Galaxia ♠ Renaissance

August 1, 2006 by Oliver · Comments Off
Filed under: Entertainment, Galaxia, Games, MPOGs 

Galaxia is game may be dead, but it’s definitely not forgotten. Head on over to Galaxia ♠ Renaissance to read a lengthy (and getting lengthier) piece of fiction by former Galaxia player, Ashley Rayburn.

It contains most of the well known players, the Consortium, the UGC as well of course yours truly, Q. If you don’t know what Galaxia is, it won’t mean much to you, but go read it anyway. It’s funny :P

Galaxia Renaissance, ♠

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AJAXy Scriptaculous goodness

January 27, 2006 by Oliver · Comments Off
Filed under: Computers, Galaxia, Games, Javascript, MPOGs, Programming, Ruby on Rails, Technology, Web Programming 

Scriptaculous is a Javascript library used for doing AJAX stuff and certain visual effects. It’s very well written, has excellent cross browser support and best of all there are cool functions in Ruby on Rails for using it.

One of the coolest features is drag and drop. I’ve already implemented it in Galaxia Ruby for adding ships to fleets :)

AJAX, Javascript, Scriptaculous, Ruby, Rails

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Tree structures in Ruby on Rails

January 24, 2006 by Oliver · Comments Off
Filed under: Galaxia, Games, MPOGs, Programming, Ruby on Rails, Technology, Web Programming 

This is becoming a trend – another built-in feature of Rails that will seriously help Galaxia development.

You can use acts_as_tree in a model to make it, well, act as a tree. What this means is you add an extra field to the database called parent_id that tracks object’s parents. Rails automatically manages this for you and adds extra methods for dealing with trees (things for accessing parent, ancestors, children etc.). Just like the post on type, this is something I was already doing with Galaxia but managing myself.

OOP

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Using “type” in Ruby on Rails

January 22, 2006 by Oliver · Comments Off
Filed under: Galaxia, Games, MPOGs, Programming, Ruby on Rails, Technology, Web Programming 

By default Rails applies special meaning to certain fields in a database table. One of these fields is “type”. The type fields is used by Rails to create a “single table inheritance model”. This sounds fairly complicated and is best explained with an example:

Imagine a forum system. A forum will have threads and replies. Threads and replies are different and have different functionality, but certainly share a lot of characteristics. So you might create a class message with two sub classes: replies and threads.

In Rails you can store all these in one messages table with a type field set to either reply” or thread. When you load a message it will actually create either a reply or thread object (in stead of a message object). When you create a new object it stores it in the messages table with the correct type.

This is ideal for Galaxia. In fact it’s the model I used all along – I just had to write the functionality myself.

Single Table Inheritance, OOP, MVC, Ruby, Rails

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Galaxia Ruby

January 14, 2006 by Oliver · 1 Comment
Filed under: Galaxia, Games, MPOGs, PHP, Programming, Ruby on Rails, Technology, Web Programming 

Okay, Galaxia on Rails would my be a more apt name for a version of Galaxia in Ruby on Rails. But Galaxia Ruby sounds better to non-programmers.

This follows the tradition I’ve been recently following of learning new languages by writing bits of Galaxia in them. There is a real possibility I might get a version out this time :P

This version may even have AJAXy goodness and things. But don’t hold your breath…

Galaxia, Galaxia Ruby, Ruby, Rails, Ruby on Rails, AJAX

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