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[soundandfury]

I know what Lua is. I was asking what this specific package is.

I think he means it gets the data from DF and produces the 'cell file', which is basically the map.

I hope that's what he means, because if so I'll be able to start on an import/export for DF Designer.

[obijohn]

It'd be nice if Obsidian includes mac compatibility, but I guess it's not a first priority goal, if one at all

I haven't tried Mac development yet (but my lady has a Powerbook and I can always sneak it away from her whilst she is reading and try my hand at it), but AFAIK Mac OS X is basically a Unix system, so the "porting distance" between Linux and Mac OS X should be less than between Linux and Windoze.

For the blood god's sake, please please pretty please for Mac?

About that powerbook... it has a PPC processor. All new Macs since 2006 are intel-only (in fact, Snow Leopard is intel-only and won't even install on a powerbook), so this will not be a good platform for the Mac development. Yes, xcode will cross-compile for intel machines on the powerbook, but the problem is going to be differences in the memory access system used by DFHack, and DFHack does not support Mac so this project would have to fill in that gap. They claim it should be possible but there has been no one to step up and do it. The UI part of Obsidian should not be difficult to port from linux to Mac, since there are already ports of most linux UI libraries (GLUT, QT, Gtk+, SDL, etc). It's going to be the DFHack-specific memory related stuff that will be the hard part.

However, once that's done, the hard part is out of the way, and keeping the Mac port in sync with the linux port should be easy. I realize that Mac support is very low on priority right now because the project is so new. But this is by far the best time to do it. If you wait, I'm afraid the Mac side will get left forever behind. It's much easier to port the pieces as you go instead of having a finished project that needs to be ported from scratch.

[Crunch]

It sounds like a good idea...  but we still need a developer willing and able to port DFHack to the mac.

[peterix]

It sounds like a good idea...  but we still need a developer willing and able to port DFHack to the mac.

More than that -- we need someone to maintain DFHack on the mac. That's a whole world of difference.

[ScrapHeap]

Hi there,

I am an avid fan of DF, although I have never played it, and probably will not have any time in the coming 10 years, seeing my professional situation
I used to contribute 2d and 3d media to the Worldforge project (www.worldforge.org)
A lot of focus was at keeping polycount acceptable and making media reusable, the latter by using versatile texture templates.
All the stuff we made can be found here: https://svn.worldforge.org:886/svn/media/trunk/
I had to suspend activities due to aforementioned professional situation. The project moves on at glacier pace (slow but unstoppable).

I suspect that a lot of the artwork can be reused (this has always been a WF artwork goal).
If a set of lowpoly trees is needed, then look here: https://svn.worldforge.org:886/svn/media/trunk/3d_objects/plants/tree_billboard/
If you need ground types, then look here: https://svn.worldforge.org:886/svn/media/trunk/3d_objects/environment/textures/
A nice meaty texture: https://svn.worldforge.org:886/svn/media/trunk/3d_objects/items/food/textures/ham/D.png
Basically you have here a multi gigabyte collection of open source game artwork available.

Have fun, and good luck!

Scrap Heap (WF nick: Munin)

[nbonaparte]

That's excellent. What programs can open .mesh, though?

[foradan]

Porting DFhack to mac is not quite as trivial as you might think, as the methods used by DFHack to access DF's memory in Linux do not work on the mac.  I got the SHM method to work, but only by recompiling the SDL library with the DFHack SHM-server-side code compiled in.  The other method requires the comms section to be rewritten to use Mach kernel calls rather than ptrace, and requires either running as root, or convincing a security layer to give DFHack access to the running DF.

And then someone has to find the memory offsets for the mac compile of each new version of DF.

At the moment I don't have the time, as there are several other projects requiring my attention, but I can give help and advice to anyone else wanting to have a go.

[chmod]

AFAIK Mac OS X is basically a Unix system, so the "porting distance" between Linux and Mac OS X should be less than between Linux and Windoze.

