Well, it certainly has been a long time since I posted any news on this site. I'm sure alot of you thought this project was dead. Believe it or not, I was actually still viewing these forums periodically over the past 5 months, but I hadn't been visiting the Sphere boards since sometime in October.

Well, I think the time has come for me to get back into the swing of things. Alot of things were left unfinished with Axis 0.14, and a number of things have changed in Sphere.

My primary focus at the moment will be on making necessary updates to Axis 0.13. However, I'm not even sure what needs to be changed or fixed, so I'm going to need the help of the users. Please post all current bugs in the Bugs section of this project on SourceForge. There's a link to this on the right side of the main page.

At the same time, I'm going to be working on getting all of the script modules finished (and started, in some cases) for Axis 0.14. I'm still looking at doing three modules for starters. The module for Sphere 0.52 was nearly complete last fall, and I think I was beginning to work on the module for 0.55. There will also be a module for 0.99/1.0.

At some point, I'll probably be working toward a 1.0 release of Axis as well, but that will be after 0.14. Probably it will just be a version which fixes all (or most of, at least) the bugs in 0.14.

I still have no timetable for all of this, as I'm doing this by myself, in what spare time I have. The only release dates I'll mention are going to be when I'm very close to having something ready.

Anyway, thanks for continuing to visit this page during its hibernation.

AxisServer 0.14.0 Release Candidate 1 is now available. It can be found in the " Downloads | Axis Downloads | Test Versions " section to the left on the main site.

It is quite possible that there are bugs in this particular version, so please report any bugs you find either in the Bug Tracker system on SourceForge, or in the forums.

Axis 0.13.3.5 will be available early next week.

I'm aware that it has been 6 weeks since the last update, and that I said back then that I'd have a RC1 of AxisServer 0.14 out soon. Well, I got distracted.

In any event, in the next week or two, there should be two releases available. First, the aforementioned AxisServer 0.14 RC1 for both Windows and Linux will be available. Secondly, Axis 0.13.3.5 will be available, which will contain a number of bug fixes and Sphere 0.99z compatability updates.

AxisServer is looking pretty good at the moment. However, there is currently no interface available for Linux users to configure the optional database. If anyone has experience with PHP/ODBC and can help build this, it would help me out tremendously. Contact me at altiara@fingolfin.net.

If there are issues that you'd like to see fixed for the Axis 0.13.3.5 release which are not already on bug tracking system, please be sure to add them. Bugs that don't get reported don't get fixed. It's as simple as that.

Finally, development on Axis 0.14 is still progressing. There are two remaining issues with the script module for 0.52 that I'd like to get resolved before I move on to the other script modules. With any luck, I'd like to have Axis 0.14 ready for an official launch by the end of this year.

Development is still progressing on the next release of Axis. AxisServer is very close to being finished. It seems to work with the development version of Axis quite well. It hasn't been tested with the current stable version of Axis, however. I will most likely be making Release Candidate 1 of AxisServer available in the next week or two.

Also, the script module for Sphere 0.52 is useable now. The old script editors haven't been put back in yet, but this is definitely planned. I will probably be making Axis 0.14 Pre-Release 4 available in the near future so that people still using Sphere 0.52 and earlier can test the 0.52 Script module.

The next task will be to work on the 0.55 and 0.99 Script modules. The 0.55 module will most likely cover 0.55 through 0.99f, and the 0.99 module will be designed to support the 0.99z and later script formats. However, this isn't set in stone, so if you have any comments on this, please feel free to do so in the forum here.

Finally, if you are using the CVS Statistics provided by SourceForge to judge whether anything is going on with Axis development, keep in mind that there is an ongoing issue with the CVS stats on the SourceForge site, so the CVS stats are not accurate.

A few bugs have surfaced in the past week or so with UOMap and Axis Server, so there are new releases of these now available.

