Posted May 21, 2016 Hello all, I wanted to give our community tool developers a heads up that the update scheduled for Tuesday, May 24th will bring some changes to text sent by the server. This may affect combat log readers as well as utilities such as Wurm Assistant. The current changes are live on Test, so you have some time to take a look and ready your own updates as needed. A brief breakdown of what has changed: Some formatting on examining creatures, mostly adding "a/an/the" in appropriate places and fixing capitalization. Adding "a/an/the" and fixing capitalization in nearly all combat messages. Adding "a/an/the" in nearly all actions. For horses, a major example is that named horses are now referred to as "the venerable Dancemax" in areas where a genus is added, whereas unnamed horses are referred to as "a venerable horse". When you examine a horse, the parentage is also formatted a little differently. [09:11:08] His mother is the aged Coffeepot. His father is the venerable Dancemax. Here is a sample of the combat log output: [09:20:13] An aged rift caster starts to cast 'Fire Pillar'. [09:20:13] An old rift jackal moves in to attack you. [09:20:15] You open yourself to an attack from an aged rift ogre. [09:20:15] You skillfully evade the blow to the left thigh. [09:20:16] An old rift caster starts to cast 'Fire Pillar'. [09:20:19] An aged rift ogre moves in to attack you. [09:20:20] An adolescent rift ogre moves in to attack you. [09:20:21] An aged rift jackal moves in to attack you. [09:20:22] You try to cut an old rift jackal. [09:20:22] An aged rift summoner moves in to attack you. [09:20:23] An aged rift summoner moves in to attack you. [09:20:24] You open yourself to an attack from a venerable rift ogre. [09:20:24] The attack to the right thigh glances off your armour. [09:20:25] An adolescent rift ogre seems to target your upper left parts. [09:20:27] You skillfully evade the blow to the left underarm. [09:20:27] An adolescent rift ogre targets your upper left parts. [09:20:27] You cut an old rift jackal deadly hard in the right hand and harm it. [09:20:28] The attack to the left shoulder glances off your armour. [09:20:29] An aged rift summoner moves in to attack you. [09:20:29] An aged rift ogre mage starts to cast 'Heal' on an old rift jackal. [09:20:31] An aged rift summoner moves in to attack you. [09:20:32] A venerable rift caster starts to cast 'Heal' on an old rift jackal. [09:20:33] You miss with the huge axe. [09:20:33] An adolescent rift ogre burns you extremely hard in the left upper arm and damages it. [09:20:36] An aged rift summoner claws you extremely hard in the left thigh and hurts it. [09:20:38] An aged rift summoner claws you extremely hard in the left thigh and hurts it. [09:20:39] An aged rift summoner seems to target your right parts. [09:20:40] An aged rift summoner targets your right parts. [09:20:41] An aged rift summoner claws you extremely hard in the stomach and hurts it. [09:20:42] You try to cut an old rift jackal. [09:20:42] An aged rift summoner claws you extremely hard in the right thigh and hurts it. [09:20:44] An aged rift summoner claws you extremely hard in the right thigh and hurts it. 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted May 21, 2016 reading that combat log as just text, with no client open, I had the overwhelming urge to type "attack rat" 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted May 22, 2016 Thanks for the list of changes, however I have some feedback. 3 days is not enough for a heads-up. If you folks are not able to make such a list sooner, perhaps a 1-2 weeks early general heads-up? So I can reserve some time. A single thread with changes, so it's easy to subscribe and track. If Warlander didn't bring this up to me, I'd be surely surprised on 24th. PS. What about those creature Id's? 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted May 22, 2016 38 minutes ago, Aldur said: Thanks for the list of changes, however I have some feedback. 3 days is not enough for a heads-up. If you folks are not able to make such a list sooner, perhaps a 1-2 weeks early general heads-up? So I can reserve some time. A single thread with changes, so it's easy to subscribe and track. If Warlander didn't bring this up to me, I'd be surely surprised on 24th. PS. What about those creature Id's? Once we've moved in to the development cycle I'm hoping to get us following, it'll be about a week notice. This is really the first time we've given a heads up for community developers, so based on feedback we will make changes to ensure it goes more smoothly next time. I think in the future we'll be doing test patch notes when we push a build up for testing, so perhaps a section in there instead. Creature IDs got pushed to the back to make rifts and the new renderer ready. To do them right will require a bit of work to both the client and the server. