Publish 3 issues

[fooka03]

Everything in this post is in regards to publish 3 (Feb '00)
http://www.uoguide.com/Publish_3

There are currently a lot of things implemented in UOSA that come from this patch that have been discussed in other threads but nothing has really come from it. I'd like to start refocusing some dev energy on these things now that the pvp crowd got their precious hally double hit

The trade window

This item is currently implemented exactly as stated in this patch. To get this back on track to be within our era timeframe several things must be changed.

• - Trapped items should be allowed to be traded.
  
  - Stolen items should be able to be traded practically immediately after theft. (This is sorta implemented in that for a true success the item is bankable and tradeable, however partial success is still not tradeable)
  
  - Overweight items/overlimit items should be allowed to be traded, excess items (over 125) or the overweight item should drop at the player's feet after the trade exactly how it behaves with vendor purchases.
  
  - Items should be able to be picked up while the trade window is open (have not tested this to see if it's implemented properly.)

Animal/monster spawns

Animals/monsters contained in houses should remain there until slain or moved/removed without the need for interaction. If they are away from their "home area" and untamed they should make every effort to return as normal but they should not be teleported/killed as they currently are.

NPCs/Monsters

There are a few things that are off here still.

• - NPCs should not list the skills they offer to train when you say "train"
  
  - Some monsters should have backpacks of loot, sometimes monsters should drop "a scroll"
  
  - NPC merchants should be reviewed in the demo to adjust some of their wares as it seems that before this patch they would not always carry expected items.

Moongates

Single clicking on a moongate should just bring up "blue moongate", not a description of where it leads.


There are other things mentioned in this patch that are either not implemented here (the secure pet/house trades) or are something I cannot check (the guildstone changes, retamed pet loyalties, smithy difficulty changes, healing based on dex). If these are some things you can cast a light on (either through shard experience, or demo code) please post here.

I know it's a lengthy read but these are several things that are massively out of era and should be looked at to patch, or at the very least discussed to come up with a patching content/schedule.

[MatronDeWinter]

All this stuff has made it to the forums at some time or another. The t2a moongate thing just proved to be too confusing for people i believe, people whined about trade window weight-scams etc.

[Mens Rea]

Good finds - I haven't seen a lot of these things in the forums [for a long time, at least].

Let it be so!

[fooka03]

All this stuff has made it to the forums at some time or another. The t2a moongate thing just proved to be too confusing for people i believe, people whined about trade window weight-scams etc.

Yea I know they were all discussed at one point or another, just made sense to wrap them all up into one thread instead of grave-digging the other ones.

The moongate thing, tough cookies for those people. You get a spyglass, you should use it. Besides, the only time I see anyone taking the time to click the moongate is when the moons are in phase and waiting to be able to actually travel again.

For the trade window weight scams, again tough. People will just have to be more aware about how many items they have in their pack before doing deals. These things aren't "game breaking", they'll just require the players to use a little more common sense instead of having the game mechanics hold their hand.

[SighelmofWyrmgard]

Everything in this post is in regards to publish 3 (Feb '00)
http://www.uoguide.com/Publish_3

• - NPCs should not list the skills they offer to train when you say "train"

Regarding this particular item, there is a misunderstanding:

The problem was that not all NPCs would provide a skill list when you simply said, "train"; most did; lists provided may have been incomplete, or even wrong (I don't specifically recall this, but it's not impossible, since the scripts either didn't exist or were improperly enabled on those "flawed" NPCs). In any event, that (most) NPCs would provide a list of skills in response to the "train" or "teach" queries is something that entirely pre-dates T2A.

Certain other items on this list constitute senseless change: why bother to revert the moongate's response to being "looked-at"; it's a feature no one uses anyway? Gee, it will improve UOSA so much that all of those cheating Noobs will no longer receive a description of Trinsic that means nothing to them, while they are trying to get to Britain, whose description they don't recognise either ...

Many other items fall under the umbrella of what I will style, "thematic" or "spiritual" accuracy, which is merely permitting fixes to mechanically-era-accurate bugs/exploits/gameflaws, on the grounds that mechanically-era-accurate replication is merely the replication of an unfinished product; the idea of thematic accuracy as a convention I will describe in greater detail in another thread.

SS

[nightshark]

The way I remember NPCs listing skills they could train was to simply rattle off single lines of keywords.

For example, if I went to the mage guildmaster to train it would go something like this:

nightshark: Felix train
Felix: I can teach you
Felix: magery
Felix: evaluating

Since only 3 lines of text per mobile can be displayed at any one time, that is what would be displayed on the screen. If you opened up your journal you could see

nightshark: Felix train
Felix: I can teach you
Felix: magery
Felix: evaluating
Felix: meditation
Felix: wrestling
Felix: resist

-------------
I may be recalling this from a different era, or even on a RunUO server, but I'm fairly certain this is how NPCs initially listed skills they were able to train. Has anyone with access to the demo checked this?

