| 00:31.13 | Baanano | see you tomorrow |
| 00:31.35 | Wildtide | cya Baanano |
| 00:32.26 | seebs | So, thinking about the watchdog, a thought occurs to me. |
| 00:32.57 | seebs | Which is that maybe the warnings should be visible only in developer mode by default, because I think the warnings are confusing players and making them think Something Is Horribly Wrong. |
| 00:33.18 | Imhothar | had that discussion with Baanano already |
| 00:33.38 | Imhothar | it doesn't really help anyone to show that error |
| 00:33.48 | Imhothar | except the author |
| 00:34.41 | seebs | Or possibly, don't show anyone except in dev mode, but keep stats, and if you have a particular thing that's hitting it a lot, you could add it to the addon error emails. "foo_event_handler() reached 0.2 seconds of CPU time in 3.4% of all calls". :) |
| 00:36.53 | Wildtide | unfortunately, and i could be wrong, i do think part of the purpose of the current system is to point the finger of blame (rightly or wrongly) at addon authors when Rift goes slow |
| 00:37.36 | seebs | I suspect it's right a fair bit of the time. |
| 00:38.05 | seebs | It would be stupendously cool if the addon stuff could be in a separate thread from the main game, but boy would that be impractical, I think. |
| 00:38.34 | Wildtide | i'm not sure where i stand on that. in truth, how much actual *processing* is done by addons? it's the calls into the API that take all the time/CPU |
| 00:39.14 | seebs | I don't know, I'd guess some do a fairly large amount, but I don't have a division of it available. |
| 00:40.49 | seebs | It's really easy to spend a TON of time in Lua. |
| 00:41.01 | Imhothar | yesterday I hit a performance warning just by printing all members of Inspect.Setting.List() |
| 00:41.20 | Wildtide | Gadgets has a CPU monitor that splits CPU usage by "Render" and everything else. right now my client is idling at 3.2% CPU Render, and 0.4% everything else. as i understand it, Render is purely down to the number of frames on the screen, and we can do nothing to improve that other than not display so many |
| 00:41.24 | Imhothar | the major flaw, IMHO, is the time-based appraoch |
| 00:41.51 | seebs | hmm, cpu-time would be marginally better, or lua-instructions, except I bet luajit makes those hard to count. |
| 00:41.55 | Imhothar | there are too many factors that influence how long a single event needs to execute |
| 00:42.20 | Imhothar | the way the watchdog works is by checking every single API call |
| 00:42.26 | Imhothar | it doesn't manipulate the Lua runtime |
| 00:42.42 | Imhothar | everytime you get a performance warning you can see it happens inside a Rift call |
| 00:42.57 | Imhothar | that's a pretty cheap trick |
| 00:43.00 | Wildtide | ahh, that makes sense |
| 00:43.23 | Imhothar | with normal Lua you could count the opcodes and give each a certain weight |
| 00:43.41 | Imhothar | but that wouldn't account for loops |
| 00:44.11 | Imhothar | the first thing we need is to have the Watchdog track each addon separately |
| 00:44.30 | Imhothar | right now the last one in the event queue bites the bullet and which addon that is depends on the player;s environment |
| 00:44.34 | Imhothar | we can't influence that |
| 00:44.43 | Imhothar | except insert our events at the front of the event queue |
| 00:44.56 | Imhothar | which is so evil I'm gonna forget I just said that |
| 00:44.57 | Wildtide | i assumed it was which ever one happened to be running at the 0.1s threshold |
| 00:45.08 | Imhothar | aye |
| 00:45.28 | Imhothar | the further your addon is at the back of the queu, the more fucked you are |
| 00:45.34 | Imhothar | it's that simple |
| 00:46.42 | Wildtide | what would make marginally more sense, would be... assuming the event system iterates the event tables and calls each function in turn (it must do that), why not grab the time before and after each call, and see if a single event handler uses an excessive amount of time. if it does, you know which addon to blame from the event table itself |
| 00:47.14 | Wildtide | rather than time the entire event call |
| 00:48.18 | Wildtide | though i suspect the watchdog is C++, and the event iteration is Lua ipairs |
| 00:48.51 | Imhothar | you can do the iteration in C++ as well, it just takes more code |
| 00:48.59 | Imhothar | well minimally |
| 00:49.17 | Imhothar | but that's the way it should have been released, bit for whatever reason wasn't |
| 00:49.28 | Wildtide | yes, but Zorba said the watchdog times Lua context switches which equates to a single event, which suggests the iteration is done in Lua |
| 00:49.45 | Imhothar | depends on what he means by context |
| 00:49.54 | Wildtide | true :) |
| 00:50.14 | Wildtide | i read it as a call from C++ to run a Lua function |
| 00:52.30 | seebs | Huh. In theory one could replace a Lua for i, v in pairs() with C++ call that called them individually. |
| 00:53.48 | Wildtide | if that is how it works, there really is no reason for the watchdog to work the way it does |
| 00:54.26 | seebs | I am thinking it probably isn't, but could be. |
| 00:54.38 | Wildtide | yep, i agree :) |
| 00:54.56 | Imhothar | Well there is some glue code written in Lua, so maybe event execution is included in htere |
| 00:55.00 | Noshei | bah, stupid patches |
| 00:55.17 | Noshei | servers down now for patch in NA |
| 00:56.28 | Wildtide | i do think there is a lot that could be done in the client to improve performance without effecting addon code at all. for example, why are Inspect calls so expensive? lots of us are maintaining caches of unit details and updating them using events... why doesn't the system do this and just return a pointer to the table on an Inspect call? |
| 00:57.12 | seebs | My guess would be that it'd be even more expensive. |
| 00:57.13 | seebs | Although! |
| 00:57.26 | seebs | This suggests a neat thought, which is that maybe an addon to do the cache would actually be worth it. |
| 00:57.46 | Wildtide | i was just playing around doing exactly that |
| 00:57.50 | seebs | One of the underlying philosophical points, I think, is that the API is thus far focused primarily on making sure things are possible and reasonably straightforward, not necessarily efficient. |
| 00:58.48 | Imhothar | Because if it returnes always the same table, every addon could chnage its values willy-nilly |
| 00:59.08 | Wildtide | it'd have to be a read only table |
| 00:59.27 | Imhothar | that would need metatable magic which can slow down things |
| 00:59.34 | Imhothar | you'd have to make every member table read only |
| 00:59.39 | Imhothar | and every member table of member table |
| 00:59.44 | Imhothar | see where that goes? |
| 01:03.53 | Baanano|afk | hey, was watering the plants before going to bed, why do you hold the nice discussions for when i'm not around? :P |
| 01:04.05 | Wildtide | i do... but i still think there is something that can be done there |
| 01:04.13 | Imhothar | because we can ;) |
| 01:04.15 | Wildtide | hehe, we wait for you to leave Baanano|afk :) |
| 01:07.48 | Baanano|afk | for me the main flaws of the watchdog are 1) the time limit being shared by all addons: it's tempting to include an optional-after dependency on libsimplewidgets, nkgenie and other ui libs commonly used just to guarantee you're in a good position in the event queue |
| 01:08.51 | Wildtide | i suppose the way i look at it, with the possible exception of BananAH, no addons out there are dealing with a lot of data, or doing any particularly clever processing (range finding is probably as computationally expensive as it gets). so optimisation comes down to not calling the API methods as often |
| 01:09.15 | Wildtide | in which case, making the API methods a lot less expensive would be a huge win |
| 01:10.35 | Baanano|afk | 2) the fact that some api calls can take a huge amount of time (SetTexture here) and that time is credited to our addons: you need to use as UI as minimal as possible, which will be perceived by players as "this is a crappy addon" |
