Project Warlock

Ruby GUI Hell and the Birth of RWT

2012-06-10T14:08:00.002+01:00

Well it's been a looooong while since we last post something. The main reason is because we are trying to develop tools to create cards and maintain the database with a nice and friendly GUI, but in that field Ruby doesn't have a decent GUI - there's a great list of choices but none of them is totally officially supported. We tried a lot of them:

IronRuby - its totally bugged and its development has somewhat stopped. The good thing about it is that it can use the Visual Studio designer;
SWT - Well to be fair I don't personally like Java. Although it is efficient, it seems a convoluted language to use in Ruby;
Shoes - It's still a baby, and it doesn't support many of the widgets we would like to see, and it has its own compiler.

While making efforts trying to master those different GUI's we started to look in a different direction creating RWT - Ruby Widget Toolkit. It's like a Ruby version of WPF and its in early stages. At the moment of this post its possible to handle windows, text components, to draw via OpenGL and print text with FreeType.

RWT works through the magic of a little gem called Ducktape created by Silver Phoenix and used in RWT by P3t3rU5. Ducktape allows you to use bindable attributes and event notification (called hooks). An example of one of its uses, is to bind the text of a component with the display of that text.

Future Scopes
In the future we want to create a protocol to have links like rwt://something.app, or rwt://somewhat.game. Maybe it's my naivety, but for me web app development is still a pain in the ass. This fight between browser standards and who gets to pick what is best for the internet is staggering development...

Pullbacks
So things are not going exactly as we expected - the project is always adapting. For example we gave up on web app model because we're in a middle of a web war to see who says what is standard. Despite all that, as I have nothing left to lose I'll be more committed to this project and this blog keeping you posted.

Iris, the personification of the rainbow and messenger of the gods

2011-11-07T22:59:00.000+00:00

Hey everyone! I have news for you - we are developing our own server gem for ruby - Iris!

You might ask why we choose that name, well for a number of reasons:

'Iris' is the messenger of the gods - "As the sun unites Earth and heaven, Iris links the gods to humanity." - in other words it links the clients to the content of our game
Recently I remembered that she appears on 'Golden Sun', one of the best Role-Playing Games ever!
Internet memes - Double Rainbow :P

The main reason we are developing our own server gem it's because none of the current gems have the features we wish to see implemented like websockets, SSL (in other words, HTTPS) and normal HTTP request. Seems that none of the gems currently available can handle these 3 guys at the same time. Good news is we are going to share this gem with everyone somewhere in the future so stay tuned!

The first version has already a release name - Iris Andromeda 0.0.1 - current version name will be named after geeky astronomical thingies - probably Caprica or Coruscant for 'C' and Tatooine for 'T'

See you soon hopefuly still on Earth :P

EDIT:

PS - Never underestimate the power of RAINBOWS!!!

My Little Pony

2011-10-14T22:57:00.000+01:00

It's been a while since our last post. Well, we went on vacation : )

We've been working for some time now on the server and client aplications for registrarion and logins - we've got pony!!!

Pony is actually a Ruby Gem for emailing people.

On other matters we've added to our team two guys developing rules and cards, and we have new designer!

You've got pony!

We've been doing mostly investigation in two areas: authentication and websockets.

Firstly we were focused on authentication, but at this stage we are going to provide simple login without authentication.

We then deviated out attention to another subject. Our main concern was to understand how to make two clients communicate with each other. Our solution comes from websockets. Other techniques (like BOSH or Comet) could have been used, but since Chrome 14 has enabled them by default, we decided it has enough advantages to be selected as the primary means to synchronous communication between clients, providing the main driver behind the chat functionality, game matches and other realtime (push) events.

Singin' like Sinatra did

2011-08-15T14:35:00.002+01:00

I'll start this post warning you - using PostgreSQL is like having a developer orgasm, just see the documentation and all its features - it makes all other databases (mySQL and Firebird) look like crying babies.

GWT web forms for login and register are already designed. Now comes the hard part: coding them... hard because of SOP, which stand for Same Origin Policy and we wanted to run the server with ruby rack and sinatra but in the end all went good and we integrated sinatra in GWT server.

PS - In the development of this game someone has lost an eye... Unfortunately it was Lady Gaga

Gaga lost her eye

Cookies

2011-08-14T10:12:00.002+01:00

No, Cookie Monster, not those kind of cookies. (sees sad Cookie Monster leave)

I've been studying real hard to make the future website secure. Right now I'm trying to figure out a secure protocol using browser cookies. Actually I've grown a small obsession with it. I just really want to see it working.

The major advantage of using cookies is that it can provide long term authentication, instead of always having to sign in every time someone visits the site. It also means that it can share session information between browser tabs.

But there are disadvantages also. Like any site that provides this feature, the cookie can be exposed to attacks and be made public. This is why I'm trying my best to make sure that all ends are tied up.

Baby Steps

2011-08-13T00:25:00.001+01:00

For version 0.1 we pretend to have the login, register and lounge system working and connected to the database.
Right now we are mastering the database and its connection to Ruby through Eclipse. The database is managed by PostgreSQL.

On other matters those with access to it can see the card planned so far here.

The Logo is in the makings too, but this one will change as the name is not definitive.

Step 1

2011-08-08T21:12:00.004+01:00

Silver Phoenix: Trying to figure out GWT (Google Web Toolkit).

P3t3rU5: Trying to figure out JRuby.