Stargate - the original portal plugin

Discussion in 'WIP and Development Status' started by Dinnerbone, Feb 3, 2011.

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    Dinnerbone Bukkit Team Member

    Stargate was a great plugin, in my own opinion. It was the perfect way of travelling distances without breaking immersion too much with commands. You had complete control over how gates looked, and what their costs, abilities were. They preserved momentum, allowed minecarts though, had an extensive tolling system and were simple enough to make and use.

    Towards the end of hMods life, I didn't manage to update Stargate because I was busy on the project you are all using now, Bukkit. Sturmeh had to take over on keeping it up to date, but he was a busy man so not much was done and it was neglected. I am truly sorry for that.

    With hMod dead and we're now all onto Bukkit, there is no Stargate plugin. Because yet again, I'm still working on Bukkit so you can actually have something to run your plugins on. Lots of plugin developers are trying to fill the gap left behind by Stargate with their own versions, of which I haven't seen any that I find as usable as Stargate was.

    During Stargates life span, we had just a single small donation to the both of us. We had a couple of rare "thanks" and (towards the end) a tonne of "fix it now!". But when developing bukkit and watching other portal mods being released, I see people congratulating them on such a unique new idea and I just feel this isn't worth developing Stargate any longer. It's served its purpose, and you have alternatives to use as a replacement now.

    Stargate will no longer be ported to Bukkit by myself (I can't speak for Sturmeh, but he seems to busy to do it himself too). I will allow any developer to reuse its name and bring back the plugin only on the condition that they agree not to add a single command into it, and they keep it as simple as it can be. Something I'd love to see the other portal plugins to pick up too.

    It's been fun, and I loved working on it. I hope you guys enjoyed it as much as I did.
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    I'll miss it. [​IMG]
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    Of course I'd rather have you working on Bukkit, but this makes me somewhat sad as well!

    I'd love to be the person who picks up the reigns- I've thought about it myself already, but I've got so many other things I'm already working on, like everyone else. :)

    If I finish my current issue list and no one else has spoken up, I'd love to at least get this started.

    I always wanted it to work entirely based on the button, personally- so you just click the button to open the portal, click it again to cycle locations, and then walk through.

    I could also see a slightly different interface much like Nijikokun's, where portals are only 1:1 connections, I'd like this- but I'd like some nice way to hook them up that didn't involve the console. My favorite thing about Stargate is that it was completely useable without a single console command or message (at least, up until the sign stuff got re-arranged inside mcserver).

    Anyway, thanks for letting us know!
    --- merged: Feb 3, 2011 2:04 PM ---
    On further thought, I may have spoken too quickly- even if I do find time, I think I'll let a more worthy subject claim the Stargate moniker :)

    I loved Stargate as a drop-in replacement for the Nether- I had carried my single-player map over to my SMP server, so I already had a portal network set up. And using Stargate, adding new portals, I always had the feeling that my portal network would still be compatible with the Nether when (if?) it makes it to SMP.

    So, that being said, I'm not really interested in custom gate shapes, iConomy support, or any of the fancy stuff that Stargate did- I really just want something to hold me over until I get the Nether. I'd even be willing to / like to copy over my old nether map to some remote part of the world, and then hook up all the gates so that it seems like you're being taken to the Nether... could be interesting.

    So, maybe if I have time I'll make some half-breed Stargate/WarpGate plugin, or just a simplified version of Stargate. Maybe call it NetherGate or something.
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    I really hoped you were announcing you were making it.
    Wouldn't it take a genius like you 30 minutes to do [​IMG] ?
    Those alternatives to stargate are very bad.
    WarpGate creates tons of lags and is unusable. WormHole are so huge, currently broken and a PITA to setup. I still need to try that sortal plugins.

    If there is any other alternatives I'm not aware could we post it here ?

    ty Dinnerbone and the bukkit team for all your great work.
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    Ok, I know I've already posted too much here, and it's annoying to lay "dibs" on an idea, but

    I call dibs on the "NetherGate" plugin! :) I've been thinking about it, and I'm really excited now- I plan to start working on it as soon as I'm done with Persistence, unless something comes up.

    The idea will be to create as close to a drop-in replacement for the "real" Nether as possible.

    So, you travel out to some remote spot on your map and initialize NetherGate. It then creates a giant "Nether" area underground- not nearly as cool as Notch's, of course, it'll probably be a huge Netherrack box to begin with.

    After that, I can map Portals outside of this area to the inside using the same formula that Notch uses- 1/8, or really whatever, make it configurable so a smaller Nether area can account for a larger map.

    You could create as many Nether areas as you need, though- portals would just map to the closest one.

    This would be so clean- no console commands other than the original initialization required, no signs required (though probably advisable in the Nether "nexus" area so you know where you're going...)