| 01:12.04 | Wildtide | ^-- most CPU time is attributable to the number of frames on the screen as well, which is the same. the only optimisation there is the "crappy addon" which has less on screen |
| 01:14.17 | Noshei | which event do I want to use to do stuff during the loading loading time instead of after it? |
| 01:14.19 | Baanano|afk | 3) the fact that every type of addon is measured with the same limit: i can understand the need of limiting time for addons used in combat (boss mods, cast bars, raid frames...where the focus is performance) as they can make the game unplayable, but in other addons the focus is utility: i wouldn't mind having a questing addon that sometimes freezes the screen for a second if i can save... |
| 01:14.20 | Baanano|afk | ...having to alt-tab and search the quest info |
| 01:15.43 | Wildtide | Nosh - probably not an event at all, but running as part of addon startup? |
| 01:17.50 | Noshei | well mean like when the entire UI is being loaded on initial log in and reloadui |
| 01:18.53 | Baanano|afk | after that, the watchdog is a kobayashi maru, a no-win situation, because what's the benefit of having it? can't players just decide on their own which is the max impact on performance they're willing to take from addons instead of hardcoding it? |
| 01:19.01 | seebs | Ooh. |
| 01:19.06 | seebs | That's a sort of awesome idea. |
| 01:19.27 | seebs | Well, to be fair, "sometimes freezes the screen for a second" is within what you can get from Quiet(. |
| 01:19.30 | seebs | Quiet(). |
| 01:19.46 | Wildtide | the code that runs in the main file chunks is the earliest you could get something to happen (i.e. where you register your event handlers). if that's not behind the loading screen, we can't do it |
| 01:22.17 | Baanano|afk | as somebody said (i think Imhotar), the Quiet thing is just a band-aid, and so would be increasing the limit to let's say 0.2 seconds: we'd had more time but probably we would hit it too |
| 01:22.51 | Wildtide | do you think Zorba actually likes the watchdog? maybe he's beating his head against the desk and agreeing with us, but can't say :) |
| 01:23.20 | seebs | Trion's pretty good about letting devs say "I'm not happy with X, but we need to because Y". |
| 01:23.43 | Baanano|afk | no, i don't blame zorba |
| 01:23.44 | seebs | I think, like a lot of things in Rift, it's a first pass at solving a problem, which will have problems, which will be examined and considered and eventually fixed. |
| 01:24.08 | Wildtide | take your 'ambassador' hat off, and let us moan! ;) |
| 01:25.25 | Baanano|afk | i think this is just a policy following a reasoning like "Players will start using combat addons, some of them will be crap and impact performance to the point of making encounters unplayable, and players will blame trion instead of the addon developers, so we better put a limit before that happens" |
| 01:26.08 | Imhothar | the problem with the watchdog is, that it's an attempt at solving a problem that currently is not a problem yet and was (to my understanding) a quick hack at solving the problem |
| 01:26.59 | Imhothar | maybe not a quick hack, but a dirty one for sure |
| 01:27.25 | Imhothar | adding code to each and every API method to track time since the last event can't be leading by example... |
| 01:27.45 | seebs | I was assuming there was a single common call for "now deliver this event". |
| 01:28.00 | Imhothar | that;s not the point |
| 01:28.07 | Imhothar | it;s finding out an addon is taking too long |
| 01:28.23 | Imhothar | as the UI and Lua code is in the same thread, you ca't just have a timer ticking |
| 01:28.31 | seebs | You know, come to think of it. |
| 01:28.36 | seebs | I just realized, there WAS a problem. |
| 01:28.43 | seebs | Which is that addon infinite loops could crash the game. |
| 01:28.54 | seebs | Not sure this is the right way to solve it, but there was an issue to be had. |
| 01:29.09 | Imhothar | how common is that |
| 01:29.11 | seebs | Of course, no effect on us because we write such awesome code. |
| 01:29.34 | Baanano|afk | how much would it take for the community to find the addon that's causing the game to crash and stop using it? |
| 01:29.35 | Wildtide | what could possibly help in the short term, is a sort of 3-strikes-and-you're-out system. rather than pop the dialog up straight away, count up the number of times an addon would have caused the warning. if it gets to 3 (or 10 or whatever) in a period of time, throw the error then. that would at least allow us some occasional spikes for config dialogs etc |
| 01:29.39 | seebs | Well, thing is. Rare, maybe, but the severity is well into "THAT SUCKS SO BAD" territory. Having the game basically wedge so you have to kill it and restart is pretty sucky. |
| 01:30.08 | Imhothar | it restarts itself |
| 01:30.16 | Imhothar | but I get your point |
| 01:30.56 | Wildtide | the watchdog has 2 levels of severity - the big nasty chop would solve the infinite loop without the far more annoying performance warnings we're getting now |
| 01:32.14 | Baanano|afk | am i the only one who has needed to recode things to split execution time, which in turn makes you need to add concurrency control? |
| 01:33.29 | Wildtide | i think you're the only one with really predictable long processes that can be effectively split |
| 01:35.33 | Baanano|afk | ok, hadn't though about that, probably most people is only concerned about the need to delay texture loading :P |
| 01:35.54 | Wildtide | yep :) |
| 01:37.11 | Baanano|afk | i'll stop venting then, this is the way things are now and the only solution is adapt to the new constraints |
| 01:37.23 | Baanano|afk | nn |
| 01:37.27 | Wildtide | night mate :) |
| 01:37.53 | Wildtide | i don't know. Zorba's pretty good at listening to concerns, and if you don't say anything, he'll never know |
| 01:38.11 | seebs | I haven't had to split stuff yet, but none of my addons do anything all that big. |
| 01:38.14 | Wildtide | though i think the point has probably been made now, so maybe we'd better ease off |
| 01:44.18 | Wildtide | i have a RiftUI suggestion btw... a download count by file, rather than just the total since the dawn of time |
| 01:45.37 | Noshei | or both |
| 01:46.09 | Wildtide | oh yeah, i wasn't suggesting losing the total count, just doing the same thing Curse does and showing the count on the file list |
| 01:49.18 | Wildtide | whoa, it's nearly 3am. i'm getting as bad as you lot. nn folks :) |
| 02:17.55 | Noshei | this is wierd, for some reason table.insert(self.markedRows, {...}) won't update the table values once the table is created |
| 02:55.02 | ZorbaTHut | re: "the main flaws of the watchdog are 1) the time limit being shared by all addons" - yeah, I'm coming to the same conclusion. I'd hoped it wouldn't turn out to be a real issue but I think I'll have to figure out a way to deal with addon CPU usage per event handler |
| 02:56.29 | Noshei | that would be great |
| 03:06.34 | ZorbaTHut | the other big issue seems to be texture load times, and I'd be more concerned about fixing that elegantly if imhothar hadn't done a perfectly reasonable patch job :V something more efficient may show up eventually, but for now, hacking together a somewhat-asynchronous solution may be perfectly reasonable |
| 03:09.33 | ZorbaTHut | And yeah, I think baanano ends up with the worst job of everyone, unfortunately. Sorry Baanano :) |
| 03:56.25 | Noshei | ZorbaTHut, tell them not to change Conquest, its awesome right now! |
| 03:56.58 | seebs | hah |
| 03:57.13 | Noshei | you been in there man? |
| 03:57.22 | seebs | They just kicked the group Faeblight is in -- possibly unintentionally -- right after a message saying they'd be turning it off for a few minutes to make tweaks. |
