yes, this post is now "old", I had mine energy glyph for 2k (someone that just connected after  several month offline, and that had several energy glyph with brado when the quest there gave it, and he didn't know that the energy gliph was now rare) (**lucky**)

The current set of glyphs available in game through buying or quests is: Air, Armor, Arrow, Cold, Darkness, Energy, Fire, Hand, Lightning, Meteor, Might, Rock, Summon, Weakness.

I don't think it's good and fair that some glyhs are only avaiable by buying them from other players : I really think you should make a quest that gives the energy glyph ...
I think that if a glyph is only aviable by buying it to other player, then that means it's not aviable anymore.

(I finally have an energy glyph, so I'm not saying that thinking of myself)

We are a lot to try to do this quest, but it is broken

(understand me, there may be a way to finish it : hack into the server to find the correct "magic sentece" : we have tried all the sentence that could be deduced by the humain brain from the datas of the quest, and we are all stuck at the same point)

ok, thanks, I did\'nt know it was first develloped on windows ...

thanks, the symlins works, but for me (debian stable) :

 ln -s /usr/X11R6/lib/libXaw.so  /usr/lib/libXaw.so.8

symlink = \"symboly link\" = \"a type of true \'shortcut\' for a file that is really powerfull\" :
under windows, you only have 1 type of sepcial files : the dirrectory, and a shortcut is just a binary&text file with a .lnk extention. each program needs to be able to understand them itself for them to work, and that exlains a lots of bugs / shortcuts not working.

under Unix, you have plenty of types of special files, and one of them is  \"symbolic link\" : a symbolic link can be seen as a shortcut to another file, but is managed by Unixes kernels. Thus, under Linux, when a program open a symbolic link, Linux make it open the target file instead. (To use a technical word : it is transparent for the programmer and for the user).

the Unix (and thus Linux) command to create links is ln
(you need to had -s to the ln command in order to create a simbolic link, overwise, you give 2 different names to the same file)

(and I know : you\'ll tell me GNU)

can you tell us about the level we need to be able to hope getting one ?
because if you need to be strong enought to kill one of the big monsters in the ruins, I\'ll forget about it right away ...
(if some that can barely kill rats can do it, I\'ll do nothing else but try to find the way to get it)

ok, sorry, I made bad asumptions, since I (wrongly) thought a lot more devellopers worked on planeshift

sorry to resurect this, I came accross it looking for a problem I had in the game (wich I have found the solution to since in an even older post)

ok, I go download ps sources and i go to bed ... (it seems to be high time for me !)

Originally posted by Goldir
 I only have a vague idea of what a \"build\", CS, and a cvs are, and I have no clue what CEL or Cal3d are.

DEFINITION OF BUILD :

In order to create a game such as plainshift, you need to make :
 - datas (such as pictures, the text the NPCs will say, a 3D map ...)
 - A programme that uses these datas to make the final game.

to create a program, you write lines in a programming langage. Each line is like an order that you give to the computer, and that the computer will execute (it is not an accurate/exact definition, but we can say each line is an instruction)
The set of all the lines that makes your program are called \"the code of the program\"
The main programming langage used to create plainshift is the C++
But the C++ instructions are not something the computer can execute : they are text in simplified english that is simple enough to be automatically translated into something the computer understands.

here an example of C++ code :
if (Player->life < 0)
  Player->isAlive = FALSE;
else
  Player->guerrir;

Since C++ is made with english words, understanding english is sometime enough to understand a part of well-written program.

the C++ code of the program is also called the SOURCE CODE of theprogram and is often abreviated as \"SOURCEs\". You may notice that you can download plainshift sources.

To make so that the computer understands these instructions, we thus have to translate them into something that makes sense for the electronic of the computer.  This \"something that makes sense for the electronic of the computer\" is the final program that you have downloaded and that you \"start\" when you start the game.
The action to make this  \"something that makes sense for the electronic of the computer\" from the source code is called compillation.
When you compille a complex project like plainshift, doing so, you also perform other action at the same time, such as linking it to the datas (3D textures ...) and other action that I wont desribe here.

The action of compilling a complex project to make the final \"game\" is called \"BUILDing a project\".
The result of the building procedure is thus call a BUILD.
At the time you compile, you may specify some options, that will change the resulted build. You can thus make several diffrent builds from one single project\'s source code.

Form instance, from the plainshift source code, you can either make the Linux, the MacOS or the windows build.
Needless to say that the Linux build will never work under windows and that both builds have a lot of differences.

END DEFINITION BUILD


DEFINITION OF CVS
(uses the definition of build)

CVS either means  Concurrent Versions System or  Current Versions System.
It is a system (a program) used to manage the source code of a project on wich several people works. It is only made for archiving differents version of a file, and has mecanisms that allows several people to modiffy differents parts of a same file at the same time.
cvs is manly used in the Unix world.
So CVS is just a tool for programmers.
But CVS allows people to get (download) the source code of a program.

