Decay rate customisable?

[Barnox 1]

I'm just wondering if the decay rate is something that is customisable, for objects and structures.

I know free deeds are a thing that is possible, but I'd rather ignore all the GM powers and server tools, boot up into singleplayer and play like that. Ideally I'd be able to play without placing deeds everywhere I want to stay, and can just build up anywhere I want.
 

Were it an option, I'd probably keep small object decay as it is (so food, forage items and stuff left on the floor will eventually decay away), but have it off for containers like barrels, larger objects like anvils and ovens,  and buildings.

[JackBinimbul 33]

This is exactly what I want to know. 

If possible, I don't want to deed at all.  I want to build wherever on my personal playground and have wild animals roaming as they please with no omniscient boundaries of ownership.

[Sarcaticous 338]

These and a host of other questions concerning day to day mechanics in the game that we take for granted need some clarification. Someone said we could adjust the passage of time. Will that adjustment be obvious for us to make? Can we adjust decay and will that also be obvious? Will there be a UI that makes the generic game functions visible to us to change? All of these are taken for granted by us as players in WURM. Now we are to control these things. Will all of this have to be modded? My concern is that the learning curve to make even a single player instance of WU work properly in a single player environment will be steep indeed. So far only vague references and we are only 11 days from launch.

Edited October 10, 2015 by Sarcaticous

[sunsvortex 599]

I remember talking with ErikN when he first started adjusting decay rates a good while back. It was quite a process and even today I dont think the system works as intended as we still get big spikes in decay. I still have armor from when i first started playing -Studded leather -where some of the pieces, actually all but the chest piece and a sleeve are still in the high 70's QL. Allmost 3 years old. The entire armor set was 80 QL when I got it. I used this armor exclusively till 4 months ago. So there should have been a lot of decay by now if only from mob dmg and repairing.....but such is not the case.

 

Will we be able to change decay rate upon release -  I dont know - if i were forced to guess, Id say not, given what an exercise it was for ErikN in the past. IIRC - decay is set per individual item....but I wont swear to that..... its been too long.

Edited October 11, 2015 by sunsvortex

[neofit 78]

Will we be able to change decay rate upon release -  I dont know - if i were forced to guess, Id say not, given what an exercise it was for ErikN in the past. IIRC - decay is set per individual item....but I wont swear to that..... its been too long.

I don't think this can be possible. There has to a procedure/function/whatever that is run at some ticks and changes one QL figure to another. Modifying the decay rate would mean adding or changing a coefficient that increases or reduces the result. What is probably set up by item is something we might describe as the durability.

 

I suspect what ErikN had trouble with was how to adjust things without giving us too much rope. But since I suppose that most people will buy WU so they don't have to deal with this WO cra state of affairs, there is no need for fine adjustments. It will be like /10 or /100 and everyone is happy .

 

Besides, we need to make sure we are talking about the same things. Too many different things in Wurm are called "decay". We have, from the top of my head:

• usage decay on armor, weapons, tools, everything that is usable (grats on getting a set of indestructible armor btw)

stuff like food very quickly rotting in your pockets or non SB containers

5% quantity "decay" in SBs (taxation without representation and all that)

structure decay, off-deed and on-deed

general decay for objects like boats, carts, tents

I bet I forgot something (brain decay)

 

I hope all of this is adjustable in WU. Personally I would not touch the usage decay, definitely not on weapons and armor. I would completely remove the SB tax and make sure that I still have food even if I am away for a 4 day week-end. We probably won't need at release to go into fine details like reduce the decay on a tent as compared to a boat, so a general multiplier per area will be awesome imho.

Edited October 11, 2015 by neofit

[sunsvortex 599]

It very well may have been he was adjusting durability, but the conversation was all in the context of decay rates. What i know for certain was that he was having a hard time with it. As I recall he got a number of things fixed quite quickly but had to redo some of them later on and continued to work on them for quite some time, several weeks IIRC. But it has been a while ago and I suspect he may have changed a number of things. As I recall much of it was about on deed items vs off deed items. Its just been too long for me to remember details accurately.