| 03:57.25 | seebs | Nah, I don't PvP. |
| 03:58.02 | seebs | Forums are full of outrage, because no one remembers that last time around, a bunch of people exploited PvP rifts, and then the holes got fixed and some of the people who had been acting in thoughtless ways... became sad. |
| 03:58.03 | Noshei | yeah, well it was basically a crap ton of free favor, prestige, and conquest power |
| 03:58.18 | Noshei | you on faeblight seebs? |
| 03:58.30 | seebs | Mostly, yeah. |
| 03:58.40 | Noshei | which side? |
| 03:58.45 | seebs | Both. |
| 03:58.51 | seebs | I have two accounts, too. :P |
| 03:59.18 | seebs | I occasionally dual-box, I have a cleric/mage duo. I once successfully tanked and healed an instance. |
| 03:59.36 | Noshei | ah, well my main is Defiant, name is Nosheii on faevlight |
| 04:00.40 | *** join/#riftuidev arton (~arton@tx-184-6-176-223.dhcp.embarqhsd.net) |
| 04:28.33 | *** join/#riftuidev Imhothar_ (Miranda@ppp-93-104-177-169.dynamic.mnet-online.de) |
| 06:58.12 | *** join/#riftuidev Solsis00 (~Dad@108-226-48-242.lightspeed.fyvlar.sbcglobal.net) |
| 07:03.47 | *** join/#riftuidev Solsis001 (~Dad@108-226-48-242.lightspeed.fyvlar.sbcglobal.net) |
| 08:41.15 | Imhothar | name your favorite Lua "feature" that is usually confusing to newcomers and/or are not very intuitive |
| 08:41.33 | seebs | [1] |
| 08:44.23 | ZorbaTHut | the sort of half-baked parameters/varargs/named-parameters support, that doesn't quite do what I'd want any of those systems to do |
| 08:54.02 | seebs | Come to think of it, the multiple-values stuff is full of crazy. |
| 09:03.58 | Wildtide | morning all |
| 09:10.29 | Noshei | morning wild |
| 09:15.46 | Baanano | hi |
| 09:17.09 | Wildtide | hi Baanano |
| 09:17.53 | Noshei | morning |
| 09:28.21 | Imhothar | is there a limit on the max number of characters in a post? |
| 09:28.32 | Imhothar | I assume there is, but is it reachable? ; |
| 09:33.09 | seebs | Probably not all that huge even. |
| 09:33.24 | seebs | At least 10k or so. |
| 09:38.03 | Wildtide | today's error report makes for depressing reading :) |
| 09:38.12 | Wildtide | that was supposed to be a :( |
| 09:47.07 | seebs | !@#*ing Microsoft. Decided to bring a machine up for updates. |
| 09:47.30 | seebs | Turns out that being not turned on for a month or two is an "activation exploit" which disables the machine completely and demands that I pay $110 to buy a "genuine" license. |
| 09:47.55 | seebs | Or search around for an alternative path that lets me re-enter the exact same key it already had again so it can validate it and say "oh, yeah. that is a valid key for this system." |
| 09:48.08 | Wildtide | ouch, nice! |
| 09:48.16 | seebs | I could sort of deal with "wow, their activation sucks" if it weren't for the flagrant and total dishonesty. |
| 09:48.31 | Imhothar | For me it's usually enough to do the phone support thing |
| 09:48.40 | Imhothar | phone activation or what |
| 09:48.48 | Imhothar | need to do that everytime I reinstall my server |
| 09:49.01 | Imhothar | when online activation fails |
| 09:49.10 | seebs | I've so far never done it. Just redo the online activation without changing anything and it's fine. |
| 09:50.32 | Imhothar | it's quite simple, but you probably need to boot the machine with the network caple removed or it won't give you the option for phone activation |
| 09:50.47 | Imhothar | you need that as it displays the key encoded in digits so you can enter it on the phone |
| 09:50.49 | seebs | Nah, it was on wireless and working fine, and it offered the option. |
| 09:50.54 | seebs | I just hate using the phone. |
| 09:50.59 | Imhothar | same here |
| 09:51.03 | seebs | Holy crap. |
| 09:51.06 | seebs | TSW's install is >32GB. |
| 09:51.42 | Wildtide | TSW? |
| 09:51.43 | Imhothar | have fun entering a 20 digit code into your phone and having to write down a 20 digit number dictated to you :) |
| 09:51.53 | seebs | The Secret World. |
| 09:52.11 | seebs | A friend's a big fan, I decided to try it, I'll play it on and off for a while. They're doing enough Cool Things to earn some money. |
| 09:52.13 | Imhothar | secrets are big |
| 09:52.32 | seebs | I remember a year and change back there was this game, and it was pretty cool but needed a ton of polish, so I figured I'd just support them and see what happened... |
| 09:55.35 | Wildtide | :) |
| 09:56.21 | Wildtide | is TSW actually out then? |
| 09:56.59 | Wildtide | oh yeah, early access |
| 09:57.00 | seebs | "Early access" until Tuesday. |
| 09:57.14 | seebs | I don't think I will enjoy it, as a game, as much as Rift. |
| 09:57.24 | seebs | Not getting a second account or anything, for instance. |
| 09:57.51 | seebs | But I like that they're trying to find alternatives to some of the MMO tropes, and I think they have some ideas that deserve attention and a chance to work on them some more. |
| 09:58.52 | ZorbaTHut | yeah, I'm also really intriuged by some of their ideas. And I love the visual style. |
| 09:59.13 | Noshei | hey ZorbaTHut, any chance you can get a mail message restored for me? |
| 09:59.14 | seebs | I personally dislike the "active dodge" thing, although I see why it makes sense to have it. |
| 09:59.33 | ZorbaTHut | noshei, none whatsoever, I don't have the permissions on the servers to do so. if anyone can, it's customer support. |
| 09:59.38 | seebs | the active/passive thing is neat, "pick any 7 powers" is neat, the ability to have one character learn everything is neat. |
| 09:59.44 | seebs | I also like their way of splitting/handling roles. |
| 09:59.47 | Imhothar | Noshei: Game Masters are the way to go |
| 09:59.52 | ZorbaTHut | (they're pretty awesome, just go ahead and ask 'em) |
| 10:00.14 | seebs | I dislike the cutscenes and voiceovers, but I recognize that a lot of people like those. |
| 10:00.29 | Noshei | I accidently deleted a message, incedently Command.Mail.Delete provides no warning if there is something attached to the message |
| 10:00.58 | ZorbaTHut | yeah, the addon API is a little dangerous that way |
| 10:01.16 | seebs | Huh, that might be a nice thing. Command.Mail.SafeDelete() which deletes only if there are no attachments left. |
| 10:01.18 | ZorbaTHut | seriously, contact support - if it's possible, they'll probably do it |
| 10:01.26 | seebs | Yeah. |
| 10:01.31 | seebs | Rift GMs are pretty good about that. |
| 10:01.38 | seebs | I once killed a mob in a way that left it unreachable. |
| 10:01.45 | Imhothar | "no levels" wait what? a MMO without levels? That will confuse the hell out of people |
| 10:01.46 | seebs | ... side note: saboteur is WAY too much fun. |
| 10:01.49 | ZorbaTHut | even if they can't restore the mail itself they can *probably* restore the item |
| 10:01.58 | seebs | It is sort of confusing, yeah. |
| 10:01.59 | ZorbaTHut | imhothar, whoa, really? I didn't even know that, that's fantastic |
| 10:02.04 | ZorbaTHut | I've been saying levels are obsolete for *years*. |
| 10:02.21 | seebs | Basically, you get points with which you buy two different categories of things, skill points and ability points. |
| 10:02.37 | seebs | skill points determine what item level you can equip; if you have one point in a skill, you can equip QL1 items, etc. |
| 10:02.51 | seebs | But really, it's all about buying specific abilities, and unlocking bonuses and modifiers and such. |
| 10:03.06 | Imhothar | yeah, its funny the role players in all those fantasy MMO need to invent some fancy stuff to explain levels |
| 10:03.37 | ZorbaTHut | ugh, I wish it wasn't a monthly-fee game, I have like no time to play games right now. |
| 10:03.41 | seebs | Not that TSW isn't also vulnerable to that. |
| 10:04.08 | seebs | One of my friends is SUPER enthused about it. Like, feels the same way about TSW that I do about Rift, roughly; the setting and gameplay are EXACTLY what she likes. |
