the reveal spell: not era accurate

[Matty]

i love what the admins of UOSA do to try to make the experience more real. wanna start by saying that. i also wanna say: change it back please! you could reveal everyone in a small house by using the spell reveal during this era if you targeted the tile closest to the house.

[Kaivan]

This has been discussed in the previous thread. and the same question still stands. What proof do we have that reveal operated on such a large radius? All evidence that we have points to a very small radius from the demo and beyond, and the functionality for reveal was still RunUO default as per Derrick's own statements, which is clearly at odds with that evidence.

[Matty]

This has been discussed in the previous thread. and the same question still stands. What proof do we have that reveal operated on such a large radius? All evidence that we have points to a very small radius from the demo and beyond, and the functionality for reveal was still RunUO default as per Derrick's own statements, which is clearly at odds with that evidence.

just that the spell was never like this. trust me on this one! 2 tiles was never the case.

[Kaivan]

Unfortunately, we cannot make any changes without information to back up the change.

[Matty]

Unfortunately, we cannot make any changes without information to back up the change.

i didn't see much info backing the initial change. the demo was referred to? a lot of the mechanics in demos are wrong, and never made it live, right? the only reason i know for an absolute fact that it's off is because... it's extremely off. you got revealed more than this radius is a fact regardless of the evidence that's been considered. please consider changing it back.

[Kaivan]

Certain mechanics in the demo are ignored for direct implementation because of evidence showing changes after the time of the demo. This is not the case with the radius for reveal, and in fact, recent evidence suggests the same very limited range for reveal is still true on OSI servers today.

[Matty]

Certain mechanics in the demo are ignored for direct implementation because of evidence showing changes after the time of the demo. This is not the case with the radius for reveal, and in fact, recent evidence suggests the same very limited range for reveal is still true on OSI servers today.

thank you for your research on this topic. i want to point out just how useful of a spell reveal was back in 98. many mages had hiding and pks would often use this spell in "hot spots" with great success. remember the room just inside despise? harpy room? elders? in cove liches, 5 reveals would just about cover the ENTIRE radius of the room. if it were the way it is now, the spell would rarely have been used.

someone else please refute this evidence. i have gained much more of an advantage than just about any UOSA player with this patch, as i have 4 stealth characters! i benefit from the inaccuracy more than anyone but it is so off that i have to speak up about it.

also, i owe you guys a thank you. i just heard from my buddy this shard got much more accurate, concerning a couple of unrelated patches that went live today!

[Kaivan]

Personal anecdotal evidence, 13 years after the fact, is not evidence. The only concrete evidence we have at our disposal right now is the demo, which clearly states a 2 tile radius. Without meaningful evidence from the era that clearly refutes the 2 tile radius, we cannot make any sort of change.

If you're not willing to bring evidence to the table, then the discussion is closed until new evidence is brought fourth.

Edit: I just completed a test on OSI servers which confirms the 2 tile radius for reveal from the demo. The radius is still the same, 14 years removed from the demo. Without absolutely crystal clear proof that reveal was changed not once, but twice, we will not be changing the range for reveal.

[Derrick]

I am in full agreement that the evidence for the normal range of this spell is incontrovertible. Is there any indication that it may have behaved differently in or around houses such as detect hidden does?

I have no reason to believe that would be the case; just trying to find a bridge between the recollection and the facts.

[Kaivan]

There have been very few changes to the reveal spell over the years, and none of them have ever involved houses. Detect hidden was the skill that was designed for use in a house with no cost attached.

[Matty]

There have been very few changes to the reveal spell over the years, and none of them have ever involved houses. Detect hidden was the skill that was designed for use in a house with no cost attached.

i'm only using houses as an example to gauge the radius of the spell. very few people, and no pvpers, had the skill detect hidden. certain thieves did. by saying "you were able to reveal everyone in a small house using a single reveal spell" i really mean reveal covered more than a 2 tile radius.

certain things have been altered in this game without referring to the demo, right? or is that all we go by?

[iamreallysquall]

There have been very few changes to the reveal spell over the years, and none of them have ever involved houses. Detect hidden was the skill that was designed for use in a house with no cost attached.

i'm only using houses as an example to gauge the radius of the spell. very few people, and no pvpers, had the skill detect hidden. certain thieves did. by saying "you were able to reveal everyone in a small house using a single reveal spell" i really mean reveal covered more than a 2 tile radius.

certain things have been altered in this game without referring to the demo, right? or is that all we go by?

yes "certain things" have but it has been based of other valid information never "what someone remembers" check out viewtopic.php?f=8&t=8711

[so.you.want.to.be...]

certain things have been altered in this game without referring to the demo, right? or is that all we go by?

I think that the idea is that we have the info from the demo that we know was correct at one point in time. If you can find other info that indicates that it was changed from the demo or other information to indicate exactly how it was working in era, they will change it.

Currently, however, it appears as if we have no info about changes to the demo and no information from era explaining how reveal worked in era. As such, all we have are memories from 15 year ago as to how it worked which may or may not be 100% accurate and which will vary from person to person. I don't think it is correct to change the mechanics based on just memories. (Although I tend to agree that the spell worked differently in era but those memories are 15 years old for me too).

[nightshark]

there's also a screenshot in galad episodes which backs up the claim that reveal spell had a very small range. you can see the "azns" attempting to reveal galad, one is even facing the correct direction to his hidden character after targeting the reveal. on UOSA the reveal spell range was so large that this would have been impossible.

since the screenshot is far from being proof (too many variables to consider), i haven't bothered to link it.

[Derrick]

I think that the idea is that we have the info from the demo that we know was correct at one point in time. If you can find other info that indicates that it was changed from the demo or other information to indicate exactly how it was working in era, they will change it.

Indeed. the demo is a code base that can prove with certainly that a particular mechanic worked in a precise way at a particular point in time. We can then move through published patch notes to see if the mechanic may have changed (they are often vague).

I (not all) accept that it's possible that some things which changed were not mentioned in the patch notes. In absence of other evidence, we can also go to the current EA UO Servers and test the mechanic there. If it's the same in the 1998 Demo as on the Live EA servers, we can have good confidence that it never changed.

In this case, all of these things have been done, leaving no evidence but uncertain (by nature) recollection that the range was greater. We cannot make a change based on a recollection when there is strong evidence to the contrary (overwhelming in this case). We would not likely make any change without good physical evidence to support it in demo code or subsequent patch notes.

That being said, there are a host of little things that we know are not yet correct on Second Age; and the reasons for these vary: time to implement, clarity of the actual mechanic, interference with other incorrect mechanics, haven't gotten to it yet, etc. These are the things that will be near the top of our priority list, being trumped only by exploitable bugs or trouble with the implementations of existing systems.