Etna 1.0 released!
Community Forums/Showcase/Etna 1.0 released!
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 Progi1984 and myself are very proud to present the Etna library. Etna stands for Easy daTabase Network Access. This library helps to connect to a web database of type PHP/MySql. This library may be used with all versions of Blitz (BlitzBasic, Blitz3D, BlitzPlus, BlitzMax, ...) or PureBasic. The main advantage of this library is that it uses threads, which means that the flow of the program is never slowed down while there is a request on a server. This makes this library perfect to be implemented in games, where you don't want that an access to a database slows down the game. This library is thus particularly useful for all games playable on the network. A large number of applications is possible with this library: * continuoulsy publish the game data on a web page (score, number of people connected, chat, etc.), * use of a master server to avoid players typing IP numbers (like gnet), * online high score table, * and much much more! You can download it from here: http://repeatuntil.online.fr/Etna This library is FREE, but please pay attention to the special license. Please try the examples in the "Examples/" directory... We hope you will like it, and more importantly, use it!  |
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| Wow - this looks fabtastic - although I don't have acess to either PHP or MySql. Does it - would it work with Access? Thanks for another great addition to the Blitz toolbox - and free too! Great work IPete2. |
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| and Blitz3d? |
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| This library may be used with BlitzBasic... If it works with 'plain ole' BlitzBasic, it'll work with Blitz3D. The reverse, of course, it not necessarily true. |
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| This sounds cool, will have a look at it shortly! |
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| This looks very cool! In fact artic! THis will be useful for us - thanks! |
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| Very nice, can see me putting this to good use. |
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| Looks superb! Thanks. I'll keep a bookmark on this :) |
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| Yes, this library is working with ALL versions of Blitz: Blitz2D, BlitzPlus, Blitz3D AND BlitzMax!! Unfortunately, the BlitzMax version is only for Windows right now. If there is enough demand, we could try to make it cross-platform... Wow - this looks fabtastic - although I don't have acess to either PHP or MySql. Does it - would it work with Access? I don't know what exactly is Access :-( . BUT this library is not restricted at all to php/mySql. It should work with other database type. The only thing this library is doing is doing some request (whatever is the database type) and retrieving the result from the web page (usually a php script). I would be interested to know if you are able to make it work with Access... |
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| Nice! :) Very useful. :D |
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| wonderful. i think i will use this in my project. |
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| Why Etna and not EDNA? Excelent work :D |
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| Don't know what exactly is Access :-( . BUT this library is not restricted at all to php/mySql. It should work with other database type. The only thing this library is doing is doing some request (whatever is the database type) and retrieving the result from the web page (usually a php script). I would be interested to know if you are able to make it work with Access... Access is a database format as well -- a bit smaller scale, and unlike SQL it is often used on a single computer. They can be addressed directly, or through ODBC just like SQL databases. Microsoft Access (which is used to create access databases) comes as part of Microsoft Office Professional Why Etna and not EDNA? Excelent work :D Looking at the logo, they probably picked it for the better name/logo connection. (Mount Etna is the tallest active vulcano in Europe. The logo obviously represents a vulcano). Not too uncommon for an 'explenation' for an acronym to be thought up after the acronym itself has been used for a while. |
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| Well that and Edna conjours up images of an Australian drag queen. Sorry possums! |
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| Well that and Edna conjours up images of an Australian drag queen. Sorry possums!  Dame Edna. |
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| Haaahaaaa, Okay, yeah, good choice :D |
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| RepeatUntil, so I guess this uses port 80 right? This is a seriously cool bit of stuff! I setup it up and it worked on my site first time and took about 3 mins to do. MANY MANY THANKS! |
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| Yes, Etna is using the port 80. And, yes, Etna is very simple to use in 3-4 commands! I added it in my project also quite easily! To answer a question with ACCESS: in fact Etna is not accessing *directly* to the database. Instead, it connect to a server running some script (php for example), and the script connect to the database. This script returns a result, which is catched by Etna. So it's not possible to access directly the database with Etna, you have to do everything through a server (which could be the localhost). I have no idea if it's possible with ACCESS. For the name: yes, the reason is the ETNA volcano in Sicilia and just to give a nice name to this lib! EDNA was not sounding so good, and we were lucky not to choose that name when I see the above photograph ;-) |
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| ReapetUntil, Many thanks for that information, I may be able to make it work with access - which is set up on my website, for experimentation purposes. I'll keep you posted. IPete2. |
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| Anyway, this looks like a pretty neat mod -- much appreciated! |
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| IPete2, we are very interested by your experiences. If you finish that, we see that. |
