Wurm Assistant - Enrich Your Wurm Experience

[Stargrace 603]

Since there have been so many updates done to Wurm Assistant since last time I wrote about it, I decided to write about it again. You can find it here. Thanks again for all of your hard work. 

[Schwanke 32]

The meditation timer seems to be broken.  At first I thought it was because I lost the logs and it needed a skill gain tick. That didnt fix it. So then I thought that it needed to see me gain in the path. That didnt fix it.

 

On schwankenchanter I just:

 

[10:38:15] Congratulations! You have now reached the level of Giving of the path of love!

 

And I just did a meditation and got:

 

[10:41:42] Meditating increased by 0.0693 to 26.891

 

And it still says 'ready' right away when it should either say 30 minutes or until end of day.

[Aldur 652]

Love the post, Stargrace! Thank you!

 

Schwanke, yeah there is something wrong with meditation timer, I just can't seem to find the cause.

[Schwanke 32]

Meditation seems to work today kinda.  On enchanter it just updated properly but on schwanke it didnt notice the new meditation. .

 

I have a meditation hack that measures since the last successfull meditation.  Then I just dont meditate any more until the hack goes off. But right no schwankenchanter says:

 

Meditation (F) (26.96) 4 <time left>

 

Where as Schwanke says

 

Meditation (F) (30,50) 3 ready!

 

even though Schwanke just did it.

 

So it MIGHT be that what does work is after a log entry for a question, plus a day reset, plus a skill gain, all works together.

 

I'll try and remember to post if schwankenchanter 'breaks' later or if schwanke fixes.  I am going to bet schwanke wont fix until the next question or you figure out the problem. Next question isnt for another 9.5 points :/.

[Schwanke 32]

Ok a piece of info:

 

I inserted these lines into the first log that I have on this computer for Schwanke:

 

[20:08:29] You think 'Yes, that probably is it'

[20:08:30] Congratulations! You have now reached the level of Rock of the path of love!

[

 

NOW. It says what I *THINK* is the right amount of times I have meditatated and the right amount of time left till the next meditation. (Of course after restarting WA2).

 

Irony being is that log entry is as old a I can GET as a hack for my last question however by that definition the question SHOULD be ready by TIME but not by SKILL.

 

So if you are measuring the question ready by ONLY time. Then this may actually be working provided the player has atleast one question answer, and one meditation in their logs.

 

Btw, this is on the client run from the install that downloads the update.  Not the stand alone. Which I totally forgot about and just started using the old auto download one.  We are supposed to be using that again?

[Aldur 652]

Hmm that helps narrow it down a bit, thanks! I didn't look much into question causing this issue, mostly skills.

 

You can use the launcher again, it works.

[Schwanke 32]

I also just noticed its not counting past the 5th meditation correctly:

 

The wiki says this:

 

Above 20 meditation skill the chances to gain skill are limited to a few per day:

• The first 5 meditations per day need to be 30 minutes apart at least
  
• Every meditation past the 5th must be at least 3 hours after the previous one. The message You feel that it will take you a while before you are ready to meditate again after the 5th and any following meditation indicates the longer wait time.
  
• Every 24 hours after a server restart the counter is reset and you get 5 new chances immediately
  

Example:

Assuming the server was restarted at 12:00 and you start meditating right away. The first 5 meditations can be done at 12:00, 12:30, 13:00, 13:30 and 14:00. The next ones must be at least 3 hours past the previous one and are available at 17:00, 20:00 and 23:00. After getting some sleep bonus you continue to meditate at 8:00 and 11:00. At 12:00, 24 hours after the server restart the first 5 meditations are available again.  

 

 

--- haha stupid editor wont let me unindent properly.. <me and my editor bugs, editor showed indenting on quick reply but now it doesnt have it in the reply lolol, fixing indents now>  

 

Anyway. My display in WA2 shows Meditation (F) <skill> 5 <timer>  

 

However the timer is 30 minutes where by the wiki it should be 3 hours.  (or in this case 2hours and 10 minutes because the server reset at 24 would fix it.)  

 

So its not doing the 30, 30, 30, 30, 3hrs <repeat>, until server 24 hours.   

 

Might be a +1 error.  (next 30 would fix it) or it might be a repeat error where it just does 30 forever or 30 till 24hours or whatever.

 

I'll use it the way it is now and meditate after the 30 minutes are up and see if it goes to 30 or 3 hours or till server 24.  (My prayer is maxed so the prayer is showing 2:08 minutes)    

 

--- Also.. Would be cool if the Path Question section said <days, skill> until next level.  Cuz like I have 23 days and 3.04 skill left on schwankenchanter but 0 days and 9.5 skill on schwanke.  Since it only shows the days I have to 'remember' the skill till my next level. Not a big deal of course but WA2 has all this nifty brain savers I love the little ones as well as the big ones

 

Still fixing the old is more important then adding a new feature. Just mentioning incase maybe it helps the bug finding process.

