Fencing

[Red]

Again, I believe it has something to do with the vague reference of "armor ignore" ability on 'some' weapons. If every statistic is accurate and yet there is still a discrepancy, some element is missing, right?

What would be cool is if someone actually talked to the guys that did the coding back then. All of the patch notes are very vague.

[Derrick]

I am lucky to get one hit every 10 to 15 seconds. For whatever reason, halberds get far more hits despite their much slower speed.

Hit rate is entirely determined by your fencing skill and your opponents weapon skill, armor doesn't play into it.

[Senses]

Your right of course, and thats why I say its something slighter than that. When you use a halberd, at least the way it tends to be used in this era and on this server, you become used to waiting a certain amount of time then closing in for that 1 big hit between spells. Fencing weapons, though, when near a person, should be swinging and missing or swinging and hitting alot more than they appear to.

Its like, in the past, if someone moved to you, then away from you, in that brief time a fencing weapon would always either hit or miss but at least something would happen. Here, and maybe its just because connections are so good?, its quite possible for you to be within contact with someone and never see any sort of swing before they move out of reach again. This never ever happened in the old days and with a Kryss, any mage would be extremely lucky to sit still long enough to actually channel a spell on you without taking alot of concentration pushbacks.

Using a Kryss on this server, and having an opponent who is always moving away from you, but only standing still long enough to prep spells or cast spells, you will find yourself lucky to swing, much less hit at all. What causes this I do not know, but I can tell you it *is* different.

[Derrick]

I get exactly what you're saying. I think this is a little bit more evidence of something that's been in my mind for a while, and the reason why no changes at all have been made to weapon swing timers even though we have a pretty good idea that there is at least one inaccuracy in them. I don't believe the underlying timer mechanism itself is quite an accurate emulation of how swings are/were triggered on OSI.
This is something I will look into further. An excellent observation. Thanks.

[Kefka]

Thanks for looking into this derrick, can you clear something up quickly?

1) are the fencing weapon timers ticking down as you move like they do with swords?

2) you currently cant swing your fencing weapon while you are moving, is this accurate?

3) there's a small delay between the time you catch up with someone and stand still, till you swing your weapon. is this delay intended?

I was on my 100 DEX fencer last night, fighting a mage outside of town. I was 100 percent ineffective, because he was constantly walking around in circles on his horse. Not even running, but just walking. This slowed my swings down to about one every 5 seconds.

[Derrick]

All weapon swing timers except archey are the same.

With regular weapons:
You can swing while moving
You do not gain time towards your next swing while moving

With Archery:
You cannot fire while moving
You do gain time towards your next fire while moving

There should not be any delay between stopping and swinging, or any reason to stop at all if your swing is "ready"

[Faust]

I am going to re-hash this old topic, because I know that it will be brought up again time after time in the future. Here is a logical theory that I have come up with based off of the way OSI timers worked that make a lot of sense in regard to this topic.

The OSI timers worked in increments in a quarter of a second. In other words the timer would increase 0.25 seconds in a "tick" fashion. Think of this function sort of like a clock in a "tick tock" scenario. The RunUO code does not work the same way with the weapon delays. RunUO is based off exact dates down to a mili-second. This means that it can get the exact "delay" perfectly. However, the OSI timers did not work this way as mentioned a few seconds ago.

I will show you the difference between the two systems using various scenarios involving a kryss and katana below. First, here are the weapon stats in regard to the speed of both of these weapons and the formula to determine a weapon delay.

- Weapon Stats -
Katana Speed = 58
Kryss Speed = 53
Weapon Delay Formula = 15,000 / (( Stamina + 100 ) * Weapon Speed )


Now we will get into the two different systems.

- Current RunUO System -
A player with 100 stamina swings one of these weapons and the date of that swing is recorded and applied to the delay. We will use a fake date of March, 12th at 11:37:10:00am. This would be 11 hours, 37 minutes, 10 seconds, and 0 mili-seconds for the record. The delay is added and attached to this specific time when the hit occurred. A katana wouldn't be able to swing again until 11:37:11:29 and a kryss wouldn't be able to until 11:37:11:49, or in other words a delay of 1.29 and 1.49 seconds for the two. This is exactly how it works in the default RunUO code.