 

A while after that is when the housing decay changes went in effect where the decay rates go sky high if the player that holds the writ does not log on for over a month and the building is off deed. Its kind of crazy high at that point. 80 QL stone walls come down in no time after that time limit.

 

 

Dont get me wrong, I hope they do allow it on release, but if I had to place a bet, id probably go with it not being ready on release.

Edited October 11, 2015 by sunsvortex

[neofit 78]

Dont get me wrong, I hope they do allow it on release, but if I had to place a bet, id probably go with it not being ready on release.

Meh, I hope not. Modification of decay rates, maybe not on structures but certainly on food and SBs are one of the mail selling points for Wurm Unsucked, right there with skill gain rates, action timers, etc.

[Sarcaticous 338]

The ability to adjust the passage of time is more important than decay rates because it directly affects decay rates. Not only does it affect decay, it also affects maturation of crops, tree growth, animal age and a plethora of other game mechanics. In WURM Online we have no need to be concerned about these things. Time passes whether we are there to see it or not. But in a single player WURM Unlimited where the game world would stop and start the passage of time should be readily adjustable to allow for the players absence from the game world. Speeding up time to allow the game world to mature to compensate for the time the game is down is relatively important. Otherwise it would seem to take forever to grow that crop of wemp so you can produce rope to build your ships. Yes, you could magically create some rope or possibly even a ship. But where is the fun in that?

[Ayes 3,715]

Since there is some type of setting that prevents decay of structures on deeds I don't see why that setting couldn't just be applied to the whole server as well. I am thinking that on my private creative mode type server that there is no reason that I would want anything that I built there to decay, so if this type of option were available I would just set the whole server up as if it were on deed decay wise.

 

I would still want the option to have Villages (deeds) just for the sake of building each one with a distinctive name attached, as well as a different style to them. Then when entering it the Village name would appear in event as usual. The main idea being to slowly build this world (server) over time with nothing such as decay to diminish what has been created.

 

Although decay within Wurm Online is necessary to achieve certain objectives it should be able to be totally removed from Wurm Unlimited if desired, since I see the main point of it being able to play the game as we desire not dictated by anyone else's ideas of what should or should not be done.

 

=Ayes=

[Terapherna 21]

I remember talking with ErikN when he first started adjusting decay rates a good while back. It was quite a process and even today I dont think the system works as intended as we still get big spikes in decay. I still have armor from when i first started playing -Studded leather -where some of the pieces, actually all but the chest piece and a sleeve are still in the high 70's QL. Allmost 3 years old. The entire armor set was 80 QL when I got it. I used this armor exclusively till 4 months ago. So there should have been a lot of decay by now if only from mob dmg and repairing.....but such is not the case.

 

Will we be able to change decay rate upon release -  I dont know - if i were forced to guess, Id say not, given what an exercise it was for ErikN in the past. IIRC - decay is set per individual item....but I wont swear to that..... its been too long.

 

armor you are wearing and items in your inventory dont take decay damage other than usage damage so that armor wouldnt have decayed other than when you are being hit by something, or atleast thats how it has always worked when i played, the only thing that decayed over time in your inventory was food

 

personally i will be setting up a deed on my home area mainly for the use of the guard so that it will take care of mobs roming in while i am doing other things, but as for everywhere else i prolly wont use deeds

[sunsvortex 599]

armor you are wearing and items in your inventory dont take decay damage other than usage damage so that armor wouldnt have decayed other than when you are being hit by something, or atleast thats how it has always worked when i played, the only thing that decayed over time in your inventory was food

 

personally i will be setting up a deed on my home area mainly for the use of the guard so that it will take care of mobs roming in while i am doing other things, but as for everywhere else i prolly wont use deeds

yeah umm...the armor is nearly 3 years old, it was stored for extended periods in chests,armor racks and took a lot of dmg from mobs over that time. I never had it imped, never needed to except for 2 pieces, and that decay/dmg is recent, which is why I finally got a new set of armor. Decay/ durabilty / something is broken and remains so to this day.

