Blckfire, hosting / scripting / both ?

[Emirien]

Okey, so i have been thinking of it lately, with the recent spike in lag and the way the server sometimes goes down for hours and even days without any apperant idea that the server is down, Should blckfire hand the server over to someone else for hosting, and focus entirely on scripting, or keep things as they are?

If we think about it for a bit,

If blckfire hands the hosting problems over to someone else, he can deticate 100% of his "uo time" to scripting, instead of having to think about the hosting aspect as well. That could perhaps ease his burden and give us religions quicker.


Just my thoughts of the day..... Semi wishing for religions to get out allready so we can see if that is the reason the playerbase is down or if its because the game is, unfortionatly as that is, too old to captivate the minds of people again.

Either that or get another scripter into the team so there will be some process on this matter.

Blckfire, can you hand us over any, ANY information other than "being worked on" about the ETA for religions ?
There was talk of september 2016, but that window came and left with nothing more than empty promises.
You had said back in april of 2016 that adv guild was 75% done

We are currently on a standby...

RL is too busy and kinda complicated atm to actually put anything out. I hope this improves in the next couple of months since I want to have religions up, the latest by, September.

I know we are always delaying stuff but the truth is at this time things are really complicated on my side of things. Once things get better I'm sure you'll see some more updates.

Just to let you guys know the update of the Adventurer's Guild is about 75% complete (it will not add nothing apart from some bug fixes).

After that I'll definitely take all the time I have free to work on Religions but, like I said, at this point my free time is almost close to null.

Then back in june you said

In Blckfire's defense, scripting isn't anywhere near as simple as popping on for 20 minutes, as I'd say it typically takes at least 30+ minutes to get your mind into a state where you can actually do some productive coding (remembering all the various connections, objects, quirks, etc.)...

Thanks for this, totally true and that's why things are moving slowly. Because to I need to have at least 1h completely free and undisturbed to be able to get something done. Which at this point in time, is complicated.

But I'm working things out, so I can free some time to be able to be more active.

Then from 28'th September we get this

Current status

Adv Guild: 80-90% completion.

Religions Phase 1: 50-75% completion.

I can't give a really good estimate for the phase 1 of religions because it still depends on how much content we're going to release in this phase. We want to guarantee that all the classes will be playable but religions as we used to know them are still some phases away.

Once we have the base set up and all the basic functionality is there, development should go faster. But, we need a strong base and that takes time to build. Also, once everything is done in Adv Guild I'm sure data manipulation will not be a problem so the completion of Religions Phase 1 should also go faster.

As a side note, development in POL is really slow because we don't have a debugger, so we have to do nasty things, like, create our own debugging system, which basically takes up more than the half of the lines of code needed in a normal program because for every line of functional code we need to add a test to know if some problem occurred since, the only thing we get from POL is a line saying that something went wrong in some script and sometimes there is simply no feedback at all. You can opt by not adding any debugging system which in turn will make your life a living hell because you will take double the time to find the place where the bug occurred. So, it's not really a choice, it is a necessity. On top of this, when handling some scripts the server must be restarted so that the changes are activated, which ofc takes some minutes away from coding.

I was asked to share this post I did yesterday in the counselors corner in response to a question related the status of things. It also explains why development is slow on top of my time restrictions.

We went from april to september 5% in adv guild? 5 months for 5% ? Really ?

And then we had this, 6'th of December :

Like I said, after Adv Guild was done I'd start looking into religions.

That's what's happening right now!

I can't give ETAs. But I can assure you that nothing will come up before the new year.

I can put some points that need to be worked on before religions are out:
- Base tome (75% done)
- Make sure all the rites included in the base tome work properly and are not prone to cause shard lag (0% done, this should also not take much time but some refactoring will for sure happen)
- Neutral religion join process (0% done)
- Neutral religion menu (0% done, this can actually be the item that takes more time)

Some extra work was done already like, for example a tool to place the altars or the base code to create dynamic menus (I'm still looking into this, because, maybe, everything is going to be changed to HTML menus).

This is what's on my TODO list for the moment.

Can you show us any progress in the last 30 days? Or is the base tome up by 1% in the last month ?

Allso, character appearance changers, you talked about handing them out after religions come out

Once religions are out we will put out an one time use item per character.

. How about you throw them out now ? Why after religions?


I hate to be the one to break the silence, but it seems to me that the staff is borderline just holding on to the server to keep a hold of the server.

If you dont have time for the project, let someone else take over.



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I will end my rambling now but show us something, ANYTHING, that proves that religions are on the way, not just empty promises.

[Simmo]

I agree, noone is doubting in Blckfires skills. Its just how Pangaeas scripters roll, they all have their active moments for first few months and then get boored or rl happens. It reminds me Alterans shard at some point, nothing happening. If we have a new candidate (?) for the host then do it, Blckfire keeps scripting. There is a lot of job to do that does not need scripting, let the boss decide and minions(Vulcan, Argon) bring it to life.

[Yonki]

I posted on the map chat 2 days ago that I´m willing to personally pay for the shard to be hosted at a company here in Iceland that specialize in this kind of stuff. It would probably work well fort both USA players and Europe players since Iceland is in the middle. If the shard goes down we will have a direct contact to a person on duty at this company who can fix this at any given time. I would of course be open to that those that play would donate like has been done before, but I would pay the rest or as a whole if no one wants to.

Lagging would also probably be a lot less since the sea lines between the UK and USA are excellent here in Iceland. In 2014 I think they put a new string between USA and Europe through Iceland, which is the fastest one connecting USA to Europe. Just a thought if the playerbase is interested.