[Derrick]

I may be recalling this from a different era, or even on a RunUO server, but I'm fairly certain this is how NPCs initially listed skills they were able to train. Has anyone with access to the demo checked this?

The description you have given is default RunUO. The text we have is directly from OSI code (read as demo)

[fooka03]

Regarding this particular item, there is a misunderstanding:

The problem was that not all NPCs would provide a skill list when you simply said, "train"; most did; lists provided may have been incomplete, or even wrong (I don't specifically recall this, but it's not impossible, since the scripts either didn't exist or were improperly enabled on those "flawed" NPCs). In any event, that (most) NPCs would provide a list of skills in response to the "train" or "teach" queries is something that entirely pre-dates T2A.

Certain other items on this list constitute senseless change: why bother to revert the moongate's response to being "looked-at"; it's a feature no one uses anyway? Gee, it will improve UOSA so much that all of those cheating Noobs will no longer receive a description of Trinsic that means nothing to them, while they are trying to get to Britain, whose description they don't recognise either ...

Many other items fall under the umbrella of what I will style, "thematic" or "spiritual" accuracy, which is merely permitting fixes to mechanically-era-accurate bugs/exploits/gameflaws, on the grounds that mechanically-era-accurate replication is merely the replication of an unfinished product; the idea of thematic accuracy as a convention I will describe in greater detail in another thread.

SS

Can we verify that this is the case with the NPCs in the demo? I do not have access to it (if someone can tell me how to get it to install on win7 x64 that would be great) so some of these things I'm only going on what was changed and what logic dictates then should be undone. I'm sure if it's the case that only a small population of the NPCs did not list, or did not list properly, or offered "wrong" skills then we should be able to check the demo for what they should be doing. Or we might even get lucky and find some of the bugged ones that show what some of the NPCs should be doing in their bugged behavior.

As to the other items being "senseless", that is your opinion, not mine. The things I listed here are four months out of era which is a pretty big gap, considering all the other things that got implemented on the way (cA still campaigning hard for implementing 100% secure housing right?) I might be a little more willing to discuss bending rules for things that are close to the era window, but not that far gone. Sure the moongates are mostly an aesthetic feature, but they are still plain wrong. They are also a relatively easy fix that take the shard a little closer to that ultimate goal of being perfectly era accurate.

Thematic fixes? Huh? If the bugs are era accurate then we should try to recreate them faithfully as evidence presents itself. Without hard evidence on the way things should behave we have to rely on the patch notes, and the gaps inbetween them, to decide how certain mechanics operate, bugs or not. I'm not trying to fix bugs that existed during the era, if anything I want to see more of them added here, they're all little parts that make up what myself, and most of us, remember about the whole T2A experience.

[SighelmofWyrmgard]

fooka,

If there are bugged NPCs in the demo, that would be really fortuitous, but I highly doubt any will be found there: for one thing, the demo is not a "complete shard" (I'm pretty sure it's only Occlo, and I'm sure player characters "properly" playing an unmodded demo are landlocked); because it's a demo, its NPC-generation is pretty-much guaranteed to be static, and not dynamic.

The situation I described (I really was there, you see) played out like this: you go to the Warrior Guildmaster NPC in Britain on Cheaspeake and say, "train", and he gives you a list; someone else on Sonoma goes to the same place and the Sonoma-version of that same NPC and says, "train", and gets nothing; Sonoma goes to Brit Healers and asks the Healer GM, and gets a list; Catskills does the same and gets no list; IIRC, the NPCs who were supposed to train would still train what they were supposed to train (maybe there were some super-bugged ones that did not even do that), they just didn't properly respond to the carte-blanche "train" query. As NPC-generation occurred by virtue of a dynamic system, this threatened to remain a persistent nuisance: in every instance of an "unbugged" Trainer-NPC being replaced, the replacement might very well be bugged; the fix applied was to "unbug" the NPC-generation system, and then make sure that all remaining Trainers were "unbugged".

Hmmm, you "claim" that you want the UOSA experience to match your "remembrances"; since you didn't remember the specifics of this issue, I'm entirely convinced you were never there.

Otherwise, I very-strongly expect that your insistence on certain items of mechanical accuracy is aimed only at personal exploitation of the associated bugs to the disadvantage of other players; I thought this immediately upon reading the OP. You "claim" that you want to "fix" things that aren't broken; I simply think you are pursuing a personal agenda.