[sunsvortex 599]

The ability to adjust the passage of time is more important than decay rates because it directly affects decay rates. Not only does it affect decay, it also affects maturation of crops, tree growth, animal age and a plethora of other game mechanics. In WURM Online we have no need to be concerned about these things. Time passes whether we are there to see it or not. But in a single player WURM Unlimited where the game world would stop and start the passage of time should be readily adjustable to allow for the players absence from the game world. Speeding up time to allow the game world to mature to compensate for the time the game is down is relatively important. Otherwise it would seem to take forever to grow that crop of wemp so you can produce rope to build your ships. Yes, you could magically create some rope or possibly even a ship. But where is the fun in that?

Im definately not 100% sure about this, but as I understand it, even though WU is a standalone game...its still a client server architecture. Which, and this is the part im not certain about, should mean you can just log out like normal and the server will still run...there fore time still passes.

 

Thats not to say it wouldnt be handy to adjust time, but, if you just leave the server running in the background you really wouldnt need to.

Edited October 13, 2015 by sunsvortex

[Sarcaticous 338]

Im definately not 100% sure about this, but as I understand it, even though WU is a standalone game...its still a client server architecture. Which, and this is the part im not certain about, should mean you can just log out like normal and the server will still run...there fore time still passes.

 

Thats not to say it wouldnt be handy to adjust time, but, if you just leave the server running in the background you really wouldnt need to.

 

Aye, and there's the rub. Even if you have a server running a game only for yourself it still has to be running. I don't know of a lot of people who keep their machines running 24/7. And even if they did the hit on performance to maintain a game world would be noticeable unless there were next to zero objects to keep track of. However, a full blown game world with tens of thousands of trees, mobs, crops, items, buildings, etc. would cause your machine to work full time time ticking and tocking the passage of time on each and every thing. Even if you were not playing the game, running it in the background would cause your processor to continually process, you hard drive to continually drive, your memory to continually...er, memorize. If you run it in the background 24/7 then time stands still for no man.     

 

Personally I would rather adjust the passage of time each time I started playing a solo game and save myself the overhead.

[sunsvortex 599]

Aye, and there's the rub. Even if you have a server running a game only for yourself it still has to be running. I don't know of a lot of people who keep their machines running 24/7. And even if they did the hit on performance to maintain a game world would be noticeable unless there were next to zero objects to keep track of. However, a full blown game world with tens of thousands of trees, mobs, crops, items, buildings, etc. would cause your machine to work full time time ticking and tocking the passage of time on each and every thing. Even if you were not playing the game, running it in the background would cause your processor to continually process, you hard drive to continually drive, your memory to continually...er, memorize. If you run it in the background 24/7 then time stands still for no man.     

 

Personally I would rather adjust the passage of time each time I started playing a solo game and save myself the overhead.

 

But then you would take the hit all at once, no telling how long it would take to ...if i understand you correctly....fast forward everything to where it should be given the last time you logged off. Especially if you were not playing for like a week or more. 

 

If your just wanting to Fast forward a bit , say between x and y number of days , irregardless of how long it has been since you last logged off, its still a big hit, but at least predictable once you have done it so that you know your going to be waiting for x amount of time while the server fast forwards.

 

 

haha I never turn my machine off, lol, its been running for 2 months 24x7 now at least...

Edited October 13, 2015 by sunsvortex

[yarnevk 257]

WO probably has a low tick rate so as not to introduce database lag while people are playing, I would guess once a sec.  A WU server could process many things in that boot second and nobody would ever notice the lag because nobody has logged in yet.  So what if the GM has to stare at the pretty screenshot slogan screen a bit longer if it allows them to use their personal computer for other things at other times than Wurm.  Just make it optional on boot let people decide if they want to rejoin WU a week later or have paused the game for that week.

Edited October 13, 2015 by yarnevk

[Ayes 3,715]

Just make it optional on boot let people decide if they want to rejoin WU a week later or have paused the game for that week.

