Another Rollback

[Picadilly]

Overflowing @ 57 items.

Name: Picadilly
STEAM_ID: STEAM_0:1:4268653
Slot 1
Time: Thursday 03/06/08 10:34 a.m. P.S.T.

 

[brian4]

You can overflow at 57 items??? Crap, I gotta make another storage character so this doesn't happen to me.

Off topic: I hope we can do another TFL/Muchachadeen farming session after the roll back

 

[Picadilly]

Please?

 

[villager]

Can you list every item that your character has on him? I mean, 57 items isn't that much, so whatever you have, you must have multiple of certain items that causes overflows.

 

[Picadilly]

Can you list every item that your character has on him? I mean, 57 items isn't that much, so whatever you have, you must have multiple of certain items that causes overflows.

I think the only doubles I have are mana and maybe antidote pots. Mana for sure though, maybe 3 or 4 of them.

 

[Blasto121]

alright rolled you back, just so you know your in the same boat as stellie except you break around 3.0 Kb and you have about .10 Kb to go.

I really think that lesser bag of holding is what keeps breaking characters.

 

[Thothie]

The scriptname is short. The only thing unusual about it is a negative weight value - and my test char has been using one with a much larger negative weight value for ages. Of course, that reduced weight encourages you to pick up more stuffz.

 

[Blasto121]

I don't know what it is about it then, but I have had people come to me about it freaking out on them. So thats why I would assume thats what it is.

personally I think everyone should just use a backpack, spell book, quiver, small sack and a big sack for all there holding needs. I use it and I don't have many issues. Then again I don't have many big name items, though I do hit the item limit quite often.

 

[Thothie]

I just use a weapon strap and a big sack myself (keeps me organized with the quiver of the archer, and a spellbook). Test character has the same, except instead of a big sack he has a “greater” bag of holding. I'm hovering around 70 items right now. My FN char has hit the 75 limit without overflowing more than once, however, I've also managed to overflow at around 70 items once or twice. (Each time I simply horded too types of arrows or pots.) The test character has always been at 75 items never overflows. *shrug*

Really need to come up with a way to lick this thing. I can't justify shrinking bag sizes any further, and I can't remove container types without affecting the items people already have in them.

 

[Picadilly]

I dunno, my overflow threshold seems to get lower and lower as time goes on. Although you may notice I've requested several rollbacks, I'm ultra careful to keep my inventory at a minimum. If you load up my char, I've mostly single copies of items, except for 2 sets of DC which I've kept handy for a trade, and obviously, a few mana pots. This one caught me totally off-guard. I was at 57 items, and this is my first overflow at -60. In fact, I had just played nightmare thornlands and simply voted to reload it, reconnected, and the overflows started. I hadn't picked up even one item, nothing, during the previous round.

While I'm not sure "exactly" how CHAR files are saved, I do hear lots of talk about character strings pushing the stored data higher. If it comes down to something like: "In my file I have a <perfect finely crafted knife>" and that equals like "25 characters (letters)", then why don't you just use abbreviations for weapons and armors and other items? I mean, in the game we already call everything by an abbreviation anyway: pfck, GiB, UGA, DC, AoB, PA, or even number codes.

 

[Shurik3n]

Don't think the issue is size of the script names. I really haven't done enough testing with it, but I have some ideas I need to try. All I know for sure is its not necessarily the size of the character file as a whole, or the total amount of items. Though, contradicting my previous thought, it could be just the total bytes of the items script names. Again, not enough testing on my part. Theres A LOT of server to client interaction when a character is loaded, so theres many things that likely factor into causing overflows. I'm willing to say its not going to be one thing, like item loading, we need to fix for a permanent solution, but that would probably buy us some room and be a good amount of progress.

 

[Picadilly]

Is it the game engine that can't take the load or is it the netchan that's being flooded? If it's the netchan, why not have the char files encrypted onto the clients machine and use [FN] to verify the integrity, rather than to store and remit the data? Obviously, this might look like a golden opportunity to exploit chars. But, if [FN] is tweaked a bit to instead, verify and compare, for example, a data tag that [FN] originally generates, and the CHAR file is encrypted, then why not just have the file stored locally?

