VPA Client usable?

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2762 days, 1 hours, 18 minutes ago

VPA Client usable?

Short question: Is the VPA client usable in VGPlanets Nu, i.e. can you download .RST files and upload .TRN files, or is usage of the web client obligatory?

2761 days, 23 hours, 45 minutes ago

RE: VPA Client usable?

VPA Client is not usable. Currently only the web client is fully functional (unless I missed something)

2761 days, 16 hours, 5 minutes ago

RE: VPA Client usable?

That's bad. An implementation of .rst and .trn should really be added. Or at least some way to import and export the data - I'm optmistic some modders will then make a conversion tool for .rst and .trn for use with old-style clients.

2761 days, 13 hours, 4 minutes ago

RE: VPA Client usable?

No no wait, my understanding is that VPA client is usable, but you have to ask steffan how to do it, I think that's his name?

There's a post in here somewhere that talks about it.

2761 days, 12 hours, 35 minutes ago

RE: VPA Client usable?

This is the thread capnkill refers to: http://planets.nu/post/attention-all-hackers-the-first-planets-nu-api-has-arrived

2761 days, 12 hours, 23 minutes ago

RE: VPA Client usable?

Thanks ronnle robot!

The user I'm thinking of is "streu"

I THINK he wrote VPA actually if I'm not mistaken?

He's shared a way to download VCR data into the far superior PlayVCR.

And I'm like 99% sure I've seen him say that he can also bring in data into VPA from NU, but I'm nto sure if he has shared the "how to" on that yet, or if he is waiting for the necessary APIs to be exposed so its less of a hack and more elegant or something...

2761 days, 2 hours, 34 minutes ago

RE: VPA Client usable?

VPA was written by Alex Ivlev. He open-sourced it about 10 years ago. I am updating it from time to time to keep up with latest developments in PHost. Other developers added new features. I am not using VPA myself, because my "baby" is PCC, the other third-party client. I know there are many VPA die-hards, so what I'm trying is to make it possible to build a VPA-lookalike from PCC2.

I have written a program to download Nu data and produce RST or DAT/DIS files. Since a few days, this program is able to upload a set of DAT/DIS back onto the Nu server. It is aimed to work with PCC2, but should also work with VPA. I posted a limited version of it as "c2nuvcr". I only posted the limited version because that one is pretty harmless and "fool-proof" to use. You cannot break anything with it. The "full" version is a proof-of-concept. It does not support every feature of Nu (messages, alliances). And because the "Nu" protocol is very fragile and has close to no input validation, it's very easy to break things, cheat by accident, or by intention (things like: upload evil JavaScript programs to other people's computers). That's probably the reason why the official API does not allow any uploads.

I am not 100% sure yet how to proceed with that. Probably it makes sense to include such functionality in a real client such as PCC2, but that needs quite some work.

--Stefan