Teibidh

So, our fix for a glitch that has people fall and get stuck in an object is to introduce an entirely new dimension to movement in a game that is so decidedly 2 dimensional that you can't even tunnel over or under an existing tunnel? Wouldn't it make more sense to revisit the engine and validate collisions a little better so people can't get stuck in the first place? Assume you can't do that, wouldn't implementing a functional /stuck (which is almost a standard item in MMOs now) to resolve the issue be cleaner and easier and far less prone to the unforeseeable consequences this game is known for than flying? -1 to flying and to jumping. +1 to making the rest of the game actually 3d first.

Another frivolous bump, had the pleasure of working with Hailene the other night in addition to my continued interactions with Jaggy, Ghengizcohen and Margus. I generally find something to not like about places where I spend money... not so far.

Incidentally, I'm not sure I understand this numbers debate ... when I put 25x25+15 and 2 guards in to any of the deed calculators it comes out to 8.622s per month? Nevermind, I get it. 4.15s, though, with 2 guards and 15 tile perimeter.

So, as Arch's one "long-term" tenant, I suppose I should throw in.... This is a wicked good deal. I have lived on the Crown since day 2 in Wurm, that was 6 weeks ago. In terms of what I have and have access to, I'm ahead of some people I know who have been playing for months. Aside from my premium costs for two characters (he didn't mention we have a Fo priest, did he?) the only thing I've used silver for is greed purchases. There are improved tools laying around in bins for any villager to use. Rocks, and virtually all types of ore and literally every kind of wood are readily available. Clay and tar are readily available, too. Not to mention access to a couple of experienced players who tend to know some of the smarter ways to do the things you're determined you're trying to do (no, I'm not one of those... I'm still doing everything the stupid way ) Seriously... I was thinking about putting my own deed down somewhere the other day just so I could say that I have my own deed.. I was looking around trying to find something that I could put a deed on that we didn't already have ... I couldn't. We've got everything. The closest I could come was to build a fishing shack on the lake in the desert, which I still didn't do because we have safe fishing sea-side... So, yeah.. it's that good. Oh, the "downside". take a look at the project list. Chances are that there's something on there that already aligns with something you wanted to do. If there isn't, I will point out that a lot of the items on there are items that I have suggested.. "Hey, Arch... couldn't we do X, Y or Z?" "Yeah, sure, I'll put it on the list." It's really not a slave labor arrangement, just pick something that benefits everyone on the deed that you would probably want to do on a deed of your own, propose it, and chances are there's a way to work it in.

I had thought this every time I have launched it since installing the new launcher. Perhaps if the launcher could start Wurm client sessions, DeedPlanner, Wurm Army Knife and other commonly used tools there would be more use for it... but as of now, yes, it's just another click to go through before getting WA in the system tray.

