Opening a can of worms ...

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SighelmofWyrmgard
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Joined: Thu May 20, 2010 5:34 pm

Opening a can of worms ...

Post by SighelmofWyrmgard »

This is an era-accuracy inquiry.

I found a discussion from 2013 (here at UOSA), regarding various patches enacted in-era on production shards, that left me with more questions unanswered than answered, particularly since the most-relevant aspects of that discussion quickly degenerated into vicious venom ...

In the interests of the prevention of more and repeated venom, I would ask to limit the invited respondents to only the following members:
  • Any/all current staff, naturally (Anarcho, Boomland Jenkins and, of course, Derrick)
  • Faust, in particular (I'll be quoting/referencing you, but you also know demo-stuff, UO:R stuff, RunUO stuff, as well as UOSA stuff: you are the person who knows stuff)
  • Kaivan (staff during the time-period I'm about to revisit, and also UOSA's premier historian)
  • nightshark (because I might quote/reference you, and I remember your Hally-Cycling thread and the '99 Japanese PvP guide, which may become important)
  • Roser (remember that summer, 2010 thread about "The OSI Double Hally Hit"?)
  • I sure would love to hear from Batlin, too, especially if he possesses any incisive insights into this matter
  • Malaikat and Mikel123 (both very knowledgeable, and I've never had reason to suspect that either does not know what is claimed to be known)
I apologise to any/all others that I should include but haven't ... I want to keep this crisp and clean.

What shall answer my question before I've even asked it:

EDIT: This is poorly phrased. Indisputable proof that a Hally-Mage could Harm-Harm-Hally (or even just EBolt-4Ticks-Hally, or simply disarm-16TicksNoSpells-Hally) Indisputable proof that consecutive Hally hits could be executed in a period of (real) time less than that specified on production shards between Feb. 26 '99 (Update - February 26, 1999) and Nov. 23rd, 1999.

So far as putting this inquiry down without other discussion, this is the only (sort of) thing that will serve. However, such will serve quite nicely, and thank you very much!

Yes, all you folks are now aggravated to apprehend that my 'can of worms' is the reconciliation of the mechanics of Hally-Cycling, as they are implemented here, with a very-specific, and unambiguous, declaration announced in the Feb 26, '99 Update.

I'll explain my confusion, first, as addressing that might also serve to swiftly dispense with this inquiry.

Faust had given some numbers in the relevant discussion (and this will be quoted below but, right here, I need to be brief) that I had found problematic: specifically describing the Explode-EBolt-Hally combo, Faust gave casting-times that were 1 Tick (0.25 seconds) per Circle, rather than 2 Ticks (0.5 seconds) per Circle; I can't reconcile 1 Tick per Circle to my UOSA experience(s), or to relevant documentation (this info might not be reliable, I concede, but it commutes with what I know and remember), or to memories of my own (admittedly limited) "real" experiences in-era on OSI.

In short, if casting-delay is 0.5 seconds per Circle, Faust (I am sure, only accidentally) supplied some bad numbers, and his conclusion that "Explode-EBolt-Hally proves Hally-Cycling" becomes potentially much-less conclusive, and may indeed simply describe a coincidental synergy between the sequence of actions and the weapon-timer changes announced in the Feb. 26, '99 Update (let's not forget the 'equip delay', also; yes?).


As to the commencement of formal argumentation, I'd better furnish the most-relevant links, first:

Haly [sic] Cycling with the Wrestling Timer, from March, 2013: this is the primary discussion I am sort-of reviving; hopefully, with less venom.

Also of (potential) relevance,

Publish - February 2 1999,
Update - February 26 1999,
Google Groups: Patch Fixes (info from Runesabre, Feb. 25, '99, to be implemented Feb. 26, '99),
Combat Sytem [sic] and Swing Timer, from April, 2010,
and The OSI Double Hally Hit, from July, 2010.

Of possible useful reference:

Insta Hit, Weapon Mechanics, and much more...,
Understanding weapon cycling and your halberd,
2.5 second hally hits with 25 dex mages is NEA (there is interesting discussion to perhaps consider)



The 'meat' of the matter:
Publish - February 2 1999 wrote:
  • Your swing rate or firing rate with all weapons is now dependent on your current stamina, instead of your dexterity.
  • Damage for your blow is now assessed on your opponent on the start of the swing, instead of at the end. This change makes a fast connection less of an advantage in melee combat. This will apply to wrestling and attacks made by monsters as well.
  • Equipping a weapon now causes a short "prep time" before you can start swinging.
and,
Update 1 - February 26 1999 wrote:An exploit for getting slow weapons to hit faster has been fixed.
and,
Runesabre (in Google Groups: Patch Fixes), 02/25/1999, wrote:10) The disarm/arm exploit to get slow weapons to hit faster has been fixed. It
will not be to your advantage to disarm/rearm a weapon
.
Now, what Faust said that inspired me to open this 'can of worms',
Faust, from page2 of Haly Cycling, wrote: Please do the math....

