How in the heck did they come up with the emotes being the reason its leading to disconnects?! I'm failing to see the logic behind this one honestly. Trail Turtle can get someone to explain this in laymans terms please? Bribe them with chocolate or ice cream or something... I want a real answer. (Not that I'll get it.)
Also is it just the /e Dance_likenooneiswatching or /e computerkneel style emotes or is it anything that is player typed with /e? I.e: /e Does what she wants. Which would then go into the Emote Channel.
Either way this won't really affect me because when I rp I use asterisks to emote out what my character is doing. I'm just worried about the people who use the /e function.
Potentially related bug: clients aren't syncing emotes or other players' statuses with the server when they relog or enter a new area. Here's a reproducible bug:
1. User A and User B are sitting at a bar: /em sitchair
2. User B disconnects and reconnects.
3. User A is sitting on User A's end and the server's end, but User B sees User A to be standing.
The server does not reconcile this difference with User B, and it is possible that disagreements between the client and server as to a player's current state (standing, sitting, dancing, etc.) may be causing issues as the server and client continue to disagree as to what is going on. Sufficient numbers of disagreements may be causing network and sync errors to crop up, resulting in disconnects.
How in the heck did they come up with the emotes being the reason its leading to disconnects?! I'm failing to see the logic behind this one honestly. Trail Turtle can get someone to explain this in laymans terms please? Bribe them with chocolate or ice cream or something... I want a real answer. (Not that I'll get it.)
Apparently someone messaged TT about how the guy was doing it. I think TT is smarter than to give the exact exploit in details. That wouldn't be good. 0.o
_____________________________
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC] <- No violence or dark humor here, move on.
I.M.P.@drimp in Champions (Careful that you don't get hit by falling bombs when dueling)
Dr Imp@drimp in Neverwinter (Apparently I use hax and exploits, also I apparently payed to win)
I could understand that emotes are only a part of the problem. The NPC are the main problem, they switch their emotes every second. So take a look at the NPC's not the emotes itself.
Simple fix - Add a cooldown timer to emotes. Some emotes already got them (most of the later ones), others don't. Aside from the annoyingly loud sounds, I can't think of any practical use for it.
VV I wouldn't know for certain, but considering what I know about emotes and what TrailTurtle has said on the issue, I wouldn't be surprised.
I cannot enjoy this game at all with all these connection issues. I know its not my cpu and I know its not my internet. I have tried to be patient in thinking that perhaps a couple hours after system patch and update that this issue will come to pass. but seriously I feel like I have wasted my money on purchases that I can't even enjoy.
To resolve these disconnects, we've temporarily disabled all emotes -- using emotes was the cause of the zone crashes.
I know that the emotes are a fun part of Champions, so we're working to get them fixed and reactivated as soon as possible. I don't have a timeline on that, but it might be a few days or a week. It's unfortunate, but having the game be stable has to be our first priority.
Thanks everyone for your help identifying possible causes, I really appreciate it.
-TrailTurtle
Hey, while you're at it... can you tell them that when they bring the emotes back online to re-activate the airguitar emote in CO, STO whiners be damned? CO had airguitar once, STO players whined it out of the build, NW players get it (where it doesn't even make SENSE), and not a peep from STO players. WTF?!? Seriously, the code's in already... just turn it back on, please?
The ability of Cryptic to introduce completely insane and ridiculous bugs constantly amazes me.
Can no one they hire seriously handle this tangled mess of a game? I find it hard to believe that it was so poorly built from the ground up that every time they try to actual do an update to this forsaken wasteland of a game that they can introduce some bizarre and seemingly unrelated bug to a random system.
And yet, here we are. Emotes. Crashing the game. Unbelievable.
-Campaign: Spells and Coin
--Part 1: Spells and Coin (NW-DHM3XQVQK)
--Part 2: A Blind Eye (NW-DI3QTHZGJ)
--Part 3: Dodo's Dinner (NW-DHPA8O253)
Don't worry I'm sure by the next update some Dev will have figured out that players are responsible for making the game crash and get them removed...:biggrin:
Our raid back end code is held together with chewing gum, twist ties, and hope.