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted May 25, 2016 (edited) I've noticed not all cases involving indefinite and definite articles have been fixed in this update. Do you plan to roll more of these in the future? Is it possible to get precise lists of affected log messages before future updates? For example an action queue trigger in my WA has over 100 conditions for the entire spectrum of in-game actions, it would be very hard to manually test every single of these actions in game. Testing some other things can be tricky due to cooldowns, opportunity requirements etc., no chance I'd find enough time to do this every month or so. PS. Tho I don't want to block any updates, of course. Edited May 25, 2016 by Aldur Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted May 26, 2016 I can try to do a better job of documenting changes like these. Might even be able to do a diff with a regex to look for string changes. Ideally I'd love to start moving strings to the client itself. This isn't an easy task right now though, and I don't expect being able to do anything like this for many months at this point. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted May 26, 2016 The moment I read the first post I thought OMG this is going to break Granger in Wurm Assistant. PLEASE, please give some consideration to these people who develop experience-enhancing apps for FREE to make this game more enjoyable. For example I've been begging for a keybind or easier way to smile at the horses for a long time now, and nothing happens. Also, the seasons are all messed up and it makes it look like the app isn't working to report season changes properly. And I don't mean you, Keenan. I mean the same FOR you - the people who give so freely to make the game better. Devs please remember to care for these volunteers/under-rewarded. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted May 26, 2016 Aye Keenan, that would help a lot. Tho I still think, purely from WA perspective, the best thing is to avoid changing the log outputs where possible. For example, today I've had to reintroduce old parsing code, because update broke Granger for WU. So far it's ok to have cascading parsing strategies, but with more frequent and deeper changes to output, it may get too complicated to continue maintaining WA for all possible WU server versions. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted May 26, 2016 7 hours ago, LorraineJ said: The moment I read the first post I thought OMG this is going to break Granger in Wurm Assistant. PLEASE, please give some consideration to these people who develop experience-enhancing apps for FREE to make this game more enjoyable. For example I've been begging for a keybind or easier way to smile at the horses for a long time now, and nothing happens. Also, the seasons are all messed up and it makes it look like the app isn't working to report season changes properly. And I don't mean you, Keenan. I mean the same FOR you - the people who give so freely to make the game better. Devs please remember to care for these volunteers/under-rewarded. Well as I said, we are transitioning into a cycle. My goal is that you'll be able to set your clocks to patch days, with new code spending a minimum of a week on Test before seeing the live game servers. The exception being critical fixes, but a grammar fix is never going to be critical unless it's saying something vulgar somehow. So with that said, our community tool developers will have some lead time to make changes. The hard part is knowing exactly what changes will affect what tools though. In reply to Aldur - text changes are a part of making Wurm feel less unprofessional. I don't expect us to focus on them, but we're not going to stop doing them any time soon. As I said, I'll try to find a way to post the specific changes with some lead time. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted May 27, 2016 You and CodeClub should carefully review reasons for such changes. Haven't heard a single player complaining about determiners and even generally text. And they do complain a lot. It's not just a matter of saving my free time, annoyances for WA users and perhaps avoiding permanently breaking some apps. It's also about spending dev time on things, that people care about the most. As I've previously said, too many of such changes eventually will result in things getting permanently broken for WU. Long term, maybe even for WO (who knows what I'm going to be doing in a year). If that happens, make sure it was for good reasons. Also consider giving community some proper API's with immutability guarantees, maybe plugin system. Something that will encourage more devs to contribute, without facing the problems I'm facing right now. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
