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[Canceled] FGjobs - Jobs & Airlines Service Tool

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[Canceled] FGjobs - Jobs & Airlines Service Tool

Postby m1ndgames » Fri Aug 03, 2012 9:58 am

Hello!
I have this idea from a FSX Server i've played on:

Basically, you could interact with a bot over chat... Because english is not my mother language, i just copy the help from the new users intro:

Flying gives you points. Where do these points come from?
You gain 1 point per minute just for flying on the server. Cool, right?
You lose points for crashing and disrupting others.
You gain again points if you fly (not too easy) jobs for the Bot. How? Simply type !job into the chatbox while you are flying or parked at some airport. This will give you a random destination as an answer on chat but if you want to fly to a certain place add the airport ICAO behind the command: !job< ICAO>. (example “!job EDDF”) If you succeed, you gain between 80 and 500 points. If you fail, crash or disconnect you lose the same amount...There is a time limit to perform the job. It can be checked typing !status. Job's speed is limited to 500 GS (Ground Speed.)
Other job types:: !propjob !cargojob !jobliner !vl (Virtual Arline). Type then on chat and check the BOT answers for more details.
Jobs can be cancelled typing: !cancel This costs 20 points. Jobliner and VL differ from this rate wether you are on the ground or flying.
You loose 20 points each day.
Certain countries air spaces will bill you a little amount of points if you don't have the current license required to fly inside them (such as the U.K. and Russia). A voice and chat message will advise you. To get this license you need to pass exams on server. Check forum for further details. Each license costs 2,000 points and you have a month to pass the exam.


That server has also a virtual airline function where a group of pilots can do jobs together and gain experience points...

Those features are heavily used and the server is mosty full (about 50 people)

--

So far so good!

No question, i have years of perl scripting knowledge and could easily create such a bot for flightgear... But... would you like to use it?
Note that even if such a bot is in place, no one is forced to use it because the bot reacts only to commands...

I thought of storing any info in a sql database, so later, a nice website could be created to manage airlines and flightplans...

If you have more ideas / criticism, i would be please to hear from you
-m1ndgames

edit: ive changed the title to the now known project name, this thread, especially the 1st posting will be edited from time to time to reflect changes and thoughts ;)

--

Update 06/25/2014:
Script has been lost while changing host and wont be continued.
Last edited by m1ndgames on Wed Jun 25, 2014 10:15 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Airlines, Cargo, Experience Points

Postby Johan G » Fri Aug 03, 2012 3:07 pm

Something similar, FSEconomy, was mentioned about 1 1/2 year ago and seemed to gain at least some interest. :D (link to forum topic)

The way the server you mention works though seems a lot simpler and possibly more fun to use.

Some ideas mentioned by one in the topic I linked to above:
Groucho wrote in Mon Jan 31, 2011 5:40 pm:First I had the usual what-is-it-good-for doubts but then I recalled some of those ancient space trading games in which you earned reputation and credits by flying missions- Wing Commander, Elite, Terminus or Eve today.

So why not have an economical system attached to FlightGear in which pilots can choose a personal path?
- As an Airline pilot flying daily routes
- A bush pilot being on his own and accepting missions from a mission roaster: Fly medical equipment from A to B today, take Mr. Smith and his family on a sightseeing trip tomorrow. Operate your own small flight business and let it grow. Or as a not so nice outlaw pilot taking the not-so-legal missions (drug flying, military actions, etc.)
- Military pilots affiliated to an army taking missions
- Rescue pilots in the rescue teams
- Police pilots hunting the not so well-behaving pilots

I believe what it should have to let it be real fun is
- a rewarding system (credits as well as reputation)
- Beneficials from the reward (credits and reputation are useless if you can do nothing with these)
- a constantly updating mission roaster with all sorts of missions (plus ad-hoc missions)
- defined career paths (eg. police: low credits - high reputation, airline pilot: many credits-high reputation-but boring routine jobs, own busines: varying credits-varying reputation-interesting life,...)
Low-level flying — It's all fun and games till someone looses an engine. (Paraphrased from a YouTube video)
Improving the Dassault Mirage F1 (Wiki, Forum, GitLab. Work in slow progress)
Some YouTube videos
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Re: Airlines, Cargo, Experience Points

Postby Hooray » Fri Aug 03, 2012 3:20 pm

i have years of perl scripting knowledge and could easily create such a bot for flightgear...