| 10:04.39 | seebs | And the company has been really turning around their support, and I think they have learned a lot of lessons from Trion about what support should be like, and dev interaction with players. |
| 10:04.58 | seebs | So I got the lifetime sub, because worst case I was supporting devs who did something genuinely new in a field which desperately needs it. |
| 10:06.30 | seebs | And now I don't have to worry about whether I'm justifying a monthly fee. :P |
| 10:06.40 | ZorbaTHut | fair :D |
| 10:07.34 | seebs | They have hiccups galore (the reserved name thing isn't quite working; the names are STAYING reserved, whoops), but they've done a lot of clever things. |
| 10:08.01 | seebs | And if this might mean that somewhere down the road, someone else thinks it's worth trying to make an MMO that deviates a little more from the EQ/WoW basic level design, that's not all bad. |
| 10:08.20 | seebs | Graphics are nice, although I honestly like Rift's style and scenery a lot better. But then, I am a total fantasy RP nut. |
| 10:08.53 | seebs | Character creation... well, more flexible than WoW, comparable-ish to Rift with more costume choices at start. Laughably bad compared to City, of course. |
| 10:09.26 | ZorbaTHut | I'm sorta bored of the fantasy world, to be honest, I'm looking more towards scifi. Wouldn't surprise me if I end up playing a *ton* of Defiance |
| 10:09.39 | seebs | Oh, and they have Defensive Target as a thing. |
| 10:09.42 | ZorbaTHut | heh, I used the CoH character creator to prototype the coloring for my fiancee and I's wedding clothes |
| 10:09.44 | seebs | Which is something I wish Rift had. :P |
| 10:10.27 | Wildtide | she happy with you in a lycra suit with your underpants on the outside? |
| 10:10.34 | Imhothar | So, your bride is brought in front of the altar in a jumpsuit with a fancy logo and a cape? |
| 10:10.42 | Imhothar | please say she's wearing a cape |
| 10:10.56 | ZorbaTHut | http://imgur.com/a/xxbHO (we do not actually look like superheroes, this is mostly just for coloring) |
| 10:11.15 | ZorbaTHut | although we are about 90% seriously going to make it Pinkie Pie+Tony Stark themed. |
| 10:11.16 | Imhothar | no capes :( |
| 10:11.28 | seebs | hah |
| 10:11.45 | seebs | Jesse observed that if we were superheroes, we'd be Iron Man and Deadpool. |
| 10:11.47 | Torhal | ZorbaTHut: Your hair also isn't that color. |
| 10:11.53 | seebs | Whereupon all of Jesse's fans said: "I ship it!" |
| 10:11.58 | Torhal | At least, it wasn't at Bubba Gump's. |
| 10:12.09 | ZorbaTHut | torhal, yeah, I usually let it fade before re-dying it. |
| 10:12.11 | seebs | The funny thing is, Jesse totally identifies with Tony Stark, and also considers me to be Pinkie Pie. |
| 10:12.16 | ZorbaTHut | Sometimes it is. It will be for the wedding. :) |
| 10:12.20 | Torhal | Hehehe |
| 10:12.27 | Noshei | so anyone going to PAX this year? |
| 10:12.31 | ZorbaTHut | Right now I just have kind of light fringes since the red has all faded out but the bleached ends are still, well, bleached. |
| 10:12.35 | seebs | Not I. |
| 10:12.45 | ZorbaTHut | noshei, always. I'll be manning the Digital Game Museum booth on the 6th floor expo, come find us |
| 10:12.57 | seebs | Although I may be going to a coworker's house for a meeting in mid July. |
| 10:13.05 | seebs | Or may not, because he lives near Colorado Springs. |
| 10:13.23 | Noshei | hope he doesn't live northwest of the springs |
| 10:13.31 | ZorbaTHut | seebs, so, wait, are you deadpool+pinkie pie, or are you iron man+pinkie pie? am confused :V |
| 10:13.39 | Noshei | otherwise he might not have a house any more |
| 10:13.48 | seebs | I'm either deadpool or pinkie pie, depending on context. |
| 10:14.05 | seebs | Amusingly, someone pointed out that Jesse and I look way too much like movie Thor and Loki, too. :P |
| 10:14.16 | ZorbaTHut | I'll admit, on second reflection, there's a lot of similarity between deadpool and pinkie pie |
| 10:14.19 | seebs | I really do tend to violate local causality. |
| 10:14.30 | Imhothar | hmpf why it is always "$14.99 / 14.99 incl. VAT / £11.49 incl. VAT" |
| 10:14.42 | Imhothar | we're paying the most again |
| 10:14.53 | Imhothar | grrr |
| 10:14.59 | Torhal | I blame Greece. |
| 10:15.15 | Imhothar | has been like this since I remember |
| 10:15.44 | ZorbaTHut | imhothar, Australia used to always get the worst end of it. I think that might have improved. |
| 10:15.45 | Noshei | its because the EU was doomed from the start |
| 10:15.55 | Imhothar | why isn't it 14,99 punds? |
| 10:16.23 | Imhothar | why do the bloody britts get it converted but not us or the americans |
| 10:16.33 | Noshei | pounds are worth more than the euro |
| 10:16.36 | Imhothar | I know |
| 10:16.45 | Wildtide | UK£ 11.49 = 14.2327156 Euros |
| 10:16.49 | Wildtide | not that far out |
| 10:16.53 | Imhothar | and the euro is worth more than the dollar, so why do americans pay so much less? |
| 10:17.08 | Imhothar | that's not fair |
| 10:18.01 | Imhothar | when I make an MMO the price is gonna be the lowest |
| 10:18.30 | Imhothar | and I'll probably go bankrupt, but at least I challenged the system |
| 10:18.36 | Noshei | $14.99 = 9.5587 Pounds or 11.8404 Euro |
| 10:18.48 | Imhothar | see |
| 10:19.17 | Imhothar | conspiracies everywhere you look |
| 10:20.02 | arton | http://i.imgur.com/iTZaU.gif |
| 10:20.11 | Noshei | 14.99 Euro = $18.9773 and 11.49 pounds = $18.1754 |
| 10:20.51 | Noshei | so really, your both getting screwed almost equally compared to the US |
| 10:21.17 | Imhothar | I bet TSW's from a US company |
| 10:21.25 | Imhothar | they're always toying with us |
| 10:21.35 | seebs | One of the CoH forum goers pointed out: If the game spit out $20 bills, players would complain that they weren't sequential. If they were sequential, players would complain that they weren't random enough. |
| 10:21.36 | seebs | Hmm. |
| 10:21.40 | seebs | Actually, I think Oslo. |
| 10:21.40 | Noshei | and to add insult to injury, most people in the US don't pay tax on digital purchases |
| 10:21.58 | seebs | Yup, Norwegian. |
| 10:22.28 | seebs | Ahh, but TSW was developed by their Montreal studio. |
| 10:22.32 | Imhothar | 14,99 is including taxes |
| 10:23.03 | Noshei | ah |
| 10:23.07 | Imhothar | in most european countries all prices are including VAT |
| 10:24.00 | Imhothar | which doesn't really help as you can't put your MMO addiction on your taxes declaration ;) |
| 10:24.27 | Imhothar | or whatever its called |
| 10:26.55 | Imhothar | hmm wonder whether I could put it as business expense considering I'm a freelance software developer... |
| 10:28.06 | Noshei | how often do you think a repeat until loop would fire in rift? once a frame? |
| 10:28.18 | seebs | It would run constantly until the watchdog killed it. |
| 10:28.22 | seebs | Like any other loop. |
| 10:28.33 | seebs | If you want a once-a-frame, register for an event. |
| 10:29.32 | Noshei | just trying to figure out roughly how long it takes for a message to open once you send the command |
| 10:29.47 | Imhothar | Immediately |
| 10:29.52 | Noshei | nope |
| 10:29.56 | Imhothar | there is no parallellism in the UI |
| 10:30.12 | ZorbaTHut | there's no parallelism in the UI, but some commands require a server roundtrip |
| 10:30.17 | ZorbaTHut | Command.Mail.Open() is one of those |
| 10:30.24 | Imhothar | the point you call the display command is the point it gets displayed, taking how long it takes, blocking the thread |
| 10:30.35 | ZorbaTHut | the real answer, in this case, is "it depends on your server lag". |
| 10:31.34 | Imhothar | ok, with "immediately" I wanted to say it doesn't happen in the background but blocks your Lua function until it happens |
| 10:31.45 | Noshei | so how could I wait for the message to actually open? |
| 10:31.52 | Imhothar | you don't have to |
| 10:31.56 | ZorbaTHut | actually, that's not true either - all it does is queue up a message to send to the server, then return immediately |