Creating a Highway - 1- Add a context menu item for right clicking on a tile with the shovel equipped "Highway" 2- Validate that the tiles connected to the corner the character is standing on are A) paved, have no unpassable slopes. This code already exists for digging, you're just calling the functions from someplace else. 3- Validate that there are no structures on more than one of a connected tile's borders. Or, in the case of a corner, that there are at least 4 borders connected to valid highway tiles. (both existing sides of a corner would have to be done before the corner tile could if there are buildings already present.) 3- Validate that the person doing the clicking is A) premium and owns a deed of any size on the server they're clicking on and C) has at least 60 paving skill. 5- If the land is not deeded (this includes perimeter tiles!) the person doing the clicking gets the "Highway > Nominate" option, on a deed only the deed owner can nominate a corner, and only if it is connected to existing off deed (including perimeter!) highway tiles. 6- If a corner has already been nominated as highway, any other premium player that is a deed owner gets a "Highway > Vote" option. 7- Including the nomination, once a corner has acquired 6 votes from premium deed owners that's it.. it's highway and cannot be modified further. This would result in the "some corners cannot be modified" type errors that one sees in digging currently. No changes to adjacent tiles that alter slope or the pavement itself will be allowed. 8- Going forward, a nominal cost per highway tile is subtracted from the global pool or king's fund or whatever it's called... the server as a whole has to pay for the highways to exist. 50% of the "revenue" collected by the king for highway tiles is distributed to deed owners who have valid voted in tiles (the reason for the off deed connectivity requirement, and the reason multiple deed owners have to be involved in voting the tile in) on their deed on a per tile basis. This provides compensation for people who are losing usable tiles to allow everyone else to get around their deed conveniently. If someone is placing a deed on existing highway tiles they will get revenue from those highway tiles, but all other code still applies. The highway was already there, it's protected by the king, etc. Removing a highway tile 1) Once a corner is highway, the "Highway > Remove" menu option is shown to premium deed owners when right clicking. Once this option is chosen a 24 hour timer starts. 2) If a tile receives 6 "remove" requests from premium deed owners in a 24 hour period it is removed from the list of highway tiles and loses its mechanical protections 24 hours later. During this period it can be nominated and voted in as highway again. 3) The "remove" option can be chosen by people without terraforming rights on a deed. This provides the player population with a method of removing cost from the pool if a deed owner who has highway tiles has done something to make them unpassable. KOS: If a deed owner sets anyone as KOS they lose any revenue they would receive for the highway tiles during that period. This gives the deed owner the right to conduct his land as he sees fit, but the king doesn't have to pay for it if he's not following the rules. Gates, fences, buildings, etc: Structures may be built only on borders that have only one highway tile connected to them. This should allow people to build along the outside of highways, but never build anything that crosses them. Why? The premium deed owner requirement means that the people who pay the most (traders not withstanding) to keep the server alive are the ones making the decisions. Since the whole argument for keeping the highway system in tact is that it benefits the whole server and the economy (again, traders?) would collapse without them, this is a way to make sure that those who reside on the server and are a contributing part of its economy are the ones who get to make the decisions about the roads. Deed owners can rearrange highways, as long as they get the consensus of other deed owners on the server. If someone is paying enough money every month to pay for 6 premium accounts and maintenance on 6 deeds there are two mutually exclusive assumptions we could make. 1) that person isn't a griefer or 2) that person is a griefer who has access to enough resources that messing with highways is probably one of the more trivial things they could do and it doesn't matter anyway. Deed owners can get compensated for giving up tiles, or they can provide an alternate route around their property ... they just need to convince 5 other people that it's a good idea.

Just for reference, I made a post yesterday about how unprofessional it was not to communicate changes ahead of time... This is perfect. Even though there's no exact date, it is clearly stated that players should plan on the rules changing. Easy sauce. Thanks. I think the most simple non-coded solution to the legal enclosure scenario is to limit the size and duration. From a code-able perspective in regards to the legal enclosure rule: Every time a planned wall or fence section is completed, the following checks are run: - Is the person completing this wall or fence section a citizen of an existing village or the owner of an existing enclosure token? - Are there no other plans with a different owner or fence sections that are not connected to this one within 11 tiles? - Has the person completing the wall or fence section ever been the owner of an enclosure token? - Is this a valid house plan that is at least 2x2 tiles (if the newbie isn't ready to build 2x2, they're not ready to reserve land either?) - Are all exterior walls of the valid plan completed? - Are there fence or gate sections directly connected to the valid plan? - Is the enclosure completed to the point where an animal could not enter or exit it? (This can use the existing pathing code.) If all of the above checks pass, then do the following: - Create an enclosure token on the tile one tile north of the north eastern most wall of the plan. - Set a timer on the enclosure token for 15 days. - Flag an 11x11 (or whatever minimum deed + perimeter size is) area centered on the enclosure token as perimeter tiles. (No ability to add templars, no manageable permissions, just reserve the space) - Add a command to 'upgrade' the enclosure token to a deed token by using an activated deed slip on it. - Modify the current rules regarding the ability to destroy structures to prevent people from destroying structures on perimeter tiles when they're not a citizen of the village that controls them. On PvP servers, this doesn't matter... on PvE the object is not supposed to be to be able to harass or destroy stuff of other players anyway, so what does it hurt? - When the timer on the enclosure token expires, the token goes away, as does the perimeter flagging on the surrounding tiles. Any time a wall or fence section is destroyed: - Is this wall or fence section in an area marked by an enclosure token? - Does the removal of this wall or fence section cause one of the previous checks to be false? If these conditions are met: - Remove enclosure token and associated benefits. This should all be fairly easily doable via code... whether it's simple to integrate with the existing code base or not I don't know, but I know I could write the snippets to do these evaluations, and I'm not a developer by trade. From a player perspective, the worst thing anyone can do from a griefing perspective is to create a bunch of alts to keep someone from deeding an area for about two weeks. They would have to destroy their own structures to place another enclosure token ... and since it doesn't give them the full privileges of a deed, I would think this would wind up not being worth it... at least any more so than any other griefing method. From a new player perspective they still have to follow the rules about securing their property, but now that their stuff can't be destroyed by other players for a short time they at least get a chance to get established and determine whether or not they want to deed the property they're on. There is no need for GM interaction if the code works correctly. If the owner has locked all doors/gates, and the code determines properly that there are no openings in the house and fence, no one should be able to get in. If they can get in, they are exploiting (remember, the code should be working properly?) and are subject to banning. If the player spends the time building the house and what not they get up to two weeks to purchase a proper deed during which time no one can come along and lay a deed on top of them or the perimeter they would require, preventing the spot they've chosen from getting hijacked. Meanwhile, it's only two weeks... if you have to wait to put your deed down until some newbie's timer expires, so be it. If the upgrade to a proper deed, they were there first anyway.

