OAWire

[Udi]

OAWire is a Firefox addon for launching OpenArena with server connections.

OAWire Google Code page
OWire Mozilla Addons page

Latest version: 0.1.3
Supports: Firefox 3.5-10.0a1

Changelog

Short list of features:

• Only supports Firefox for now
• Creates launcher buttons on the dpmaster site and converts every OACON link
• Possibility of additional launching arguments
• Full localization support (currently supported: English, Hungarian, Italian (thanks Gig))
• Licensed under GPLv2

Version 0.1 is rather a proof of concept release, it basically does the same as the OACON protocol with slight differences (no password support, dpmaster can be used for browsing and launching, only Firefox is supported but at least it's OS independent). There are two ways of improving it: add more browser support and add more features. If every browser allows access to the local files, managing packages and configs over the web is possible, we can start making an optional service like QL. If we succeed and stay fully open source other projects could also benefit from it. But that's a distant dream.

You can help by testing the addon, translate it to your language (see Wiki on project site), join development or give me some feedback of what can or should be improved.

[Gig]

Interesting. I should try. Does it subdivide the servers depending from the mod and gametype used?

A big problem in the server browser integrated inside OpenArena is that it does not show you the mod in use (I hope they will implement this useful function)...

UPDATE: Tested, it adds a button to launch OpenArena in the "classic" page http://dpmaster.deathmask.net/?game=openarena
Nice, but I thought it was something more similar to the old good ''The All-Seeing Eye" (why its developers discontinued it, why???), something that also pinged the servers...

[sago007]

I often find that these plugins are rather demanding to setup (anything that doesn't work out of the box is in that category)

OpenArena should every time it starts add or update itself in a file called ~/.openarena/oacon_start that contains something like this:

Code:

oa0.7.0 /home/sago/openarena-0.7.0/openarena.i386
oa0.7.7 /home/sago/openarena-0.7.7/openarena.i386
oa0.8.1 openarena

If openarena was started from /somedisk/openarena-0.8.1/openarena.i386 it should automatically update oacon_start to use the right path.

Links on the web could look something like: "oacon:(oa0.8.1)82.211.202.16:27590" and the oa-launcher should see that it can simply run "openarena +connect ...".

Another file (like oacon_args) could contain version specific launch commands. Like

Code:

oa0.7.0 +set fs_homepath /home/sago/.openarena-0.7.0
oa0.7.7 +set fs_homepath /home/sago/.openarena-0.7.7

This would of course need to be created manually.

This would make keeping multiple versions easier. For example during version transitions. No new version of the launcher required. It could even be extended to other games without adding a lot of plugins.

Unfortunately it could be hard making this plugin multi platform because of the different paths used.

[fromhell]

'The All-Seeing Eye" (why its developers discontinued it, why???)

Yahoo buyouts always spell death.

[RMF]

I'm going to check it out later today

[Udi]

OpenArena should every time it starts add or update itself in a file [...]

A generic extensible file with a light syntax (not XML) is a good idea. It can contain the binary paths and the versions also and any other information which might come up.

Nice, but I thought it was something more similar to the old good ''The All-Seeing Eye"

The addon so far is an experimental thing, when (or if) it matures it will have a site dedicated to it either with it's own QStat list or mirroring the list from dpmaster. Since the different browsers have different APIs for drawing buttons etc., HTML is the best choice for a GUI (just like QL, you can't use the addon only through the QL site). It's a long and a little expensive development so maybe it's the wrong path to take.

The mod infos you want are already on dpmaster, when you look at the details of a single server there are two variables: game and gamename which vary accordingly (baseoa, insta, defrag etc.) So basically you just need a software which gets the dpmaster XML file, parses it, and draws a pretty GUI displaying all the info. So developing a desktop server browser with some multiplatform technology (Qt or Python+GTK like the RN|Launcher) could be faster.

[Gig]

Well, I linked it DO NOT LINK[/b]) h t t p s : / / openarena . wikia . com/wiki/Servers#Tools]here...

[RMF]

hm just tested it (little late ye) and works quite nice. Though imo the logo style it too much in the foreground and odd color pallette in combination with dpmaster. Also it tried to connect to IP:PORT&showplayers=1 It worked, but just a note.

[...]