    I'm really keen on this concept, but I haven't done any research. Off-the-cuff, it seems pretty doable!
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    Hey Dinnerbone,
    I never meant for my portal plugin to be a 'replacement' for your Stargate mod. I just thought it would be fun to make a stargate plugin, until I found it had already been done (but not ported yet). I really didn't think it would cause any issues....

    Again, sorry if I had anything to do with you not wanting to work on your Stargate project any longer.
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    been logging on to twice a day for the last 3 weeks to see if Stargate was released, sigh.

    I've tried all the other bukkit wormholes/gates, nothing comes close to stargate. Simplistic, easy to use & works.
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    Darn, it was the one plugin I was patiently waiting for
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    *sadface*. Well that sucks, I loved that plugin. Was the favourite of most of my users too. Ah well, guess I'll have to live with WormHole. Thanks for your time making this back on hMod though and thanks for notifying everyone that you will not be working on the project :).
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    dark navi

    Would it change your mind if someone decided to donate now? :3
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    It's no replacement for Stargate, but I've got a page up for NetherGate now if anyone wants to keep track of its progress.

    It's meant to work exactly as I described in my long rambling post at the start of this thread.

    Currently, it only creates "Nether" areas, and even the construction code for that still needs some work.

    It does have a data store set up to track nether areas and portal locations/bindings, though- so that's really a huge part of the way there (thank you, Persistence).

    I still have to, you know, create the actual portal/teleport functionality. Hopefully tomorrow if I have time- I know there are deferred creation / chunk loading issues that I'll have to deal with, but I think I've got it worked out.
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    The fact you only got one or two small "thank yous" saddens me. I actually got into plugin writing only because of Stargate, and I saw this thread seeking to finally get a port for my server as we are currently using WarpGate and it just doesn't work well for us. If the source for the original HMod version is is available, I could look into porting it, with your consent.
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    You know that this makes me very very sad - but I respect the decision (what else could I do). It was fun testing features for you during the hmod time, and I would have loved to continue with CB.

    All the best with the rest.
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    Dinnerbone Bukkit Team Member :)
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    I was going to start work on a port of this, but seeing as feverdream has it covered, I think I'll just say well done on an excellent plugin Dinnerbone, and while it is sad you don't have time to continue on it, you should be proud of how many people love it and want to port it.

    Good luck feverdream!
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    I'm sorry you feel that way Dinnerbone... I hope it gets ported by someone some time. We have a lot of portals all over the map, patiently waiting for the plugin to get back online. The other plugins I've seen just don't cut it :-/
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    Thanks again to @Dinnerbone for Stargate, it and dynmap were always my favorite hMod plugins. I think @feverdreams' post made me feed bad about coming in here and tooting my own horn in the prior post instead of using this thread to rain appreciation on you:)

    @feverdream- if you are interested in collaborating, please let me know! Probably 80% of the code I have written for NetherGate could be used in a Stargate-type plugin, as well. It would take care of saving all of the portal locations and targets and such, at least.

    If you plan on starting with the hMod code as a base (as opposed to doing a re-write with the original code as a reference), then you probably just want to re-use the data-storage mechanism it's already got- so I guess it depends on how you would approach it.
    --- merged: Feb 5, 2011 9:20 PM ---
    I wanted to clarify this statement- most of the code in NetherGate could be used to get you started on a Stargate plugin as-is. You could just remove the 20% of the code that's there to create the nether area, and start from that.

    I did not mean to imply that NetherGate would get you 80% of the way toward re-implementing Stargate! You'd probably still have about 90% of the work left to fully implement all of the features of Stargate- especially custom gate shapes.

    Raphfrk kindly clued me in to the key fact that portals still get automatically created in SMP, even though they don't work. This makes my life a lot easier, since I want to emulate single-player functionality, but I have to image the Stargate code is tremendously more complex due to that fact!

    So, yeah, you may just be better of starting with the hMod code and doing a straight-up port...
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    Dinnerbone Bukkit Team Member

    NathanWolf, I'm actually doing work currently into something which may make your life much easier (and cause you to lose all of your hard work). Suffice to say, multiple world support is working.
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    Dinnerbone, that is great news, but how is the performance? I'll be curious how a beefy server handles this with 40+ people online, half of which are in each world.
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    I just saw this on twitter! Thanks for the head's up- I don't have a whole lot of time invested, so it's not a huge loss :)

    I think I'm going to finish up NetherGate, though, since it's almost done, and keep it around. I'm guessing it'll take a bit for all plugins to support multiple worlds- or is that all going to be seamless somehow?

