Locking down items next to doors

[Ripplinger]

You couldn't in 1999. But when UO first started, there were no rules about house placement. A friend placed it there on Moonglow about 2-3 months after the opening, maybe even sooner, I remember him killing himself to get enough money for it at the beginning. Then when he wasn't playing as much, he gave me the house.

Once placed, they wouldn't remove any houses, but if it ever decayed, it couldn't be replaced there.

And the chests were definitely locked down. There would be no point in just setting them on the floor when anyone breaking in just had to pick up the chest and move it to get in. I sure wouldn't have put myself through the trouble of moving it just to walk in either unless it was locked down for security.

[Kaivan]

Well, if you believe they were locked down, that belief is in direct opposition with patch notes, news archives, and other related information.

[MatronDeWinter]

Looks like the image is before our timeframe anyway.

[Derrick]

Looks like the image is before our timeframe anyway.

What did you see that indicates that? The nightmare indicates the T2A era, I couldn't see anything else myself that dated this image :/

[Kelektra]

Though no notes or anything i specifically remember that you could lock down items in front of or next to interior doors but you had to open the door in order to do it. I was extremely surprised when i tried it the first time i got a bigger house here and it didnt work.

[Mikel123]

He posted that it was dated March 1999. I don't see any patch notes detailing rules changes to lockdowns between then and the end of 1999... although if we're looking for patch notes for confirmation, these chests could not possibly be locked down anyways.

There are only a few possible conclusions here.

1) FACT: you should be able to put items directly adjacent to a door. What happens when you try to open a door with an impassable item blocking it? I have no idea. But there's clearly a chest in that picture blocking one door. I can't seem to do this on our shard.

Then, either:

2) The screenshot, and Ripplinger's memory, are from before the November 1998 patch note.

OR

3) The patch note is incorrect.

By the way, I found a Groups archive post from April 2000 talking about "you cannot lock that down here". And I don't see any changes to lockdowns noted anywhere between 1999 and April 2000. So my hunch is Ripplinger is remembering locking down those chests in 1998. But that's just a hunch.

[Ripplinger]

Though no notes or anything i specifically remember that you could lock down items in front of or next to interior doors but you had to open the door in order to do it. I was extremely surprised when i tried it the first time i got a bigger house here and it didnt work.

Finally one other person remembers doing it. And having to open the doors to lock down the items sounds right, so there probably was that slight trick to doing it.

As I said before, there really would have been no reason to put the chests there if they weren't locked down. That's no security at all and certainly not worth having to deal with moving everytime I walked in or out of the house.

[Kelektra]

Though no notes or anything i specifically remember that you could lock down items in front of or next to interior doors but you had to open the door in order to do it. I was extremely surprised when i tried it the first time i got a bigger house here and it didnt work.

Finally one other person remembers doing it. And having to open the doors to lock down the items sounds right, so there probably was that slight trick to doing it.

As I said before, there really would have been no reason to put the chests there if they weren't locked down. That's no security at all and certainly not worth having to deal with moving everytime I walked in or out of the house.

It was a trick because you couldnt lock it down when the door was closed because cant lock down next to a door but once the door was open that door was not there (not sure how this works via coding) either was considered not there at all or just on the another tile but you would be able to lock stuff down once the door was open.

On a side note. I also remember placing items on the Railing inside houses and on Patio houses and being able to lockdown/secure them there. I used to have a classic Patio house that i had a box on the very left side railing. You could see the box all the time whenever you recalled to the house and you were able to use the box from outside the house.

This is a completely different issue and i really have been thinking i need to make a post about it sometime.

[MatronDeWinter]

Looks like the image is before our timeframe anyway.

What did you see that indicates that? The nightmare indicates the T2A era, I couldn't see anything else myself that dated this image :/

The brick is in the middle of a farm. By our pre-uoR t2a, I do not believe this to be at all possible.

[Kaivan]

Ok, here's a few things regarding this:

1) FACT: you should be able to put items directly adjacent to a door. What happens when you try to open a door with an impassable item blocking it? I have no idea. But there's clearly a chest in that picture blocking one door. I can't seem to do this on our shard.

It is actually possible to place an item in that location, you just need to open the doors to do so.

Then, either:

2) The screenshot, and Ripplinger's memory, are from before the November 1998 patch note.

As Derrick pointed out, the screenshot must necessarily be from T2A, and almost certainly after the housing updates.

OR

3) The patch note is incorrect.

Nope, the patch note is correct. It intended to keep anyone from locking items down in front of house doors.

By the way, I found a Groups archive post from April 2000 talking about "you cannot lock that down here". And I don't see any changes to lockdowns noted anywhere between 1999 and April 2000. So my hunch is Ripplinger is remembering locking down those chests in 1998. But that's just a hunch.

For anyone who's interested, this is the quote in question and actually cites the use of an early bug in the new housing rules to lock down any kind of item on your door steps:

April 20, 2000

|
| MTK wrote:

| >
| > How do you lock down items on door steps?
|
| If you lock down something out there that affects gameplay (such as an
| item that blocks movement) you will get in trouble. Locking down items
| like lanterns seem to be ignored by gm's.

