page on our wiki.

We do not have that much PPS students this time, so the goals for this semester haven’t been set very high. We decided to improve the existing vertical scroller mode to a really playable state. To present something new at the end of the semester we are going to build a defense station on the moon. This station is destroyed due to the attack of aliens. Our main character will land on the moon to find a ship which is designed to enter the atmosphere. Fleeing on planet Earth is probably not a very good idea, but this is not an issue yet. We have to produce some content so the project will gain more popularity and the community grows.

As I said we want to improve the vertical scroller mode. This project is worked on by Nico. He worked on similar projects already and he will reimplement the vertical scroller system nearly from scratch.

Then there is the moon station. This is a BSP-Model which will be designed by Michi. We are really looking forward to see the half destroyed station with a lot of traps and difficulties. Michi will get support by Fabian who built the interior of the space station last semester. Check out the old page to see how cool the moon station will become!

Of course the half destroyed moon station will have a working security system. This will be implemented by Reto and Sebastian. Reto will work on the implementation in the code and Sebastian will model the automatic turret in blender.

We will also improve a lot of other things: I‘ll work on a better HUD and better playability of the FPS mode, Chrigi works on a better working AI in the vertical scroller mode, Silvan already started to define new things in the engine that we can script and he will also model the surface of the moon and Nowic will model the ship I mentioned at the beginning.

I hope I did not forget anyone. Check out the project pages I linked in the text and don’t be afraid of asking questions. Please leave a comment.