Below is a short summary of the latest Community Meeting, followed by its chat logs – which have been gently edited for formatting, to put questions and answers in bold for easy skimming, and to omit greetings and farewells and other such asides. Meetings are hosted by Estate owner NeoBokrug Elytis at 2:00 pm on the last Saturday of every month at The Potato Farm in The Wastelands, and the discussion is typically divided into three main topics: Estate, Game, and Roleplay & Events. Everyone is welcome to attend!
LAND:
➳ We’ve had just enough new residents and just enough departing residents to have the exact same occupancy as last month.
➳ That means we haven’t reached that occupancy goal by our March 1 deadline, sadly.
➳ Contract work has kept Neo too busy to work on the mysterious Backup Plan A, so the deadline is being pushed out to April 1.
➳ Once that contract work ends, Neo will be able to work on Wastelands development full-time again.
➳ The mission: a total of a 10% gain in occupancy in order to prevent us from possibly needing to shed or restructure a region.
➳ Keep spreading the word!
GAME:
Sit-Teleport Errors:
➳ The problem: when people TP in or out of a region, it lags severely and scripts stop running for a long time, but players can still move; when scripts run again, they may be so far away from where they were before that the HUD thinks they must have cheated.
➳ While an average person’s script time is less than 2mb, some visitors have shown up with 10mb of scripts – which takes up 10-20% of a region’s Scripts Run and can create severe and prolonged lag.
➳ The latest update to prevent these false-positive HUD suspensions has helped a bit, but the problem persists.
➳ The llGetTimeDilation function no longer accurately reports this region lag, so Neo is looking for new and more reliable ways to measure it and account for it: possibly by measuring simulator frames instead.
➳ If you still encounter this bug, send Neo a notecard with the time, the error as seen in the popup, the SLurl of where it happened, and a description of what you were doing. Just saying that you’re suspended is not enough and does not help anybody; Neo needs the details.
Hunting Updates:
➳ The Dune Trapper is going to get an upgrade, restoring some broken abilities and adding new features.
➳ The Dune Trapper will need at least three people to hit it before it can start taking damage so that it cannot be soloed even if glitched.
➳ The more hunters fighting it, the bigger the bonus damage!
➳ Neo’s considering adding a new Alden quest where you have to hunt a critter.
Player Suggestions Under Consideration / Investigation:
➳ Ways for people to choose between Aeg’s Potion Quest or Mushroom Hunt – possibly at an increased EXP cost or cooldown time to keep people from being able to grind for only one set of rewards?
➳ Increased critter spawn rates?
➳ Are Blood Potatoes not spawning for the winter or not spawning because they broke?
➳ Adding owner chat messages in local when we metabolize extra food to heal a DoT?
➳ Did short-duration flight forgiveness stop working again?
Miscellaneous:
➳ Ccindy Pfeffer has been making a lot of progress with the Visitor Center build!
➳ The Environment Enhancement Project (EEP) is slated to be a main release soon – but Neo will be working on other game updates before EEP-related updates.
➳ The metabolism system was tweaked so that your health stays consistent no matter what your hunger level is.
➳ Saul the Food Trader is still dead.
ROLEPLAY & EVENTS:
➳ The next RP Mutant Drum Circle will happen on Monday the 2nd.
➳ March’s Barrelhead Bazaar will be Saturday the 7th.
➳ Less than two months until The Red Revival! If you play a Human or a Manimal and have ever thought about becoming a Ghoul, get in touch with Aposiopesis Fullstop for more info.
➳ Sam’s Make Of Soup game is perpetually running! Ingredients can be gathered on the parcels of certain landowners.
➳ Apo is working on some self-guided character creation helpers to assist new players with applying all the Wiki / Visitors Center / notecard information to their own character creation. Testers wanted!
I. THE ESTATE
NeoBokrug Elytis: IT’S… TIME.
NeoBokrug Elytis: Okay! As per the usual we’ll discuss the three main aspects of the estate, with time in between for questions and comments. The last topic RP & EVENTS is typically an open floor discussion. There’s not too much to cover this month, but some good topics worth discussing in freeform.