| 10:32.06 | Noshei | ^ |
| 10:32.14 | Imhothar | oh well that's another case |
| 10:32.24 | ZorbaTHut | the addon system will go right back to executing. you'll get an event (Event.Mail, I believe) once the reply comes back. |
| 10:32.32 | Noshei | so I can't do anything until the message is returned with the data |
| 10:32.43 | Imhothar | ah you were taling about a Command |
| 10:32.52 | Noshei | yeah |
| 10:33.19 | Imhothar | how do Inspects behave which require a server trip? |
| 10:33.21 | ZorbaTHut | and note that you'll *have* to return from the lua environment - the message pump runs every frame, so it'll take at least one frame for that event to fire. |
| 10:33.31 | ZorbaTHut | imhothar, no Inspects require a server trip, for exactly that reason :) |
| 10:33.38 | Wildtide | i don't think any inspects.... *stops* |
| 10:33.42 | ZorbaTHut | all the things which require server interactions are Commands. |
| 10:33.50 | Imhothar | so that's when they return nil? |
| 10:34.05 | ZorbaTHut | "nil" generally means "the thing you requested doesn't exist" |
| 10:34.35 | Imhothar | for example, when I call Inspect.Item.Detail() for an itemtype of one of my alts I get nil, but calling the same function a second later returns something. So the itemtype wasn't in the cache |
| 10:34.36 | ZorbaTHut | in a few cases, mostly with inspect.item.detail()'s that aren't in the local cache, it will quietly go and request information on them |
| 10:34.45 | Imhothar | hah |
| 10:35.03 | ZorbaTHut | yeah, that's sort of a weird case admittedly - the intention is that you shouldn't be able to poll items in order to check what's now in your cache |
| 10:36.04 | Imhothar | is it possible that this can also happen in laggy situations? I get error reports where Inspect.Item.Detail() reuturns nil on slot ids inside Event.Item.Slot() where the slot is reported as containing an item |
| 10:36.10 | ZorbaTHut | incidentally, Command.Buff.Describe() is a great example of this - it's a command whose sole purpose is to do a server round-trip to retrieve more detailed information on a buff. |
| 10:36.56 | Noshei | so any suggestion on how to basically wait within a function for the data to come back? |
| 10:36.57 | ZorbaTHut | imhothar, hmmm. the API definition doesn't let that happen, so either I need to fix it or announce a breaking change :V do you know of repro steps for it? |
| 10:37.18 | ZorbaTHut | noshei, you can't, the data will never come back until after the function has returned. you'll have to set an event handler and return from the function. |
| 10:37.20 | Wildtide | Nosh - if you waited for a round-trip, the watchdog would have a field trip |
| 10:37.33 | ZorbaTHut | you could in theory do clever elegant things with coroutines, but those are going to be difficult to get working properly. |
| 10:38.04 | Imhothar | ZorbaTHut no I*m sorry I only get that from the daily reports |
| 10:38.11 | ZorbaTHut | imhothar, dang |
| 10:38.30 | ZorbaTHut | oh btw I think the Event.Mail-while-no-mail-interaction bug is probably fixed on Live as of today |
| 10:38.37 | Imhothar | Noshei, isn;t there a callback argument in Command.Mail.Open? |
| 10:38.50 | Imhothar | I think there was |
| 10:39.05 | ZorbaTHut | hey, there totally is, I forgot I went back and added callbacks |
| 10:39.06 | Imhothar | there is |
| 10:39.08 | Noshei | zorba can you give me a Command.Mail.TakeAll then that takes all items in a specified message without requiring you to actually know what items your taking? |
| 10:39.13 | Imhothar | Command.Mail.Open(mail, callback) |
| 10:39.15 | ZorbaTHut | good catch, imhothar |
| 10:39.54 | ZorbaTHut | noshei, fun fact: the "take all" button on the mail window does exactly the same Open/Take/Open-the-next-one dance that you can do through the addon API |
| 10:40.08 | Imhothar | Noshei: just iterate the "attachments" member of the mail, it contains all the items |
| 10:40.11 | ZorbaTHut | given that, I'm just gonna let you code it up yourself :) |
| 10:40.33 | Imhothar | ooh no sorry I was somewere else |
| 10:40.44 | ZorbaTHut | there's really no more efficient way to do it |
| 10:40.45 | Imhothar | wait no I was right |
| 10:41.06 | Imhothar | Inspect.Mail.Detail().attachments contains all the itemids you can plug into Command.Mail.Take |
| 10:41.42 | Noshei | only after the message has been opened... |
| 10:41.48 | Imhothar | yeah |
| 10:42.03 | Imhothar | you need to open it because otherwise the client doesn't get the info from the server |
| 10:42.09 | Imhothar | amirite, ZorbaTHut? |
| 10:42.27 | Noshei | you are |
| 10:42.40 | ZorbaTHut | yup |
| 10:42.51 | Imhothar | so for a TakeAll you'd need a new client -> server command |
| 10:43.05 | Imhothar | I don't even want to think about how many people need to get involved in that |
| 10:43.40 | ZorbaTHut | well, honestly, one, I could do it solo. But it's just not worth the time and it's not worth the complexity on the server. We didn't add one for the built-in Take All command, we're not gonna add one for the addon system. |
| 10:44.35 | Noshei | will a return in a callbackfunction return back to the command? |
| 10:44.41 | Imhothar | no |
| 10:45.14 | ZorbaTHut | and I'm off to bed, g'night all and good luck with the mail addon, noshei :) |
| 10:45.27 | Imhothar | Command.Mail.Open is fire-and-forget call |
| 10:45.28 | Imhothar | nn |
| 10:45.31 | Baanano | nn zorba |
| 10:45.53 | Imhothar | the callback gets called some time later in a totally unrelated program location |
| 11:11.22 | Noshei | are we able to close a Native UI window? |
| 11:13.46 | Baanano | no |
| 11:14.05 | Noshei | lame |
| 11:14.12 | Imhothar | We can't do anything with native windows |
| 11:14.21 | Imhothar | only attach to them and get some events |
| 11:15.30 | Noshei | was hoping I could close the message window after I send the Open Command |
| 11:15.57 | Baanano | you'd lose mail interaction if you did that |
| 11:16.13 | Noshei | not the mail window, the message window |
| 11:16.20 | Baanano | ah ok |
| 11:16.31 | Baanano | mmm |
| 11:16.48 | Baanano | maybe you can close that one, have you tried command.mail.open nil? |
| 11:16.49 | Imhothar | you lose interaction with the mail once you close the message window |
| 11:17.05 | Noshei | no you dont |
| 11:17.05 | Imhothar | I think |
| 11:17.17 | Imhothar | well then |
| 11:17.30 | Noshei | I already tested Command.Mail.Take on a closed message, with the mail window open, worked just fine |
| 11:17.51 | Noshei | after opening the message to get the item id of course |
| 11:18.34 | Noshei | otherwise the message window will stay open while I iterate over each item to take it |
| 11:18.49 | Noshei | which was noticable with just 1 item |
| 11:23.49 | Noshei | hey Baanano you see that nice little thread about your addon not working with 1.9? |
| 11:24.17 | Baanano | yeah, it's amazing they're trying to fix it |
| 11:24.46 | Noshei | yeah that was pretty funny |
| 11:26.57 | Baanano | no, it's not funny, there are people who have stopped using the AH because it isn't working, in my shard the auction volume has dropped by a third, i need to fix it |
| 11:35.02 | Noshei | no I meant it's funny that people are trying to fix it, especially considering how complicated it is |
| 11:38.12 | Baanano | dunno, maybe they do a better job fixing it than me :P but it's amazing to see they miss it to the point of actually trying to fix it |
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| 19:29.17 | Wildtide | ZorbaTHut, when you're around... how quickly do textures get unloaded? just thinking - if i have 2 Texture frames A & B, and I clear the texture from A, and then immediately (within the same event handler) set B to the same texture A used to have, will the client unload and reload the texture? |