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| Just a reminder for people planning to use the ETNA library. This library come with a very special license! It is an "email-ware". This means that this library is FREE. However, if you use this library in one of your project, you MUST contact the authors saying that you are using Etna. An email, or a post in a forum, is required whatever is the status of the project: commercial or non-commercial, completed or in development. Even if the project is just starting, is just private or will never be released, you are still required to send an email. Needless to say, your email won't be use except for the authors to do a count of their users. Contacting the authors gives you automatically and immediately the rights to use the library without restrictions. If you wish, you could describe your project in your email, and we can even include a link to your project on this web page if you authorize us. This special license is just to deal with the frustration of coding something and not knowing if somebody used it! We have right now 4 declared users. I hope we will have more soon ;-) |
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| I'm still at the 'thinking about starting' stage, but if I do, I'll be sure to let you know. ;-) |
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| I have squirreled this away for when I get some free coding time.... an email will be on its way when I get started on something |
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| BlackJumper, it's very easy to use - we use it to store the top best 10 times for each level for one of our games and it works a treat! |
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| I haven't really looked at this yet, but... does it use any kind of encryption when communicating with the server? |
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| Its no use - I have sucummed to a Linux account with PHP and mysql - hoooray now I can try this.. IPete2. |
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| i don't think it uses any kind of encryption. its up to you to protect your php-script. good that i am very used to php/mysql ;) |
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| No, It doesn't use any encryption when sending the command to the server. However, we give some ideas for encryption on our web page: http://repeatuntil.online.fr/Etna/Etna_lib.html (section security issues). Unfortunately, I am really not an expert on encryption. But if you guys have ideas how we can use encryption with this library, we will take any ideas and try to implement them directly into the lib! IPete2: this library uses a dll, and so can not be used on other platform that Windows. We will try to make it work on other platforms, but this is not guaranteed. |
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| Just want to mention that the first game using ETNA is out there. This is qoob (in beta release). qoob is using ETNA to publish times (without slow down of the game) of players for each world, in order to compare time of different players, and give another dimension to the game. If you want to have a look a the time table, please go here. So I want to stress that not only pure online game can benefit from ETNA!! You can add a new nice dimension for any games, like in this case comparing time or high-score of all people playing to your game!! Until now, we have ~10 happy users of ETNA. ETNA is completely free, so please use it as much as you can... |
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| RepeatUntil - thanks for the plug and the AWESOME ETNA. |
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| ooops, Boiled Sweet, I corrected the Q in q in my previous message ;-) |
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| For Etna users on BlitzMax: apparently Etna is broken when using version 1.18 of BlitzMax. BUT Mark Sibly replied and said that he will soon introduce a fix to correct that. * The error: compile error ?????? Cstring type can only be use with extern functions ' Definition of the functions in the dll Global ETNA_SetServer(server$z)"Win32" Global ETNA_SetDelimiter(delimiter$z)"Win32" Global ETNA_Update()"Win32" * Answer of Mark Sibly: Big balls up on our part - will be fixed soon. |
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| Just a quick update for Etna, with 3 announcements: * We are working on automatic encryption within Etna. We will make this change almost transparent so that Etna will still be as easy to use. Let me insist that this is a very good news: encryption is coming! * There is now a dedicated forum for Etna users: http://blitzklan.free.fr/forum/viewforum.php?f=32 . You don't need to register to be able to post. Of course, you can also use this Blitz forum to ask questions (with Etna in the subject). * A new version of gnet (master server) is coming along, using Etna. The main advantage over the original gnet is that it won't freeze your game while refreshing the server. Stay tuned! |
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| This looks very interesting. This may be very useful for Naked War. I'll let you know how it works out. |
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| Just like to say this is great. Is there a new thread for version 2, or any other news? John - how did you get on with Etna in Naked War? |
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| Thanks, Beaker! Thread for version 2 is there: http://www.blitzmax.com/Community/posts.php?topic=58946 And yes, there is some news for ETNA, I am just waiting that everyone come back from vacation to release this new version. What is coming is: - A special module is ready for ETNA: a new GNET (see sig of Beaker ;-) that uses ETNA to communicate, which means that it will work on every Blitz (3D, Max, Plus) and it will never freeze your game (on the contrary of the original one) - An ETNA user (Fra) wrote a wrapper for ETNA for C++. Hopefully, this will broaden the number of users - ETNA is now usable as a library for PureBasic Coming in mid-september, as soon as I get DSL at home... |
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| RepeatUntil, Go on, have some bottle, rename it back to Edna! Computing needs some fun put back into it, and your util seems to be already earning respect; since it sounds like it could probably carry it off quite easily, it really should be Edna! ;O) |
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