And btw. If you can´t create accounts directly through the site... we won´t get new players in the playerbase... I think that HAS to be a priority...


-Sincerely, Jón Áki Jensson (Yonki)

[Emirien]

I posted on the map chat 2 days ago that I´m willing to personally pay for the shard to be hosted at a company here in Iceland that specialize in this kind of stuff. It would probably work well fort both USA players and Europe players since Iceland is in the middle. If the shard goes down we will have a direct contact to a person on duty at this company who can fix this at any given time. I would of course be open to that those that play would donate like has been done before, but I would pay the rest or as a whole if no one wants to.

Lagging would also probably be a lot less since the sea lines between the UK and USA are excellent here in Iceland. In 2014 I think they put a new string between USA and Europe through Iceland, which is the fastest one connecting USA to Europe. Just a thought if the playerbase is interested.

And btw. If you can´t create accounts directly through the site... we won´t get new players in the playerbase... I think that HAS to be a priority...


-Sincerely, Jón Áki Jensson (Yonki)

I was actually thinking if he decides to hand over the shard that i'd offer one of my spare machines to host the shard.

I have fiber connection, 1gb up / down speed, the designated server machine has 24gb DDR3 ram, will have a new SSD and has a i7 930 2.8ghz cpu with proper cooling.
To London

to New York

To Sydney


And within Iceland


These are the speeds and ping im getting via speedtest while having 2 gaming computers and 1 file server going on 24/7.
If, and i say again, IF, i will get to host the server i will rework my internal network to focus on supporting the machine that will host the server.


But the ball is in blckfire's yard, what do you want to do ?

[Glarundis]

Can you show us any progress in the last 30 days? Or is the base tome up by 1% in the last month ?

I hate to be the one to break the silence, but it seems to me that the staff is borderline just holding on to the server to keep a hold of the server.

If you dont have time for the project, let someone else take over.



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I will end my rambling now but show us something, ANYTHING, that proves that religions are on the way, not just empty promises.

I think this is the main problem. Of course,even if things are being worked on, they will take time, but it's understandable, it's not an easy task. The problem is that, for all we know, religions could be at 1%, we can't really tell. And like emirien said on the OP, months and months have passed by, but still, we are just like we were 12 months or so ago..We need something to make us see, and something IG, not a post every now and then (which I do appreciate, so thanks for those, but still, we need to _see_ something)

[James Blackburn]

screw whats done, question is, if anything is being worked on even atm, i'd like to hear honest asnwer, from current staff, is anyone even active from current staff atm, considering it took more than month to check bug forums for 3 of them? it would be nice if they would atleast let everyone know that they have failed and nothing is being worked on

[Cyrus Tegyr]

Well last I heard over the last couple weeks tomes in their base form are being actively tested.

In terms of progression on the map front I need to get a hold of my current IRL situation and get out of a rut of depression I'm in (fear not, not suicidal, that's the coward's way out), then I'll get back to it I'm already feeling better just tiring with all that's going on in my life.

When map is done I'm going to push for a staff forum access so that I can stay more in touch with staff and try to put my meter scripting abilities to use. Tyrion and I have been in relatively constant talk about ideas I think that would make various aspects better and improved. I've got various ideas for future goodies as the religion system is Blckfire's baby I'm willing to help with what I can but many of my ideas are merchant oriented as well as a different look at the siege system as I think we all know that can be really improved and be more open in terms of guilds being able to be active in it. My thoughts are essentially a modified version of the OSI faction system. (Though this is something I have not discussed with current staff.)

[James Blackburn]

Well last I heard over the last couple weeks tomes in their base form are being actively tested.

In terms of progression on the map front I need to get a hold of my current IRL situation and get out of a rut of depression I'm in (fear not, not suicidal, that's the coward's way out), then I'll get back to it I'm already feeling better just tiring with all that's going on in my life.

When map is done I'm going to push for a staff forum access so that I can stay more in touch with staff and try to put my meter scripting abilities to use. Tyrion and I have been in relatively constant talk about ideas I think that would make various aspects better and improved. I've got various ideas for future goodies as the religion system is Blckfire's baby I'm willing to help with what I can but many of my ideas are merchant oriented as well as a different look at the siege system as I think we all know that can be really improved and be more open in terms of guilds being able to be active in it. My thoughts are essentially a modified version of the OSI faction system. (Though this is something I have not discussed with current staff.)

so atleast pang isn't complately ditched, good to hear that, since there was nothing new posted from blackfire and co for a while, it felt that staff is complately out

[Cyrus Tegyr]

I concur, communication needs to be better, you know I've had my differences with this and I'll be honest about every past administration, there has and still continues to be a serious break down in communication.

While most of my disagreements usually stem from what I see as terrible decisions, one of my biggest complaints currently and this view is shared by others is what the hell is going on, a thread if it is to be used for updates should not be called weekly updates where the majority of posts are questions trying to find out what is going on. With that in mind I'm going to try to keep my ear to the ground and if I have to do it I will try to keep players in the loop, though at times I feel a bit shut out as I'm not technically staff.

As for any ideas I have with regards to replacing the jobs system or the siege system with a more osi centric system which I think is much more fair for both defender/attacker alike, all I'm currently doing for those is putting the Gumps together and the rest of the bits will need to be filled in. Most of this work is done for me as I reconstruct alot of these Gump's by examining RunUO scripts and make the proper changes from there to be POL compliant, however sometimes I have to reconstruct Gump's through screen shots and get them as close as possible.

[LacedUp]

he took 6mnths to respond to my ticket just to get my accts active. gLad he responded, eventually, but current staff need to make room for people who give a damn.