Must say i really like this and fine it very handy 

[Gig]

Just a little thing (OAwire 0.1): if you first apply some filter on dpmaster server, this filter is shown in the URL. When you use OAwire to start a match, you can see the "filter" part of the url inside the address OpenArena tries to connect to (or example, 127.0.0.1:27960&hide=both). It seems to work anyway, but I wanted to tell you.

[Udi]

Thanks Gig, RMF already posted it. I will apply a proper regexp for the next version (don't know when).

[RMF]

Oh well as long as it works
I like it for how easy i can switch between the launched oa version with just a few clicks and changing one number in the past. For oacon i could write a simple batch to do the job but i'm too lazy lol

[Gig]

Hello everybody. I just updated to the new FireFox 4, and OAWire 0.1 does not work anymore. Could you please update it? Thank you!

[Udi]

Yes, I guess. Probably for next weekend.

[Gig]

Hi Udi.
Did you have some time to take a look to the tool?

[Udi]

Hi Udi.
Did you have some time to take a look to the tool?

I've checked, there are 3 things I need to change:

• change the maximum version number, so it installs under FF4 (already done)
• move the icon from the bottom statusbar to the upper toolbar
• recheck the dpmaster markup, it seems to be broken, only the first entry has a play button

I should be able to fix it in a couple of days.

[sheepofsin]

[removed]

[Gig]

• move the icon from the bottom statusbar to the upper toolbar

It could be nice to make an option to let the user select if he wants the icon on the lower plugin bar or on the upper bar (and maybe even the choice to do not show the icon at all) ...

[Gig]

Udi, how's going with FF4?

I've even tried to "hack" it to allow OAWire to run on it.

If one goes to about:config in FireFox 4, and adds a new boolean value called extensions.checkCompatibility.4.0, setting it to "false", then he is allowed to run extensions that are not certified for firefox 4 and then were previously disabled. Firefox still warns you about what of your extensions are not certified for FF4, allowing you to enabling and disabling each one at will.

But, unfortunatley, at least on my machine, OAWire 0.1 does not work correctly with this hack. The server listing page shows me only the first "Play!" button (however, I could enter the page of each server before clicking on play)... and when I click on it, it launches the game like but without trying to connect to any server...

Well, at least it seems I can get the useful Aardwark extension (nothing to share with OpenArena, but useful for printing web pages removing useless stuff!) work, using this hack!

[Udi]

If one goes to about:config in FireFox 4, and adds a new boolean value called extensions.checkCompatibility.4.0

That's one way to go. But you can hack individual addons aswell, you download the xpi files to your harddrive, you extract them (they're JAR files), open the install.rdf file, and look for the maxVersion value, and you change that to "4.*". That will probably work, since there are no API changes in the new XUL. But QStat changed it's HTML output, so the current OAWire won't work, not even in 3.6 or older FireFox versions.

I'll quickly fix the dpmaster error, and make a release, and I'll later add the other features we discussed earlier.

Update: I've uploaded a fixed version. It seems that the QStat output did not change, but Firefox 4 has some changes. The dpmaster and FF4 fix is the only change, plus there's an italian translation thanks to Gig. Please test it, more features will come later.

[RMF]

Where can I sign up for translation into Dutch

Edit: Nevermind, I've found it. Will do this tonight, gonna run for the bus now

[Gig]

Thank you, man! 
I will test it in the next days, I'm extremely busy with real life now!

Does this 0.1.1a version work with both FF3 and 4?

[Udi]

Does this 0.1.1a version work with both FF3 and 4?

No, it seems that it's broken for FF3.6, a recent nightly build works though (FF6). I will check if I can manage to make it backward compatible.

[Gig]

Tested... it works.
Thank you, man!
.. but the "about" link does not work.

Just a curiosity... what should you do to make it available directly form the addon search function of Firefox, instead of manually downloading the xpi file from your site? To register as a developer at Mozilla? It's a shame that many useful firefox (and thunderbird) extensions are not comfortable to find and to keep updated for the average user.

[Udi]

Just a curiosity... what should you do to make it available directly form the addon search function of Firefox, instead of manually downloading the xpi file from your site? To register as a developer at Mozilla?

Yes, I think it only requires a free registration. I should do it in the upcoming weeks.