Artifact Chest 2.0

[ceriux]

looks nice thothie! i just wish i could experience it... is that old helena?

 

[Sabre]

Awesome. Can we has B patch?

 

[Belmont]

Btw Thothie, if you have any other request skin-wise (like the grey arms, wich was easy to do) or anything, give me a call.

And question (the kind you hate), will we see the Title system on Fed2008a or atleast some of it?

edit: and I love that new lighting system, can't wait for it!

 

[Thothie]

Awesome. Can we has B patch?

B patches are for major fug ups. We dun have any this month SFAIK (we had several in the late DEC2007a, JAN2008a pretty much zapped them all.)

If yer one of those guys who just has to have the latest thing I might consider giving out ultra-beta server sets when I'm convinced they are stable. I'll PM you a set if I create a dll set I'm satisfied with.

Map patches might be about as important as the DLLs though...

Right now I'm looking into ways to make Old Helena less like, well MS 1.3’s Old Helena, in terms of crash rate. Seems we’ve come full circle.

The silly thing is, there’s never more than 8 orcs, and up to 3 troll/ogres per wave – plus the extra two for the catapult crew makes a maximum of 13 monsters at any given time. (I know SEEMS like a lot more than that)

Problem is everyone’s response to the invading orcs is “ZOMG MASS AOE DOT SPELLZ FTW!” – and 13 orcs all running DOT at once, coupled with all the visual effects and looping code that go with, tends to crash the server nicely.

Reducing the orcs and making them tougher isn’t really an option in this case, as it’s the sheer number of orcs that let them get by.

I have, however, reduced the number of orcs sets in each wave by 2, and increased the movement rate and damage of two others to compensate. I figure that might help, but I’m really open to other suggestions to stabilize the map.

(MIB: I know I could prob do this myself, and it’s simple, but we really need those clientevent, cleffect, effect, and repeatdelay, caps/counters. Also we need to make sure that monsters are immune to x/dodamage calls for 0.1 seconds after getting one to prevent dodamage stack crashes. I figure make a new property on the monster that stores the game.time of the last impact.)

Another nasty thought I had for reducing crashes (players won’t like this) is to place all the DOT effects under one type, so they don’t stack. Reason players will hate that is it means no monster could be affected by more than one type of DOT any any given time – but I think it would dramatically reduce edicts in situations like old Helena.

 

[Sabre]

Know what else would make Old Helena crash less? Fixing the Stability Potion xD

 

[villager]

Whenever old_helena crashed on me, it's right when the catapults are exploding :S

 

[Thothie]

I've not seen it crash there yet, but I could see where it would... There's a HUGE smoke sprite (like 100 frames), and a gib shooter that fires wood bits everywhere, so with everything else that's going on, it's a heavy toll.

It's such a neat effect though... I'm kinda wonderin if we can put caps on map entities that have no real impact on play from within the code... For instance if we can keep track of the effect count, and say, block the env_shooter if there's too much stuff going on. Hmm...

The firewall traps the orc shamans spawn when they die cause all sorts of havock - I really need to re-write that firewall code from scratch, it was insane to begin with.

 

[The Man In Black]

Blargle. More work >_<

 

[J-M v2.5.5]

In totally unrelated forum stretching news, here's Helena at midnight under the new lighting system:
[images]

That is just awesome!

Whenever old_helena crashed on me, it's right when the catapults are exploding :S

Had the exact same thing twice, maybe even three times. Obviously this can't just be a coincidence. You might want to cut down on the visuals of exploding catapults, Thothie.

 

[villager]

Thothie, maybe you could lower tha amount of orcs/trolls when it's time for the catapults roll out?

 

[Picadilly]

I haven't noticed old helena 'crashing' so much as 'trigger bugging'... I estimate that we've played a total of 6 hours on old helena only to finish it twice in the last 24 hours. All failures due to bugged triggers.

 

[The Man In Black]

By trigger buggings you mean kill-all-the-monsters-for-no-result, right?