Explosion Damage Delay: 3.0 Seconds
Ebolt Cast Delay: 1.75 Seconds
Ebolt Damage Delay: 1.0 Second
Hally Delay: 5.0 Seconds

Again, please explain to me how you can unload this combo when your hally resets to 5 seconds after being dragged AND equipped when the equip/arm delay is triggered if you could not cycle a weapon????
I've underlined the part I wish to contest. My point is this,

If the Feb 26 Update enforced the 5-second halberd delay, considering also the unequip/equip delay(s), without any "cycling-as-we-know-it", this quite likely would coincide (almost exactly) with the casting times of Explode-EBolt, and it might only seem as if the halberd had been "cycled" ... was there an 'arcane technique' to the player's actual order-of-operations, when preparing this combo, that I do not apprehend?

So, can we revisit this, and with civility?

BTW, another potentially-relevant piece of information supplied by Faust:

[quote="Faust, on page 3 of "Haly Cycling", quoting Publish 5 (Renaissance),"]Players using melee weapons in combat will now hold their swing until their target is in range. Additionally, the timer that determines melee weapon swing times (combat timer) will now advance as the player is moving. Thus, melee weapon users will no longer be required to stop moving before swinging.[/quote]

Which would confirm all of Faust's remarks regarding, "What is known to be wrong with UOSA's combat mechanics" .

Can this be sorted-out?

SS
Last edited by SighelmofWyrmgard on Wed Nov 30, 2016 9:48 am, edited 1 time in total.
SighelmofWyrmgard wrote:
uosa44 wrote:For sale, by original owner:
1 Human Brain, never been used, only slightly damaged, still in original packaging.
$1, obo
FTFY.

SS
uosa44 wrote:The inability for this person to respond in such a crazy manner proves my point.

Taboo
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Re: Opening a can of worms ...

Post by Taboo »

You seem to be asking one question specifically. The answer is that you are not standing one tile away while dropping ebolt + explosion. You move away, cast, equip, and then move into swing distance. It's not a perfect timed combo, just near perfect.

Also, you are pretty god damn flagrantly pretentious. Have you considered sending PMs with the players CCed whom you'd like to converse with specifically? ...As opposed to posting in the public section and being rude af?

Just a thought!

**** On a side note, I literally tried to add you to foe list after reading this post (so I might avoid reading them in the future) and it says you are a administrator/moderator. What's up with that?

SighelmofWyrmgard
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Joined: Thu May 20, 2010 5:34 pm

Re: Opening a can of worms ...

Post by SighelmofWyrmgard »

The people who were invited were invited because they are expected to 'get it' and --guess what!?!-- someone who wasn't invited showed-up and --guess what, again!?!-- doesn't ...

Thanks for both your uninvited venom, and lack of comprehension: two things you've provided that were specifically uninvited; congratulations.

As far as your other question is concerned, to my knowledge it's nothing more than a by-product of an 'oops', of which staff is aware but has not yet corrected.

I've apologized, generally, for non-invites but, of course, someone had to demand clarification: clarification has been given.

SS
SighelmofWyrmgard wrote:
uosa44 wrote:For sale, by original owner:
1 Human Brain, never been used, only slightly damaged, still in original packaging.
$1, obo
FTFY.

SS
uosa44 wrote:The inability for this person to respond in such a crazy manner proves my point.

SighelmofWyrmgard
Posts: 881
Joined: Thu May 20, 2010 5:34 pm

Re: Opening a can of worms ...

Post by SighelmofWyrmgard »

I'm going to throw this in as a reply, rather than an edit, to ensure that any/all interested parties do not miss it.

Firstly, when I composed the OP, there were a couple of reference 'possibilities' I had considered including, but had decided against, in what-must-only-be a vain, vain as it is demonstrably daft, attempt at brevity: 'if/when discussion travelled in a certain direction', at that juncture would I introduce it/them.

So, I'll pop them in here, and later I will amend the OP to make sure that they are there, also (with the OP also emended to indicate the revision).

