Being targetted and killed while hidden.

[Sir Lagsalot]

I only have 55 hps, and I was not at full health.
He did precast exp, which he cast on my brother. (I did not know this at the time of my original post.)
He started to cast harm, I hid, he cast EB on my twice. I died.
Harm does not have a delay like exp, and he never hit me with harm.

Is that simple enough for you to understand why it does not make sense?

[marmalade]

if there was some sort of bug that let people cast on you while you're hidden, i would suspect somebody would have noticed it by now.

[Sir Lagsalittle]

*Name of illegal 3rd party program omitted for fear of admins* could do it back in the day.

And I'm pretty sure I could write an *name of program omitted for fear of admins* script to do it.

Not that hard to wrap one's brain around. It happened, it was bizarre, flukey, buggy, unexpected. Hence the post.

Trust me, our time is far too valuable to us to waste time posting a QQ session because we got PKed. Had I died, it would have been the 7th time in about 2 hours on that character.

The "precast explode, target, cast harm, last target, run up to where target disappeared, wait for guy with 0 wrestling and like 15 dex to swing to reveal then cast EB twice (a total of 4 spells on a char with 0 resist and 55 hitpoints)" theory simply doesn't hold water.

Furthermore, if memory holds, explode and eb are 20 mana each. So, evaluating the precast again theory, 1 explode on me (20), 1 explode on Lagsalot (40), harm (44), EB (64), EB (84), Heal (88), EB (108). Granted, we can assume GM meditation, so passive recovery is in there, but this brings up a few questions:

Why would a red burn the last smidge of his mana to Energy Bolt a horse? Wouldn't he want to have enough left over to escape or fight back if noto's showed up?

Why would someone with the years of experience playing UO from all sides of the morals coin just sit there while someone cast 3 spells on them. The energy bolts alone are almost 4 seconds worth of cast time, and, as any PKer worth his salt will tell you, that's an eternity in a chase.

Just today I escaped from a mediocre PKer who tried to spam paralyze on me.

I won't argue the point that he came in precasting explode. Getting blown down to 5 health was proof enough of that to me, but he simply did not have the time, mana, or mechanics to cast a total of 3 spells in the time it took my brother to get off the screen and hide.

Additionally, and this will be my final word on the "theory": Had he cast precast explode again and targetted lags a lot, when he went to cast harm, a split second after his target cursor came up for harm, explode would have hit, hence, there would not have been time for him to start casting Energy Bolt BEFORE the "So and so is attacking you!" message. As soon as explode hit, or the .5 second first circle harm hit, it would have said that. In the journal, it clearly shows "so and so casts Energy Bolt... so and so is attacking you!... so and so casts energy bolt". To assume an explode, harm, eb combo to be cast before the explode hits defies the game physics and is borderline laughable (no offense meant).

It just doesn't hold up.

I have a few ideas on how to replicate it and I'll test them out and PM the admin if I find anything of significance.

[Sandro]

lol @ hacks that let you target hidden people

you really are clueless

[Sir Lagsalittle]

Because you can't do it, it must not exist. Oh, how wonderful omnipotence must be.

[Sir Lagsalot]

lol @ hacks that let you target hidden people

you really are clueless

You cant see the wind, so it must not exist either right?

We have a bug forum for a reason. Quit harrassing other players for posting buggy experiences.

[Derrick]

There is no 3rd party software that would allow this; hidden player locations are not sent to the client as they were in pre-t2A. If it's possible to target someone that is hidden, it would be possible to do this with razor by turning off "range check last target", or by recording a macro that targeted someone and playing it back after they hid; this should be easy to test. The determination of whether a target is valid is always made by the server, not the client.

I have a few ideas on how to replicate it and I'll test them out and PM the admin if I find anything of significance.

Thanks!

[archaicsubrosa77]

He had a summons casted...
he gained fame from killing things after he was dead
is that a clue maybe?

Summons have been targeting players right at casting lately.

Something must have hit you or caused you to auto defend and I am guessing whatever you summoned, or whatever you provoked who was running from what you summoned.

