I only have to finish loading our test mob, George, from the db, and we will be ready to do the first public release of this new code base. It will most likely happen tomorrow, as I have some family obligations today.
I will post an announcement on the front page when this happens. The donwloads will be posted at our CodePlex site.
I just tested WheelMUD using SharpDevelop 3. It worked flawlessly! It is better than VS 2008 Express editions, since it is not crippled, and it is compatible with VS 2008 Professional features out of the box. Here's a screenshot to prove it:
It also has Subversion support built in. That's pretty nifty! I was able to compile and run the TestHarness without problems.
Just wanted to show the latest screen capture of the TestHarness.
I've been really thankful about SQLite, since I decided to switch to it as our default persistance database. This graphic explains how I feel about SQLite:
For fast, agile development, I really hate having a lumbering database. SubSonic is a very lightweight ORM framework for .NET. It started out as a web-only framework, but it has matured enough now that it is a joy to work with. The latest 2.1 version comes with a neato admin app called SubStage that generates the DAL layer for you. I only have to point it to the config file where all the SubSonic stuff is at, the point and click. I don't feel I'm stuck in molasses when I work on WheelMUD's persistance code. Pure bliss!
I had some free time, so I decided to do some "fun" coding. I started fixing all of the stuff I had commented out in the Facade project. I now have the player and room facades working. I'm still trying to get the command stuff working.
The original stored procedure that we were calling for commands has a T-SQL special function called iter_intlist_to_table. I need to find a way to do this using C# and the SubSonic framework.
Just plucking along, slowly but surely...
I just got done transferring the data from the SQL Server 2005 Express to the SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition database. This sure was a LOT of work!
I also checked in a couple TSQL scripts. One of these scripts is for table creation, and the other is for the seed data. I had to change a couple column names, because the TSQL parser (that MS wrote) has a fit if there are any column names with reserved words. Option is a reserved word. I also had to change True and False boolean values to 1 and 0 respectively.
I'm going to have to regenerate the DAL to accomodate this. At least I don't have to generate this by hand. Long live code generation!!! 
I'm doing a presentation on Subversion to my local .NET User Group tomorrow night. I attend the Utah County .NET User Group. I'm also their webmaster.
This is the first time I have ever spoken at a user group. Fortunately for me, I have spoken in front of people a fair amount, so I'm not nervous. I've done consultant work on and off for about 7 years, so I've had to give plenty of presentations.
This will also be a good chance to show off PainlessSVN to a group of .NET developers. The user group's site is
http://www.ucnug.org
I just saw this on Rocky Lhotka's blog:
"I used to learn new technologies by writing games - specifically MUDs and then low-end MMORPGs (well, I wrote and rewrote parts of one that never really came together). Someday I'd like to get back to doing that."
And
"I've been feeling seriously burned out of late. That's not good. Part of it is due to the way travel grates on me more all the time, but most of it is that I haven't spent time doing truly exploratory things for a very long time now. CSLA has become quite consuming, and so my spare time goes into the framework, when I could be working on a .NET MUD engine or something really fun like that (I have these cool prototypes for truly dynamic world behavior that I'd love to pull together into something real)."
Here's the link to the whole blog post:
http://www.lhotka.net/weblog/BeingABetterDeveloperIn6Months.aspx
He's the author of CSLA, a DAL framework that I've used before. I think I talked with him about WheelMUD once upon a time. I've read several of his books. His stuff is always pretty good.
I got the mud engine talking to the DAL just now. WHEEEEEEE! 
I got really tired of the DotNetNuke core Blog module, so I ripped it out and replaced it with this. It already bombed today, by not letting me edit and/or create new blog entries.
I haven't had time to customize the look of the module, but I will in time.