Today's patch included an obvious hack to Throwing Blades that will probably be permanent because nobody wants to touch the code for charged powers.
Now we have an instance-crashing emote.
There are two newer major versions of Cryptic Engine in production.
Just saying.
Choose your enemies carefully, because they will define you / Make them interesting, because in some ways they will mind you
They're not there in the beginning, but when your story ends / Gonna last with you longer than your friends
To resolve these disconnects, we've temporarily disabled all emotes -- using emotes was the cause of the zone crashes.
I know that the emotes are a fun part of Champions, so we're working to get them fixed and reactivated as soon as possible. I don't have a timeline on that, but it might be a few days or a week. It's unfortunate, but having the game be stable has to be our first priority.
Thanks everyone for your help identifying possible causes, I really appreciate it.
-TrailTurtle
Feel free to leave the emotes out, I mean it's not like that's a part of Dev concern anyway right?
^_-
We've been asking for more emotes for years, literally almost four of em now.
On a serious note, if re-vamping the emotes is nessisary, can't we get the rest of the emotes?
Here we are now going to the West Side
Weapons in hand as we go for a ride
Some may come and some may stay
Watching out for a sunny day
Where there's love and darkness and my sidearm
In game as @forgemccain
No, I think I was misunderstood...I didn't want details in to how the person was doing it. I was more interested in how the team came up with it that someone was exploiting emotes as the reason that things are crashing...If someone tattled, then okay.
Do we have an ETA of when this might be sorted out?
No, I think I was misunderstood...I didn't want details in to how the person was doing it. I was more interested in how the team came up with it that someone was exploiting emotes as the reason that things are crashing...If someone tattled, then okay.
Do we have an ETA of when this might be sorted out?
I don't know if it was in this thread or another, but it sounded like someone brought it to TT's attention or the Dev team.
Now Cryptic, go dig your files and give that one guy a hearty handshake.
Whats next?
Travelpowers corrupting game servers?
Well they did throttle back overall TP speed a while back because "too fast", same for the prototype Hawkwings.
I'm getting a bit worried about how so many things we do are starting to adversely affect server stability. Movement speed, power spam and now emotes? What next?
No, I think I was misunderstood...I didn't want details in to how the person was doing it. I was more interested in how the team came up with it that someone was exploiting emotes as the reason that things are crashing...If someone tattled, then okay.
Do we have an ETA of when this might be sorted out?
Now my friends have been account banned for simply TRYING to emote in roleplay and check if emotes were back on, and they weren't even culprits. Isn't there anyone else that had this kind of thing happen to them? I'm terrified to roleplay now, because I'm used to /emote commands to RP and I may accidentally slip up enough times that I get blamed like my friends for something they didn't do. Gosh, this is a disaster. -.-
Photon: If your friends were genuinely using emotes to RP, ask them to send in a ticket, and provide any evidence that they can that they're active RPers. We did a sweep to find people who were taking advantage of a glitch, but as with any sweep, it's possible we got some people who were innocent. If that's the case, we'll do everything we can to get your friends fixed up.
I'm still baffled at this one myself. And I'll give a little rant.
OK, I keep reading these things about the problems being 'deep in the code'. I'm not going to pretend I'm a programmer or know a lot about it, but when you tell me something's too deep in the code- I mean, this isn't an alien spacecraft we're reverse-engineering here. It's YOUR game, so... maybe explain this to me.
And really, how the hell does spamming an emote disconnect the whole server? That's just... wow.
The "banned command" whatever line that now pops up in the chat window whenever you try to use an emote can be hidden by disabling System messages in your chat settings. Players that have those disabled(I've had them disabled for years now) won't see any sort of error message pop up when they try to emote. If I had not seen this emote issue being talked about on the forums I would have kept trying to use them until I came to the conclusion that they're broken, and in the process would have risked getting banned.
I've already sent in tickets and such. As far as evidence goes, I don't know how the heck I could provide that, except that we RP basically every single day. Which has been ruined for the time being...
This issue that was 'uncovered' today is actually something that has been around since beta. It was reported back then and never fixed. The person who reported it to PWE/Cryptic was actually the culprit who was causing the crashes after the patch today. The fact they did a 'sweep' of people using emotes tells me they actually do not know what the real issue is any more and the person who told did not give them the full details of the cause. The reporter was actually threatening other players with reporting them for bans before they got banned. I got a screen shot to prove it and submitted a ticket to PWE/Cryptic with this screen shot. So whoever got banned for using emotes in game should have their friends or whoever petition PWE because using emotes is NOT the issue.
I code for a living.
I would get fired for this kind of work.
I know exactly how this zone crash is caused.
I never did it myself.
Fix the actual issue and quit disabling/nerfing things because you do not know how to fix the code.
1 person should be banned, you know their @name now. Everyone else should be unbanned. Especially since they were banned on all PWE games. Simply unacceptable at every level.
I've already sent in tickets and such. As far as evidence goes, I don't know how the heck I could provide that, except that we RP basically every single day. Which has been ruined for the time being...
Are you part of an RP group?
I know I'd vouch for any of my SG members, none of us would do this..
Here we are now going to the West Side
Weapons in hand as we go for a ride
Some may come and some may stay
Watching out for a sunny day
Where there's love and darkness and my sidearm
In game as @forgemccain
I'm afraid that our RP group is my group, and it's currently limited to us three. But we ARE RP veterans. I know that some of my friends' characters were in Sterling Academy, and they have alot of RPers. But my SG is The Final Tower, however I don't expect anyone to know us.
This issue that was 'uncovered' today is actually something that has been around since beta. It was reported back then and never fixed. The person who reported it to PWE/Cryptic was actually the culprit who was causing the crashes after the patch today. The fact they did a 'sweep' of people using emotes tells me they actually do not know what the real issue is any more and the person who told did not give them the full details of the cause. The reporter was actually threatening other players with reporting them for bans before they got banned. I got a screen shot to prove it and submitted a ticket to PWE/Cryptic with this screen shot. So whoever got banned for using emotes in game should have their friends or whoever petition PWE because using emotes is NOT the issue.
I code for a living.
I would get fired for this kind of work.
I know exactly how this zone crash is caused.
I never did it myself.
Fix the actual issue and quit disabling/nerfing things because you do not know how to fix the code.
1 person should be banned, you know their @name now. Everyone else should be unbanned. Especially since they were banned on all PWE games. Simply unacceptable at every level.
This is the kind of shoddy work we have come to expect from Cryptic and PWE. The kind that wouldn't fly in most companies.
Come on guys, maybe break open that piggy bank and shell out for some people that can actually do what they're paid for.
-Campaign: Spells and Coin
--Part 1: Spells and Coin (NW-DHM3XQVQK)
--Part 2: A Blind Eye (NW-DI3QTHZGJ)
--Part 3: Dodo's Dinner (NW-DHPA8O253)
I'm afraid that our RP group is my group, and it's currently limited to us three. But we ARE RP veterans. I know that some of my friends' characters were in Sterling Academy, and they have alot of RPers. But my SG is The Final Tower, however I don't expect anyone to know us.
I do. Your little robot characters make me laugh a lot.
To resolve these disconnects, we've temporarily disabled all emotes -- using emotes was the cause of the zone crashes.
I know that the emotes are a fun part of Champions, so we're working to get them fixed and reactivated as soon as possible. I don't have a timeline on that, but it might be a few days or a week. It's unfortunate, but having the game be stable has to be our first priority.
Thanks everyone for your help identifying possible causes, I really appreciate it.
-TrailTurtle
pls tell me how to get the mind mini-set pls i want it:
I'm still baffled at this one myself. And I'll give a little rant.
OK, I keep reading these things about the problems being 'deep in the code'. I'm not going to pretend I'm a programmer or know a lot about it, but when you tell me something's too deep in the code- I mean, this isn't an alien spacecraft we're reverse-engineering here. It's YOUR game, so... maybe explain this to me.
And really, how the hell does spamming an emote disconnect the whole server? That's just... wow.
I'm a programmer in training, and I could come up with a theory with examples on "deep in the code" here. As for how spamming emotes DCed the whole server, I get theories but it seems it's no good to post them, plus people who knows more than me is already reporting it, so yeah.
Now, firstly you need to throw away your common sense, when we say something is wrong deep in the code, it may not mean something that's hidden like, a maze-like spiral of classes and methods. It just means that it's not that obvious to find. (Of course, one of the possible reasons it's not obvious to find is because the problem is wrapped in a maze-like spiral of classes and methods....)
I don't know exactly what language Cryptic Engine is written in, however as long as it's anything past C, one small oversight in one place (for bonus points, totally unrelated places) will start a chain reaction and cause something else to broke, if you are not preventing it, that is. Also, most of the time, the debugger messages won't tell you what exactly happened. For example, I mainly work with PHP, and sometimes when working on IIS+PHP, IIS would give HTTP 500 and output this gem : "Error Code 0x0: The operation completed successfully" in the debug logs. It's programming, it do not need to make sense. Don't believe me? search for the exact phrase in google for its complete glory, this could cause by literally hundreds of reasons, and I could say close to none are actually related to the file the system is accessing.
You ask me how to prevent that? Catch your exceptions, Comment your code, and Come with your logic and workflows intact but leave your common sense and sanity at the door, thank you. (I made up the last part, but I followed it and it worked nice for me). Oh, and bring a Rubber duck to check your code for you.
Back to Cryptic Engine, recently there are problems (I posted screens in the amusing picture thread, remember that?) about the client get horribly out of sync in some instances. I could be one-shotted by Gravitar(No, this one is normal), pop my rebirth serum, got killed when the animation is in progress and when I still has that HP bar empty, then suddenly my HP Bar went full, the down window disappears, and I can slide on the floor and do stuff when stuck lying on the floor. This is clearly a sync issue. However it may not actually related to the code that's actually doing the syncing. (If there really are something wrong with syncing, I should get DCed, right?)
One thing I need to point out and hope the devs are listening: It seems there are tons of hard-coded stuff in this engine CO uses. I could be wrong and I need other people to verify this, but I arrived at the conclusion based on TT's statements about rotating events (example the max array size of the usable maps are hardcoded, which means when new maps come old one had to go and you need to manually switch to other maps.), and the way some of the in-game texts and items are being displayed. This may also explain why whenever something is added tons of other stuff is broken, and the absence of the Foundry.
lol it seems I went a little overboard, sorry.
tl;dr: Yes, they ARE facing with a alien spaceship and need to reverse engineer it. In fact, as long as you aren't working with assembly (which is another layer of hurt), every program in every High-level programming language, even the one you wrote just now, is a black box unless you tell the computer to track how it runs and make it return anything you can read (or if you are really, really experienced with your code and that's where the rubber duck comes in, or has Google by your side lol) , and no offence; It clearly isn't the case of this CO engine.
I don't know exactly what language Cryptic Engine is written in...
Well, for what it's worth, the Los Gatos studio is currently hiring a C programmer. Doesn't say anything about C+, C++, or C#, just C.
In the Air Force, I used to code in COBOL. My personal record was something over a hundred compiler errors from leaving out the semicolon at the end of one line in the Data Definition section (I think it was on the 88-level variable THE-COWS-COME-HOME, a flag for a loop that would iterate between once and two thousand times - PERFORM B001-PROCESS UNTIL THE-COWS-COME-HOME).
"Science teaches us to expect -- demand -- more than just eerie mysteries. What use is a puzzle that can't be solved? Patience is fine, but I'm not going to stop asking the universe to make sense!"
Say TT once this has been fixed do you think you will reward players a free recon token?.
Because it was not given out as it was supposed to when them new powers came out
There was never any mention of a retcon token, much less a promise of one. So how do you get that there was "supposed to be" one?
As I understand it, the tokens are handed out when major changes are made to multiple piwers or mechanics. Two minor changes hardly qualifies, and I don't think the addition of powers warrants one either.
Did they give out tokens with the addition of the Earth framework, or with the martial arts and gadgets powers added for Night Avengers?
_________________________________________________ @flamingbunnyman in game. Formerly @Roderick in City of Heroes.
There was never any mention of a retcon token, much less a promise of one. So how do you get that there was "supposed to be" one?
As I understand it, the tokens are handed out when major changes are made to multiple piwers or mechanics. Two minor changes hardly qualifies, and I don't think the addition of powers warrants one either.
Did they give out tokens with the addition of the Earth framework, or with the martial arts and gadgets powers added for Night Avengers?
Not so sure I didn't pay much for the other powers, its just mostly there was according to a friend of mine who played CO for years now.
But it whuold be nice if freefroms could get a free recon token due to the price of cleaning powers with so much Gold needed. or anyone in that matter.
So yes should of..but don't want to sound like a **** so...I say it this why "Whuold of been nice and a change from the devs."
Also not all players have the cash to buy a recon token with real cash
There was never any mention of a retcon token, much less a promise of one. So how do you get that there was "supposed to be" one?
As I understand it, the tokens are handed out when major changes are made to multiple piwers or mechanics. Two minor changes hardly qualifies, and I don't think the addition of powers warrants one either.
Did they give out tokens with the addition of the Earth framework, or with the martial arts and gadgets powers added for Night Avengers?
They have not given out retcons for additions, but changes to existing powers that adversely affected builds have resulted in free retcons in the past.
Some may be remembering the golden days when retcons for changes of this sort could be counted on. Times change. Not always for the better.
That reminds me of a time when the game would crash if you opened anything other than your first inventory bag. Partially because at the time, flight was also glitched in that it would force you to move laterally, even when trying to go straight up or down.
SOCRATES is still being hacked by /<CONNECTIONLOST...so we are still not permitted to run around CO..
On the plus side this is the most thematic prelude to an event ever
As Sarah Kerrigan is fond of saying, "I was thinkin' the same thing."
Still waiting for an even bigger "cyber-hack" that will bring everything down on the day of. { wink } <
See, that? I'm not taking any chances with emotes on any CO platform.
I'm at work right now, so I can't really check, but that better mean 'emotes are back and everything is normal!' [resolved] and not 'we half-assed it, but at least the servers aren't crashing, right?' [resolved]
To allay anyone's fears about this being a long-term issue, here's an email I got from LordGar last night:
"The build is now underway with fixes from both [name] and [name]. It will go to PTS in the morning."
We don't want to push anything before it's fully tested, and we don't want to put a fix on Live right before the weekend if we're not 100% confident -- but we are working to get this emote fix in as soon as possible. We know that this is an inconvenience, but if the alternative is crashing servers, we strongly believe this is the best possible option.
Neat. To everyone subscribed, go to the PTS and attempt to break the servers with emotes to stop anything bad from happening on live.
Well, for what it's worth, the Los Gatos studio is currently hiring a C programmer. Doesn't say anything about C+, C++, or C#, just C.
In the Air Force, I used to code in COBOL. My personal record was something over a hundred compiler errors from leaving out the semicolon at the end of one line in the Data Definition section (I think it was on the 88-level variable THE-COWS-COME-HOME, a flag for a loop that would iterate between once and two thousand times - PERFORM B001-PROCESS UNTIL THE-COWS-COME-HOME).
COBOL? Are you one of the old timers that had to be drag into service to fix the Millennium bug before the calendar click over to 2000?
Or are you one of the Lords of Cobal? BG circa 1978 { VBG }
I'd love to go back to coding in COBOL. It was a fun puzzle. However, sadly, I thought that by enlisting in the AF I'd found a shortcut that would enable me to work in the field without the trouble of getting a college degree; my impression turned out to be mistaken.
If you know anyone in the Seattle/Tacoma metroplex that would be willing to hire a slightly superannuated COBOL programmer without paperwork to prove his knowledge, though, I'd really like to hear about it...
"Science teaches us to expect -- demand -- more than just eerie mysteries. What use is a puzzle that can't be solved? Patience is fine, but I'm not going to stop asking the universe to make sense!"
That reminds me of a time when the game would crash if you opened anything other than your first inventory bag. Partially because at the time, flight was also glitched in that it would force you to move laterally, even when trying to go straight up or down.
some days the game feels as fragile as a model made out of playing cards
Comments
Also is it just the /e Dance_likenooneiswatching or /e computerkneel style emotes or is it anything that is player typed with /e? I.e: /e Does what she wants. Which would then go into the Emote Channel.
Either way this won't really affect me because when I rp I use asterisks to emote out what my character is doing. I'm just worried about the people who use the /e function.
1. User A and User B are sitting at a bar: /em sitchair
2. User B disconnects and reconnects.
3. User A is sitting on User A's end and the server's end, but User B sees User A to be standing.
The server does not reconcile this difference with User B, and it is possible that disagreements between the client and server as to a player's current state (standing, sitting, dancing, etc.) may be causing issues as the server and client continue to disagree as to what is going on. Sufficient numbers of disagreements may be causing network and sync errors to crop up, resulting in disconnects.
Apparently someone messaged TT about how the guy was doing it. I think TT is smarter than to give the exact exploit in details. That wouldn't be good. 0.o
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC] <- No violence or dark humor here, move on.
I.M.P.@drimp in Champions (Careful that you don't get hit by falling bombs when dueling)
Dr Imp@drimp in Neverwinter (Apparently I use hax and exploits, also I apparently payed to win)
Formerly known as Rei_Kisagi
Join Date: 19 June 2011
Simple fix - Add a cooldown timer to emotes. Some emotes already got them (most of the later ones), others don't. Aside from the annoyingly loud sounds, I can't think of any practical use for it.
VV I wouldn't know for certain, but considering what I know about emotes and what TrailTurtle has said on the issue, I wouldn't be surprised.
Exactly that. To my understanding, normal use of emotes (like NPCs have) isn't a problem. I can't discuss any further, though.
Handle: @drgmstr
"Embrace your dreams"
Come Check Out My PRIMUS Database Page!
Hey, while you're at it... can you tell them that when they bring the emotes back online to re-activate the airguitar emote in CO, STO whiners be damned? CO had airguitar once, STO players whined it out of the build, NW players get it (where it doesn't even make SENSE), and not a peep from STO players. WTF?!? Seriously, the code's in already... just turn it back on, please?
-END OF LINE
Can no one they hire seriously handle this tangled mess of a game? I find it hard to believe that it was so poorly built from the ground up that every time they try to actual do an update to this forsaken wasteland of a game that they can introduce some bizarre and seemingly unrelated bug to a random system.
And yet, here we are. Emotes. Crashing the game. Unbelievable.
--Part 1: Spells and Coin (NW-DHM3XQVQK)
--Part 2: A Blind Eye (NW-DI3QTHZGJ)
--Part 3: Dodo's Dinner (NW-DHPA8O253)
-One Shots
--The Wizard of Eldeur (NW-DRKQNE4S7)
:rolleyes:
And playing by myself since Aug 2009
Godtier: Lifetime Subscriber
Today's patch included an obvious hack to Throwing Blades that will probably be permanent because nobody wants to touch the code for charged powers.
Now we have an instance-crashing emote.
There are two newer major versions of Cryptic Engine in production.
Just saying.
They're not there in the beginning, but when your story ends / Gonna last with you longer than your friends
Feel free to leave the emotes out, I mean it's not like that's a part of Dev concern anyway right?
^_-
We've been asking for more emotes for years, literally almost four of em now.
On a serious note, if re-vamping the emotes is nessisary, can't we get the rest of the emotes?
Like ALL of them?
Here we are now going to the West Side
Weapons in hand as we go for a ride
Some may come and some may stay
Watching out for a sunny day
Where there's love and darkness and my sidearm
In game as @forgemccain
Do we have an ETA of when this might be sorted out?
I don't know if it was in this thread or another, but it sounded like someone brought it to TT's attention or the Dev team.
Well they did throttle back overall TP speed a while back because "too fast", same for the prototype Hawkwings.
I'm getting a bit worried about how so many things we do are starting to adversely affect server stability. Movement speed, power spam and now emotes? What next?
Photon: If your friends were genuinely using emotes to RP, ask them to send in a ticket, and provide any evidence that they can that they're active RPers. We did a sweep to find people who were taking advantage of a glitch, but as with any sweep, it's possible we got some people who were innocent. If that's the case, we'll do everything we can to get your friends fixed up.
OK, I keep reading these things about the problems being 'deep in the code'. I'm not going to pretend I'm a programmer or know a lot about it, but when you tell me something's too deep in the code- I mean, this isn't an alien spacecraft we're reverse-engineering here. It's YOUR game, so... maybe explain this to me.
And really, how the hell does spamming an emote disconnect the whole server? That's just... wow.
It quite possibly is, now.
The "banned command" whatever line that now pops up in the chat window whenever you try to use an emote can be hidden by disabling System messages in your chat settings. Players that have those disabled(I've had them disabled for years now) won't see any sort of error message pop up when they try to emote. If I had not seen this emote issue being talked about on the forums I would have kept trying to use them until I came to the conclusion that they're broken, and in the process would have risked getting banned.
I code for a living.
I would get fired for this kind of work.
I know exactly how this zone crash is caused.
I never did it myself.
Fix the actual issue and quit disabling/nerfing things because you do not know how to fix the code.
1 person should be banned, you know their @name now. Everyone else should be unbanned. Especially since they were banned on all PWE games. Simply unacceptable at every level.
Are you part of an RP group?
I know I'd vouch for any of my SG members, none of us would do this..
Here we are now going to the West Side
Weapons in hand as we go for a ride
Some may come and some may stay
Watching out for a sunny day
Where there's love and darkness and my sidearm
In game as @forgemccain
This is the kind of shoddy work we have come to expect from Cryptic and PWE. The kind that wouldn't fly in most companies.
Come on guys, maybe break open that piggy bank and shell out for some people that can actually do what they're paid for.
--Part 1: Spells and Coin (NW-DHM3XQVQK)
--Part 2: A Blind Eye (NW-DI3QTHZGJ)
--Part 3: Dodo's Dinner (NW-DHPA8O253)
-One Shots
--The Wizard of Eldeur (NW-DRKQNE4S7)
I do. Your little robot characters make me laugh a lot.
pls tell me how to get the mind mini-set pls i want it
And playing by myself since Aug 2009
Godtier: Lifetime Subscriber
I'm a programmer in training, and I could come up with a theory with examples on "deep in the code" here. As for how spamming emotes DCed the whole server, I get theories but it seems it's no good to post them, plus people who knows more than me is already reporting it, so yeah.
Now, firstly you need to throw away your common sense, when we say something is wrong deep in the code, it may not mean something that's hidden like, a maze-like spiral of classes and methods. It just means that it's not that obvious to find. (Of course, one of the possible reasons it's not obvious to find is because the problem is wrapped in a maze-like spiral of classes and methods....)
I don't know exactly what language Cryptic Engine is written in, however as long as it's anything past C, one small oversight in one place (for bonus points, totally unrelated places) will start a chain reaction and cause something else to broke, if you are not preventing it, that is. Also, most of the time, the debugger messages won't tell you what exactly happened. For example, I mainly work with PHP, and sometimes when working on IIS+PHP, IIS would give HTTP 500 and output this gem : "Error Code 0x0: The operation completed successfully" in the debug logs. It's programming, it do not need to make sense. Don't believe me? search for the exact phrase in google for its complete glory, this could cause by literally hundreds of reasons, and I could say close to none are actually related to the file the system is accessing.
You ask me how to prevent that? Catch your exceptions, Comment your code, and Come with your logic and workflows intact but leave your common sense and sanity at the door, thank you. (I made up the last part, but I followed it and it worked nice for me). Oh, and bring a Rubber duck to check your code for you.
Back to Cryptic Engine, recently there are problems (I posted screens in the amusing picture thread, remember that?) about the client get horribly out of sync in some instances. I could be one-shotted by Gravitar(No, this one is normal), pop my rebirth serum, got killed when the animation is in progress and when I still has that HP bar empty, then suddenly my HP Bar went full, the down window disappears, and I can slide on the floor and do stuff when stuck lying on the floor. This is clearly a sync issue. However it may not actually related to the code that's actually doing the syncing. (If there really are something wrong with syncing, I should get DCed, right?)
One thing I need to point out and hope the devs are listening: It seems there are tons of hard-coded stuff in this engine CO uses. I could be wrong and I need other people to verify this, but I arrived at the conclusion based on TT's statements about rotating events (example the max array size of the usable maps are hardcoded, which means when new maps come old one had to go and you need to manually switch to other maps.), and the way some of the in-game texts and items are being displayed. This may also explain why whenever something is added tons of other stuff is broken, and the absence of the Foundry.
lol it seems I went a little overboard, sorry.
tl;dr: Yes, they ARE facing with a alien spaceship and need to reverse engineer it. In fact, as long as you aren't working with assembly (which is another layer of hurt), every program in every High-level programming language, even the one you wrote just now, is a black box unless you tell the computer to track how it runs and make it return anything you can read (or if you are really, really experienced with your code and that's where the rubber duck comes in, or has Google by your side lol) , and no offence; It clearly isn't the case of this CO engine.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
...the ultimate Contrast Moe (or not).
In the Air Force, I used to code in COBOL. My personal record was something over a hundred compiler errors from leaving out the semicolon at the end of one line in the Data Definition section (I think it was on the 88-level variable THE-COWS-COME-HOME, a flag for a loop that would iterate between once and two thousand times - PERFORM B001-PROCESS UNTIL THE-COWS-COME-HOME).
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
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Because it was not given out as it was supposed to when them new powers came out
There was never any mention of a retcon token, much less a promise of one. So how do you get that there was "supposed to be" one?
As I understand it, the tokens are handed out when major changes are made to multiple piwers or mechanics. Two minor changes hardly qualifies, and I don't think the addition of powers warrants one either.
Did they give out tokens with the addition of the Earth framework, or with the martial arts and gadgets powers added for Night Avengers?
@flamingbunnyman in game. Formerly @Roderick in City of Heroes.
Not so sure I didn't pay much for the other powers, its just mostly there was according to a friend of mine who played CO for years now.
But it whuold be nice if freefroms could get a free recon token due to the price of cleaning powers with so much Gold needed. or anyone in that matter.
So yes should of..but don't want to sound like a **** so...I say it this why "Whuold of been nice and a change from the devs."
Also not all players have the cash to buy a recon token with real cash
They have not given out retcons for additions, but changes to existing powers that adversely affected builds have resulted in free retcons in the past.
Some may be remembering the golden days when retcons for changes of this sort could be counted on. Times change. Not always for the better.
'Caine, miss you bud. Fly high.
Don't jump else your game will crash
You laugh.
I was skydriving from RenCen buildings and my game crashed.
Regular running out of memory issue, but still.
Deliciously nutritious!
That reminds me of a time when the game would crash if you opened anything other than your first inventory bag. Partially because at the time, flight was also glitched in that it would force you to move laterally, even when trying to go straight up or down.
That's just it. They CAN'T. Cryptic code is a mish mash of spaghetti code and code commented thusly:
And documentation?
THIS!
IS!
CRYPTIC!
*Kicks the asker into The Bottomless Pit Of No Documentation Despair*
"Champions-Online and Star Trek Online contained hundreds of hours of mediocre content!"
and "nothing was polished".
--Jack Emmert
Still waiting for an even bigger "cyber-hack" that will bring everything down on the day of. { wink } <
See, that? I'm not taking any chances with emotes on any CO platform.
{ second wink }
I'm at work right now, so I can't really check, but that better mean 'emotes are back and everything is normal!' [resolved] and not 'we half-assed it, but at least the servers aren't crashing, right?' [resolved]
E:
Neat. To everyone subscribed, go to the PTS and attempt to break the servers with emotes to stop anything bad from happening on live.
Or are you one of the Lords of Cobal? BG circa 1978 { VBG }
Actually COBOL is still in use nowadays in banks and other systems. It's just not that well known and the coders of COBOL are laying low...
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
...the ultimate Contrast Moe (or not).
If you know anyone in the Seattle/Tacoma metroplex that would be willing to hire a slightly superannuated COBOL programmer without paperwork to prove his knowledge, though, I'd really like to hear about it...
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
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some days the game feels as fragile as a model made out of playing cards