I may have been born at night, but it wasn't last night.

SS

[fooka03]

Mamma always told me not to feed the trolls...

I'll be honest, I never asked a vendor to train me. I played a dexxer in era as my only character (my cousin and I shared an account.) So I'm largely only going on what the logs say and what logic would dictate needs to be changed to reverse them. If there's other proof as to what the mechanic should be then that is what we should go with, I just want to get it right not go on hearsay.

After looking in the demo myself it is as you say, the vendors do list what they teach. However, I want to find the innkeepers that teach me resist on UOSA...

Ok you got me, my motive is to be able to build the largest mongbat farm on the shard and not have to interact with the buggers to get them to stay put. Since this is such a noble undertaking I would assume that most of the shard would support me on making this possible.

My other motive is to see the monster loots adjusted to see backpacks and scrolls drop. God I'm such an evil bastard for wanting these era accurate things to be implemented.

Again, while all these things may seem "minor" to you, they are still things that are not accurate to the timeframe we are trying to recreate. And since the shard as a whole has a goal of era accuracy, I'm just trying to do my part. I may get things wrong sometimes, but I rely on the rest of the community to assist with research so that we can all enjoy a better experience that is closer to what WE ALL remember, not just the individual.

P.S.: Since you bring up motive, what's yours for not wanting these things to be fixed?

[SighelmofWyrmgard]

My motives are twofold:

One is to lobby against straight-jacket mechanical-era-accuracy, when it threatens to steamroll over the pleasurable play experience of other players, not favoring one individual or faction over any other; change is not synonymous with progress;

the second is attempting to help prevent the UOSA support staff from being cajoled into implementing unneccessary fixes, particularly when necessary fixes indeed still exist.

Oddly, I've developed this bizarre idea that your motives are not these absurd notions you have expressed: because I truly was a player on OSI in-era, I know of dozens upon dozens of exploits tied to era-accurate mechanics; isn't it such a remarkable co-incidence that several of these "just happen to innocently" be tied to mechanics you are lobbying to implement ... ?

Aside from those possibilities, gate-luring a dragon/balron into someone's house, for example, acquires some additional ... um, poignance, if such a creature actually acquires indefinite persistence when transplanted to a new location ...

But, of course, your only concern is "dusting the mantelpiece" ... How dare I intimate it might be otherwise!

On the subject of feeding trolls: trolls? What trolls; you?

SS

[fooka03]

Haha ok yea I'm out to abuse exploits that I have no idea what they are.

I'm not trying to coerce the staff into making these changes a priority over other things that require more immediate attention. On the contrary, the op indicates that we talk about a schedule for implementing these fixes (implies long term project)

For some of these things, sure I can see your point about arguing against them for the sake of mechanical accuracy (i.e. monster loot and the moongates). However, things like the trade window mechanics and the creature/npc persistance are pretty big deals and can add new, creative ways to play the game. Just because there are some that would attempt to exploit these changes for malicious reasons (as you said, dragon in the house) doesn't mean we should rule it out.

Since you're such an expert on the era and have a perfect memory of things from 10+ years ago, perhaps you could share your knowledge in a helpful way and try to iron out some of the issues facing the shard. Or you could continue looking for hidden motives and conspiracies where none really exist. Either way, I'm going to continue doing research and trying to unravel the era mechanics in order to make this shard as close to T2A as possible. Some of those changes are going to be bland and not game changing, but you have to take the good with the bad.

[son]

lol the verbiage

[Faust]

If there are bugged NPCs in the demo, that would be really fortuitous, but I highly doubt any will be found there: for one thing, the demo is not a "complete shard" (I'm pretty sure it's only Occlo, and I'm sure player characters "properly" playing an unmodded demo are landlocked); because it's a demo, its NPC-generation is pretty-much guaranteed to be static, and not dynamic.

True and not true.

The definition of a modded demo isn't black and white. Batlin managed to get the entire world going with some minor tweaks. However, the demo most certainly could be a 'complete' shard if someone really wanted to run one. All the code that OSI used is present, including the server code. Making a tweak in order to get this functioning properly to bypass the restrictions that was implemented on it would be a form of 'modding' in a sense. However, this is mainly done through bypasses and not adding your own code to get it working. So technically it's modding but it isn't at the same time.

[Nexus]

- Some monsters should have backpacks of loot, sometimes monsters should drop "a scroll"

The 'a scroll' items were removed from the game before Nov. This is the same for backpacks on creatures.

http://web.archive.org/web/199910121646 ... indev.html

The updates included with this "in development" were introduced on Nov 23rd (see http://www.uoherald.com/news/news.php?newsid=587 for evidence). This proves they were removed by the cutoff date.