So cvs is widely used to download the source code of a program, and make sure people always download the lastest version.
Since you can build the final program from the source code, under linux, there are programs that you can only get by

what cvs is (summury of text from info pages) :
CVS is a version control system.  Using it, you can record the history of your source files.
 With CVS, you can easily retrieve old versions to see exactly which change caused the bug.
You could of course save every version of every file you have ever created.  This would however waste an enormous amount of disk space.
CVS stores all the versions of a file in a single file in a clever way that only stores the differences between versions.

what cvs is NOT (summury of text from info pages)  (correct mistakes made by a lot of programmers) :
CVS can do a lot of things for you, but it does not try to be everything for everyone.
CVS is not a build system.
CVS does not dictate how you build anything.  It merely stores   files for retrieval in a tree structure you devise.
CVS does not dictate how to use disk space in the checked out working directories.
CVS is not a substitute for management.
CVS is not a substitute for developer communication.
CVS does not claim to help at all in figuring out non-textual or distributed conflicts in program logic.
CVS does not have change control.
CVS is not an automated testing program.
CVS does not have a built-in process model.

END DEFINITION OF CVS

Originally posted by Goldir
 I didn\'t consider this a code contribution,

neither do I. maybe shall we create a section of the dev forums to explain to non-programmers how the project is made? after all, one of the power of Open Sources projects is that they are a mine of *free* (public) knowledge ? (only a suggestion ...)

I hope you understand everything now ...

This message is adressed to people that don\'t have programming knowlege/skills
I would like to add the following precisions :

1) for develloping a free game such as plaineshift, time is a real problem, because when you have the skill to participate into it, it means you have no time to do it because :
  - Programmer and computer ingenneers really have a lot of work to do (maybe not all of them, but at least  99% of them)
  - When they have time, they spend it with their girlfriend, friends, familly, ... or :
  - If they like video game (which is required to contribute to the PlaneShift Project, since I don\'t see someone that hate game spending time to create one) and if manage to find some time, they will evacuate their stress playing videogames instead of making some.

2) When you are working on a medium size project like PlaneShif, you collaborate with at least 50 other programmers. If you stay several months without looking at the code, to be able to do the least modification/deboging, you need to first get back into the \"code\" first (code ~= lines written in a programming laguage) and that may take several hour/days.

3) Even if I only glimpsed at it, plaineshift is (like most OpenSource projects) verry well organised, wich mean that the code written by one persone is easyly understanable by someone else, and that doing modification to it is easy. It also means that it is as \"generic\"/\"moduar\" it can be, witch means that nothing has to be done more than once, and thus, when you have to modify something in it, you never have to do the same modification to several places.
(for instance, the NPCs are not \"hard-coded\" but are defined by scripts on a separate module (here the module is in a separate program ! that\'s so beautifull !) so to add a NPC, you don\'t even need to write code, and when NPCs crashes, the server still runs !

4) a lot of peaple like me are tempted to participate/help in such a project, but they know that if they find the time (between 2 and 3 AM)  to do it once, stakes that this happens twice are close to zero.

5) IMPORTANT : the most \"time-costing\" thing in NPCs creating is the 3D modeling whitch _ANYONE_ able to clic on a mouse can do. learning how to use 3D Studio Max takes one or two afternoons, and if you don\'t want to buy such a software, you can use blender that is totally free ! A lot of tutorial exists on internet for quickstart using this kind of sofwares.
Using blender to create a 3D model is not harder than using MS-Word to type a beautifull report. (though I prefer TeX and (//) povray )
Anyone that has time can help develloping planeshift (would it be creating \"scripts\" or typing \"sentences\" for NPCs)
Note that very detailed explanation on how to make a bug happen are also precious to develloper.

6) note : Most computer ingeneers stop working as programmer after 2 years after they exited the school, and they loose a part of their programming ability (most of them becomes managers). Now everywhere in the world, most the company\'s programming is outsourced/dellocalised into India. (Programmers from India are really great and very skilled !) (it\'s just such a pity they are paid ten times less than french or american programmers)

anyway I\'ll download the source on my school laptop, and see if I can look for simple bugs (such as uninitialized pointers) in it when i have a gap.

If I see enough of it, I will discribe

since I\'m not very good at english, I appologise for the language/grammar/spelling/... I may have done in this post. Feel free to \"Private message\" them to me so I can correct them.

you may better understand why I\'m saying all this knowing that :
I\'m student at EISTI ( a computer ingeneer school)
I have more than 10 years of computer programming experience (including 9 years of C++ programming)
I have already participated in teams that created videogames (with 3D, network, IA, and sound programming)
Even though i\'m still a student, I already participate in several projects, and don\'t even have time to sleep. (and when I play, it is manly to evacuate my stress or my frustration against a problem I don\'t see the begening of a solution, and work better after)

I hope I have brung some light on why is planeshift advancing slowly, and how you can help things go faster.