 

[Picadilly]

Well ya, that's one way to put it. However, it seems that there's a secondary monster timer that will continue to spit out Ogres or Trolls, even when the main attack waves of Orcs have been bugged and stop spawning.
It can happen at any point in the attack waves. Basically, you kill the last Orc running around on the map and the next wave doesn't come. Sometimes it seems to be accompanied by a gibbed monster, although I can't confirm that since it's a pretty chaotic map.

 

[Jon]

I really like how the new chest system will not depend on HP. Im among the higher level people (at least I think I am idk) and I done decent dmg. Only thing that keeps me back from adding to spawn chances is HP.

 

[Thothie]

Well ya, that's one way to put it. However, it seems that there's a secondary monster timer that will continue to spit out Ogres or Trolls, even when the main attack waves of Orcs have been bugged and stop spawning.
It can happen at any point in the attack waves. Basically, you kill the last Orc running around on the map and the next wave doesn't come. Sometimes it seems to be accompanied by a gibbed monster, although I can't confirm that since it's a pretty chaotic map.

Yeah, this pisses me the hell off... I even switched it up so the monsters are counted when they spawn, rather than when they die (so gibbing a monster shouldn't affected it) - but even with that, it seems some monsters, for some reason, don't get counted. I dunno if it's too much stuff going on, and somehow the trigger_counter doesn't get the news, or that some monsters aren't spawning at all. I have a "safety buffer" on the trigger counter of about 4, so if as many as four monsters are not counted, it'll go off anyways - even then, sometimes it fails, and sometimes it goes off far too early.

The trolls and ogres are on a seperate set of spawns that changes (upgrades) with each orc wave.

 

[J-M v2.5.5]

J-M v2.5.5's take on rolling (until this new arty system is implemented), revision 2, because it's relevant:
1) You may not roll for an item that you can't use due to lack of skill.
2) You may not roll for an item if you didn't help beat the boss. And by 'beat the boss' I mean you must do big amounts of damage.
3) You may not roll for an item if you do not meet the level/HP range of the map said item is in.
4) You may not roll for an item you already have.

 

[Picadilly]

Thothie, I'm pretty sure the counter buffer isn't sufficient in this situation. In fact, what's the downside of having the counter buffer spread a little higher? If it were me, I'd spawn another wave (to ensure your targeted monster death quota is met), and lay the buffer a wider berth. I personally wouldn't mind the extra work if it were to boost the chance of successfully completing the level.

 

[Thothie]

Well, if there's too much of a counter buffer, you wind up with 16 or more orcs on the map at once, as the next wave begins, before the first wave is down... And although the counter buffer is currently 4, I've seen as many as 8 (ie. ALL) the orcs from one wave still about, when the next wave starts.

*sigh* I'll have to roll back the XP changes I made to the bosses, I dunno what is up with that (although I've some theories).

 

[Jelly]

Naw, you don't have to do that.

 

[Tentadrilus]

No, no, the XP values are fine as they are... Believe me. They're fine.

 

[Belmont]

I also very much like the EXP bosses give now, because before you would be better off killing normal monsters to gain EXP but now bosses and monsters are quite equal.

 

[J-M v2.5.5]

*sigh* I'll have to roll back the XP changes I made to the bosses, I dunno what is up with that (although I've some theories).

Naw, you don't have to do that.

No, no, the XP values are fine as they are... Believe me. They're fine.

I also very much like the EXP bosses give now, because before you would be better off killing normal monsters to gain EXP but now bosses and monsters are quite equal.

Boss XP is fine, don't worry, we're all happy

 

[villager]

Ugh... is there a way to turn off other peoples signs? ...

 

[Thothie]

Then I'll just take away all those nifty chests with nifty items the bosses give you...

Something's gotta give somewhere.

 

[Belmont]

Seems the exp balances just fine, the more players, the less exp you get.

I just did another Atholo run with 5 people and we each got less than 5k each, so I don't think you need to change anything.