Skilled Gaming
Servere/Servers => Green Zone Stuntage (SA:MP) => Announcements => Topic started by: IstuntmanI on 28 February 2017, 20:47:18
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Hello guys,
Today marks 8 years since GZS is being developed (28.02.2009). If I remember correctly, we were first hosted in 2011 and closed 2-3 times, due to various reasons, but we were always back to offer happiness. Happy birthday to us !
Besides that, with this occasion I want to announce something pretty big.
I currently had a plan to make this announcement for v3.00, but as today v2.86 got released, at the current rate of releasing new versions of ~1 month, it would take ~13-14 months to start v3.00 development, which is a time way too big, as the current server development status and my life's stage really requires it.
My current plan is to run this server for at least few more years, if something apocalyptical won't happen to SA-MP (actually, 0.4a may be released in 2018, which is good). As you may know, I am 20 years old and at this age many are leaving the online communities, but not me, at least for the next years. SA-MP, its entire community and GZS's development, helped me with a lot of things: I learnt english (ironically, this post may have some mistakes), how to be a leader, how to be organised and many other useful things. Besides those things, I also learnt lots of IT related things, which led me to my actual IT path in life. I am currently studying Computer Science in Bucharest, Romania. Without the whole SA-MP thing, this wouldn't happen. The most important things I learnt about IT are that SA-MP helped me to learn to code and handle databases. This helped me a lot, as I'm currently in the second year of studying at this faculty and I already knew most of the coding and database courses, even if in highschool I didn't do anything related to IT. I am actually doing really well and I was noticed by the coding teachers there (well, for now, I got perfect 10s [Romanian school marks are from 1 to 10] at every course I liked and considered useful [mostly coding courses, also databases]). My current dream future job is to be a programmer in C++ (something like C, but A LOT more advanced). I actually have more jobs possibilities for the future, mostly because of the things I learnt mostly because of SA-MP.
As you may know, or not, SA-MP is using for server development a scripting language called Pawn (looking a lot like the C language), but a pretty old version, released around 2006 (conclusion: we are working with a language designed to be easy [without too many features, so really limited] and outdated, the newest one is from 2017, but SA-MP didn't update). But after I got pretty advanced in this language it hit me: this language is limiting me a lot ! This is why since 1-2 years ago the development of GZS got slower and slower (well, this is the main reason, I also have personal life reasons and problems, the time is pretty limited): I am a speed maniac and I really like to keep things organised. Pawn isn't too fast and it isn't offering me too many possibilities to organize nice. So I got a decision: I will convert the whole server to C++ ! We currently have tens of thousands lines in the main server file and few other thousands in other included files, so it will take a lot to convert Pawn to C++ . (imagine trying to translate English to ... French, anyway, a more similar language, as C++ has a lot of Pawn's features)
I dedicated a lot of my life and my free time to this server. I love this server. You like this server. I can't let it die just like that, due to a really old development language and lost of interest. To keep it alive I have to upgrade to the newest programming requirements, keeping me entertained (I'm entertaining myself when learning) and prepared for my future. Pawn got me bored a lot, as it is probably not used anywhere in the world (talking about jobs) and is pretty easy (to be honest, it is a great start if you want to start programming, just like the C language). I had two options: closing GZS (bored of developing it) and starting working on something else directly in C++ or converting the whole GZS to it (well, obviously, this is what I chose).
But here are the downsides:
1. There will be months without updates because I'll be working on the conversion (and I'll try to update as much of the internal code, C++ offers me a lot of better versions of the current codes, but anyway, more upgrading will be done after the initial version release of the converted code, as the main purpose for now is to get it working entirely in C++). I don't actually know how much it will take, as I never did such a major conversion. Tens/hundreds of thousands of lines need to be converted.
2. I may fail in converting (I'll try as hard as possible !), due to few internal problems such as incompatibilities between languages (Pawn actually has some features which C++ doesn't have). In the past year I studied C++ pretty much so I hope I won't have big problems related to it.
Huge upsides:
1. Developing will probably get much faster, as I will be happy to learn new things and it will allow me to organize the code better and way faster. I already have few ideas which C++ will make a lot better than the current Pawn (hint: more minigames and jobs will be easier to make, or, at least, more pleasing for me).
2. C++ has a much much bigger community than Pawn. This means that a lot of useful hard-to-make libraries got released, made by big teams, which I will be able to implement in GZS and use.
3. If I learn to use the language correctly, GZS will be way more optimised than now.
4. Personal: I will get more and more advanced in C++ so it will be easier to get a better and better paid job in the future. If my salary will be big enough for me, I promise to invest into GZS for advertising, as this is my main passion. I hope SA-MP won't die until then (well, this year it made 10 years since it got released and it is still going nice. Happy Birthday and long life, SA-MP ! You influenced a lot of multiplayer mods in the world and also a lot of people for better paths in life).
5. It guarantees a way longer life for GZS, if nothing bad will happen. Even if I'll be busy with my job, I'll try to keep it active and work when I'll have free time.
So, v2.87 and probably other versions (if there will also be a lot of other updates besides the internal code conversion) will come in at once in a few months, after the conversion will be successfully tested and working correctly.
Thanks for playing and I hope that we will be here for at least as much years !
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I learnt english (ironically, this post may have some mistakes).
You mean may= 40% or half? :D :D :D
Good Luck at GZS . Happy Birthday to GZS!
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You mean may= 40% or half? :D :D :D
Good Luck at GZS . Happy Birthday to GZS!
You stay in your Albanian...