Two possibly-relevant bits of information derive from the same reference-point: the UO Live Access Patch, August 25th 1999.
UO Live Access Patch wrote:How do you use the "arm/disarm" macro?
  • Once you bind the macro to a key, you must first arm the item. Then use the macro to disarm/arm that particular item. Remember, you must assign the macro for each hand.
and,
UO Live Access Patch wrote:How do you use the "delay" macro?
  • The "Delay" macro will cause your character to wait before going to the next macro in a list. Remember, the "delay" macro counts in tenths of a second. Therefore, one second would be 10. For example, the following series of actions would cause your character to use the hiding skill, wait 7 seconds, and then use the stealth skill with the press of one key:
  • use skill = hide
  • delay = 70
  • use skill = stealth
So, where am I going with this weird, seemingly irrelevant, drek?

The Live Access Patch was August 25, 1999, while the aforementioned "Update 1" was February 26, 1999: the client-side arm/disarm macros did not exist at the time in which Faust describes the "cycling" of Hallies, using Explode-EBolt-Hally; do not get me wrong, I am not saying that Faust is/was lying; I am saying that he had to have been (and I think he actually describes this, himself, somewhere: Faust, you and I know this but maybe not everyone does ...) manually-dragging the hally from/to the paperdoll to make this happen, at all, while/after he's dropping the pre-cast Explosion, and then casting the EBolt, dropping it, and re-equipping the hally again (again by actually dragging it from pack to paperdoll!). To my modes of thinking, with a 3.0 second casting time, plus drag-and-drop, plus reverse drag-and-drop, considering lag-or-no-lag over a serial connection, also considering suspended combat-timers during movement and "ticks" of 0.25seconds, did that second Hally swing really start at <5 seconds ... ?

Fine, but what's with the "delay macro" crap?

Paradigm shift: everything hitherto has been in terms equatable to "0.25second ticks"; at least as of August 25th. 1999, we have specific reference to the client being "authorized" to update the server according to 0.10 second "ticks"; gee, what are the "ticks" of the master clock? Yes, I had purpose when I hoped to invoke Batlin ...

I've added this stuff in the interests of better-satisfying interested-but-not-invited-parties, and/or perhaps to help better-assuage the indignation of same: the whole purpose of a forum-thread versus CC'd private dialogue is both transparency, fwiw, but also simply to provide indication that there are --and have always been!-- folks here who care very-much about the authenticity of the material.

I'm no hero: everyone else has done all the work! However, even when/where the work might be flawed, be assured that at all times, many, many people were/are making this shard the best it can possibly be.

Oh, just two other things,

nightshark is doubly-invited, hahaha! because I now remember other demo-deconstructing work in which he's been involved!

To at-least-some "non-invitees": the list is, by no means, "carved in stone"; should any of the invitees nominate anyone for valid purpose, then bingo! you're in; also, and alternatively, anyone who PMs me and declares/complains/suggests, of the following form (pay attention to *~*, please), "Hey, you jerk, I did a lot of research and performed experimentation against all of this stuff, *and here are the credentials*, and *I posted this here* ... and you didn't invite me", whose 'pedrigree' qualifies, will be admitted.

So, that's that. As I've said before, if I've left anything out, I wil surely rue it ...

Actually, roflmao, certainly not in one instance!

SS
SighelmofWyrmgard wrote:
uosa44 wrote:For sale, by original owner:
1 Human Brain, never been used, only slightly damaged, still in original packaging.
$1, obo
FTFY.

SS
uosa44 wrote:The inability for this person to respond in such a crazy manner proves my point.

Dudekisser
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Re: Opening a can of worms ...

Post by Dudekisser »

Sighelm, your posts are basically a drinking game. Just gotta hunt down italics, bold, the excessive colons, semi-colons, dashes, ellipses, quotes, and then I'm off to get my stomach pumped from too many shots.

I hope you find the discussion you're hoping for.

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Mens Rea
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Re: Opening a can of worms ...

Post by Mens Rea »

There were two programmes called UOAssist and UOExtreme which meant you could arm/disarm without the use of the UO client.

Kaivan
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Re: Opening a can of worms ...

Post by Kaivan »

I rarely check the forums anymore, and frankly, this is an old and very contentious issue that hasn't been touched in years - and I don't really want to get into it again. Thus, the comments below will be as brief as possible but will try to explain some of the agreed upon facts regarding combat. Beyond that, I don't intend to engage further with the topic.