Edited March 2, 2014 by Schwanke

[Schwanke 32]

Yes its not a +1 error but continuing the loop or whatever.  I am on meditation 6 for the day with 30 minutes to next when it should be still on 5 with 1:38 till the 24hour mark.

 

So gotta watch for the 30, 30, 30, 30, 3hrs, ... sequence too. (according to wiki).

[Schwanke 32]

Another tidbit. It doesnt seem to be watching for the you need to move 10 tiles trigger either.  On the 6th attempt I went to the wrong rug on my tile path and it gave me the error:

 

[06:54:33] You recently meditated here and need to find new insights somewhere else. 

 

however I wasnt paying attention and finished the meditation anyway and it reset the timer.

 

I am not 100% sure on this but I *THINK* that if you meditation where you meditated before and dont move the 10 tiles it DOESNT count as a successfull meditation.  but I am not 100% sure on that one. 

 

Another another tidbit is I have NOT gotten the error message saying that I need to wait 3hrs. So its possible the counter in your code is still counting from yesterday? and its not really at 6 but at like 4 or something?  I still have another 1:31minutes left in today according to the Prayer timer so I will see if I can try to get the error message and see if that resets the timer.

 

Could take a few days to debug this with all these timers

[Schwanke 32]

I think someone said meditation no longer 'tells you' when your not going to get a tick. You have to do the counting yourself.

 

So your code would have to measure 30 minutes from the last meditation for the first 4, then 4hrs from the 5th 3hrs from the 6th etc. With a reset at the 24hr mark.

 

I think thats right.  I'll try and confirm it in GL-Freedom or something.

 

btw, when you read my multi posts. Do you read the last post I posted or do you read it in in your email?

 

 

Cuz I can keep updating the last post with new info and save the board the multi post headaches hehe. I read mine in my email usually but I guess I should read the board for the same reason lol.

[Schwanke 32]

I confirmed from a alliance member that the message: You feel that it will take you a while before you are ready to meditate again.

 

Shows up when you have to wait 3 hours but the 30 minute ones do not.

 

Since I havnt gotten that yet today I am assuming that your code is counting from my previous server 24 hours for some reason.  I will try and hit the 5th meditation mark before the server transitions toherwise have to wait till tomrrow

[Schwanke 32]

Confirmed two things:

 

1) The end of day timer works.  I mediated with less then 30 minutes left in the day and the timer says till end of day not till end of 30 minutes.

 

2) The message: You recently meditated here and need to find new insights somewhere else.  .. indicates you need to move the 11 tiles.  When you get that message it should not reset the timer. So if you wait 30 minutes but dont move 11 tiles, you wont use up your chance until you move the 11 tiles. I think currently your code resets the timer even if you dont move. (even if you get that message)

 

Thats all I can test until the 24 restarts in 21 minutes.  Keep an eye on it today. Probably wont do a report until I have gotten a lot more data today so tell me if you fix it :D .

[Schwanke 32]

1) First med seemed to be fine. 30 minute timer, says #1 after meditation. Skill is listed properly.

 

2) Recieved: [09:11:17] You recently meditated here and need to find new insights somewhere else.

Timer was reset. Should not be.

 

After successfull meditation timer did not reset again. Which makes sense since it thought it was 'reset properly' the first time.

 

Says the right number of meds. Counts down from 30.

 

3rd) Seems fine so far. 30 minutes, says 3, was a skill gain, skill gain updated.

 

4th seems to be with out hitch. Next one is the first real test.

 

5th) says 3 hours

 

Did you ninja fix this? Or did it just take a question answered and a day of updates to reset everything properly?

[Aldur 652]

I didn't touch anything, I couldn't even run into these issues yet. Have few more ideas though.

 

Though it's true, if you meditate too close to last location, it will count as a meditation in timer. Will try fixing it.

[Aldur 652]

Since I'm sure some of you are curious what I'm up to, here is the little weekend summary.

 

Unfortunately, I think I've wasted most of this weekend. My goal was to build a new better system to save settings and all other kinds of data in Assistant. For that I was trying to use a database instead of files (to make settings less prone to corruption) and different serializer (to make working with these settings faster and easier).

 

I've managed to write this new system and the first database (SqlCe) worked pretty fine and I thought it is "it", but I've had to do some performance tests just to be sure. I've compared it to the old system and guess what... it was so slow I just couldn't believe it! Far too slow to be useful for what I'm using it for.