Actually, I think any command should be able to be bound to a key ... for a couple of reasons. Perhaps my 'twitch' skills aren't up to snuff and I have a hard time clicking on smaller objects. If archery in this game is supposed to be intentionally difficult like that, cool.. someone should say so and then we'll know. But really, without a keybind, the only thing archery will ever be for me is a way to grind for body control and then only as far as I can use practice targets for it.

As a new player (my first premium month expires this week) I can't intelligently comment on whether the predatory animal change is going to seriously unbalance anything. I grind fight skill by bouncing stuff off of templars and tower guards because every creature out there seems to be able to eat me even in my studded leather. Consequences of low fight skill, blah blah blah. Some people seem to love it, others hate it... and this isn't a new argument, every time someone changes a game there are those who are for and against. What I will comment on though is that so far I have seen nothing encouraging about the development processes Wurm operates under. I don't expect that every organization in the world follows the ITIL or other operations framework for how they do their changes, but the way updates seem to just get thrown in on random days at whatever time the development team thinks they're ready is unprofessional at best, amateur hack at worst. I could not personally write the code to make a Wurm clone, there's obviously some intelligence behind how it was written and implemented, but I would very strongly suggest that the team grab a change manager who has some experience in service delivery and let them teach the shop how to go about informing users, scheduling changes, and updating and maintaining documentation. Too much management sucks, but there needs to be some serious change control put in to place there. At the very least, just pick a day of the week and stick with it. A simple known quantity like "Servers will always be brought down for maintenance and any updates on Tuesdays at 12:00:00 GMT." would go a massively long way. If you're going to stick with the idea that telling people what changes are going in ahead of time is horrible and should never be done, at least people would know to make sure their stuff is as secure as it can be when they log out Monday night.... but really, if changes are going in Tuesday, there's no good reason why end-users can't be notified at least Monday. Anyway, some great concepts in the game. It's a little rough around the edges by today's UI standards, but for a small team, it's very cool. Just get some professionalism to go with the good ideas and coding skills.

Trying to remember where that emblem was taken from, I know I recognize it.

Lots of references to Soul Depth, what about Soul Strength for us Mag types? And are cordage ropes used because they can be put in a bsb, or are we better off using our god's double favor item if we don't have storage issues?

Only somewhat unrelated: Is there a shortcut or bind for the context menu for the "Shoot" or "Target Practice" commands? I really really wanted to do archery, but having to right click on my target every time I want to shoot it is a massive massive turn off, to the point where I'm not bothering with it. Thoughts?

Where could I have looked to see that downtime was scheduled for today?

Bump and a +1. I have placed two orders of between 7.8 and 12s worth of tools, armor, etc, plus a couple of miscellaneous pieces in the past couple of weeks. I was answered promptly, prices on stuff that wasn't already listed on this page were just as fair and the large orders were delivered to my doorstep with a thank you. They also seem to span the time zones pretty well, I'm US East Coast (GMT-5) and have been able to talk to one of them in-game anywhere between 6AM and 12PM local time.