NAB622

I'm a bit confused, what?

ParaTracker 1.3.1 is released.

 

http://paratracker.dogi.us/

 

Two new skins have been added, each with a light and a dark variant: Banner ad, and Skyscraper ad.

 

There is also a major change this release; you can specify a background color (with opacity), text color, and two player list colors (with opacity).

 

Several bugs have been fixed as well.

 

 

Feedback is welcome.

Right now my time is consumed with personal things and ParaTracker. We have no intention of letting this project go, and I'm still active, but with JediTracker's demise, ParaTracker is far more important.

In case anyone was wondering why there was a brief outage earlier, PHP updated earlier today, which caused the player list to always show up as empty. Cagelight tracked the issue down to stricter type casting in the new php library, and corrected it. All is well.

Edit:

 

Instead of editing the post repeatedly I'll just delete and summarize. I am watching as servers show up on our ParaTracker host and adding levelshots to things here and there. I added levelshots for your guys' servers a few days ago. It looks like someone changed the BSP name of the map you guys are using to read "Temple" instead of "TEMPLE" - and case matters.

 

Cagelight fixed it already, so you should be fine now.

Can you elaborate a bit on that? Are you saying they were showing at one point and now they aren't, or that you are trying to add some custom ones?

ParaTracker 1.3 is released.

 

It is currently hosted on our website at http://paratracker.dogi.us/. Please check it out and let me know what you think. Feel free to use it if you like.

 

There were some HUGE changes this release. It took a long time to finish because vast portions of the back end have been updated. According to the changelog:

 

 

 

 

In addition to all this, the Dynamic setup page will now generate HTML for a sandboxed iframe, although a lot of things had to be re-enabled for it to work, so isn't really a whole lot more secure than it was. But at least it's there.

 

I do expect some backlash for the new levelshot transitions, but here's the good news: you can either choose a single transition that you like, or turn them off entirely. Or, if you really want to get extreme, you can make your own, even crazier ones.

 

Caelum - I have not yet completed GeoIP support. There are two options in the config file for it, but currently, it does not work. I'll get there at a later date, as unfortunately, life has thrown me yet another painful curveball at a most inopportune time.

 

Circa - There's now a skin called "Bigflat - Light" that might appeal more to your tastes. There's also a variant called "Bigflat - Dark" that I like better.

 

For anyone that would like to make a skin of their own, there's a file called "Template.css" in the skins folder you can use, or you can use the JSON response to make your own from the ground up.

 

Feedback is always welcome.

All right, everything is in order; skins A B and C are redone in the new CSS method.

 

The skins are completely redone now with CSS.

 

The text labels on each item are now generated from within the CSS skin files, and can be modified at the user's discretion.

 

Cagelight vastly improved the network response time - in my tests, getting and parsing info took less than one second on average. Many servers responded in less than 1/10th of a second.

 

Server ping was added as a feature on the param list as well as optionally on the tracker page.

 

Completing the JSON support is next on the list, as it is primitive right now (It needs access to the levelshot files and a few other things), and once it is done I will be updating the GitHub repository and the website. Hopefully in the next day or two.

Not to mention, that brings up a lot of security concerns. Web pages should *never* *ever* be able to launch a program on the client computer.

I forgot you posted that one above, sorry. Way too much stuff going on, I'm completely scatterbrained.

 

Okay, I'll see what I can do. It probably won't look exactly like that one, but I can get something pretty similar.

I'm curious why the styling needs to be split up at all. Why not have it all in one file?

There are a few things, like the dynamic tracker setup page, that have styles of their own. ParaStyle.css is intended for those styles. There's a few other oddball ones in there too but I can't remember them at the moment.

 

Regardless - I have already moved the RCon, Param, and colorizer styles out of ParaStyle.css and into the individual skin files, and separated the skin files into a skins/ folder. The next time I have an update, they will be available.

 

I'm going to get back to work on my own skins very soon, now that the back end is more stable and more flexible.

 

Also - if you are having trouble with the css skins, just make an image mock-up of what you want and I should be able to do it for you. More skins is better.

Another update!

 

I am working on having the tracker auto-detecting games, and parsing them uniquely. So far, it is working well, but I still need some more time to make it completely flexible between multiple games, as it was not my initial intent.

 

For now, I have some great news; I have a test HTML page for ParaTracker and a CSS file ready to go. So for those of you who want to play with the skins, you can do that now instead of waiting. Here's the download link:

 

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/19603700/ParaTracker/ParaTracker%20TEST%20PAGE%20FOR%20CSS.zip

 

To modify the skin, unzip the folder somewhere, go into the CSS folder, and modify the two CSS files however you see fit. Particularly, ParaSkinA.css is the one you'll probably be looking for.