 

It would be very helpful if there was some way to alter the passage of time at will within WU. In this way certain functions such as crop growth and animal aging could be accelerated if desired. Or perhaps even to freeze it to maintain a certain status within the world where everything created would remain as is. Although I doubt that WU will be this sophisticated to have these options built into it. From all that I have read it just mimics the functions of WO, which are then alterable with GM powers to a certain degree.

 

=Ayes=

[yarnevk 257]

It would be very helpful if there was some way to alter the passage of time at will within WU. In this way certain functions such as crop growth and animal aging could be accelerated if desired. Or perhaps even to freeze it to maintain a certain status within the world where everything created would remain as is. Although I doubt that WU will be this sophisticated to have these options built into it. From all that I have read it just mimics the functions of WO, which are then alterable with GM powers to a certain degree.

 

=Ayes=

The game already has code that converts real time to 8x wurm time, all that needs to happen is to patch that and increase the server tic rate massively.  I would prefer WU devs do it because they would know all the gotchas that a modder might miss, but I think even the devs themselvs are afraid of the mysteries buried in the Wurm code.  Since it would indeed cause server lag is why I propose it only be done at boot, if a server lags when nobody is on did it really lag?

Edited October 13, 2015 by yarnevk

[Karys 77]

The game already has code that converts real time to 8x wurm time, all that needs to happen is to patch that and increase the server tic rate massively.  I would prefer WU devs do it because they would know all the gotchas that a modder might miss, but I think even the devs themselvs are afraid of the mysteries buried in the Wurm code.  Since it would indeed cause server lag is why I propose it only be done at boot, if a server lags when nobody is on did it really lag?

 

For the purposes of playing a single-player version of WU without a dedicated server running 24/7, rather than fiddling with the speed of temporal advancement each time I started up the server, I would very much like to have the ability to simply tell the server to simply advance "X" hours.  Then if the game is off for two days, and if I want a relative advancement of crops, etc., I just move it forward 48 hours and I'm done.  This would seem to be much simpler and more accurate than having to increase the speed of time, then wait for it to catch up to where you want it, and then slow it down, hoping that you've done the math right and didn't significantly overshoot the mark while at high speed to where something you were trying to age is now useless.

[Clatius 455]

For the purposes of playing a single-player version of WU without a dedicated server running 24/7, rather than fiddling with the speed of temporal advancement each time I started up the server, I would very much like to have the ability to simply tell the server to simply advance "X" hours.  Then if the game is off for two days, and if I want a relative advancement of crops, etc., I just move it forward 48 hours and I'm done.  This would seem to be much simpler and more accurate than having to increase the speed of time, then wait for it to catch up to where you want it, and then slow it down, hoping that you've done the math right and didn't significantly overshoot the mark while at high speed to where something you were trying to age is now useless.

 

Someone, a dev I think, said this could be solved by increasing time passage by 50%. I'm not sure if that was the max time can be increased or just a number thrown out there. Using Karys' example, that would mean to catch up 48 hours you would  have to sit and watch the game for 6 HOURS to get caught up time wise. That is completely unacceptable. If you are gone from home for more than a day things become crazy. Heck, even three hours would be nuts. Each hour of game off time would result in 7.5 minutes of waiting for the game to catch up. Just sleeping and then going to work, no turning the game on until you got home, would result in two or more hours of catch up. So either the game time needs to be increased several times more than the 50% cited or something like Karys suggested needs to be possible.

[yarnevk 257]

Before you rant on something the devs might have said can you first cite the post it was said in.  I have never heard they was putting such a minor speed limit on timers and time and I try to read all the posts.  Even Challenge was 25x skilling and that was a WO server.

 

What I have read is that they did not have time adjustment and they recommended adjusting the timers as the workaround.

Edited October 17, 2015 by yarnevk

[Tinkerer 107]

Well, if you consider that Golden Valley server has the same 8x speed of day and night, but has 3x the growth rate and decay rate of everything, at least an 'overall' server setting should be possible. Whether this can be broken down into categories of items rather than just one global modifier or not, I have no idea.

 

However, this doesn't help the issue of self hosting and not keeping the server running on a machine 24/7, returning a few das later to see your crops and trees have still only just been planted.