- OSI Timer System in Ticks -
The same thing as above with a player with 100 stamina swinging the both of these weapons. However, instead the timer will be based on increments of 0.25 seconds in a tick formation kind of like a clock. A katana delay of 1.29 and 1.49 is generated based on the OSI weapon delay formula. The timer will increment in ticks until the amount has been accomplished. A katana would produce 6 ticks sitting at 1.5 seconds and a kryss would tick 6 times also being 1.5 seconds making them the same exact speed. To explain this a little further a katana would "tick tock" to 1.25 seconds in 5 ticks and see that it still hasn't exceeded the required amount and apply one more tick to 1.5 seconds to make sure the delay was accomplished. The same thing would happen for a kryss in this situation.

In other words this means that EVERY weapon delay is incorrect at a range of 0.25 seconds. Having some weapons hit a lot faster and slower than what should be the case. The lost time/damage for this builds up and makes a substantial difference in the long run. If you do the math 10 hits amounts to a lot. You can have 100 damage going one way or the other for instance...

This would clearly explain why a kryss would be slower than a katana on here.

I hope this makes some sense to everyone here...

[Senses]

It makes sense, yes, but is it fixable? Much like the ever so slight beat of a sparrows wings at the equator it has much larger than expected implications where we are now. It has created a difference in how people play on this shard even if it is a simple tick tock.

[Faust]

Oh, yes. It isn't a hard fix at all. We have actually been converting a lot of functions into the tick based system. A great example of this was the movement speed of NPC's that was changed to be accurate recently. I could probably write a quick algorithm in a matter of seconds for this. I was actually planning on doing it sometime soon.

[Senses]

hooray then! As a reward I promise tons more era accuracy suggestions and little or no pay!

[Eaglestaff]

Derrick, if you are unsure of the tables you provided and remember fencing being faster then look at the weapon tables int he T2A manuel. It lists the kryss at 53 speed and the katana at 48 speed. I don't think those tables you have are era accurate either. I say go with the T2A manuel.

As far as the weapons not swinging when something moves in and out of range - I see this too and yeah its annoying I remember if you and your opponent flew past eachother on horses you still would both swing even if you were only next to one another for a split second.
If the theory is that faster connections are causing weapons to not swing then RUNUO should be tested on slower connections for verification.
I don't know RUNUO but I know people aren't going to go back to dial-up so if connection speed is the cause then this is looking like a very complicated issue that will require some serious tinkering and that's a hard thing to do while sticking to the philosophy of emulating the era as strictly and exactly as possible(and that is the philosophy that is going to give this shard longevity over other shards)

I wish you all here the best in getting this straightened out. Good luck.

[Derrick]

One of the interesting things about the weapon timer not advancing while you are moving is that things like lag and turns do gain you time toward your next swing, this interesting phenomenon could indicate how lag could have played more into it back then.

There's been a ton of discussion in countless threads on the kryss vs. katana issue, and what it's come down to is we know the swing speeds changed, as well as many other combat mechanics like the addition of anatomy within the T2A era, after the T2A manual and srat guide were published. We've really tied ourselves to post-Feb 1999 combat mechanics, as anatomy bonus and the meditation skill were introduced at that time as well.

It's certainly not any easy job keeping all this straight, and memories do vary on a lot of issues, but straight and true mechanics on the server side really are the goal. Wishes of good luck much appreciated

[d'Troyes]

I've recently stumbled over UOSA the other day after being overly frustrated with the new DarkFall release. I've since quit that blasted game. I've been playing here for about 3 days now. I played UO from Nov '98 - Summer '01. The first thing I noticed last night hunting with a couple friends, that I got to play on this shard as well, was that chasing NPC's down is different.

I recall being able to constantly swing/hit as they ran away, however, last night it seemed as if my character had to come to a stop (hoping the NPC would stop as well for that extra second) before a swing occurred. My brain cells have taken quite a beating in the past 11 years, but if any of them serve me right even the swinging animation occurred while running.

Of course, back then I was a dexxer too with a Kryss for mage casting disruption. I know the proof is in the writing you guys provide, but the Kryss was always faster from my recollection. Katana vs. Kryss discussion aside, it seems that there is still an issue with moving & attacking simultaneously. I was using a DSL connection by 1999 as well.

[d'Troyes]

Okay, so I tooled around with the melee combat for a couple more hours last night and I believe I may have been mistaken. It does appear to work properly when chasing things down and swinging simultaneously.

[Derrick]

Aye, you can swing while moving, it's just an issue of the time you are moving being credited to your next swing time, which it does not here, but did in UO:R