    EDIT: The more I think about this, the more I love it. Screw NetherGate! I can see how this could work fairly seamlessly with minimal changes- I assume there is an id of some kind in World? I need to look- I can think of a few places (the undo lists) in Spells that will need to make sure to differentiate between worlds some how. I'm gonna PM ya, @Dinnerbone :)

    EDIT2: Or maybe not- are you not PM'able, @Dinnerbone? Is that why it seems like you're ignoring all the conversations I try to start about Persistence? I'm starting to feel like it's a double-entendre, here- I'm being so persistant!

    EDIT3: Geez, maybe not, nevermind- maybe it's getting late and my brain is melting. Oh, well, hopefully I PM'd you, Dinnerbone :) I'm going to stop editing this post now.

    I've also noticed that Bukkit permissions is coming along really well- so I think I'm going to hold off / cancel plans for Permissions integration ... which, wow, really frees up my schedule :) I can get back to work on fun stuff!
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    For those who want it: I've uploaded my progress on Stargate (mostly rearranging code and events, etc., fixed a lot of compile errors) Feel free to use it as a base if you want, but be warned, still some work to do - fix config files, schedule task, and missing events that might have workarounds... FWIW, download it here
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    Oh, and by the way- @Dinnerbone, extreme kudos on this news. The Bukkit team has really one-upped Notch this time! No disrespect meant to Notch or Mojang at all, but I've been waiting for SMP Nether since I set up a server. I've always known it was "coming eventually", but this is such an amazing surprise to get it so much sooner.
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    So, I actually ported this plugin last week, but had held off on posting about it as I thought Dinnerbone was going to port it. There are features stripped out, and things changed, but anyone can feel free to use this as a base for making it more feature-rich.
    I removed anything to do with iConomy, and currently the vehicle hooks are removed. The code isn't the cleanest, and it's very hacky, but it gets the job done for the server I work on. As I said, feel free to use it as-is or modify it. I won't be posting any binaries as this is just meant for other people to develop off of at the moment.
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    This does make me sad as well. :( I loved Stargate.
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    This saddens me, I'll miss my giant, heart-shaped, perpetually on fire stargate.

    I'm sorry you weren't thanked enough for the time you sank into the plugin. For what it's worth, I'm grateful. Stargate was arguably the single most important and most used plugin on my server pre-Bukkit, and I hope a plugin exactly like it comes along soon.

    Oh, and while I've got the chance - thanks for sinking time into Bukkit now!
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    If you guys want to get together on this as a project team, I'm all for it! I only offered as I was not sure if others wanted to take up the banner, but its nice to see Dinnerbone and the rest of the community on this.
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    Serious question:
    Would you change your mind if you received donations now?

    Because, in all seriousness, all of the other Portal plugin's fail. They're absolutely horrid. The only Portal plug-ins I've seen have fixed (And rather ugly) appearances. Shit, most of the Portal plug-ins are all command driven, and I hate it. There was ONE plug-in that I believed would work and that was WarpGate by Nijikokun. But, no offense to him, almost all of his plug-ins are broken, do not meet the guidelines to continue as a released plug-in, or/and offer horrible support. Sure, we all get busy and sometimes we can't answer everyone's questions, but damn, if you have pages upon pages of users with almost identical errors and no fix, well, it's time to call it a wrap.

    I would be ecstatic to find StarGate ported over to Bukkit, and I would not none other than yourself to do the coding. I'm sure I speak for all:
    I wouldn't want anyone else to screw it up
    I'd be more than willing to pitch in a donation for an incentive for you to work on this plugin.

    Because let's face it, customizable Portals that are purely absent of the command line, as of right now, do not exist.
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    Dinnerbone Bukkit Team Member

    I'd like to say possibly, but I'm afraid it wouldn't be true. If I did that, this would just be a "I'll carry on porting after I get x money". I've seen developers who do that and I despise it; a donation is a thank you, absolutely not a requirement.

    I might come back to Stargate if I feel a need for it and after my current workload lessens, but I'm hoping NathanWolf or fullwall will have good progress by then :)
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    Fair enough. Thank you for your response. Unfortunately, my little players will just have to take the luxury of exploring the countryside until StarGate is (hopefully) re-released. Good luck with all your work! You've done some marvelous stuff!
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    I hate to say this but I'm getting pulled into the direction of working on the ArrowTurrets plugin that I had previously adopted as it looks like @toi is MIA and since its sort of something I was already helping with I have an obligation to give it a bigger priority over "new projects" with the limited time I hav after taking care of the plugins I have already released; If anybody wants to help take this over and help get it started, just do it. Don't wait for me.

    There is enough code in this thread that it should be a good way to get a project going, or at least get ideas flowing that could lead to bigger things. If you set up a github, I have no problem looking at your code and suggesting improvements or edits if asked.
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