Inaccurate House Caching

[mrbojangles]

Credit goes to Kryptonical for initially bringing this up over in the client support forum, but I think this is an accuracy issue, so i'll post it over here.

original discussion: http://forum.uosecondage.com/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=15890

I vaguely recall this being possible way back when on osi. I'm trying to set it up now so that the houses I own are permanently cached so when I log on I will be able to have the insides of that house showing prior to stepping on the stairs.

Any thoughts on how to get this done?

If you haven't already, you can go in "UO Options -> Misc -> Last Option". The max you can cache is 1000 houses with this method.

This option currently has no effect.

What orionsune points out, makes me believe that our current cache system is inaccurate. Why would there be an option to cache up to 1000 houses, if they aren't being cached at all.

I'm fairly certain that I remember that once a house was visited, it will remain cached for a long time (probably until you fill up all 1000 cache spots, then cycled out.)

So the system should be, items in houses are invisible until you step on the steps, and then once you do they stay in your cache untill cycled out by the 1000 house limit.

[Krats]

IIRC no source beyond memory. A house would stay cached until you crossed a sub-server.

[MatronDeWinter]

That option is session based. Increasing it only increases the amount of houses that are cached in that session before it starts uncaching the old houses. It always resets on login, or like pointed out above, when crossing a server line.

Reducing it is more of a RAM-saver than anything else.

[Derrick]

This client caching would be entirely client side, there is nothing (that I know of) server side that would even have access to this setting.

This is EA's description of this feature:

Cache this many houses on client - Sets the number of houses that will be saved on your hard drive. This can increase client performance at the cost of disk space.

This is likely caching of the house itself, not the contents, and is likely the cause of the "ghost houses" that sometimes occur when a house is redeeded.

There is a max update range in the client for items, when you move too far away the client simply erases the items from memory. Houses are "tricked out" a little bit so that you always either see all the contents of the house or none, as in initial development if you moved a screen and a half away from a castle for example, you'd only see half the castle contents (the ones closest to you), when you came back. The items are resent to the client in this case, the client will not cache them by any mechanism that I'm aware of.

However, on the subject of hacking the client to extend this range, it should be very possible.