Forums » General
Greetings!
As you might have guessed from my not being on the production server much lately, I've been working on things that players can't really help me test. I've missed you guys:) And, finally, I've got some new stuff for you to try out!
I've done all the testing I can easily do by myself and a fair bit with our interns. So your whole mission should work properly most of the time, and I hope you'll find them more fun (or less frustrating) than the current incarnations.
With your help, I hope we can iron out the inevitable wrinkles that real players always find, and have at least the new escort missions in the game by the end of the week. The Hive should work well too, but we want to be as certain as we can that the expansion behavior doesn't result in either a lack of available missions, or an overly resilient Hive, before we pull all the static bots out of 8 more systems (to begin with).
New Features:
Hive:
- 3 of them. They are centered in sedina, metana, and rhamus
- they now expand spacially from the stronghold into all asteroid sectors in that system and the 2 adjacent (an arbitrary limit)
Escort:
- the traders will now wait in a new sector until the whole group is there
- *unless* one of them is damaged significantly, in which case they flee to the next sector and wait (with the same conditions)
- the undocking behavior is less lame
- the mission now begins when the first player to take the mission (or the most senior if the first/most-senior aborts) leaves the station. this should make playing as a group easier to arrange.
- you are rewarded for appropriate kills (what is appropriate is complicated and possibly not optimal- feedback needed)
- you are rewarded for the whole mission according to the profit the mission owner made (there's a whole npc economy thing going on behind the scenes that will tie into the new player-visible revamped one)
- your cut of the escort money currently depends on how much of the route you traveled (travel half, get paid half) and is awarded when the last trader docks or is destroyed (if all are destroyed, there is no profit- therefore no reward) - I may add a performance component (your kill rate vs other escorts in group/historical average)
- for a full reward you have to be in the final sector when the last ship docks, but you don't have to finish the whole thing to get rewarded for the part you did (ie you didnt home near the destination and died in the last system)
Known issues:
1) The trade ships don't drop their cargo when they die. (fix in the works)
2) The trade ships are all moths (just a simple thing that may be fixed as you read this)
I can't think of any others that players would notice right now. I'll edit this list as I become aware of more.
Please post all reports to this thread.
Thanks!!!
~Michael
As you might have guessed from my not being on the production server much lately, I've been working on things that players can't really help me test. I've missed you guys:) And, finally, I've got some new stuff for you to try out!
I've done all the testing I can easily do by myself and a fair bit with our interns. So your whole mission should work properly most of the time, and I hope you'll find them more fun (or less frustrating) than the current incarnations.
With your help, I hope we can iron out the inevitable wrinkles that real players always find, and have at least the new escort missions in the game by the end of the week. The Hive should work well too, but we want to be as certain as we can that the expansion behavior doesn't result in either a lack of available missions, or an overly resilient Hive, before we pull all the static bots out of 8 more systems (to begin with).
New Features:
Hive:
- 3 of them. They are centered in sedina, metana, and rhamus
- they now expand spacially from the stronghold into all asteroid sectors in that system and the 2 adjacent (an arbitrary limit)
Escort:
- the traders will now wait in a new sector until the whole group is there
- *unless* one of them is damaged significantly, in which case they flee to the next sector and wait (with the same conditions)
- the undocking behavior is less lame
- the mission now begins when the first player to take the mission (or the most senior if the first/most-senior aborts) leaves the station. this should make playing as a group easier to arrange.
- you are rewarded for appropriate kills (what is appropriate is complicated and possibly not optimal- feedback needed)
- you are rewarded for the whole mission according to the profit the mission owner made (there's a whole npc economy thing going on behind the scenes that will tie into the new player-visible revamped one)
- your cut of the escort money currently depends on how much of the route you traveled (travel half, get paid half) and is awarded when the last trader docks or is destroyed (if all are destroyed, there is no profit- therefore no reward) - I may add a performance component (your kill rate vs other escorts in group/historical average)
- for a full reward you have to be in the final sector when the last ship docks, but you don't have to finish the whole thing to get rewarded for the part you did (ie you didnt home near the destination and died in the last system)
Known issues:
1) The trade ships don't drop their cargo when they die. (fix in the works)
2) The trade ships are all moths (just a simple thing that may be fixed as you read this)
I can't think of any others that players would notice right now. I'll edit this list as I become aware of more.