The latest version of UOMap (1.3.2) contains some updates Arya (the developer of Pandora's Box) made to support clients who only have the 3D version of Ultima Online installed. In addition, there is a fix for a bug in the GetMapHeight() method.

The latest version of Axis Server (0.13.3.3) contains support for Sphere 0.99z, where the password and plevel tags in the account files are now being saved in mixed case. This new build of Axis Server can now support the new Sphere builds, as well as previous versions.

There is a new package of Axis 0.13.3.4, which includes the new versions of Axis Server and UOMap.ocx.

Due to a major blunder on my part, I managed to remove the branch tag from the current development branch in the CVS repository on SourceForge. This didn't remove the code, of course. It just made trying to update anything in the branch a major headache.

So, to salvage things, I created a new branch, called v0_13-Stable which contains the 0.13.x stable code, and any subsequent bug fixes. I then merged the development branch back into the trunk. In essence, the development and stable branches have switched places.

Even though the UOMap, UOArt, and axissvr modules in the CVS tree didn't get hosed, I thought I'd basically do the same sort of thing with those modules, just for consistency sake. The UOMap and UOArt now have stable branches called v1_3-Stable, with the trunk being the development branch, so to speak. The axissvr module hasn't been changed yet, but I plan on getting that taken care of tomorrow.

Sorry about the confusion out there, folks. Of course, if you don't understand anything about what I've written in the last few paragraphs, don't worry. It's just an administrative issue that will be transparent to the users out there.

It seems that the regular, predictable development updates have become quite erratic. I apologize for that.

However, that doesn't mean that there is nothing going on. I've been concentrating on the Script COM modules for the last few weeks, and things are starting to come together fairly well. There's still a lot of work to do on them, so don't expect to see another test build up anytime soon.

I'm also hoping to spend some time in the near future getting another Linux build of Sphere together. Perhaps over the long weekend coming up I can tackle that.

At long last, the ActiveX controls with support for the new artwork Ultima Online : Age of Shadows has been released. Go to the downloads section to download them directly, or use the Released Files link in the SourceForge section at the left to get the new controls.

Of course, none of this does any good to the Axis users without a new Axis release to support the new ActiveX controls. To that end, 0.13.3.4 of Axis has been released as well. In addition to the UO:AoS support, a couple of other changes have been made, including support for the syntax change of the .nudge commands in Sphere.

The last couple of weeks have been fairly productive on the Axis development side. I've made a fair bit of progress on getting the ODBC implementation in Axis Server put into place. I'd would estimate that this task is roughly 50 percent complete. I am making a configuration dialog built in to the Windows version of Axis Server. However, for the Linux version, I don't have the expertise to create an X application to do this. This will probably need to be done with a web/PHP interface using the built-in ODBC functions within PHP.

The XML support for Axis Server is complete. I haven't tried to compile it in Linux yet, but since I'm using a fully portable library for XML now, I don't see this as being an issue.

Just for the record, passwords in the Axis Server database will be encrypted with an MD5 hash.

I'd like to chat with Menace sometime in the near future about implementing an ODBC based account system in Sphere itself. In addition, I'll see if I can convince him to use the MD5 stuff in the account file/database as well.

In unrelated news, the NHL playoffs have begun, hence the new poll. I know not everyone here is as big of a hockey fan as I am, but I thought it would be fun to get some thoughts on this from around the world. Since the Flames didn't make the playoffs (again), I'm going to have to stick with the Devils this year.

A new build (preview 3) of 0.14 is now available in the downloads section. It contains support for the libxml stuff, as well as a change to the static tool which makes the preview windows work again. For this build, you'll need to install the support files again, as I've added a couple of DLLs to it (iconv.dll and libxml2.dll). The MSXML download is no longer needed, so I've removed it from the the download links.

Another busy week away from Axis, so there's not a whole lot to report.

However, I did manage to get rid of all reliance on the MSXML library in favour of libxml. The changes I've added include some much more helpful error reporting when the parser has problems loading an XML file.