BS on lanterns too - just say no.

| You need a lockable chest. Lock that down, then lock the chest. Place
| the item you wish to lock down on the steps, at the location you want it
| to be. Then drag the item onto the locked-down locked chest. It won't
| go in that locked-down locked chest (cause its locked . The item will
| bounce back to where it came from (the steps), and it will be locked
| down onto the steps. This method takes advantage of the fact that if
| you drop an item into an unlocked, locked-down chest, the item will be
| locked down inside that chest.
|
| You can also use this method to lock down items inside houses, near
| doors or stairways where it is otherwise not possible. For example, you
| can use it to lock down paintings on the walls at the head of stairs in
| towers.
|
| gil

Gil, they have made it clear that what you exactly describe above is an
exploit in a recent communication, regardless of what it is (lanterns or
whathaveyou) you are locking down on your porch.

Thanks for laying out that exploit though in easy to follow directions.
Just isn't the same without all the bugsites anymore. wtg.

This was an exploitation of the code in the new lock down system that allowed you to lock down items on your steps (and thus near a door) when you weren't supposed to be able to. It occurred because of an error in the code that would attempt to lock down an item dropped onto a locked chest that was locked down before checking to see if it was actually a locked chest. Thus, the item would "bounce back" to its original location, but would do so locked down because of where it was dropped.

As for locking chests down in front of doors, it was possible to do so during early 1999 as a bug. It was used to counteract another bug that existed at the time with nightmares who could actually walk through the walls of houses and were being used to loot houses in a couple of ways. Here's a couple of newsgroup posts regarding the bug posted in early 99:

February 14, 1999 (You can read about the other house loot bug here)

This bug is real. They looted all of vesper beach area, sonoma . We caught
one later because he stashed stuff in the fishers tent . Name: TESSIDOR
GOLREIA. He recalled out unfortunately. What i want to know how the F#4!K
they get things OUT of locked down chests. Stuff on the floor can get
"fetched" sure but inside chests? Stuff in secure chest was ok.
What sort of horse knows how to open and close chests for christs sake??
Btw you CAN lock down chests in front of doors as long as you OPEN the
door(s).

February 15, 1999

Damocles wrote:
> Right now there is a house breakin involving Nightmares walking
> through the walls of houses. There is a simple counter to this: lock
> down a chest right in front of the door. Technically this is not
> supposed to be possible (you'll get a message about not locking
> objects down around the door), but if you open the door to your house
> first you can lock down the chest regardless.

> So yes, basically you use a bug to prevent a much larger bug from
> victimizing you. I think that's justified.

> Note: I still can't find out whether the Nightmares can pick up locked
> down items or not...some people have said they can't. They have 1000+
> str, though, so they can definitely clean out your place of all items
> that aren't locked down. The full contents of your house can be made
> targetable by a feature of UOPlugin, too.

> Second note: the Nightmare bug does NOT work on towers, keeps or
> castles.

Beyond these post and others dated before it (December 1998), no mention of this bug is made in any capacity. Thus, it is likely (and almost guaranteed) that the lock down bug and the bug involving Nightmares were both fixed before mid-T2A (OSI didn't always publicize their fixes for bugs).

Looks like the image is before our timeframe anyway.

What did you see that indicates that? The nightmare indicates the T2A era, I couldn't see anything else myself that dated this image :/

The brick is in the middle of a farm. By our pre-uoR t2a, I do not believe this to be at all possible.

This is an old house placed before this patch note:

Houses will no longer be allowed on furrowed cropland.

[Ripplinger]

Beyond these post and others dated before it (December 1998), no mention of this bug is made in any capacity. Thus, it is likely (and almost guaranteed) that the lock down bug and the bug involving Nightmares were both fixed before mid-T2A (OSI didn't always publicize their fixes for bugs).

I'm certain it wasn't fixed anytime though mid-2001, that's when I quit paying just to keep the house. The house setup stayed pretty much the same with all items next to doors as shown in the November '99 image on Page 1. After Phase II housing came in where everything had to be locked down or decay, all those items next to every door frame were locked down pretty much as they originally were, maybe minor placement changes.

This image is from December '99, after I had to change a few things to stay under the number of lockdowns allowed (think it was 1000 or 1100). Even the chests are still there (I didn't finish placing them in this image apparently, but you can see one still in front of the left door).

I never heard about the nightmare bug though at all, that one just sounds weird. I'd believe white wyrms doing it since they're pretty much kleptomaniacs about looting everything.

[Kaivan]

We would need a screenshot of post-January 2000 T2A, or an early UOR screenshot with items locked down in those locations to verify that any such bug still existed at the time, because item decay was not in place until the January patch (or any newsgroup posting from the time citing its existence).

If it can be confirmed that this was still still a workable bug, then we may consider having it here.

[Ripplinger]

Here's one dated July 5, 2000, where I finally got 2 of each potted plant I preferred to lock down. This character is the tradeskiller, not the tamer, and why there's no nightmare here.

[Kaivan]

This is the conundrum that we're dealing with at this point:

In order to be certain that this bug existed, we need some verifiable piece of information that shows, without a doubt, that the bug existed during late T2A (circa early November 1999). The reason we need that is because of the fact that there were two bugs that provided you identical results (at least on the inside of the house): the ability to lock down an item next to a door or stairs. The problem is that we don't have any information from that time frame (sorry, I did ask you for the wrong time frame screenshot - we would need a pre November 23, 1999 screenshot showing the items locked down in that area).

[Ripplinger]

I have a bunch of screenshots dated November 5, 1999 where I borrowed a furniture dye tub and was experimenting with different furniture colors. This is one of them (they're all pretty much the same, just different colored bookcases mostly). There's far too many storage chests in this image to be after the Phase II housing update.

But you can still see the chests along the front wall both next to the door and one of them in front of one door. (I was pretty anal about keeping the place neat so usually dumped the released chest inside the chest next to it until I left again.)