 

Now, all this being said, I have a question: should the styles for the param list be different for each skin, or the same? Now is a good time to make that choice, before I go any further, because it will change the file I put the styles into.

 

Circa and Caelum, I look forward to your input, good or bad.

Just an update, since I imagine some people are following this project with interest now.

 

Cagelight saw a request for JSON on Discord, so he implemented it.

 

Caelum and I spoke a few days ago, and his requests should be possible. Most of them, most notably XSS safeguards and flood protection, were already implemented.

 

I have finished remaking skin A with all CSS, and will begin working on skins B and C shortly. The new CSS method is completely flexible and the end users can change literally anything they like about it. A few items, like the levelshots and player list, are grouped together to make them more useful, but other than that everything can be manually colored and placed anywhere. Circa, you'll have to let me know what you think when you get your hands on it, but I think you'll love it.

 

Edit: None of these changes have been uploaded yet; I want to finish skins B and C first, merge the two code bases we are working from, and look into Caelum's requests.

In the interim, though, ParaTracker is functional and can be used.

 

Paratracker.dogi.us

Unfortunately that is exactly what I am trying to avoid doing. I don't want to use a portal, because the wall will be large and round. But thanks anyway. I'll probably just have to leave it visible from both sides.

Well the website for JediTracker is completely gone now.....did something bad happen to BlaSt?

Sure, sounds like a bit of fun. I'm very *very* busy IRL, but I will be happy to switch gears back to here and make it work.

 

The back end of the tracker and the UI were kept mostly separate for this reason, so it shouldn't be very difficult to rework the UI. Keep in mind also that ParaTracker theoretically supports any Quake 3 based game, not just JA. I would still like to get Xonotic levelshots and Quake 3 Arena levelshots, and I'll need to get bitflag data for each of them as well. Eventually.

That's very helpful. I'll look into DIVs and the possibility of using them for the entire layout, but I really don't know what I'm doing with them yet.

The design cannot be changed by the end user, due to it being controlled by the PHP. I am not very good with CSS actually. If you have a better way to do it, please share, since I am honestly way out of date with my HTML knowledge.

Oh wow. Didn't expect that......especially since it lasted so long.

 

Because of JAOWNT, I haven't been doing anything new for ParaTracker - skins A B and C are the only ones completed thus far. (Skins E F G and H should theoretically take very little time each.) And then there's the ASCII/ANSI bug I still have to figure out. Other than that, ParaTracker should be completely usable, to the best of my knowledge.

 

If there is anything else you need added to ParaTracker, or if you're really itching for more skins to be released, let me know. My attention is elsewhere at the moment, but it can easily be diverted back to here.

 

Just a reminder; you do not need to host ParaTracker yourself. We have one already set up that you can use, just like JediTracker.

 

http://pt.dogi.us/

How about Deathstar esque blast doors?

 

Edit: any room? Hide a whirlpool room somewhere

 

Blast doors are already being worked on. Due to some limitations of the prefabs, however, I didn't go with death star style blast doors.

 

A whirlpool room? Please elaborate.

After looking up some sci-fi door designs, it seems that the door doesn't need to look very high tech - it's the frame that makes all the difference. So for now i made some decent looking door frames. Thank you, Railback, for the design, although i likely will not use it at this time.

 

Added a hydronics lab and shooting range to the list of rooms to add.

After some more thought..... I might be able to stretch this to 15 decks or so. It would be a lot of work, so I'm not sure I want to go through with it, but if I do, just about any room idea will have space.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CO1bVeZuhaA

mannable weapons bays, gun/cannon turrets, etc.

 

Noted and added to the OP.

 

Most dreadnaught art has "blisters" on the outer hull that contain the turbolasers - so if I do anything with mannable guns, that's probably where they'll be. It's tricky because it'll involve slicing through the outer hull, which is mostly curve patches. But I'm sure I can make it work.

 

 

Edit: Another thing I'd like to know - does anyone have any cool door ideas? I don't want them to be traditional doors that go up into the ceiling, but I also don't want to make them simply move sideways.

As promised, here are some screenshots from within Radiant. Please keep in mind this is VERY WIP and a lot is subject to change. All comments are welcome.

 

Outside of the ship:

 

 

 

The hangar area (There is only one hangar for now, and I will probably add an identical one on the bottom of the ship later):

 

 

 

VERY early shot of the bridge area:

 

 

 

Finally, pictures of the aforementioned hallway prefabs. The red light strip in the middle of the walls is going to be a light bar that turns on for red alert only, but it has to be visible for editing: