UO Second Age

Why was the object delay changed to 800 ms? It seems like its way too long and everything I do has this extra delay that was never on OSI. Was this changed based on some new information found or was it needed in correlation to the throttle delay?


Suggest we take the object delay back to 600ms.

All delays are based on ticks(increments of 0.25). There are possibly still some older delays that may have not been fixed yet, but any new delay added, fixed, or whatever would always be based on ticks. No delay would ever be 600ms or 800ms that was recently changed. If you're talking about the Razor indication for the pause they add an extra 10ms to substitute for lag.

But the object delay "ticks" were increased recently right? Why was this so.

-Packet throttle on Attack, Lift and Use packets of 1.0 seconds (on average, slightly compensated for lag and bursting)-
is what I see in the patchnotes, was this because of Attack last spam crying that all actions now suffer?

Derrick told me that the action delay was one second in the demo.

Vlastslav wrote:But the object delay "ticks" were increased recently right? Why was this so.

-Packet throttle on Attack, Lift and Use packets of 1.0 seconds (on average, slightly compensated for lag and bursting)-
is what I see in the patchnotes, was this because of Attack last spam crying that all actions now suffer?

I thought he did the object delay because of a speed hack.

I have to say though, the object and action delays do cause an issue with object based combat tactics (Ie disarming weapons, drinking potions, rearming weapons and shields).

One second object delay in the demo or not, for some reason things seems very clunky on the live server and adding all these minor delays causes an issue with object based combat and tilts things in the favor of other tactics. I'm not quite sure that is the way it was on 1999 OSI.

The problem is Razor not the delay... Razor was built around an Ultima Online emulating engine that allows you to spam the hell out of actions unlike the real thing. For example, what little action delays that exist in the default RunUO code is roughly around 0.5s. The default object delay that Razor queues is 600ms to account for latency. All it takes is an alteration of the object delay queue in Razor to resolve this. One major problem is the feature that allows you to unequip, drink a potion, and re-equip your weapon all in one setting... This type of feature did not ever exist and puts 3 actions into one setting...

If you actually loaded up the demo and felt how slow actions really were you would be amazed in disbelief.

Faust wrote:The problem is Razor not the delay... Razor was built around an Ultima Online emulating engine that allows you to spam the hell out of actions unlike the real thing. For example, what little action delays that exist in the default RunUO code is roughly around 0.5s. The default object delay that Razor queues is 600ms to account for latency. All it takes is an alteration of the object delay queue in Razor to resolve this. One major problem is the feature that allows you to unequip, drink a potion, and re-equip your weapon all in one setting... This type of feature did not ever exist and puts 3 actions into one setting...

If you actually loaded up the demo and felt how slow actions really were you would be amazed in disbelief.

When I played the demo 10 years ago I was amazed by how off it was from the real game play.

I brought the CD to work, where my RL friends played, to show some others the game we talked and talked about for hours. (There's sometimes a lot of down time in a SOC capable military unit waiting for an chemical or biological attack to happen anywhere in the world).

When we loaded it up and tried to show our other the game we were really struck by just how off the demo was from the online version.

I don't remember much about why it seems off but I know it was like playing a shadow of what was online.

Now, I'm not discounting some of the knowlege gained form the demo, but we need to recognize that the demo only goes so far.

The demo is an exact replica of the game when it existed in August of '98. It was an addition that was included with the t2a expansion that was released a couple months later. There are numerous differences from the era the demo was compiled in compared to the t2a era... However, most of the fundamental basics that exist in the demo still exist in UO today. When looking to confirm something on the demo you don't simply say "HA THERE IT IS" and that's the final word... You take everything into consideration to validate it using other sources. There are some things that can't be verified from other sources most of the time though. The action delay is a great example of this. Why would you want to make a guess at this delay when you can extract it from the ONLY valid source that ever existed? This delay has more than likely not changed since its inception like so many other fundamental features introduced early on in the game.

The lacks of delays on anything are probably one of the biggest things that make RUNUO feel "fake". Its good that the object delay now exists, simply adjust razor to compensate.

Era accuracy vs horribly slow clunky feel of the game should be taken into consideration.

A little additional information on this topic...

http://uo.lycaeum.net/archives/003822.html wrote:Speedman replied to comments from users who are frequently receiving this message "You Must Wait to Perform Another Action".
The "You must wait to perform another action" didn't change at all with Publish 24. It was put in a long time ago to prevent exploiters from being able to do actions very quickly. To my knowledge it hasn't been touched since.

speedman
UO Server Programmer, Origin Systems

This statement from an Origin programmer states that the action delay was put in a long time ago and hasn't been touched since... The action delay exists on the UO Demo meaning it was added before August '98 for certain. This suggests that it hasn't changed since its inception just as I assumed and stated previously.

Faust wrote:A little additional information on this topic...

http://uo.lycaeum.net/archives/003822.html wrote:Speedman replied to comments from users who are frequently receiving this message "You Must Wait to Perform Another Action".
The "You must wait to perform another action" didn't change at all with Publish 24. It was put in a long time ago to prevent exploiters from being able to do actions very quickly. To my knowledge it hasn't been touched since.

speedman
UO Server Programmer, Origin Systems

This statement from an Origin programmer states that the action delay was put in a long time ago and hasn't been touched since... The action delay exists on the UO Demo meaning it was added before August '98 for certain. This suggests that it hasn't changed since its inception just as I assumed and stated previously.

Is there a throttle on actions that are not object based? Is that were the discrepancy we notice comes from?

In other words, from the demo we see that things with objects and even skills have throttles for use. How about casting of spells? Is there a delay in the system for that?

The idea is that if the OSI system was based on "TICKS" then it would stand to reason that all actions in the game must have waited for the ticks and thus packets right? Even spell casting.

So, the constant smooth action we see in RunUO for spell casting may not have been so smooth on OSI. Just a thought.

The reason why I'm taking this line of logic is because something is still a miss.

It was my understanding the the 1.0 second action delay (which is not per item but any item) as exists in the demo as i have seen myself, it still active of Live EA UO, but it would be for someone else to verify this.

All functions that produce the "You must wait to perform another action." is an action delay. Derrick is correct with his statement. I messed around with this on the demo some trying to produce the delay. For example, after opening a backpack or your paperdoll gump simultaneously you can produce the message trying to do another action. Skill delays are not associated with the action delay and have their own special delay. The "You must wait to use another skill." message to show an example. Spells have no recast delays on the demo at all. This was later changed after the release of t2a applying the recast delays. When you try to cast another spell with another spell target up it produces the "You are already casting another spell." message.

Faust wrote:All functions that produce the "You must wait to perform another action." is an action delay. Derrick is correct with his statement. I messed around with this on the demo some trying to produce the delay. For example, after opening a backpack or your paperdoll gump simultaneously you can produce the message trying to do another action. Skill delays are not associated with the action delay and have their own special delay. The "You must wait to use another skill." message to show an example. Spells have no recast delays on the demo at all. This was later changed after the release of t2a applying the recast delays. When you try to cast another spell with another spell target up it produces the "You are already casting another spell." message.

My point was is a little finer than that...

What I'm saying is that if actions and object manipulation worked on ticks, as well as the weapon timer, wouldn't all actions work on ticks as well? These other actions including spell casting.

So, on a 250 ms timer...

Person A Casts a spell between ticks, he or she would have to wait for the next tick and packet to send to the server the requested action.

Person B arms a weapon between ticks, he or she would have to wait for the next tick and pack to send to the server the requested action.

Is this an accurate understanding of the 1999 system?

If not, then please explain the flaw.

My basic understanding is that the ticks were designed for packets and with that, then all actions would be effected.