RO: La multi ani GZS si sper sa-l tii permanent, fara evenimente negative, playeri cat sustine :)) si un staff care sa te faca mandru :V
EN: Happy birthday GZS and I hope you'll keep it forever, without negative events, players as much as it can hold and a staff making you proud of it :V
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Hip, hip, uraaaa!!!
Good job, mate! :))
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Felicitari pentru munca depusa, tine-o tot asa !
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Foarte tare stunt, eu te sustin si mult noroc cu GZS :D
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Happy Birthday GZS :D
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Asta da proiect de 8 ani! Bafta la facultate, la convertare si la viitor!
Mi se pare ca ai o gandire destul de limpeda, inafara de ceva schimbari, tine-o tot asa (imo)..
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Asta da proiect de 8 ani! Bafta la facultate, la convertare si la viitor!
Mi se pare ca ai o gandire destul de limpeda, inafara de ceva schimbari, tine-o tot asa (imo)..
Ți se pare greșit. :))
Bravo! :D
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Happy birthday GZS and gg STUNTMAN :D
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Frumos, la mulți ani GZS, să ne vedem așa și anii vitori (asta depinde de stuntman)
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La multi ani GZS (și stuntman că ai rezistat până aici)
Ai făcut un server foarte frumos și bine gândit....Cum ai rezistat 8 ani, sper să reziști și în continuare...LA MULTI ANI! =D>
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La multi ani gzs! Imi pare rau ca am intarziat o zi..
La multi ani in continuare :D bravo tie!
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La mulţi ani GZS! :)
Să ai ghinionul să-l ți deschis, incă 80 de ani.
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La multi ani GZS!
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La multi (b)ani.
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Looking forward for it !! Good luck man 🙋🏼♂️✌🏼
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Happy Birthday GZS!
It's really a nice server, you did a pretty good job stuntman, congratulations.
Like you said, I hope you don't get tired of doing this. About your future, I am sure you'll get what you want and I believe you work very hard for this.
I am proud of you!
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Ok guys, I have to come with a public update related this announcement.
Well, I worked a pretty lot in the first few months to convert the whole code to C++. The server was crashing a lot when I just made it to execute the code on server, but I made it stable only after approximately one month of intense working and researching crashes. I don't think that it has any bug that causes server crashes right now, so it is stable and perfectly working on C++. This was a huge step forward for the development. But, of course, I may have added a bug or two while migrating the code, but I think that I discovered most of the bugs and fixed them already. When the update will come online you will be able to report the bugs anyway, so there's no problem with the small bugs, only if they aren't bugs crashing the whole server without knowing the cause (well, I will discover those too, if it will be the case, no problem).
The current version is v2.86. We were launching updates at ~20 lines of updates in '/news'. The next version, the one developed in C++, has for now at least 45 lines of updates, which means that v2.87 and v2.88 are already ready. I fixed mostly bugs (some of them were back-ported to v2.86 because they created problems or were easy to fix on the old version) and changed little things around. I also added few small interesting things, but nothing major.
From now on I'll try to focus on trying to make the internal code profit even more by the power of C++, which means that I'll spend a while on it. Hopefully I'll manage to add at least one bigger feature in the next version (which will come, as I said, in a pack: v2.87 and v2.88, but probably v2.89 and v2.90 will be ready too at least, as it will take some time).
Now, about the pretty big problem: as you may know, we are using a shared host. We don't have any access to the operating system or updates related to it. When doing things, I really like and have to use one of the latest features/updates of things, so I am using C++'s standard of 2011 (C++11) and a bit of 2014 (C++14), which made the language even a lot more powerful and GZS is using the features of those standards pretty much by now, so downgrading to C++03 would be really retarded and would serve absolutely no benefit, it would make the development slow and this is the reason why I decided to migrate to C++: to make the development faster. So, I talked with the support first at the end of 2016, because they had to upgrade the OS which was ancient, an Ubuntu OS from 2010 of which support expired in 2015 AFAIK. I pretty much spammed them about this problem because in February or March they told me they're going to update in the second trimester of the current year, of which the last day was on 30 june. They still didn't come with the promised OS upgrade. We need a newer OS on the shared host because the newest C++ compiler supported by that system isn't supporting code compiled with newer standards of C++, not even the C++ standard of 2011, as the OS is from 2010.
So, mainly because I want the next version to be pretty great (the internal code upgraded as much as possible) and because the host isn't supporting (yet) the newer and greater standards of C++ I won't be able to put any update online, at least until they will upgrade the OS.
I don't know if this new version will come this year. I don't know if they are going to upgrade. It may be needed to change the host in the future. For now, they aren't telling me any clear answer about the status of upgrading. The idea is that the development continues internally and it won't stop.
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Ok, I come with a pretty fast update related to the host. So, I made that ticket about newer C++ compatibility 10 months ago, but they came with a work-around solution only one day ago, one day after I posted the reply from above. They upgraded just the GCC (the C++ compiler) to version 6.4, which was released in July 2017, which has support for C++14 and even partial support for C++17. This means that updating the server was "unblocked".
I have to work more on the server to do more internal changes related to stability and organizing code, also in-game updates.
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Good luck then :D I wish the best for GZS and all guys that play there.I think you are doing a great job and server is getting better with big steps.I hope we get more players and to upgrade in a total new level with more features like:new systems,minigames,maps (I was working on them but now I can't u know the reason),and also to remove those little bugs.Also I want that the server be online for few more years like 7-8 more years or forever :D .I am very happy for GZS and I think others feel like me.I don't have anything else to say,wish you the best GZS,Nistor and all players here on forum or in server. #GG-GZS.
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The new version has been released, thanks for waiting ! You can see it here (https://forum.skilledg.com/index.php?topic=43076.0).
Also, 2-3 months until the server will be 9 years old !
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