Friday with Means - January 29th, 2010 - Explosive database

[Means]

German Character Transfer

The character from the German dimension, despite our best efforts, is obviously delayed. Waldgeist has sent me a list of the most commonly asked question concerning the transfer and I have sent him the answers to the best of my ability. The questions and answers should be found on the German language forums. I imagine he will add a link "HERE" when he translates this one. For everyone else the rules and conditions of the name/character cleanup will be posted next week.

Moderated by Waldgeist
Ninja edit, to add a link here


This week

There is always something that generally gets in the way and slows us down...the amazing part is that it is something new every time. If this job provides anything it is "variety" in every day life. It is amazing how many things can go wrong in a completely new way all the time. As most of you are aware we have been putting together the next version of the Daily Mission system after putting the very first version on TestLive last week. This is an unusually ambitious update that involves updates to almost every single playfield on Rubi-Ka as we are also doing our best to resolve all the old issues concerning Alien pathing in player-made cities. The "build/export" process for this takes up to 2 hours per playfield and has to be done twice each time (once for the Free version/small client and once for the All expansions/full client. With about 40 playfields being "fixed" in this update (including some new areas for the Daily Missions) this process can take a LONG time to put together. At 11:30pm on Wednesday night the last of the "data" playfields were being added to the exported data...at the exact same time our Database administrator in the United States took the whole database down to upgrade the software. "Boom" is a good word. As the build process takes for granted that it is receiving the data it needs...we ended up with a version on Thursday morning without a few pieces of information...like "What are professions" and "What is health?"....pretty much all the information the servers needed to determine whether a character should be alive or not was missing. Logging into this server put characters into an immediate and never-ending death loop.

That version will unfortunately NOT be coming to the live test dimension.

Unfortunately the only way to be sure the data is "ok" is to run the complete set of data exports...again. When our Vice President of Patching returns from his long weekend vacation (and hopefully recovers from working ALL night the day before his vacation in hopes of salvaging the data disaster.) we will have another go and have hope to get the next version on TestLive next week.

Such VARIETY!

Engine Variety

Work of course continued this week on the engine...this week CLOTHING/ARMOR seems to be in and complete. This seems to be almost the last (crosses fingers) of the integration work...everything that "should" be there is now actually there. SO some work began this week in the OPTIMIZATION phase of this little project.

It was discovered that in the conversion process between using AO ground and using DreamWorld/Cheetah ground that the ground file increases a bit on the way. Up to about 290 Megs PER PLAYFIELD. As AO has about 100ish playfields at this point I required a new pair of shorts and smelling salt noseplugs. The coders managed to get this down to 8-32 Megs by the end of the week...so the sky is no longer falling...and I'm sure they can make it even smaller as we go.

The clothing looks better...less pixelation of textures as you "move" away from the character either with the camera or with your character...was nice to see those smooth edges.

Meetings occurred for arranging for the full production of the new heads by the Chinese office...I am amazed at the level of quality produced by their team. Astounded is a good word. I can't actually remember at this point if we showed you the test head they did for us of the Atrox...they are currently reworking one of the Nanomage heads to futher estimate timelines..when we get that I will post it here. Damn are they good. I'm really excited about it. Our artist Flaptoot is even more excited about it as he will likely get to spend some time in the Chinese office during the process..as a martial arts afficianado he is looking forward to practising his art in the parks in the morning with the locals before going to work. I'd love to go myself but unfortunately he'll do a better job with ensuring the heads are as amazing as they should be...and I know what generally happens when I leave the office.

Questions from last week

People being brought out of sneak by AOE effects. Yes this is intended. If you resist the nano you will NOT be exposed. There will no longer be a "message" when you appear or disappear that will notify everyone in the area of your presence. It should also be noted that these AOE nanos are not going to be "spammable" as they are now. AOE effects will have a cooldown...so randomly spamming these tools will not be as efficient a way to detect hidden players as it is now. Either way...any hostile effects that hit you in sneak will likely continue to expose your position in the future. Players concealing will have to watch out for AOE professions as much as they have to watch out for concealed players...the advantage is still on the side of the concealers. Please check out test to try out the new conceal code..looks pretty good.