 

Initially I thought, something else in this new system is slowing everything down. So I've added a new way to save data, using simple files just like the old system. Well, tests confirmed it was indeed database, as the file-based way was even faster than old one.

 

I've read that SqlCe does not cache data and it's just directly reading and writing to disk, so I've turned to another database (SQLite) and this time, I've simply failed to get it to work at all. I'm sure, there is probably some magical sentence to copy-paste somewhere to make it all nice, but I've not found it and after wasting 2 hours on that, I've figured I'm just wasting time and dropped the idea of database completely. This was mostly because of trying to use entity framework to work with it. I'm also suspecting sqlite wouldn't be much faster than sqlce.

 

Fortunately, at least this new serializer turned out pretty good. So next thing I'm going to do, is to strip the new system of all this database nonsense, keep everything as files, tweak few bits and pieces where there is room for improvement and plug that into Assistant (and new launcher) and go back to doing something productive here, for a change.

[Schwanke 32]

Thomas Edison (inventor of the light bulb) once said: Failure is not a loss. You just learned one more way not to do things.

 

This coming from a man that took over 1000 tries to find out what made the best light bulb including experimenting with.. wait for it..

 

... different kinds of cheese. 

 

[Schwanke 32]

Btw, now Schwanke is normal again with meditation.  So I guess whatever state it got into sorted itself out with a day cycle of meditations.

 

My guess is its somewhere in parsing incomplete logs. Remember. If I remember correctly I copied my logs from my old machine but I didnt have all of them. So somewhere in there my mixture of half eaten logs (termites?) caused WA2 to go into a state you hadnt planned on. But it fixed itself after meditating for a day.

 

I'll let you know if it does it again but I wouldnt worry too much. If nothing else I would put it as a 'note to self' thing and if someone else complains suggest this as a solution or atleast ask them if they messed with their logs.  If this is the first time you hit this combination chances are itl be a long time before you hit it again unless someone is as crazy (stupid?) as me.

[Aldur 652]

Good it sorted itself out. I've put all links to these posts under a note on the board, so eventually I'll give fixing this another shot.

[Schwanke 32]

Meditation bug is back. Not sure what it is anymore. I have just been using it like wurm-yesterday but now schwanke is o 6 and schwankenchanter is on 5 and both say 30 min when prayer timer that works right all the time says 8hours which means the server didnt just cycle over.

 

See if it fixes itself tomorrow.  Maybe its something wierd like every other day?

 

I heard once of a bug in a piece of software that only came out on full moons because one of the developers used a lunar calender for something and got a +1 error when it started to wain from pure full.

[Schwanke 32]

And today meditation after 5 says 3 hours after both. It actually does look like you have an every other day bug hehe.I'll keep running this as much as I can today and see if it goes back to broke tomorrow

[Aldur 652]

Eh, ghost in the assistant...

[Viti 400]

Hey Aldur,

 

Not sure if you were working on the servers or so, but yesterday I told a friend about wurmassistant and the original download in your first post will start the launcher for him, but is unable to contact the servers and hence cannot download the client. The manual download dropbox one in the main post is not available either, so I sent him to the "publish"  version you posted a week or 2 ago to temporarily fix the shutting down issue.

 

Just thought it might be an idea to let you know =-)

[Aldur 652]

Thanks Viti! Fixed the dropbox link, but the launcher seems to be working. Maybe it was some temporary issue.

[Aldur 652]

(late) Weekend Summary:

 

Last weekend I've been pretty busy, but I did spend some time on WA and managed to fully code all the gizmos behind new launcher. Since it seemed almost ready, I was hoping to release it mid-week... but it looks like it needs a bit more love. I've made a bunch of tests and some fail or act randomly and I need to understand why and fix these issues. With the new style of running WA itself, it will be much easier to just fix issues as they happen, but launcher must be as reliable as possible from day one.

 

What more can I say about launcher... most was already mentioned in earlier posts: it has a proper installer, finds and notifies about new version of both WA and launcher itself, allows making WA backups, WA is split into stable and beta completely separate installations, there are of course options to configure automatic updates and news feeds for both branches, so following changes and sending feedback should become easier.

 

Additionally, it looks like other tools and links may end up available in the launcher, most notably Warlander's DeedPlanner, but also things such as community maps, server announcement feeds etc. Not in the first release of course, but some time in the future.

 

I also have a few more crazy ideas to explore, but maybe I'll save these for another occasion!

Edited March 12, 2014 by Aldur

[Nomadikhan 2,196]

Noo Noooo we like crazy ideas and now that you have us so spoiled it'd be terrrrrrrible to tease us!