The facts:
  • We have a strong working idea of how the combat code looked like on OSI servers as of June 1998. The following general facts are true about the combat code during that time:
    • Weapon timers for all melee weapons would continuously cycle once engaged in combat, meaning you could "swing" while standing 10 tiles from your opponent.
    • Archery would reset it's swing to the beginning for the 1 second "plant time" each time the player moved, thus causing archers to "hold" their "swings".
    • Lifting a weapon (weapon, armor, shields, clothing) under any conditions would reset your swing to the beginning for all weapons (this was later tested on OSI servers in 2010 producing the same effect).
  • The February 2, 1999 patch notes state the following: Equipping a weapon now causes a short "prep time" before you can start swinging.
  • A February 26, 1999 hot fix states the following: An exploit for getting slow weapons to hit faster has been fixed.
  • A UOR hot fix on April 28, 2000 states the following: Players using melee weapons in combat will now hold their swing until their target is in range. Additionally, the timer that determines melee weapon swing times (combat timer) will now advance as the player is moving. Thus, melee weapon users will no longer be required to stop moving before swinging.
From these facts, we can derive some relevant information:
  • Some time around February 1999, a "prep time" was implemented for weapons which superseded the complete reset for lifting weapons found in the demo. There is no concrete information noting its removal, but hard evidence exists that it was removed by 2010. Therefore, any prep time for equipping a weapon could have potentially been removed sometime between February 1999 ("fixing the exploit") and some time in 2010.
  • We don't have any hard evidence indicating the prep time was strictly limited to melee weapons, but we do know that OSI had the capability of differentiating where necessary.
  • We know that at some time between June 1998 and April 2000, restrictions were placed on the ability for a player to move and advance towards their next melee swing. With the early UOR hot fix, that system was removed and a new system was implemented where melee swings would advance until the swing was ready, and then the swing would be "held" until the opponent was in range. Therefore, the movement restrictions for swinging could have been implemented as early as the next major patch on OSI servers in 1998, or they could have been on servers for merely a couple of days just as UOR was introduced in 2000. Either way, we don't actually know.
Because of the lack of any patch note either indicating the introduction or removal of these mechanics, we are left with several possible ways to craft a combat system, and we have little to go on beyond the claims of in-era discussions to guide things. It has even been suggested in those previous threads, that the patch note which was intended to indicate a fix to the increased swing speed simply did nothing and that things continued to work as is, but those claims are hard to substantiate one way or the other. Therefore, the reality is that we just don't know what was exactly in place during T2A, whether we're talking about March 1999 or December 1999.
UOSA Historian and former staff member: August 11, 2008 - June 19, 2016

Useful links for researching T2A Mechanics

Stratics - UO Latest Updates - Newsgroup 1 - Noctalis - UO98.org

Taboo
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Re: Opening a can of worms ...

Post by Taboo »

Honestly, imo.... You should just shut the total f*ck up.

Your posts are so vastly irrelevant considering any actual problems, even with in the realm of actual inaccuracies. You are a snob, and even worst, a waste of read.

Your convoluted responses aren't even worth going through, including the personal ones you sent me.

I'd like to pull you apart. Let me chew it over to see if it's worth it. I'll get back to you. (Person who's def not kavian).


SS

SighelmofWyrmgard
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Re: Opening a can of worms ...

Post by SighelmofWyrmgard »

Mens Rea, thank you for confirming the operational mechanics/capabilities of those two programs. I knew of both, but had never used either (IIRC, UOE hacked the packet-stream and could easily get a user banned). The real question has to do with actual start/stop of the relevant timers, server-side, but the facility of UOA/UOE to make the client-side transition(s) "crisp and clean" is relevant, and lends weight to Faust's original assertions. You have contributed, thanks.
Kaivan wrote: Because of the lack of any patch note either indicating the introduction or removal of these mechanics, we are left with several possible ways to craft a combat system, and we have little to go on beyond the claims of in-era discussions to guide things. It has even been suggested in those previous threads, that the patch note which was intended to indicate a fix to the increased swing speed simply did nothing and that things continued to work as is, but those claims are hard to substantiate one way or the other. Therefore, the reality is that we just don't know what was exactly in place during T2A, whether we're talking about March 1999 or December 1999.
This conclusion summarizes the situation nicely, thanks. I wanted to be sure that there wasn't anything known/knowable that had not been investigated. Certainly, it struck me as odd simply that that aspect of the Feb. 26 Update seemed to have become "the patch that never was". Of course, there is also the possibility that something had been changed, but then (for whatever reason) reverted out, perhaps only a very short time after.

I had suspected the substance of the conclusion you have provided. I had not "hoped for" anything, one way or the other: I am satisfied that the issue is resolved, irrespective of any 'bad numbers'.

Thank you.

SS
SighelmofWyrmgard wrote:
uosa44 wrote:For sale, by original owner:
1 Human Brain, never been used, only slightly damaged, still in original packaging.
$1, obo
FTFY.

SS
uosa44 wrote:The inability for this person to respond in such a crazy manner proves my point.

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Soma
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Re: Opening a can of worms ...

Post by Soma »

Sounds like Taboo made a new friend.
Please choose a more appropriate signature.

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