Have a great weekend!

[bitnykk]

1st !

taking advantage to say GG for what's done, and wish GL on RK3 merge, daily missions and rebalance ofc.

just don't forget new engine (read news, seems you don't) & also newcomer inczor (noob island relift, tutorials to attract people, bugged spots like sheol, etc ...). eg : i'm sure some players could help revamp the way newcomers discover AO and the gameplay.

and finally FFS give doca a little attention
http://forums.anarchy-online.com/sho...d.php?t=566048
that roxx, looks great, is ready to use, ppl lub it. so make him proposal (idk money, freetime, cyb0r whatever !)

[Iriche]

2nd

[Variable]

third!

[NoGoal]

nth

[shadowgod]

doh.. almost forgot its friday.

[Brampfine]

´lo Means
thx for transfer FAQ

a few questions

Can we have Buildings and Cred´s for a new start @Rk1 ? (in Age of Conan they did it after merge)
ql300 serum for buildings are not rains from heaven, and we need a city for advantages.
u write that u build four city spots with round 112 places later after transfer.
there we need to build two times a new city, first a serenity without playershop
and later in one of the four city pf´s a city with playershop and this cost many cred and time to find all items.

are the comming city pf´s huge enough to build all types of buildings, and not a small without skybar, cafe, guardhouse....rp greens

When starts the merge ?

What about names ?
when a Free-Acc with last login 6 month ago have my name, can i hold my name with Pay-Acc.

[angryturtle]

7th

[Technogen]

sigh, I hate you all.

Except you means, well maybe, you posted first you evil evil person, let macro post first then yell first and post your fwm next time!

[Krattonomic]

so the AoE nukes are going to have a cool down to them? 0-o sounds like a major nerf to the nts if I am reading that correctly

[Saetos]

Grand Theft Humidity,
Grand Theft Humidity,
Grand Theft Humidity?

Can I have some some sort of indication that you're at least thinking about taking our suggestions and fixing this nano?

[Techmagos]

Originally Posted by Brampfine What about names ? when a Free-Acc with last login 6 month ago have my name, can i hold my name with Pay-Acc.

they already explained this. try reading the forums while you are here?

[Wrangeline]

Good luck with those problems. Sounds very annoying and frustrating

[Technogen]

Originally Posted by Means I can't actually remember at this point if we showed you the test head they did for us of the Atrox..

Nope, you didnt, please add it to your 1st post.

[Wrangeline]

Originally Posted by Saetos Grand Theft Humidity, Grand Theft Humidity, Grand Theft Humidity? Can I have some some sort of indication that you're at least thinking about taking our suggestions and fixing this nano?

I'm pretty sure they will post info on such things when they are ready to do so.
GTH is only one out of 137 things that people are curious about atm.

[Hacre]

I hope someone gave a Jethro Gibbs style slap to the back of the head to whomever decided it was a great idea to take the database down during a large write, or to the guy doing the update that didn't inform the DBAs in the first place, lol.

Thanks for confirmation on AoE effects. Surprised/disappointed you didn't include some shots of the new heads.

[Lheann]

Means, What about Docaholic's icons he did all the work on? The level of player effort for the game deserves some response.

[Ukblizzard]

So the explanation after this:

Vor dem Transfer werden wir alte Charaktere säubern um Namen freizugeben für den Transfer und weniger Überschneidungen zu verursachen.

Assuming this is being applied across all servers with the cleaning up of names, does it mean the character just has to have logged in within that time to be considered active? Did I miss that explanation somewhere?

EDIT: Oh I just re read your post in which you said you would explain it next week..

[Technogen]

IT will most likely be like last time, where the player needs to log in game once with that name.

[Dancingrage]

Interesting and unfortunate on the exporting problem, but I guess accidents happen. I was hoping to see a new version come out this week but I'll live with what's there.

Any chance of squeezing in a few AI buildings in the 'free' client so froobs can finally get out of the player cities and into the Grid, or duel with their overpowered orgmates in the Silo? I know this was in the works but without the 'large' client I could see how this would be a pretty big problem for a froob player.

Hm...Death Loops..that'd be a nice black metal/industrial band name, wouldn't it?