Why are you hunting Cyclops, Titans, and Wyverns with 55 hit points? You were dead anyway

You werent at full hit points...you aggroed something. Maybe the harm was reflected back on him...you ran off screen to hide and he just bumped into you causing you to auto defend. Or the missing hitpoints was from that harm and he attacked you way earlier and again when you auto-defended.

You know what happened better then anyone. I doubt it was a hack. Tab out next time.

[Sir Lagsalittle]

He had a summons casted...
he gained fame from killing things after he was dead
is that a clue maybe?

Summons have been targeting players right at casting lately.

Something must have hit you or caused you to auto defend and I am guessing whatever you summoned, or whatever you provoked who was running from what you summoned.

Why are you hunting Cyclops, Titans, and Wyverns with 55 hit points? You were dead anyway

You werent at full hit points...you aggroed something. Maybe the harm was reflected back on him...you ran off screen to hide and he just bumped into you causing you to auto defend. Or the missing hitpoints was from that harm and he attacked you way earlier and again when you auto-defended.

You know what happened better then anyone. I doubt it was a hack. Tab out next time.

Since my brother omitted some things, I'll clear up whatever confusion people are having.

He and I both were on our bard characters. GM music, almost GM provoke. That's pretty much our only skills. We were using a boat at Titans. He lured to me, I provoked from the boat. This is why he wasn't at full health. Titans do cast sometimes, so he had taken a smidge of damage.

We do not have the magery to cast summons and he is not a tamer, therefore, no pets.

As a bard, when you provoke two critters and one of them dies, you get karma and fame, even if you die before they do.

Again, reiterating a point that must have been missed earlier: My brother was GREY (as in hidden) while the dude cast that first EB on him. Not punching (as one would expect if he had auto-attack). This is why he didn't try to run off. He was hidden.

Though I appreciate the attempts to find fault in the telling of events surrounding this bizarre situation, let's leave the speculations aside for now.

[GleepGlop]

He had a summons casted...
he gained fame from killing things after he was dead
is that a clue maybe?

Since the RunUO upgrade provoking creatures gives fame/karma no matter what

[archaicsubrosa77]

do explosion pots count off in journal if they are dropped on the ground before detonated/setoff?

[marmalade]

depends if they're dropped before or after they hit the number 1.

[Sir Lagsalittle]

I didn't consider explosion pots. Very possible he could have launched one right off the bat, so the hiding would have been moot.

However, as I recall, they did show in journal as 3...2...1

That is not to say they do that here, however.

Also, I spent about 3 hours last night testing various old hacks and 3rd party proggies I remember from back in the day and even wrote a small program myself to do a bit of packet sniffing, and I have to compliment Derrick on how bulletproof his RunUO scripts are here.

As the perverbial mouse in the "better mousetrap / better mouse" scenario, I gotta say I'm pretty impressed with the mousetrap of UO2A and am starting to lean more to the "my brother might have taken a step and lagged or something" side of the fence. I have maybe 2 more ideas to test, which I will do today after I finish my homework, but so far, it's looking like Derrick's scripts are superior to my hacks. <8D

Keep up the good work on that front Derrick!

[marmalade]

the numbers dont show up for explosion pots unless you're the one throwing them or they're on the ground. it's possible he could have started an explosion pot running after casting one of the ebolts, knowing you had just hidden, and then run upto where you were standing.

[Derrick]

Keep up the good work on that front Derrick!

Thanks much for your testing, and I'm glad to hear of the positive results. While I'm very confident that there should be no way to circumvent what should and should not be doable, I try not to be overconfident, and very happy to see testing done. In my own quick tests i could not find any way for this to be possible either.

After seeing the log myself I felt a little puzzled, but I suspect the purple pot speculation is a good one pending any other info. It's not unusual for the other party to weigh in on what happened in these threads either, so we could also hope for that to actually close the book on this. Either way though it's a good exersize in making sure everything is running legit; so please add the results of any further testing you might do. Thanks!