You'd be suprised You have to get comfy with the Mach kernel, since OSX crippled most of the BSD calls that would help with this. It's its own world, which is why I gave up on the DT side until a mac hacker comes along who will maintain it on an ongoing basis.

[ScrapHeap]

.mesh files are runtime files for the ogre scenegraph.
you will also often find .3ds and .wrl
I believe that multiple converters can be found. Blender might also eat .mesh files

[Shaostoul]

Can't wait for this to come out... also bump

[Tack]

posting to track, but also to offer praise to the amazing minds at work on this project.

'hem.

[Skeggox]

Thanks for the compliment Tack

Alas, it's a crazy ass time at work. Averaging about 65 hours a week, with super-extra overtime on weekends. Deadlines are deadlines, but at least things will quiet down just before we ship. Just a few more weeks...

Just to reassure - I haven't forgotten about Obsidian. I have, however, been struggling with the weirdest Lua error lately. Anyone familiar with Lua and binding to C, can you maybe cogitate over the following and offer some suggestions as to what might be the culprit?

<technical>
I'm generating Lua bindings where I start by registering metatables for each C++ class. I generate a C-function for __index, which contains a generated switch statement that compare a hash of the incoming string key with all of the members and methods defined in the class. It will return either the value of a member, or a C-function wrapper for a method. A similar C-function is generated for __tostring (prints the C++ class name) and __newindex (to assign values to members). These class metatables are added to the registry by using luaL_newmetatable with the fully qualified class name. Whenever I need to push such a C++ object into Lua, I create a light userdata set to the object pointer, get the registered metatable using luaL_getmetatable, and set it on the lightuserdata.

So far, so good - all according to examples from the Programming In Lua online book. Except... for some reason most lightuserdata will act as if the most recently retrieved metatable is set on them. So, given class Fortress, class Map and class Cell, each with a __tostring that prints the class type, I get the following:
> fortress = ReadFromDF()
> print(fortress)
Cell::Fortress
> map = fortress.Map
> print(map, fortress)
Cell::Map Cell::Fortress

Here comes the funky part:
> cell = map.Get(0, 0, 0)
> print(cell, map, fortress)
Cell::Cell Cell::Cell Cell::Fortress

See? The root object stays the same (it is actually a full userdata), but the light userdata references (cell and map) are set to the latest metatable retrieved.

Trying to debug this with commandline gdb in Windows is not helping. I've been wholly spoilt by Visual Studio's commercial debugger these last few years, and my brain is just too tired to learn gdb properly at this point. Anyone know of any good free mingw32-friendly debuggers (or good GUI frontend for gdb) on Windows, or do I need to whip out the Archlinux and try out KGdb etc?
</technical>

P.S. Don't even mention Visual C++ Express - yes, its free, but the free debugger smokes crundle butt-lint and the compiler can easily be curb-stomped by a furry wambler suffering from gastrointestinal stress.

[foradan]

Lightuserdata does not have a metatable.

A value in lua is something like this:

struct {
   lua_type type;
   union {
      void *ptr;
      lua_number_type num;
   } d;
};

Numbers and lightuserdata are fully stored in this structure.  Tables and userdata have the main data pointed to by d->ptr.  There is no space in this structure for a metatable reference.

[RCIX]

I don't have any C++ or much art skills, but i can give you a hand with any lua-side problems you may encounter; PM me if you need it!

[darius]

<...>
Trying to debug this with commandline gdb in Windows is not helping. I've been wholly spoilt by Visual Studio's commercial debugger these last few years, and my brain is just too tired to learn gdb properly at this point. Anyone know of any good free mingw32-friendly debuggers (or good GUI frontend for gdb) on Windows, or do I need to whip out the Archlinux and try out KGdb etc?
<...>

Am using Codeblocks Ide. It has integrated gdb support. Although might be not as powerfull as VC++ but it's opensource.