Please post all reports to this thread.
Thanks!!!
~Michael
In a word, über.
Production or Test server?
Test Server.
For those who don't know how to get there:
Instead of just entering your username when you log in, enter "test:your-username", and your password as usual. If you signed up fairly recently (within 2 months, I think), you won't be in the copy of the database used on the test server. Also, there will be no effect to your normal, production-server characters. Every few months, we overwrite the test server database with the one in production.
For those who don't know how to get there:
Instead of just entering your username when you log in, enter "test:your-username", and your password as usual. If you signed up fairly recently (within 2 months, I think), you won't be in the copy of the database used on the test server. Also, there will be no effect to your normal, production-server characters. Every few months, we overwrite the test server database with the one in production.
At least a couple people tried the Hive mission on the test server, and, from my logs, would have had problems with it registering their kills. I forgot to move something from the development server to the test server. That's fixed now. *Please* report any problems you encounter; not all issues are evident in the logs.
Just had a go, bractus HH, sent me to odia L3. No automatic setting of route .Still not getting credit or thanks message for kills , just the normal xp.
Having cleared the sector , no " there are more rust buckets on way " message , so no idea whether it ends properly.
Even so , the underlying mechanics seem to work fine.
Cheers
Ecka
Having cleared the sector , no " there are more rust buckets on way " message , so no idea whether it ends properly.
Even so , the underlying mechanics seem to work fine.
Cheers
Ecka
Took mission from Deneb C-10, sent to cantus C-11.
9/10 bots killed by me, 5 or 300 LW exp rewarded per kill,
no completion message or new bots message.
Exploded back to station, started to get "Good work" messages, then
"sector clear, but more rustbuckets" and "remedial flight lessons" message all while at station. combat exp also awarded here
Launched, jumped back to mission sector, no bots there, docked at nearest station, returned to mission sector, still no new bots
Aborted
Still at Deneb C-10 took escort to Metana M-6, got mission text "See the convoy safely to its destination of Metana M-6.", no convoy appeared, waited 10 mins, flew to destination, no sign of convoy.
Aborted
9/10 bots killed by me, 5 or 300 LW exp rewarded per kill,
no completion message or new bots message.
Exploded back to station, started to get "Good work" messages, then
"sector clear, but more rustbuckets" and "remedial flight lessons" message all while at station. combat exp also awarded here
Launched, jumped back to mission sector, no bots there, docked at nearest station, returned to mission sector, still no new bots
Aborted
Still at Deneb C-10 took escort to Metana M-6, got mission text "See the convoy safely to its destination of Metana M-6.", no convoy appeared, waited 10 mins, flew to destination, no sign of convoy.
Aborted
Tried the convoy stuff too, it looks very awesome when they launch from the station:
http://img133.imageshack.us/img133/5931/dump0027xe4.png
All of them also started shooting wildly at me after I fired a homing missile or two at them too, seems to work fine.
Took a few missions in different systems, but no convoy actually appeared. I did notice a LOT of random 'voys around (like 4-5 factions in a sector at one time) so I guess those are the ones we're supposed to escort?
http://img133.imageshack.us/img133/5931/dump0027xe4.png
All of them also started shooting wildly at me after I fired a homing missile or two at them too, seems to work fine.
Took a few missions in different systems, but no convoy actually appeared. I did notice a LOT of random 'voys around (like 4-5 factions in a sector at one time) so I guess those are the ones we're supposed to escort?
Your testing has turned up a couple bugs I can verify and know how to fix (more or less). But, as I feared, performance/scalability seems to have also been the cause of a lot of the reported wonkiness. I'm going to reduce the test for now to seperate these issues from the actual bugs. The Hive is now restricted to Sedina, Odia and Latos and Escort missions are available only at Xang Xi stations. The performance problems may or may not delay the release of these things; the test server is, after all, a single, venerable machine.
Have you switched to the new backend, or is it still SQL-based?
Still SQL-based.
Edit: I think Incarnate is answering about the game in general. All persistent player-data, the PCC missions, and lots of other things are stored in an SQL db.