| 19:31.30 | ZorbaTHut | I think it may, yeah. If you want to be careful about that, keep a bunch of hidden textures with the appropriate image loaded. That'll force the game engine to keep the texture in memory. |
| 19:31.46 | ZorbaTHut | It's possible a future |
| 19:31.52 | ZorbaTHut | (argh kitten) |
| 19:31.59 | ZorbaTHut | it's possible a future improvement will add a few-frame delay to unloading. |
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| 20:06.13 | Baanano | wow imhotar |
| 20:07.11 | Wildtide | thanks Zorba, just wanted to check before i start tearing my buff handling code apart |
| 20:07.25 | Wildtide | and lol @ ZorbaTKitten :) |
| 20:10.18 | Wildtide | Imho, WT?? tell me you had that lying around somewhere already |
| 20:11.06 | Imhothar | nope, started it yesterday |
| 20:11.23 | Imhothar | had the feeling our forum is missing soemthing like that |
| 20:11.34 | Wildtide | yep, that's gotta be a sticky |
| 20:12.59 | ZorbaTHut | I'll run it past community, I don't know what our policies are on stickying user posts. Great post though :) |
| 20:13.05 | Wildtide | "Since 1.9 we have a bloodthirsty beast lurking around in the dark called the WATCHDOG." ... you can just picture him with glowing red eyes. there's probably a lot of drool involved too |
| 20:13.25 | Wildtide | we should give him a name... |
| 20:15.41 | *** join/#riftuidev Noshei (~quassel@c-67-161-146-244.hsd1.co.comcast.net) |
| 20:17.33 | Imhothar | Can it be anything other than Cerberus? |
| 20:17.53 | Wildtide | i was thinking Pooky myself :) |
| 20:18.06 | Baanano | i've called it many names lately |
| 20:18.09 | Imhothar | that's the other extreme |
| 20:18.12 | Wildtide | lol |
| 20:18.27 | Imhothar | is Goofy actually a dog? |
| 20:18.31 | Wildtide | yep |
| 20:19.04 | Imhothar | Baanano: "The one dog who bears many names" |
| 20:19.39 | Baanano | most of them wouldn't pass profanity filters |
| 20:19.55 | Imhothar | it's unspokable names then |
| 20:19.57 | Imhothar | adds to the mystery |
| 20:21.44 | Baanano | i picture it like this http://www.burbuja.info/inmobiliaria/attachments/guarderia/28499d1283950139-autentico-shurperro-y-no-esa-mierda-copiada-de-4chan-pitbull-6222223.jpg |
| 20:22.44 | Imhothar | more like this http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fc/Killer_Chihuahua.jpg |
| 20:23.01 | Wildtide | ewwww |
| 20:23.07 | Imhothar | you don't notice it unless it bites |
| 20:23.31 | Noshei | hey nice post Imhothat |
| 20:23.38 | Wildtide | the meanest of all... http://files.sharenator.com/evil_dog_RE_Top_42_World_Military_Strengths_Ranking_By_Global_Fire_Power-s400x300-94917-580.jpg |
| 20:24.12 | Wildtide | that Chihuahua is gonna give me nightmares ;) |
| 20:24.42 | Imhothar | add red glowing eyes and the growl of terror |
| 20:25.17 | Imhothar | thanks Noshei |
| 20:28.38 | Wildtide | you know, i promised myself Rift was my last MMO after I overdid WoW and tried every other MMO out there... and now you went and made me look at Secret World. i'm having a really hard time not hitting that pre-order button right now |
| 20:29.45 | Noshei | that lifetime subscription package is pretty interesting |
| 20:30.42 | Wildtide | yeah, it's not a bad price if you knew you were going to stick with it |
| 20:31.21 | Wildtide | but i'm terrible for playing these things for a month or two, and then shelving them |
| 20:32.22 | seebs | My justification came down to "I don't mind supporting devs for trying something cool". |
| 20:32.53 | Imhothar | I'm too stupid to find that lifetime thing |
| 20:32.53 | seebs | And supposedly, their UI is flash and they are intending to support addons/mods. :) |
| 20:33.19 | Wildtide | nothing good will come of it, you mark my words :) |
| 20:33.20 | seebs | It's an upgrade option; if you go to the pre-order thing, there are three upgrades available, one of which is the lifetime thing. |
| 20:33.32 | Noshei | on the pre-order page it is the last package, it's like $199.99 |
| 20:33.36 | seebs | Confusingly: There's a $15 upgrade, a $50, and a $200. The $200 includes the $50 but not the $15. |
| 20:33.56 | Wildtide | hit preorder now, scroll down to the grand master pack |
| 20:33.57 | seebs | So total is $265 if you get everything, $250 for a lifetime sub plus the game itself. |
| 20:34.00 | Imhothar | Frankly I can't find the preorder either. Only beta signup |
| 20:34.17 | seebs | Huh. It's possible that pre-order is gone. Was still there earlier today (like 5AM earlier). |
| 20:34.34 | Wildtide | i just did it now |
| 20:34.41 | Wildtide | didn't buy it, just hit the button to look |
| 20:34.51 | seebs | Character costume options are sorta wussy, they tend to have each model in three colors, but you can't necessarily find the same colors for any two things. |
| 20:35.15 | Imhothar | I remember seeing it earlier today |
| 20:35.50 | Torhal | http://www.thesecretworld.com/media <-- sidebar, preorder |
| 20:36.09 | seebs | Man, people are creepy. |
| 20:36.48 | Noshei | https://register.thesecretworld.com/signup/ctrl/register/us/tsw/TSW-PREORDER -- scroll to the end |
| 20:36.55 | seebs | Working on Helpy's queue, got a question in it which is actually genuinely creeping me out. |
| 20:37.00 | seebs | I did not anticipate that. |
| 20:37.46 | Imhothar | what the.. why put it in media |
| 20:38.16 | seebs | Because they are insane. |
| 20:39.15 | Baanano | ? |
| 20:40.14 | Wildtide | they lost me too, Baanano |
| 20:40.51 | Imhothar | so the lifetime abo is 200, which is 13 months |
| 20:41.38 | Imhothar | don't the devs actually hurt themselves with such an offer? |
| 20:41.51 | Imhothar | Imagine the game runs for years and you have tons of people with the lifetime preorder |
| 20:41.59 | Imhothar | you're missing on lots of money |
| 20:46.22 | Imhothar | so technically, if you want to support the devs in the long run, don't take the lifetime thing |
| 20:50.42 | Imhothar | Hmm what I don't really like so much is the enforced pvp with 3 strictly defined factions |
| 20:50.49 | Noshei | yeah, but the $200 one is more money now that can be put into immeadiate dev |
| 20:51.15 | Imhothar | I prefer games where you give the players the options to create factions and let them beat out the shit of each other for whatever reason they come up with |
| 20:53.23 | Imhothar | Basically how Eve works in lawless space. The grass on the other side is greener? Go conquer it :) |
| 20:54.06 | Imhothar | or, in Eve terms, the roids are more juicy |
| 20:54.46 | seebs | I am planning to completely ignore the PvP, since so far as I can tell there's no point at which you're obliged to do anything about it. |
| 20:55.12 | seebs | I don't much like factions, but I don't care that much, and I like that you can socialize with (and I think even group with) people regardless of faction *or server*. That last surprised me. |
| 20:55.56 | Wildtide | i read something about Eve that kinda impressed me. you can convert your game time into PLEX (in game item), and if you get destroyed while carrying it around in your ship, someone can loot your game time. i thought that was fairly epic :) |
| 20:56.00 | seebs | I think the deal with lifetime is, the only time you lose money is when it's bought by someone who would have stayed paying for at least 13 months, and you make a lot of extra money off it when people leave. And a LOT of people leave no matter what they thought. |
| 20:56.28 | Baanano | why would you fly carrying a plex? |
| 20:56.36 | Imhothar | People do it |
| 20:56.42 | Wildtide | well, you'd have to be a bit daft, but still... |
| 20:57.00 | Imhothar | Widite, there are also chances the item gets destroyed, having pracitcally a real-world-money-sink in the game |
| 20:57.35 | Imhothar | I don't really know why they added that. for the first few months PLEX couldn't leave a station |
| 20:57.44 | Wildtide | i haven't played eve in years, so it was all new to me |
