"Trade While Hidden" puzzle (Large House with Patio reward)

[Batlin]

WARNING! This is not an in-game event but still very closely related with the goal of this shard.

Searching is an art, do you master it? http://www.searchlores.org/

About one month and halve ago Matron De Winter issued a bug report where he claimed you should be able to trade while hidden.
http://forum.uosecondage.com/viewtopic. ... 35&p=65907
I actually had vague memories of this too and had no way to proove this, then came the day Derrick said:

Because the demo is (currently) single player it's not (yet) possible to test this on the demo.

And indeed, the PvP demo shows you could trade while hidden on OSI in june 1998. I'm absolutely certain Matron is on top of it with his memories, but why doesn't it work anymore even if the packet is send like Derrick said?

I've really become lazy the last couple of weeks and I seek your help to solve this puzzle. Therefor I'm rewarding the first player to come up with a solid case about this topic with a deed to a Large House with patio.

The rules:
1) make sure to answer the following 2 questions:
- is trade while hidden T2A era accurate? (aka "when did it stop working?")
- why did it stop working?
3) make sure you have the evidence for each question
4) reply with your answer here (no PM's)
5) be carefull, make sure your answers are solid before posting
(you don't wish to hand out clues to the competition!?)
6) if you do this in group, there is only one deed, the actual poster will get the deed
(it's up to him to use a scissor and cut the deed in (equal) parts)

The answers are out there and for you to find. If necessary I'll hand a out a hint when I desire to do so.

Good luck.

[Hemperor]

Something to note, possibly.

On the demo today, I killed myself on Avatar (the host) with an explode pot. But when you have the wisp you don't even reach the death screen before the wisp has saved you! However on my client's side I could not see Avatar, only his wisp following him.

I was unable to see the trade screen that was brought up on Avatar's screen when trying to trade, on Hemperor's. I would of course still lose stamina when walking on Avatar's tile etc because Avatar was the host. Not sure if related at all, but something to note.

I can try to recreate this today if necessary and record.

[Hemperor]

I'll take a quick stab at this. I believe there was an exploit through ExtremeUO or whatever it was called that allowed you to see hidden players. This is because the server would still send your clients the packets of them, your client actually knew they were there however they were made invisible to the user. Packets loaded for the character, trade was possible. In the situation in my last post, somehow the character got lost in a jumble of whoknowswhat, my client was unaware of Avatar's presence, thus not being able to see the trade screen.

Very vague and broad I know, but possibly a start to something. Does the server here send out packets of the hidden players to other players within range? It would make sense if it didn't.

EDIT: No one likes a triple post, heheh:

Never really took a look at the original post to clearly, just wanted to get my experience from today out there. But from further thinking I believe I may have this figured out already, so to answer the questions:

1) make sure to answer the following 2 questions:
- is trade while hidden T2A era accurate? (aka "when did it stop working?")
- why did it stop working?

Trade while hidden would have been accurate because the client would have still been aware of a hidden players presence, however still invisible to the user. This allowed the exploit of ExtremeUO to reveal these players to the user, because the packets of the hidden player were still received. Because the presence of the hidden player was known, it was possible for a trade window to exist on both sides.

Through my experience today, the client (hemperor) was unaware of Avatar's presence and therefore unable to see the trade window on his screen. I'm going to assume that the shard here doesn't send the packets of hidden players (possibly to avoid exploits like ExtremeUO had done) and therefore the trade window isn't able to be seen on the non-hidden player's screen.

I will try to recreate this on the demo, I am not sure how easy it will be, may have been a one time fluke.

EDIT: Final answer:

Several measures will be put in place against users of UOExtreme and UOPlugin.
You will no longer be able to see hidden and invisible people with it.
Bank box exploits will be fixed.
Stealing exploits will be fixed.

