Placing items on tower/keep/castle "ledges"

[Roser]

Since the beginning of time we were able to place items on the un-walkable ledge part of towers keeps and castles. This allowed us to deco our ledges with any item, or even create a staircase out of footstools to walk off a roof.

This is still the case on UOSA however... Since the housing foundation patch (the one that made it so you can cast spells and throw potions into houses) we now can only place items on the South and East facing walls. North and West facing walls seem to be bugged and will bounce back any item placed on them (even with razor placement).

Now I dont know how to demo act's but I do know how official UO shards act right now. And that is to have all four wall directions acting the same, no inconsistency as we have here on UOSA. All ledges on official UO servers can have items place on them. I have tested, here are some screen shots.









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These screens were taken when I first investigated this occurrence years ago. Unfortunately after extensive research into this and multiple forum posts and PM's it seems to have fallen on deaf ears. So here we go again this time in a public forum.

Can we fix this or talk about it?

[Kaivan]

We'll have to look into this to see why this is happening, since something different is occurring in these instances.

The difficult part to contend with is the fact that some line of sight changes did occur, and weren't documented directly on the updates page. Rarely, changes were posted to the FYI section of the website, or sometimes not at all. Unfortunately, none of the text of those portions of the website is available anymore, but as an example, a post that I made back in 2011, when they were still available, documents 5 such instances of changes being posted to the FYI section of the website, including a line of sight change in May of 1999. While I have no documented evidence to show you, that specific LoS change was related to the fences of patio houses, which according to OSI, prevented trading of items over the rails (e.g. dropping items from outside of the house to inside of the house).

This relates to our current problem because the question of whether we can stack items on the railing of a house or not has inconsistent information surrounding it. While live OSI servers, even those from a couple of years ago, seem to indicate that it is possible to place items on the edges of houses, information that is far more relevant to our concerns (the demo) shows that is it not possible to place an item on the edge of a house railing. Attempting to place an item on the ledge of a house, be it a patio, a tower, or a keep does not yield successful results. Even when using the UO 98 project so that it is possible to connect to a UO Demo server with a modern client and Razor, a drag/drop operation on a relative target produces the results seen on the western and northern wings of a tower. That is, the item can't be placed there (same result on all sides). So, in this regard, live OSI servers don't seem to correlate with item placement as seen in the demo, which means that at some point the mechanics were changed, even if it wasn't properly documented.

We will still look at how line of sight works, because it is obvious that it should work one way or the other, not one way in certain directions, and another way in the other directions. The major difference is that we'll likely be revising the code to prevent placement on a ledge in all directions, as the more relevant information seems to indicate that behavior, provided clear evidence to the contrary is not found.

[Roser]

When testing this on the Demo, are you using Razor to drop items on these ledges?

On the official UO servers you can not place items on these ledges without a 3rd party app such as Razor. I tried for the better part of an hour to do it without Razor on these specific ledges (castle/tower/keep) and could not do it.

To clarify Razor drop - Pick any item up and hold it in your drag/drop que, hit record on Razor, using your character as a center point drop the item one tile in the direction you desire, stop the recording. Edit the one line you have, click on "convert to relative location", this now allows you to drop the item in the direction you recorded wherever you stand. Now you can pick up X item and place it on X surface.

I'm assuming you can do this on the demo by using Razor, if not then it becomes perplexing to me that you can do it on official servers. If it is the case that Razor drops don't work on the demo then the question arises, what about these ledges changed that makes Razor act differently?

[Kaivan]

The regular demo does not support the use of Razor as it only allows you to play the demo with an imbedded client. However, the UO 98 project, which acts as an extension to the UO Demo server that enables the ability for the demo to accept connection attempts from an IP address, allows you to use Razor to connect to the server that is hosted locally. It is there that a cross verification was done using a drop relative macro that resulted in a bounce back on all sides.

If it is the case that Razor drops don't work on the demo then the question arises, what about foundations changed that makes Razor act differently?

The issue isn't strictly limited to foundations. It could simply be the difference between some server flags that allow you to place an item on the edges (e.g. the item id has the surface flag set, allowing you to place items on it). Or it could be a more complex change such as the line of sight code being changed to allow placement in certain locations that you wouldn't otherwise be able to place an item. The fact is that we don't really know for sure.

[Roser]

Oops I meant to say "ledges" not foundation. I tried to change it before anyone read it lol.

[Roser]

Interesting, so definitely no ledges drops on the demo then.

If it is related to the line of sight code, which takes us all the way to 2015 on official servers, then it would seem we should have the ability to ledge drop on UOSA.

Hopefully we can get more info on this.

[Kaivan]

If it is related to the line of sight code, which takes us all the way to 2015 on official servers, then it would seem we should have the ability to ledge drop on UOSA.

I'm not sure how you reached this conclusion. The demo, which is far closer to what we're looking for in terms of mechanics, does not allow a player to do so. The live OSI servers, as per ~2011 or 2012 showed that it was possible. Thus, some sort of change happened to LoS between now and then, and without concrete information documenting exactly when it happened, the more reliable source - the demo - should be used.

[Roser]

I'm saying if the LOS patch is found to have an impact on the ledge dropping, we should have it here.

Demo > No ledge drop
LOS patch may 1999 > Possible ledge dropping activated
Current day UO > Ledge drop

No solid conclusion here as there is not really any information to go by.

[nightshark]

I wouldn't think this would be affected by LOS as you would have LOS to the ledge surface before or after the patch. Saying a mobile (with an eye height of 16) wouldn't have LOS to the tower ledge in any era of UO is a stretch since the height of the ledge is lower than the height of the mobile eye level.

In RunUO terms the stool dropping is checked by DropToWorld which checks whether a surface is valid to drop on from the mobile's location. How it's handled in the demo and OSI may be different. Enabling dropping of items onto tower ledges in RunUO requires a small edit of a single line, but there must be something else in play on UOSA if it's not possible to drop in all directions.

[Kaivan]

I wouldn't think this would be affected by LOS as you would have LOS to the ledge surface before or after the patch. Saying a mobile (with an eye height of 16) wouldn't have LOS to the tower ledge in any era of UO is a stretch since the height of the ledge is lower than the height of the mobile eye level.

In RunUO terms the stool dropping is checked by DropToWorld which checks whether a surface is valid to drop on from the mobile's location. How it's handled in the demo and OSI may be different. Enabling dropping of items onto tower ledges in RunUO requires a small edit of a single line, but there must be something else in play on UOSA if it's not possible to drop in all directions.

It's certainly true that any player mobile should have the ability to see the ledge of a tower, and in general, when we're referencing "line of sight" we're talking about it in the more colloquial sense of "can you successfully interact with a given location". In the strictest sense of the term where you ask "can I see point X from this given location", the tower ledge is quite visible. The discussion thus far has been framed based on the wider question.