NeoBokrug Elytis: Starting with estate and land — occupancy has remained exactly the same as last month. Had a few people move in, and a few people moved out. It was amazingly slow in terms of people getting or letting go of land. Which is … better than losing large swathes of land I guess.
NeoBokrug Elytis: But it was kind of odd overall.
NeoBokrug Elytis: Spring is just around the corner so I suspect occupancy will go up at least a little.
Aposiopesis Fullstop crosses her fingers!
NeoBokrug Elytis: Slow but steady progress is being made on the visitor center. I haven’t had much time to work on it — but CC who’s helping out with the RP wing has made lots of progress since November.
NeoBokrug Elytis: If you’re a resident and you visit the tier panel AND you cam out of the box you’re in, you can see it to the west.
NeoBokrug Elytis: It’s still a bit of a mess, but it’s taking shape nicely.
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Ooh…
NeoBokrug Elytis: I am pretty sure we’re not going to hit that 5% goal in a couple days. Occupancy hasn’t really moved since the first goal was met. I haven’t had time to work on backup plan A, so I am going to extend the goal to April 1st. I am almost done with my current contract project and that will free up a lot of time for me to be back in The Wastelands full time.
Irk (shannonwilsonbell): YAY!
NeoBokrug Elytis: Just keep the pressure on your non-wastelands friends.
NeoBokrug Elytis: Force them to move in, chain them to the lands.
Verity Goodnight: and non-second life friends!
NeoBokrug Elytis: ;)
NeoBokrug Elytis: That’s about it for land stuff!
Aposiopesis Fullstop scrawls a to-do list: “Get… more… friends.”
NeoBokrug Elytis: Any questions or comments before I get on with game stuff?
Aposiopesis Fullstop: What was Backup Plan A?
NeoBokrug Elytis: Confidential.
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Aha.
Verity Goodnight: Some sort of dance craze that would compel people to move here
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Selling unattended children on the black market. Understandable.
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Should raise lots of funds.
Dexter Bogdanovich: opening wl for blingbling
NeoBokrug Elytis: 1 child == 1 year
NeoBokrug Elytis: The bling is already here, just buried thousands of feet down.
NeoBokrug Elytis: Sandusky knows more about that
Dexter Bogdanovich: hahaha
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Hee!
Dexter Bogdanovich: thats why i never cam below ground at cormac^^
NeoBokrug Elytis: Moving on to game stuff then?
Dexter Bogdanovich: √
II. THE GAME
NeoBokrug Elytis: I know the false positive suspensions are a pain. I know why they happen at this point. I am working on trying to find a better way to measure region lag so I can account for that. Back in the day you could rely on llGetTimeDilation to see how much lag there was or wasn’t. Now it almost always reports 0.99 — even though some scripts are not being run that frame.
NeoBokrug Elytis: Right now it’s showing 0.996 but only 75-85% of all scripts are being run.
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Eeugh.
NeoBokrug Elytis: ANd when a person teleports in — that “Scripts Run” stat takes a HUGE dump.
NeoBokrug Elytis: Because I am measuring distance traveled over what is expected to be traveled AND THEN A LITTLE BIT MORE for good measure — if the HUD script doesn’t get run for a long time by time it wakes up, it thinks you’ve traveled too far.
NeoBokrug Elytis: That is the crux of the problem. The old LL tools to measure script lag don’t report actual script lag anymore — so using normal methods to measure doesn’t work.
NeoBokrug Elytis: However…
NeoBokrug Elytis: In the past I have used clever methods to detect hidden lag to a degree of success. Those methods are less reliable now. But I have been doing some development on making new methods with a little bit of success as I have time this month.
NeoBokrug Elytis: LLs region updates this past year has been nothing but trouble for the game. It’s been keeping me too busy trying to fix problems that suddenly appear.
NeoBokrug Elytis: I have also contemplated ejecting anyone who has 10 fucking megabytes or more of scripts on. That just kills region performance when they teleport, out, or cross region borders.
NeoBokrug Elytis: Right now, no one here has more than 2mb. Which is just fine. :)
Aposiopesis Fullstop: I was about to say, what’s normal again?
RABT (setirabit.rayna): whew
NeoBokrug Elytis: I think 5mb is high. I think 10mb is just obscene.
