*** Vendetta 1.8.289
- Added more optimizations to help with lag during large battles.
- Private messages, guild, group, and vote actions no longer reveal
online status for privacy reasons.

I'll be especially interested in reports of failed hit-checks under this version, particularly in grey space (where we're still testing a more drastic optimization). We expect those with large inventories to notice a reduction in 'lag' while being hit, changing turrets, or docking and undocking, especially in busy sectors; please report your experiences.

1) A hit check is when a weapon makes contact with an object?

2) Are you saying that in the past, people with immense inventories have caused the rest of us lag?

A hit check is when a weapon makes contact with an object?

Basically, continue to report when shots are hitting people but not harming them.

Are you saying that in the past, people with immense inventories have caused the rest of us lag?

The impact was predominately on the individual with the immense inventory. But, now that we're optimizing this code, we're trying to fix as many things as possible.

And then now when I start querying traders all of a sudden it wont reveal if they are online. Seriously? If you are going to take a measure like this how about you start with all the 'spy bots' that just stay logged in to stations for days. I mean seriously is TGFT a dev guild?

Seriously? We're just fixing stuff. There is no agenda, there's just a window of time and a project that fits it, or someone's modifying a given piece of code anyway and we try to clean up multiple problems at once.

Hmm, now when people mistype a name or forget the quotes, they won't even know until the person fails to respond (and they might think he's just ignoring them). Maybe it could be changed to only be ambiguous for names that have been online in the past month? That would make most actual typing errors cause an error message, without impacting privacy in a meaningful way.

there appears to be a post missing here....

And yeah, the solution to amend the "online" status was way overcompensating. We should be told if we type a username wrong (i.e. if the name doesn't exist).

The only real thing that should have been fixed was the /vote mute returning the online status, since it was a stealth way to monitor. Everything else (invites and /msg) should have been kept as is.

And yeah, the solution to amend the "online" status was way overcompensating. We should be told if we type a username wrong (i.e. if the name doesn't exist).

If we aren't checking purely if the user is online, and instead are establishing if they're a user at all, that requires a big database search of the entire historical userbase. I would rather not do that every time someone mis-types something.

But, perhaps there's a better middle-ground solution here. Admittedly, I was not very involved in this privacy fix.

ARF suggested a good one on 100 today:

Typing /vote mute should only return "your vote was recorded" -- regardless of whether or not someone was online. Everything else should function the same way as prior to this update (invites and /msgs).

@Pizzasgood: You are a "programmer", with no sympathy for non programmers. I have no sympathy for you.

establishing if they're a user at all, could be done by a plugin. there is basically no reason for a player to message anyone they have never heard or seen, and a historical database of every name ever created is overkill. name spelling can be checked client side with a plugin.

"And yeah, the solution to amend the "online" status was way overcompensating. We should be told if we type a username wrong (i.e. if the name doesn't exist).

If we aren't checking purely if the user is online, and instead are establishing if they're a user at all, that requires a big database search of the entire historical userbase. I would rather not do that every time someone mis-types something.

But, perhaps there's a better middle-ground solution here. Admittedly, I was not very involved in this privacy fix."

Export the data of players online within the last month to a flatfile every x minutes from the database. You will have a known quantity of calls to the database that can be taken into consideration for infrastructure, and then the flatfile can be referenced for such transactions. I'd be a little surprised if you aren't doing something similar already, as direct database calls would be a rather large overhead for the number of players VO hopes to support. Another alternative would be a secondary, slave database, which could handle the reads.

Greenwall: The missing posts were by Inevitable. I don't know why he deleted them. At one point he was ranting incoherently about not being allowed to quote Inc or some nonsense. I think he forgot his meds.

Funny got a lua error when i try to access station commodities sell page

vo/if_newstation_tabs lua 639 attempt to compare with nil
stack traceback:
vo/error lua 59 in function <vo/error lua 58>
vo/if_newstation_tabs lua 639 in function 'set_infodesc'
vo/if_newstation_tabs lua 663 in fuction <vo/if_newstation_tabs lua 655>
(tail call)?

if i hit the sell selected button and try to play with the dialog box buttons it generates more lua errors and do nothin': everything shows with value of 0c in the dialog box.
Cant sell anything from my inventory with the commodity page. works if i load it in the ship and sell from the welcome page.

Same with no plugin loaded so not related.

If no one else has this dont bother, probably my system's too old (linux).

CN'B

Edited: ok tis not just me
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/2/28789

We're looking into the Lua error.

Savet: Heh, thanks, but that's.. not really our issue :). We're pretty far out beyond that.

Client update has been released to fix the lua error.

I hoped you were, but you have to admit that the "fix" would make me question such a thing ;)