roncli.com blog: August 2011

It's finally all grown up!

LibWowAPI, my .NET library for accessing the Blizzard WoW API, has finally been completed, and version 1.0 has been released. It is feature-complete, meaning that everything that is available from the API is available in my library.

I've also spent the better part of the last week painstakingly documenting every last class, method, and property, so that developers will have an easy time figuring out how to use the library.

If you're a .NET developer and interested in playing around with the Blizzard WoW API, be sure to check out LibWowAPI.

Labels: Coding, Gaming, LibWowAPI, World of Warcraft

Friday, August 19, 2011

LibWow...API? 0.5 beta
Posted: 12:11:00 AM 0 comments

So I finally decided to drop the "Armory" moniker of what was LibWowArmory. It is now LibWowAPI to better match what it's a library for, namely the Blizzard WoW API. Yet, this version is a heck of a lot more than a name change.

The latest version now supports BNET authentication, provided you have an authentication key pair from Blizzard. The character profile got PvP and quest fields added to it. There are new classes for character achievements, guild achievements, quest lookups, and even battlegroup arena ladders. Item lookup is now fully supported as well.

Several properties got changed to become shared (or static if you're into that C# stuff), including the region and the language. I wrestled with this one for a while, as I wanted to give the library flexibility to change the region and language on a whim. However, making it shared allowed me to write a lot less code, and honestly I'd rather deploy the website as "us.something.com", "eu.something.com", etc. with each website controlling the value of the region and language in the Global.asax file. The resulting coding styles felt a lot more natural that way.

The headers got changed, as Blizzard is no longer using the LastModified header, but rather the IfModifiedSince header. Makes.. uh.. sense. I also send some of my own, though. X-Library and X-LibraryURL identify the library as LibWowAPI, and X-Application and X-ApplicationURL are exposed for the developer to identify their application accordingly.

I also decided to expose the Data property of each class, which gives you the JSON as returned by Blizzard.

Finally, this release is the first release with a binary distribution. Don't want to load the source? No problem, reference the DLLs and enjoy.

Once LibWowAPI includes auction data, I'm going to bump the version number to 1.0, drop the beta tag, and do a short screen cast on how to use the library via YouTube. After that, the sky's the limit with what you can do with this library. Enjoy!

Labels: Coding, Gaming, LibWowAPI, World of Warcraft

Saturday, August 13, 2011

LibWowArmory 0.4.1 beta
Posted: 5:54:00 PM 0 comments

And now, some error handling. LibWowArmory now includes a new BlizzardAPIException class that will allow you to catch the errors thrown by the Blizzard WoW API.

Labels: Coding, Gaming, LibWowArmory, World of Warcraft

Friday, August 12, 2011

LibWowArmory 0.4 beta
Posted: 4:34:00 PM 1 comments

Well, Blizzard decided to close down the old World of Warcraft Armory at the beginning of the month. This promptly broke Six Minutes To Release, resulting in me having to code in a flurry to get a working version of LibWowArmory.

Of course, LibWowArmory is kind of a bad name for the library now. The Armory's replacement is the Blizzard WoW API. I'm going to stick with the old name just because to me it's still the Armory, just in JSON format instead of XML.

Anyway, you can get version 0.4 beta of LibWowArmory from CodePlex.

Note that the item lookup is vastly incomplete, and auction data is not downloaded yet. Those will come soon enough. Also, Blizzard is constantly developing this API, and up until recently were adding things faster than I could code them. So, this library will probably evolve pretty quickly as well.

Labels: Coding, Gaming, LibWowArmory, World of Warcraft

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

The Crossroads preview
Posted: 2:03:00 AM 1 comments

At risk of stating the obvious, I've been rather slacking when it comes to releasing music. Honestly, I just don't have the time or patience these days to stay in one place long enough to evolve a piece of music to the point where it can be considered a full release.

However, this doesn't stop the music from running through my head. In the past three months alone, I've mentally completed three full length songs. One of them is something I started writing back in 1995, and the finished version is probably going to be very close in sound to Given Up.

But this one... this one came on like a storm in just a few weeks' time. The piano melody starts the piece, but develops into a grand ballad of rock, thrashing drums, vibrant strings, and background vocal support. The lyrics probably aren't finalized and, being a relatively new piece, I haven't quite got the inflection and timing down just yet.

Adding all that, however, takes time. Time I don't have. So, instead, I am content for now to simply put the piano together, run through one take of the vocals, do some minor post-processing in Audacity, and at least release something.

I give to you, "The Crossroads". If you have a modern web browser, you can use the controls at the top of the page to give it a listen, or you can download it here.

Labels: Music, Stripped Down, The Crossroads

Friday, August 05, 2011

Slow progress, but progress nonetheless
Posted: 4:41:00 PM 0 comments

The roncli.com update has been quite slow moving. Just recently, however, I wrapped up the page editor, meaning that I can now add content pages to the site.

For now, I've only added Descent: Aries Wing, as all of the other pages on my site will live in other sections of the site that are yet-to-be-developed. Also, more good news for my Aries Wing readers is that I will be publishing chapters 8, 9, and 10 with the completion of the new site.

I've tightened up a few things, including making the Twitter widget get data on the server-side. Plus, each page and blog post will be able to be shared via Facebook or Twitter. I'd include Google+, except you can't share anything without using their images, and their images don't exactly fit the theme I'm going for.

I think at the heart of things, the website will ultimately use this new page system for just about everything, so getting these new sections online shouldn't be too involved. It's just going to be a matter of finding the time to add them. Up next is adding the music section and migrating everything from The Home of the Nightstalker over to the new site.

Labels: Coding, roncli.com