I should have another pre-release build available with this functionality in it sometime this weekend. I'll also need to update the documentation for anyone who is actually trying to build Axis from the current development sources.

The last few weeks have been very busy for me both at home and at work, so progress on Axis has been minimal since the last report.

However, that doesn't mean that nothing has happened at all. Just not nearly as much as I would have liked.

Development preview 2 of Axis is available, and should fix the problems many people were having just getting the damn thing to run.

I'm still making progress on the COM script modules, but there's nothing to show for it yet. This is probably the second highest priority at the moment.

The top priority right now is moving from the Microsoft XML parser library to libxml, which works on many platforms, and doesn't have alot of the bloat factor that the Microsoft parser has to it. A good chunk of this conversion has been finished in Axis, but there is still a bit more to do.

Another week has passed, so it is time for another update.

A number of people had problems getting the 0.14 preview to run on their systems. I think it was a combination of some issues with support files being missing (particularly with the MSXML library), and a few bugs in Axis itself. I hope to be making an updated version available this weekend, before I go and completely break the script loading functionality in Axis.

With that said, here are the things I've accomplished in the past week --

COM -- I'm continuing work on the script modules, although they are far from complete at this point. I'm going to be putting the old script editors back into Axis for the 0.52 script module. Editors for other modules are planned, but may not make the 0.14 release.

Assorted stuff -- An automatic check-for-updates feature was put into the 0.14 preview version, although there is currently no option to disable it. That will come in a future version, I promise.



I've also added support for Malas in the UOMap.ocx control, and the current development version of Axis supports it. I will be adding support for it in the stable branch of Axis very soon as well. Also, the map and statics dif mul files are supported in the latest UOMap control. Next, I'll be adding support for anim3.mul into UOArt.

So, it's been a decent week. Back to work again.

A preview version of Axis 0.14 is now available in the downloads links. It is primarily intended for those people who wish to translate Axis into their native language. Axis uses XML files for localizations, so anyone with a text editor can customize Axis for their own locale.

For more information on the Axis translation project, visit the Translations page.

This version also contains the new COM modules for the client commands, so please test them out for whatever Sphere version you might be using.

Keep in mind that this is a test version, so many things may not be working correctly. Axis 0.13.3.3 is still the latest stable release.

A few weeks ago, I started giving weekly development updates in the Axis Development Forum, but I'm guessing they weren't getting as much visibility as they might here. So from now on, I'll post them here.

COM - I've written a new command module for Sphere 0.52 in C++, so the .NET framework won't be necessary. I think it will work in 0.55 as well, and possibly some of the 0.99 versions. If not, I'll make another one for those versions.

Translations - Code for all dialogs to support localization is now complete. Translations are applied on the fly from an XML file that can be modified in any text editor. I also have a tool that can convert an existing .rc file and associated .h file into an XML file. Volunteers translating the .rc files can continue to work on those, and I'll convert them to XML. Volunteers working on new translations will be able to grab the .XML file and translate that directly.

In order for those doing the translations to actually test their XML conversions, I'm hoping to have a test build of 0.14 available by the weekend.

Feel free to make comments on this in the forums.

Everyone knows how much I hate documentation. Well, I just finished the first draft on the Axis COM spec document. It is nearly 50 pages long. However, it should describe the COM stuff that I'm looking at adding to version 0.14.

This document is aimed at developers who will be looking to add support for other Ultima Online server emulators to Axis. This isn't intended for the faint hearted. It's a technical document. It would help to have some knowledge of C++ and COM before reading this, but it isn't neccessary.

So, if I haven't already scared you off, you can download the document. The document is in Microsoft Word format, so you'll need an application which can read this format.

Please don't be shy about sending me comments on this. The specification isn't set in stone yet, so the methods, interfaces and modules described in the document are still subject to change. I'll hope to have a finalized document available in a few weeks, depending how many comments I get. The more the better. Honestly.