| 20:58.34 | Imhothar | I think the problem was the station you bought it was the station you had to trade and redeem it, limiting the range of operation for people trading with PLEX |
| 20:59.11 | Baanano | i wouldn't mind flying to the plex station |
| 21:00.43 | Imhothar | even if the trip took half a day cause it's on the other side of the galaxy? |
| 21:02.19 | Baanano | even then, i'd change to a jumpclone, put a shuttle on autopilot and let it go that station while i'm at work :P |
| 21:03.12 | Imhothar | well seems like it was important enogh to people so meh |
| 21:05.03 | Baanano | they could have made the plex market global, or provide functionality to auto transport them to another station, allowing to fly with them is just opening a great opportunity for player rage |
| 21:05.31 | Imhothar | it's the least effort for the devs |
| 21:15.43 | Wildtide | hmmm... Cerberus|Pooky|He-who-cannot-be-named is biting my addon on game load, but not on reloadui. wonder if it's down to general busy-ness of the machine while it's loading Rift up |
| 21:16.16 | Baanano | there are events that only fire on first load, as the inventory ones |
| 21:16.52 | Wildtide | hmmm. might make it wait a couple of seconds before setting itself up, to move it out of the way of other addons |
| 21:17.02 | Imhothar | but not after reloadui unless that has changed |
| 21:17.33 | Imhothar | I think the watchdog is disabled during the *.Load.* events, but not afterwards |
| 21:17.55 | Wildtide | oh? now that could be handy to know |
| 21:18.42 | Noshei | I'm pretty sure I remember SZorba saying that |
| 21:19.01 | Imhothar | it's also disabled during the SavedVariables events |
| 21:19.12 | Imhothar | or gnerally when the shutdown sequence starts |
| 21:19.15 | Imhothar | something like that |
| 21:22.35 | Wildtide | oki, i'll see if i can move anything a bit earlier then. might help |
| 21:23.03 | Wildtide | i currently wait for the player to become available, then do init. it makes creating a gadget easier, cos you don't have to worry about only having half a player |
| 21:27.40 | Noshei | do you build the config UI at the same time? |
| 21:28.01 | Wildtide | no, that only ever gets built if it's needed. most of the time, it'll never be built |
| 21:28.16 | ZorbaTHut | yes, the watchdog is disabled through Startup.End |
| 21:28.27 | ZorbaTHut | or whatever the "everything is loaded now" event is called |
| 21:29.37 | Noshei | thats interesting that your getting issues with watchdog wild, I've got 6 different gadgets on my screen and haven't gotten watchdog warning from it |
| 21:31.59 | seebs | Zorba, just a note: I know this is probably totally redundant, but! You may want to encourage some of your coworkers to try TSW. Much of their game design is not really portable, but I think there are things in there that Rift could probably steal, and that might make for a richer game experience. |
| 21:32.28 | seebs | And in a larger health-of-the-industry sense, encouraging devs to try something new is probably an investment in everyone's future career happiness. |
| 21:33.39 | Wildtide | Nosh - it's really intermittent, and i'm pretty sure it's something to do with my machine getting bogged down during start up. you machine is a lot faster than mine, so it probably won't happen to you |
| 21:33.45 | seebs | I could *conceivably* have gone back to a game basically like WoW after playing Rift, but I would have found it frustrating and limiting. Now? I don't think I could even seriously consider it. (And it reflects very well on Rift that I still think the soul system is awesome, I might add.) |
| 21:36.33 | Noshei | yeah Wild it would be nice it Watchdog could take a computers average performance into consideration. |
| 21:38.23 | ZorbaTHut | seebs, I know a few already are - game developers tend to be pretty up on latest games. |
| 21:38.31 | seebs | I imagine so. :) |
| 21:38.32 | ZorbaTHut | I've had to interrupt my boss in the middle of Diablo 3 a few times :V |
| 21:38.51 | Wildtide | lol, does that get viewed as R&D? :D |
| 21:38.57 | seebs | I haven't made the Real Characters I plan to play yet, but I have an illuminati named Plausible "Realname" McLikely. |
| 21:39.21 | seebs | Which I will happily defend as being appropriate to the RP server, given the game lore and setting. |
| 21:39.28 | ZorbaTHut | wildtide, I jokingly refer to gameplaying time as "research" |
| 21:39.40 | ZorbaTHut | seebs, that is an excellent name |
| 21:41.00 | seebs | I have "Seebs" and "Merisioux" reserved as player nicknames. |
| 21:41.31 | Wildtide | i was immediately drawn towards Templars, wonder if ppl in the US are more likely to choose Illuminati, and Europe Templars, etc? |
| 21:41.33 | seebs | My purchase came with reservations, figured I'd grab one of my general favorite names, and also the ID I like to use. |
| 21:41.49 | seebs | Well, honestly, I would almost certainly go with Templars myself, but I have friends playing Illuminati. |
| 21:42.03 | seebs | People IRL consistently conclude that I am some sort of obnoxious paladin. |
| 21:42.28 | seebs | Only IRL, I'm the nigh-militantly non-violent sort. |
| 21:43.17 | Wildtide | A Pacifist Paladin? try saying that 10 times quickly when you're drunk :D |
| 21:52.10 | Imhothar | no need to be drunk to fail at that |
| 21:52.21 | Wildtide | yeah, i found that out too |
| 21:53.19 | Wildtide | seebs, before i bite the bullet and try it, what are the first impressions of TSW? i watched a gameplay vid, and it seems to be somewhat lacking in the polish dept. not that that really means anything |
| 21:53.38 | seebs | What MMOs have you played? I've only mostly played WoW, Rift, and CoH before. |
| 21:54.00 | seebs | My basic impression is... I don't much like the cut scenes and voiceovers, but I think they're probably objectively pretty good. I just tend not to like things like that. I like text. |
| 21:54.26 | seebs | Quests are pretty cool, and I think they do a better job than a lot of others of making the quests logically hold together and providing interest. |
| 21:54.34 | Wildtide | erm... EQ, WoW, Anarchy Online, Eve, AoC, Vanguard, Rift |
| 21:54.47 | Wildtide | LotRO |
| 21:55.03 | seebs | If you drew a line from WoW to TSW, it would come fairly close to Rift, I think. |
| 21:55.12 | seebs | It has *more* character flexibility, which is saying something. |
| 21:55.38 | seebs | Modern setting, I think they call it "dark urban fantasy". Some of the early stuff is pretty survival-horror; I've been looting abandoned shops in a town overrun by zombies. |
| 21:55.51 | Wildtide | now i like the sound of that |
| 21:56.04 | seebs | I'm writing up a quick review on my blog, will post link shortly. |
| 21:56.12 | Wildtide | cool, i'll wait for that then :) |
| 21:56.31 | seebs | There are factions, but outside of dedicated PvP zones, you are all on the same side and can (I believe) even group, although you can't join cabals (aka guilds) of the other factions. |
| 21:56.40 | seebs | You can group with people across servers for *all* the content -- not just dungeons. |
| 21:56.44 | Wildtide | tbh, the most fun i've had with online MMOs, is playing D&D in IRC :) |
| 21:57.17 | Imhothar | holy crap |
| 21:58.56 | Wildtide | wasn't actually IRC, but for the life of me, i can't remember what the text+dice+map client we used to use was |
| 21:59.39 | seebs | http://www.seebs.net/log/articles/687/surface-review-the-secret-world |
| 22:03.10 | Wildtide | thanks Seebs |
| 22:03.24 | seebs | Don't wanna oversell it; I mean, it's not like this will replace Rift for me, it's not really in the sweet spot for some of my game preferences. But it really does deserve a look. |
| 22:03.42 | seebs | I mention this in part just because one of the funcom-bashers really pissed me off. |
| 22:03.59 | Wildtide | that's kinda where i am too. i have no desire to replace Rift as my game of choice, but it sounds different enough to be worth a look |