Roguelazer, are you perhaps thinking these missions are using the web-based mission editor? The hive, escort, pirate, border-skirmish missions (and many more to come) are written with our internal mission language; it's capable of coordinating between missions and groups of players and npcs, etc, and isn't nearly as user-friendly as the mission-editor available to the Player Contribution Corp. Our Common Lisp prototyping environment, Deliverator, has very little interaction with SQL. It stores persistent info in serialized-lisp-object files. We have plans for a more scalable architecture, but we think we can get away with what we've got for a while longer.
An update on the testing progress:
The first bug that someone turned up is proving difficult to find. It results in the mission not ending. There also seems to be a rare case where the bots all stop somewhere short of the destination. Thanks for the help so far! I hope to see more of you on the test server- people have different play-styles and turn up different bugs.
Roguelazer, are you perhaps thinking these missions are using the web-based mission editor? The hive, escort, pirate, border-skirmish missions (and many more to come) are written with our internal mission language; it's capable of coordinating between missions and groups of players and npcs, etc, and isn't nearly as user-friendly as the mission-editor available to the Player Contribution Corp. Our Common Lisp prototyping environment, Deliverator, has very little interaction with SQL. It stores persistent info in serialized-lisp-object files. We have plans for a more scalable architecture, but we think we can get away with what we've got for a while longer.
An update on the testing progress:
The first bug that someone turned up is proving difficult to find. It results in the mission not ending. There also seems to be a rare case where the bots all stop somewhere short of the destination. Thanks for the help so far! I hope to see more of you on the test server- people have different play-styles and turn up different bugs.
All the bugs I've been able to duplicate are fixed as far as I know. There are a couple more that have been reported, but I haven't been able to capture enough info on them yet. Going to sleep now- here's hoping I wake up to reports of everything working like clockwork (and peace on earth while we're at it).
Woah, bugalicious.
Good things:
* Bots no longer become unresponsive. Even in the levi sector, the bots weren't jumping around or ignoring me like they used to.
Bad things:
* Mission messages lag by several minutes. I'd kill a bot, then 1-4 minutes later, I'd get the "Good work, Roguelazer" message.
* Bot chat lags by several minutes. I'd enter a sector with pirate bots in it and they'd start attacking me. I'd run away. Several minutes later, I'd get an "Arr" message from the bots that were attacking me.
* Hive Queens in the Levi sector are broken. They warp in, fly in a circle, then warp out
* Observers are broken. They seem to be trying to ram the player as best as they can
* Teammates in hive hunt are broken. The Xang Xi ships warp in one or two at a time and die quickly. The capship never appears, which means the levi is very, very difficult to kill.
* I didn't get any credit for the majority of my hive kills. I got maybe 5 rewards for killing maybe 10 or 15 bots.
Good things:
* Bots no longer become unresponsive. Even in the levi sector, the bots weren't jumping around or ignoring me like they used to.
Bad things:
* Mission messages lag by several minutes. I'd kill a bot, then 1-4 minutes later, I'd get the "Good work, Roguelazer" message.
* Bot chat lags by several minutes. I'd enter a sector with pirate bots in it and they'd start attacking me. I'd run away. Several minutes later, I'd get an "Arr" message from the bots that were attacking me.
* Hive Queens in the Levi sector are broken. They warp in, fly in a circle, then warp out
* Observers are broken. They seem to be trying to ram the player as best as they can
* Teammates in hive hunt are broken. The Xang Xi ships warp in one or two at a time and die quickly. The capship never appears, which means the levi is very, very difficult to kill.
* I didn't get any credit for the majority of my hive kills. I got maybe 5 rewards for killing maybe 10 or 15 bots.
Rogue: The hive queens in the levi sector have been broken for a long time, and there hasn't been a capship in a levi sector in a very long time too.
I was just hoping that these updates would fix that. :-D
had a try at some escort missions, I think deliverator was completely bogged down . Took ages to get the mission going , then it just ground to a halt.
I'll try again tomorrow
Ecka
I'll try again tomorrow
Ecka
1. there are no hive bots in sedina. all gone. bye bye! dunno why.
