First official UOX3 House of Commons Chat

# Fifth official UOX3 House of Commons Chat

#### May 7th, 2000

Legend

Developer answer
Question
Misc

EviLDeD: Welcome to another session of the UOX3 House of Commons Chat. We have been tending to things in RL, and virtually, as you have probably noticed by the lack of the last 3 meetings.
EviLDeD: We are back on schedule, and things should resume to the almost normal stream we were before the brief holiday.
EviLDeD: Skyfire has volunteered to take your questions this session, so please direct your question to him. And Thanks for coming.

EviLDeD: «Boris»: when will UOX totally blow sphere right out of the FUCKING water!!?!!?!!? what new features are going to help accomplish this?
EviLDeD: Well, we already don't?
* Xuri ponders "what water"
Abaddon: I'd agree with that
EviLDeD: As for features, there are MANY new ideas getting worked in, and kicked around. so to give you a list would be like telling you what your xmass presents are before xmass. Or heunika (apologies for my misspelling)

Abaddon: «Chaos»: When are we going to see the next townstone phase, if its not already on a shard somewhere?
Abaddon: This is one of those easter eggs we were talking about
Abaddon: We've been kicking around a lot of ideas, but none of our plans are much more than fluid at the moment
Abaddon: but yes, we'd like to see townstones progress further if possible, it is on our list of things to look at and long term goals to improve
EviLDeD: Wait till you see what app does have in store
EviLDeD: App= Abaddon
* EviLDeD kicks himself out

EviLDeD: <Hanse> How far along is multithreading?
EviLDeD: Hanse, I have a complete threading model laid out that I have verbally shared with the other devs, I have gone as far as to code up some routines that after being tested well will be put into uox3. We are well ahead in the threading area of the server, however implementation has been halted due to obvious
EviLDeD: changes in thinking, and method in the source code.

Abaddon: «Boris»: do the ntrigrs.scp work? cause some people say theirs work, but i cant get mine to work? what is wrong? eh
Abaddon: Well, to my knowledge, all triggers now work
Abaddon: I don't personally know off hand of any that don't, but I could be wrong
Abaddon: if anyone knows they do work, then please get in touch with me if possible, so I can have some clear directions on how to make them work
Abaddon: if the general consensus is that they are broken, then I guess we need to take a look at it :>
* EviLDeD agrees with Abaddon. Never kicked around with triggers, much except for cooking

Abaddon: «Boris»: ab: are you planning on starting coding classes again anytime?
Abaddon: If I honestly thought that I would get a reasonable number of people turning up regularly, I would probably try and start them up again
Abaddon: Because, the best way to learn something is to have to teach it to others
Abaddon: Now.... if I could regularly get 4 or 5 people in one place for 30 or 60 mins, then sure, I'd consider starting it up again
Abaddon: But you'd need to get those people before I'd consider it again :>
Abaddon: If anyone is interested, please go through Boris
EviLDeD: :))
Abaddon: He asked the question... so he gets to do the leg work :>
Skyfire: hehe
Abaddon: And for those who are asking me already, it's C++ teaching

EviLDeD: «Org»: Question. I'm wondering when the current problems are going to be fixed before new additions are added.
EviLDeD: Org, this is something that has been an ongoing issue with the DevTeam, this is also much of the reason that many have moved on to what they consider better, and greener EMU's (Mooooo). We feel that critical problems, should be FIRST and foremost. Killer features, and other extras have a low priority in the DevTeam. However not forgotten.
EviLDeD: I think that Ab will agree were are nearing a point that a lot of how you have known UO'g will change.
EviLDeD: But in simple answer to your question we have always been working on important things and pass up features often.
Abaddon: Oh yes, very much so
Abaddon: I've passed up dozens of killer ideas, for the sake of trying to get this thing more stable
Abaddon: We all want to see it strong, stable and fast
EviLDeD: Passed up doesn't mean thrown out! So don't think that any ideas that have been external and great have been forgotten because they haven't

EviLDeD: «JustMichael»: When will people be able to delete and accounts to their shard without screwing up all the accounts after the one they added or deleted?
EviLDeD: This is a VERY important issue, they way that the accounts are coded in the first place was ridiculous, and how the item/chars were linked was even more daring. However code styles wern't stable enough to support the true benefit that the hash tables made available
EviLDeD: pair this up with almost terrible account code you have our problem. There is a fix on the horizon. I figure over the next few releases you will see this bug gone. Cause a bug this truly is