Also, if that isn't a solution, we had a discussion over here.

Summary:

Q Make storage chests that have CHAR files themselves, put in a plain map with a "bank" feel to it where players could retrieve or store items when they needed to.

A This doesn't change the fact that the chest would still have a 4k limit and may possibly have overflows.

I think that there's something else missing from this dialog. The fact that this "chest" wouldn't have extra data such as: stats, XP points, gender, etc... would probably reduce the CHAR file's encumbrance substantially. Furthermore, placing an item count restriction on each chest could help out a lot too. The ability to buy multiple chests would easily work around the item restriction. The chests could work on a similar premise to the guild crests and work by password.

 

[The Man In Black]

Reliable channel overflow comes from either:
1. Too many messages in the queue
or
2. Too many bytes in the queue
(Yes, there's a difference)

I'm not sure which (likely 2), but the point is, if you get spammed with messages from the server, you get disconnected. When you load your character, among other things, all of your items get sent one by one (these messages also contain things like quantity, quality, etc, and are required for the client to operate the item).

We can't really have FN->client char verification. Client->server communication is VERY problematic as is, and, since only the server 'talks' to FN, we'd have to send a message to the server, then to FN. This has a few problems attached with it.
1. Dropped packet in either of the 2 messages
2. The client->server message problem we have currently
3. How do you intend to get the encrypted characters to the client without a reliable channel overflow? ;-) We can't really require people to go download more stuff, as Thothie thinks it's problematic enough with people not being able to get updated client.dlls (and we DID just have a problem with that :roll
4. We don't have any hashing verification as of now. MD5 had a few issues in tests, plus Kuroneko speaks badly of it. The MD5 verification already had functions in the code, so, when they refused to work properly, I wasn't in a hurry to implement other hashing functions to find the same problems occur

We finally have FN file i/o (Thoth hasn't given his stamp of approval, yet), so text file banks are a possibility right now. They will likely take a lot of programming that no one is apparently in a hurry to do. There would likely be one bank per steam id that contains nothing but necessary info on the item. It would likely work off of the store GUI so you could "sell" your items to store them and "buy" them for 0 gp to withdraw them. The item limits of banks would be much higher, as they wouldn't be loaded for every map and wouldn't have character information.

Oh, and as Thothie said, the PFCK has a relatively short _script name_ which is how they're stored. If you're worried about scriptname lengths, keep Litch Tongues out of your inventory.

 

[Blasto121]

I should pull from my FN list and compile some statistics on characters, I might be able to find some trends among them that signify higher chances of overflow.

 

[scooby3219]

It's probably not lesser bag of holding since I haven't overflowed once in my entire character history.

 

[CrazyMonkeyDude]

It's probably not lesser bag of holding since I haven't overflowed once in my entire character history.

Same here... I believe. I've got/had most items in the game... I'm holding 70 right now I think.

 

[The Man In Black]

I've overflowed maybe once? I have a lesser bag of holding that has (approx) 4 items in it and a total of 72 items.

I'm curious, and this is probably a combination of hunger, sleep depravity, and boredom from waiting for Squirrel to die in his game so we can go get food.. Wonder a steam setting like your internet connection speed could play a part in this. The fact that steam has a problem and not your computer, and the fact that so many people have different "limits" makes me think there's something else involved, like that setting.

 

[CrazyMonkeyDude]

If it helps, mine's set at "DSL/Cable > 2M"

 

[The Man In Black]

Likely not, then >_>

 

[Sabre]

I'm chalking it up to location in relation to the FN server...Though it's strange that there aren't any (reported) overflow issues from Europeans and Australians.

 

[The Man In Black]

Location should have nothing to do with internet tubes getting clogged.

 

[CrazyMonkeyDude]

I'm chalking it up to location in relation to the FN server...Though it's strange that there aren't any (reported) overflow issues from Europeans and Australians.

I'm gonna have to call self-pwnage on this one.

Oh yeah, quote-owned. Or something.