I saw Cherokee and Res and a few others talking about DRoP, some type of proxy from what I am gathering from the talk over in the Game Op/Sysop forum. Can anyone explain more about it? Is it going to have a scripting language? What kind of features is it going to have?

http://tavern.homeip.net/drop

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/drop_proxy

Thanks Didaskalos

Eagerly waiting for a first release so I can see what all the talk is about. The web site has little info.

the website is out of date to some extent, but I would rather work on developing the product that updating the website. suffice to say, drop is making reasonable progress, and should help out a lot of people who have a weakness with respect to data, hunting, and related tasks.

I wasnt suggesting a full running explanation of the progress, I realize this eats up time better spent in development. Maybe just a quick note on the home page every couple weeks with a couple sentences on progress and possibly an expected date. That shouldnt take more than about 5 minutes every couple weeks. Either way, I am still eager to see what it can do. The data mining and data management scripts and tools out there are usually closely guarded by their writers and their perma corps and I think this would help a lot of people.

drop website has been updated. for those interested, please visit http://tavern.homeip.net/drop

Nice Project. Sounds awesome for what it is suppose to do. Hope it works out for yall.

I had come across the DRoP website link about 1 year ago. And nothing, except the expected time frame, has changed in that time.

Yeah, but the program itself is a lot further along in regards to completion now. I have seen working demonstrations of it before, and I believe they're to the point of testing it in live games.

quote:Originally posted by The WABBIT

I had come across the DRoP website link about 1 year ago. And nothing, except the expected time frame, has changed in that time.



Yes but you havent been seeing it from our side either.

The first version was simply a really fancy proxy and we had to deal with some issues that caused trouble. The CN9=All Keys trouble that some of the other proxy's out there dont cope with is something we had a little hassle with at first.

Drop got put on hold (we thought for a time that it was more of a stop rather than a hold).

Then it came back and the proxy was revamp'd from the ground up (of course this time it was just making something great instead of making something that works).

The menu systems, IP security issues, setup options, and user interface were worked on.

And there were just tons of small changes made to it here and there and most were tested / changed to fit what we needed it to do.

Skipping ahead to where it is now. We have a fairly good front end for the user to set up everything. Some of us play more than 1 game. We have done away with 1 icon per game (This is probably best for players like me who might have been playing 3/4 games at a time, 4 games = 12 windows for a normal proxy / helper / terminal setup
vs 9 windows for a drop / helper / terminal setup)
The parser is coming along nicely and for the most part it's showing no trouble.
We are now storing all of the data.

I cant say that it's going as fast as everyone would like. But the main program code is being done by didaskalos. He works full time just like most of you and has a wife and 2 kids at home.

Rev works (I dont know if he's full time but I think he is) and then he does that church stuff too .

They are both busy people with RL issues and drop is a spare time development thing. I know other helpers out there that spent years and years in the works and never even got stable enough to work. Our DRoP is stable enough to work but it just doesnt have everything that we want in it yet. When Drop is released then Most users will find it to be a great program.

I can't wait for DROP to be realeased.

I'm a bit curious though... How exactly is the data shared between corp. members? (what will you have to do to set that part of the program up. will the members of the corp have to open any ports for this to communicate? am I even thinking right? hehe)

Thanks...

'automated' data sharing will be accomplished by establishing a socket to a 'server' component, which will act as the data synchronization 'master-mind'. So, yes, in all likelihood, you will want to open up specific ports, most likely just two. One for the drop client (if you want external connections) and one for the drop client to communicate with the 'server' component.

is this part completed yet and working? (the data sharing)
how do you set it up with your corp. members. it only shares the info with the ones you want currect? (i.e. corp memebers or just another trader)
Forgive me, but i really like the idea behind this and i think it will change this game drastically and i just want to be able to understand it 110% so i can use it to its full extent as soon as it comes out [:D]

quote:Originally posted by Heat Sink


is this part completed yet and working? (the data sharing)
how do you set it up with your corp. members. it only shares the info with the ones you want currect? (i.e. corp memebers or just another trader)
Forgive me, but i really like the idea behind this and i think it will change this game drastically and i just want to be able to understand it 110% so i can use it to its full extent as soon as it comes out [:D]



No not completed..
It will share with a central server (that server being a player). so everyone will just use that 1 player for all of the sharing (in an attempt to keep from boggign down everyones connection).
You should be able to share with everyone, but considering some of the data that could be sent I would hope you'll only ever exchange with corpies.