Abaddon: «Skywise1»: Any chance of getting a RemoveNPC trigger command for Triggers? Great for Quests...
Abaddon: Sounds like a nice idea to me
Abaddon: But as we've been saying, a lot of nice ideas have been put on the back burner for other issues
* EviLDeD agrees with Abaddon
Abaddon: If you can give me the details of exactly what you want, then I might be able to get around to looking at it sometime
Abaddon: But no promises on a time frame, sorry

EviLDeD: [20:28] <Skyfire> THIS IS A BUG (could be a question): «GM_Death_afk»: *Sir* there is a well know bug of peoples char accounts being ruined by getting attacked after they are already ghosts and then losing their backpacks permanently. This is now effecting over half my users, any address of this issue would be extremely helpful.. as yet I have no solution to the problem
EviLDeD: This is something that you will find repaired when the account issues that JustMichael asked about earlier. This problem is heavily tied to the same systems, thus it doesn't work.
EviLDeD: and to reinforce that this is on the IMPRITIVE to fix lists.
EviLDeD: Imparetive
Skyfire: IMPERITIVE
(As an aside, spell checker says Imperative)
EviLDeD: blah
Skyfire: yea

Abaddon: «Ripper»: when will you change the pathfinding walking in combat for npcs? It really could use a change. Any thought?
Abaddon: Well, I think the pathfinding issue you have Ripper is actually WP related, not UOX related
Abaddon: I know we fixed a major pathfinding issue a couple of months back, it turned NPCs in combat from mindless zombies who couldn't walk anywhere to intelligent creatures (or relatively so)
Abaddon: However, as with all systems, I'm sure we'll go back and have a look at it sometime
Skyfire: WP walking works fine. This was an older UOX bug (about 4 versions ago)
Skyfire: fixed by the dev team

EviLDeD: «JustMichael»: Any chance of getting a NPC Rectangle and NPC Circle that use the NPC's current position for the centre?
EviLDeD: Good idea JM. I think that with some of the upcoming changes that this request will be taken care of.

EviLDeD: «Adooziewop»: Q: For the uninformed (me), what ARE the major issues being worked on at the moment? :)
EviLDeD: Ado, on this one please read up on back LOG of previous HOC meetings, we have been asked what's on the horizon a lot, and we have done our best to explain it to some level. A lot of work explaining it here would be saved if you would please have a look at the previous logs at http://uox.stratics.com

Abaddon: «Boris»: when will NPC running be added? if it already is.. how do i enable it?
Abaddon: The framework for it is in there, that's for sure
Abaddon: However, somehow a while back a partial implementation was actually removed
Abaddon: It's on the back burner, like other things, but a variable speed of npcs would be a nice thing :>
Xuri: Hm.
Xuri: NPCs already run. excuse me for interrupting.
Xuri: just add RUNS in npc.scp for that npc
Xuri: and it will run (in combat)
Abaddon: I know

EviLDeD: «morphius»: Any time frame on when auto account creation will be fixed or where I can get a CGI script to do it?
EviLDeD: doh.
EviLDeD: Well anyhow he can read it later.
EviLDeD: When accounts gets fix autoaccount creation will get fixed with it. As for a CGI, I have an undocumented, and unsupported DLL that works on IIS/PWS webservers that will facilitate account create. As for other CGI alternatives, I am also looking to make a suitable replacement for *nix webservers, like Apache, however this wont be happening to soon, unless serious interest is displayed.

EviLDeD: «GM_Death_afk»: is there any current workaround for the ghosts dying / losing backpack (stats change as well as far s i can tell)?
EviLDeD: At this point there really isn't much that we can do. As its a pretty nasty bug were always looking for a way to fix it. I have said many times before that we will be fixing these account, char related issues over the next number of builds. Keep your eyes open.

Abaddon: «RevolutionShadow»: Question: Anything under development or currently in place that would allow someone to set an NPC's path? Such as listing a set of coordinates for the NPC to follow. Something along the lines of an NPC Schedule, as seen in Ultima 7.
Abaddon: Well, if you want a faster way to cripple a server's speed, I can't think of one :>
Abaddon: Perhaps as a long term goal it might be worth considering, but as it stands right now, it's not really feasible

Skyfire: if( chars[c].npc && chars[c].runs && chars[c].war ) // Ripper 10-2-99 makes npcs run in war mode or follow :) (Ab mod, scriptable)
Skyfire: extmove[12]=dir|0x80;
Skyfire: grr
Abaddon: well done Sky :>
Skyfire: wrong button! :)
EviLDeD: whohoo, coding lessons in the meeting
Skyfire: hehe
Abaddon: If there's any more questions, you might want to ask them now

EviLDeD: «Boris»: Ab, now that i got around 10 people, will you be starting those lessons?
EviLDeD: Talk to Abaddon later.
EviLDeD: Well seeing as that is the last question.
* Connection reset by peer