The FlightGear Multiplayer protocol uses XDR-encoded messages, and it's documented here: http://wiki.flightgear.org/Multiplayer_protocol
Some more pointers are available here: viewtopic.php?f=18&t=13510&p=136501&hilit=xdr#p136501

That should get you started quickly.
We've had lots of discussions regarding multiplayer "missions" and "adventures" in the past: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=16192&hilit=adventures
Also see: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=14758

So some people are clearly interested in a game-style experience in FG.
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Re: Airlines, Cargo, Experience Points

Postby m1ndgames » Sun Aug 05, 2012 10:06 am

thanks a lot for the pointings! :)

im gathering ideas, a first list of features will be posted this evening... feel free to contribute! :)
FGjobs - Virtual Airlines & Jobs Service Tool
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Re: Airlines, Cargo, Experience Points

Postby Hooray » Sun Aug 05, 2012 10:29 am

Please feel free to use the wiki and start a new article there, let us know if you need any help with it.

http://wiki.flightgear.org
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Re: Airlines, Cargo, Experience Points

Postby m1ndgames » Sun Aug 05, 2012 10:46 am

Hooray wrote in Sun Aug 05, 2012 10:29 am:Please feel free to use the wiki and start a new article there, let us know if you need any help with it.

http://wiki.flightgear.org


will be done as soon as i find a catchy project name :lol:
FGjobs - Virtual Airlines & Jobs Service Tool
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Re: Airlines, Cargo, Experience Points

Postby Hooray » Sun Aug 05, 2012 11:28 am

FGScoreBot
(just kidding)

BTW: You can easily rename wiki articles and move them to new pages.
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Re: Airlines, Cargo, Experience Points

Postby m1ndgames » Sun Aug 05, 2012 6:41 pm

Hehe, mine isn't better, but i dont care... whats in a name anyways? ;)

http://wiki.flightgear.org/FGjobs

i tried to set low objectives for starters... after im able to extract player data from a "external players" point of view, anything will be really easy and bigger steps can be made.
FGjobs - Virtual Airlines & Jobs Service Tool
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Re: Airlines, Cargo, Experience Points

Postby Hooray » Sun Aug 05, 2012 6:51 pm

I realize that you probably want to use the multiplayer system and Perl for this, but I'd just like to point out that many of these things can be more easily accomplished "in-game" using the built-in tutorial system which is entirely XML-configurable and implemented using the Nasal scripting language, which is pretty close to C/C++ and JavaScript (or Perl for that matter).

By using so called "generic multiplayer properties" and the "mp_broadcast.nas" module in $FG_ROOT/Nasal, you should be able to implement most of these features entirely within FlightGear on top of the existing MP protocol, without having to use any external tools.

http://wiki.flightgear.org/Tutorials
http://www.flightgear.org/forums/viewto ... 30&t=10223
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Re: FGjobs - Jobs & Airlines Service Tool

Postby m1ndgames » Sun Aug 05, 2012 7:05 pm

i know it will be tricky to get the game data, but after that struggle, anything will be easier... or can i connect to a sql db from inside nasal? ;)

another thing i would like to point out: when i would use the tutorial + nasal system anything would be client-side right? if so, it could be cheated... i dont want that :D
FGjobs - Virtual Airlines & Jobs Service Tool
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Re: FGjobs - Jobs & Airlines Service Tool

Postby Hooray » Sun Aug 05, 2012 7:14 pm

m1ndgames wrote in Sun Aug 05, 2012 7:05 pm:i know it will be tricky to get the game data, but after that struggle, anything will be easier... or can i connect to a sql db from inside nasal? ;)


Well, you are probably in for a surprise, but yes, Nasal does have SQLite bindings: https://github.com/andyross/nasal/blob/ ... iew=markup

another thing i would like to point out: when i would use the tutorial + nasal system anything would be client-side right? if so, it could be cheated... i dont want that :D


There's nothing preventing you from customizing your own fgms server, so that your system could be entirely server-controlled.
You could even link in your own Perl interpreter if you really wanted to, or directly use Nasal, too.
The job of processing all the multiplayer data will be much easier once your code is directly running within the server process.

Alternatively, you could implement your addon as a "relay", so that it can be explicitly added by other fgms admins.
Many options, pick your poison! :-)
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Re: FGjobs - Jobs & Airlines Service Tool

Postby m1ndgames » Sun Aug 05, 2012 7:25 pm

Wow... i think... i have to read a lot more!

Im a (still noobish) flightgear player since 1.4 and never really peeked into the code, so.. yeah... :D

thanks a lot for all the links! i will certainly think about my options some more...
FGjobs - Virtual Airlines & Jobs Service Tool
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Re: FGjobs - Jobs & Airlines Service Tool

Postby Hooray » Sun Aug 05, 2012 7:33 pm

Just to be clear about it: the SQL bindings are currently not available by default in FG, but it would be a 5-minute job to add them if required, obviously that would require rebuilding FG from source though.
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Re: FGjobs - Jobs & Airlines Service Tool

Postby m1ndgames » Mon Aug 06, 2012 10:20 am

Hello again :)

after reading a bit of code, mainly this and this, i am almost sure it will be easy to collect the needed player data.

i just have to create a listener on the server that interprets the packets, right? i will start today with coding a module that makes the connection in between the script and a flightgear server...
FGjobs - Virtual Airlines & Jobs Service Tool
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Re: FGjobs - Jobs & Airlines Service Tool

Postby Hooray » Mon Aug 06, 2012 10:25 am

Yes, that's basically correct. You may also want to take a look at the fgms (server-side) code, there's some interpolation/extrapolation code involved.
Also, you may find it easier to directly configure your tool as an "observer" or at least as a "relay", so that it can be easily "connected" to other fgms servers. The other option would obviously be directly modifying fgms itself.
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