In simpler words, packets of hidden players were no longer sent to others in the region after this patch. Would explain why it was still possible to do on the demo. To answer the question "Is this accurate?". No, this seems to be way out of the target frame, although an interesting question and answer, it is mainly pre-T2A.

here is my recreation on the demo:
http://www.yourfilelink.com/get.php?fid=502222
I could have hidden and then traded and the window would have showed up, however I'm lazy and this has already been confirmed.

[Batlin]

I accept your answer sir.
You surprised me. You win.

On the demo today, I killed myself on Avatar (the host) with an explode pot. But when you have the wisp you don't even reach the death screen before the wisp has saved you! However on my client's side I could not see Avatar, only his wisp following him.

I was unable to see the trade screen that was brought up on Avatar's screen when trying to trade, on Hemperor's. I would of course still lose stamina when walking on Avatar's tile etc because Avatar was the host. Not sure if related at all, but something to note.

These two are closely related with the trade while hidden issue. The other client not seeing you must be a bug in the core, probably the method the wisp is using to resurrect you is the not proper method to handle resurrection. I will try to modify the wisp script to solve that issue, the wisp script was never ment to be used in a multi-player environment anyways.

The video you posted shows the Avatar right after wisp-aided-resurrection, because of the bug the other client doesn't know you're there and doesn't paint while walking and indeed you can't trade. If you would have been visible, then hid and traded you could have seen the trade window.

This is also why there is no explicit patch note about "trading while hidden", it got fixed without intention.

[MatronDeWinter]

Thanks for paying hemperor to figure this one out!

[Hemperor]

Another side note, recreating this on the demo is only possible if you kill yourself with a purple potion without targeting it. Throwing the potions at my feet would bring me to 0 hits however still visible on the other client. Very strange.

[archaicsubrosa77]

actually trading while hidden happened after T2A as well so I think it may have never been resolved, here is an account of someone using this exploit to keep someone from looting their own corpse having a hidden trade window up that only the hidden trader could see
http://groups.google.be/group/rec.games ... 7e48d6beec

[Hemperor]

actually trading while hidden happened after T2A as well so I think it may have never been resolved, here is an account of someone using this exploit to keep someone from looting their own corpse having a hidden trade window up that only the hidden trader could see
http://groups.google.be/group/rec.games ... 7e48d6beec

Not sure if you actually read this post or the one you linked, but:

One point though - How come I didn't see a trade window during getting
my stuff back? Is this a feature of being hidden or is it a bug? Perhaps OSI
should write some code into the game that allows ALL your gear to return to
you if you dbl-click your own blue corpse. Just a thought.

Just the way it works, bug if you will, design if you won't. Hiding while
after a trade window is open or opening a trade window by dropping something
on someone while hidden does it every time

You also stated "that only the hidden trader could see"...that is essentially what this post is about!

[archaicsubrosa77]

Yeah the thing was you could open the trade window but the other could not see it. That is what the original post concerning this was about that Matron wrote.
You could open the window but the other character could not see it to close it.
You couldnt drag items from anything but your pack when a trade window was open so this was exploited so you'd keep a person busy trying to close a window or running back and forth to auto close it to wait for the body to decay to the point it would be lootable, or enough time for your friend to get there.

[Hemperor]

Yeah the thing was you could open the trade window but the other could not see it. That is what the original post concerning this was about that Matron wrote.
You could open the window but the other character could not see it to close it.
You couldnt drag items from anything but your pack when a trade window was open so this was exploited so you'd keep a person busy trying to close a window or running back and forth to auto close it to wait for the body to decay to the point it would be lootable, or enough time for your friend to get there.

That is an interesting note and may already be implemented here. Seems like the trade window not showing up when the client doesn't "know" about the hidden character is client side only, so I would assume that the tactic you just mentioned is already implemented here.

[archaicsubrosa77]

Yeah this has nothing to do about the contest just a side note.
Keeping in mind that his can be ueseful to good and evil players alike.
The red looting your friend? Throw a trade window up.

[tekai]

Jees I gotta pay hemp to change his stand on all kill and help me research that.

I know it was stealth patched =p