| 22:04.15 | seebs | A friend clarifies that there is a thing which sort of functions as a bit like a level analogue. |
| 22:04.28 | seebs | In that skill with a given class of item can limit the items you can equip, and thus the stats they can provide. |
| 22:05.10 | Wildtide | well, advancement is part and parcel of an RPG,whether through gear, skills, levels, whatever. there has to be some sor tof analogue, otherwise you may as well play CoD |
| 22:09.48 | Noshei | hey ZorbaTHut, you know if giving a GM the message id's would be any help to them if I accidently deleted them? |
| 22:10.09 | Imhothar | can't hurt |
| 22:10.28 | ZorbaTHut | convert it to decimal first, their tools don't use hex :) |
| 22:10.43 | Noshei | lol |
| 22:10.54 | ZorbaTHut | I have no idea if it'll help, but, yeah, can't hurt |
| 22:11.15 | Noshei | oh and log.txt is bugged and showing combat info, it's really freakin annoying |
| 22:15.10 | ZorbaTHut | huh, may be my fault :V I'll take a look at that next week |
| 22:17.37 | Noshei | dang it, copy paste is being stupid and won't paste the id's into rift. Just keeps pasting the last thing I had copied out of rift. |
| 22:27.17 | Imhothar | id = tonumber(string.substring(mailid, 2), 16) |
| 22:27.48 | Imhothar | why do it in a different program ;) |
| 22:28.08 | Baanano | the mailids are 64 bit, rift lua uses 32 |
| 22:28.37 | Imhothar | 32 what? |
| 22:28.43 | Imhothar | numbers in Lua are doubles |
| 22:29.49 | Baanano | maybe, anyway they don't have enough precision to hold a full rift id |
| 22:30.22 | Imhothar | hm |
| 22:30.25 | seebs | I think it's 52 bits of mantissa in lua numbers. |
| 22:30.28 | seebs | And that is a really good point. |
| 22:30.36 | Imhothar | 17 significant digits |
| 22:30.49 | Imhothar | thought there were lots of leading zeros |
| 22:31.46 | Imhothar | but isn't only the lower or upper half an actual id and the other half a server checksum? |
| 22:32.19 | Baanano | ids start with a "prefix" based on the server, those in Bloodiron@EU start with 04E58 |
| 22:33.02 | Baanano | (though i've found some players and items which use a different one, all of them pre-summer 2011) |
| 22:33.50 | Baanano | and static npcs (vendors and such) use a different one too, which has a lot of leading 0 |
| 22:34.21 | ZorbaTHut | imhothar, there's a few different kinds of ID. That's true for some, not for all. |
| 22:34.38 | Imhothar | consistency ftw :( |
| 22:40.07 | Baanano | it's tonumber which is limited to 32 bits |
| 22:40.57 | Baanano | any hex value larger than FF FF FF FF returns that value |
| 22:41.29 | seebs | Hmm. |
| 22:41.35 | seebs | Should you just be using them as strings, maybe? |
| 22:42.27 | Imhothar | yes |
| 22:42.37 | Imhothar | it was just about converting them to decimal for support |
| 22:42.40 | Baanano | i'll need a bignumber converter at some point, as the mails that tell you the auction id use the decimal string |
| 22:43.28 | Baanano | and higher part * 2 ^32 + lower part loses precision :( |
| 22:43.53 | seebs | Eww. |
| 22:44.19 | seebs | Yeah, converting ... hmm. |
| 22:44.20 | seebs | That's hard. |
| 22:59.27 | Wildtide | pondering... before 1.9's texture changes, the only way i could effectively do the sweep overlay for buff timers was a combination of a mask and a huge spritemap. now that we can cache/share textures, i wonder if it's worth replacing that with a more simple texture with all 100 frames cached in hidden frames |
| 23:01.53 | seebs | Hmm. |
| 23:02.09 | seebs | I would *think* that that would be more expensive, but I'm not sure. |
| 23:02.25 | seebs | You could keep the huge spritemap hidden, though, so you're only using one copy of it. |
| 23:02.31 | Wildtide | yeah, i don't know either. obviously the spritemap is being shared now, so that's ok |
| 23:02.45 | Wildtide | but i don't know how much overhead the mask for every displayed buff is |
| 23:04.14 | Wildtide | actually, i think i've lost the individual images that i generated to build the spritemap, so i'll quietly forget that one :) |
| 23:06.55 | Wildtide | awesome, i found the client for the best mmo (well, mo) i've ever played... http://www.dmfiat.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/openrpg_ss11.jpg |
| 23:25.18 | Imhothar | hmm I just realized I haven't "played" rift for about a month |
| 23:25.49 | Imhothar | moving between the banker and mailbox can't really be called "playing" the game |
| 23:26.11 | ZorbaTHut | masks are actually shockingly expensive, be careful with them |
| 23:26.18 | ZorbaTHut | the hidden frames will probably be significantly faster |
| 23:26.19 | Baanano | you were coding, if you enjoyed it you were playing |
| 23:27.19 | Wildtide | ZorbaTHut, oh, that's really good to know. i (ab)use them all over the place, as it was the only way to animate something without the client grinding to a halt |
| 23:27.21 | Imhothar | hmm using a Mask was one of my appraoches at Cooldowns |
| 23:27.25 | Imhothar | guess that's a no-go then |
| 23:27.42 | Wildtide | that's where i use them Imho |
| 23:28.04 | ZorbaTHut | honestly I may be overreacting, but benchmark it if you're concerned |
| 23:28.10 | Wildtide | what i call a "sweep" animation, is the circular cooldown thing |
| 23:29.41 | Wildtide | well, i viewed them as a necessary evil. the fewer visible frames the better, and having the mask's doubled up the number of frames needed to display a buff texture. knowing that they are also expensive makes it even easier to decide what to do |
| 23:30.10 | Wildtide | err, not a buff texture, a cooldown overlay |
| 23:32.46 | Wildtide | hmm... in fact, i use them everywhere. role icons, unit hostiility indicators, etc etc. basically any time there is a choice of a set of images to display, i've used my 'ImageSet' control, which is a spritemap. Ooops! |
| 23:33.06 | Imhothar | Texture Coordiantes! |
| 23:33.08 | Imhothar | :p |
| 23:33.19 | Wildtide | i asked for those on the forum already :) |
| 23:33.32 | Imhothar | you're not alone |
| 23:33.34 | Wildtide | for this very reason ;) |
| 23:33.56 | ZorbaTHut | honestly I really wish scaleform would just automatically texture-corpus stuff :V but it doesn't, so, welp |
| 23:34.14 | Wildtide | but that was back when i thought frames were just textured quads |
| 23:35.26 | Wildtide | i looked into Scaleform a bit when you mentioned it. it's used everywhere isn't it? |
| 23:35.48 | Wildtide | i couldn't help thinking it must be a performance nightmare, but obv not given the number of AAA games using it |
| 23:37.01 | ZorbaTHut | 2d UI tends to not be a major performance bottleneck anyway, and artist time is valuable |
| 23:37.12 | Baanano | i've been in some projects where flash was used not because it was better, but because artists are used to it |
| 23:37.34 | Imhothar | Since vertex and pixel shaders UIs are much faster, if implemented correctly |
| 23:37.56 | Imhothar | the naive approach is a disaster though |
| 23:38.53 | Wildtide | does Scaleform not expose UV coordinates as an option at all? |
| 23:39.11 | ZorbaTHut | the bottleneck with most of the addon system additions isn't "is it possible", it's "does zorba have time to implement it". |
| 23:39.31 | Imhothar | you need more grmelins on the team |
| 23:39.37 | Imhothar | gremlins |
| 23:41.04 | Baanano | don't think so, zorba does awesome stuff alone, and if he had to teach and supervise gremlins... |
| 23:41.25 | Imhothar | don't feed them and don't get them wet |
| 23:41.29 | Imhothar | that's all really |
| 23:44.39 | Wildtide | Baanano, what field do you work in? |
| 23:45.22 | Wildtide | and don't say "i don't, i work in an office" ;p |
| 23:46.39 | Baanano | right now, health insurance software |
| 23:48.07 | Wildtide | oh, i was wondering if you were in games, with you saying about using Flash |
| 23:49.09 | Baanano | that was some years ago |