2. there are a lot of storms in sedina. in fact, every single roid sector i went to had a storm in it. like 8 in a row.
3. same story 1. + 2. in latos.
4. clicking 'trade missions' at xangxi Sedina L2 then hitting 'nevermind', suddenly i cannot see any other missions. tried abort/etc. no worky. had to redock.
5. xang xi L2 has no 'escort mission'
6. xang xi L2 has a 'wingman mission', which first of all is not really a 'mission', second of all, why does it show up if you can only take it in a UIT/Itani/Serc station?
7. xang xi L2 has no 'hive hunt' mission
8. latos TPG station has no escort missions either
2. there are a lot of storms in sedina. in fact, every single roid sector i went to had a storm in it. like 8 in a row.
3. same story 1. + 2. in latos.
4. clicking 'trade missions' at xangxi Sedina L2 then hitting 'nevermind', suddenly i cannot see any other missions. tried abort/etc. no worky. had to redock.
5. xang xi L2 has no 'escort mission'
6. xang xi L2 has a 'wingman mission', which first of all is not really a 'mission', second of all, why does it show up if you can only take it in a UIT/Itani/Serc station?
7. xang xi L2 has no 'hive hunt' mission
8. latos TPG station has no escort missions either
Apologies to Ananzi and anyone else who tried to test the new missions since early this morning. I forgot to reset things on zarniwoop before i went to sleep. I'll get things into a good state for testing sometime in the next hour.
<long_copy_and_paste>
build 8L127
MacOS version 1048
This is a Power Macintosh with a processor that I am unaware of: 0x00000144
Hardware: (18 100:PPC 970) PowerMac11,2 @ 2500 MHz (x4), 2048 MB
[Thu Oct 12 21:47:12 2006] Found driver: "Mac sound driver". Type 1, Version 8.1. Load @0x00641340
[Thu Oct 12 21:47:12 2006] Instantiate address: 0x5de144
[Thu Oct 12 21:47:12 2006] Found driver: "OpenGL Reference GKGL driver". Type 5, Version 66.0. Load @0x006414b0
[Thu Oct 12 21:47:12 2006] Instantiate address: 0x70e590
sound driver initialized.
generic collection
unhandled page: 7
[shortened by momerath]
generic collection
generic collection
Input driver initialized.
[Thu Oct 12 21:47:47 2006] Flight-Assist mode enabled.
Using server zarniwoop.guildsoftware.com, loginname moldyman
[Thu Oct 12 21:47:57 2006] Using server zarniwoop.guildsoftware.com, loginname moldyman
Protocol version does not match server.
[Thu Oct 12 21:47:57 2006] Protocol version does not match server.
Please use the update utility to update your Vendetta installation.
[Thu Oct 12 21:47:57 2006] Please use the update utility to update your Vendetta installation.
<long_copy_and_paste/>
build 8L127
MacOS version 1048
This is a Power Macintosh with a processor that I am unaware of: 0x00000144
Hardware: (18 100:PPC 970) PowerMac11,2 @ 2500 MHz (x4), 2048 MB
[Thu Oct 12 21:47:12 2006] Found driver: "Mac sound driver". Type 1, Version 8.1. Load @0x00641340
[Thu Oct 12 21:47:12 2006] Instantiate address: 0x5de144
[Thu Oct 12 21:47:12 2006] Found driver: "OpenGL Reference GKGL driver". Type 5, Version 66.0. Load @0x006414b0
[Thu Oct 12 21:47:12 2006] Instantiate address: 0x70e590
sound driver initialized.
generic collection
unhandled page: 7
[shortened by momerath]
generic collection
generic collection
Input driver initialized.
[Thu Oct 12 21:47:47 2006] Flight-Assist mode enabled.
Using server zarniwoop.guildsoftware.com, loginname moldyman
[Thu Oct 12 21:47:57 2006] Using server zarniwoop.guildsoftware.com, loginname moldyman
Protocol version does not match server.
[Thu Oct 12 21:47:57 2006] Protocol version does not match server.
Please use the update utility to update your Vendetta installation.
[Thu Oct 12 21:47:57 2006] Please use the update utility to update your Vendetta installation.
<long_copy_and_paste/>