Verity Goodnight: haha I was wondering
NeoBokrug Elytis: You can have one person with 10mb of scripts easily suck out 10-20% of region scripts run.
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Holy shit.
NeoBokrug Elytis: The rub is, teleporting them home will cause another lag spike.
Dexter Bogdanovich: lol
Aposiopesis Fullstop: And how many of them aren’t going to pay attention, and are just going to keep coming back over and over?
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Too bad you can’t use Experience tools to just Ruth the bastards.
Aposiopesis Fullstop: :V
Dexter Bogdanovich: haha apo
NeoBokrug Elytis: So IDK, there’s no good solution to fixing the scripts run issues we have in relation to the HUDs. I have done some testing trying to measure how many simulator frames have passed since the script last run it’s checks, to some success. I have to figure out one small thing in regards to that before I can make an attempted update.
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Instead of measuring just “a little bit more” than should be a reasonable distance for good measure, could it be a lot more? Like… arbitrary number here, but 20 meters or something? People who are cheating don’t have such a dense network of chairs that they can get where they’re going in tiny increments; the whole idea is that they’re trying to cross huge distances quickly.
NeoBokrug Elytis: Oh, it is already a lot more.
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Things are just so fucked up that we travel those huge distances before the scripts run again. Gotcha.
NeoBokrug Elytis: WHich is why I am not changing that number., If you’re hitting a lot more it’s because the region is having SOME issue that’s prevented the script from beign run for a long time.
NeoBokrug Elytis: I would rather just build a solution that can account for that so the HUD knows when things are shitty.
NeoBokrug Elytis: Ironically, I already have that code in there and it gives more leeway if an avatar enters or leaves a region.
NeoBokrug Elytis: It’s just the delay is SO bad, that even those checks fail.
BlackWidow Sinister: Unless I’m trying to get out of a hole I fell into, I can’t see any reason TO sit teleport. ????
BlackWidow Sinister: What’s the issue with it?
Aposiopesis Fullstop: The whole point is that the sit teleport error is triggering when you have NOT sit-teleported.
NeoBokrug Elytis: Sit teleport is a general term I am using. Basically people were cheating on quests by sitting half or all the way across a region rather than run to their destinations.
NeoBokrug Elytis: And since some quests are timed it’s cheating in my eyes.
BlackWidow Sinister: shakes head. sheesh
NeoBokrug Elytis: I mean, the game is free. It sucks that 30% of HUD code is meant to deal wht things out of my control or ways people cheat. But I can’t be around all the time.
NeoBokrug Elytis: I have also been working on fixing the Dune Trappers flaws and broken abilities.
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Could something be done on the NPC’s end of things? Like… “it shouldn’t be possible to get there and back in less than X:XX – no reward for you?
Aposiopesis Fullstop: ”
NeoBokrug Elytis: Apo, nah.
Aposiopesis Fullstop: That way, cheaters don’t get the rewards, and the rest of us don’t get boned by false positives.
BlackWidow Sinister: I find my quest crate (when I do it) for alden right outside the JY where he is sometimes
BlackWidow Sinister: less than 20 seconds to complete it
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Right – that could be a sort of bare minimum.
NeoBokrug Elytis: I’ll fix the false positives first, because that’s less work — and sit teleporting is used on non-quests too.
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Ahhh, yeah, that’s true. The NPC-end way would have to account for what region it was in, and have different timers for each one, and that’s just gonna be some crap.
Dexter Bogdanovich: sometimes timebomb crates seem to explode much too fast. i remember finding them really fast and then dying not even half way back to alden
NeoBokrug Elytis: So soon the Dune Trappers are getting a general update. Some of their broken abilities will be fixed and updated.
Aposiopesis Fullstop: …yaaaay?
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Hahaha
NeoBokrug Elytis: Time Bombs are not determined by if you make it to Alden in time. They have their own timer with plenty of random independent of your time limit to get back.
Dexter Bogdanovich: ok
NeoBokrug Elytis: Either it explodes before you get back, or you get it back in time.
Dexter Bogdanovich nods to neo
NeoBokrug Elytis: I want to add a new Alden quest this year. Maybe go kill a something quest.
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Ooh.
Dexter Bogdanovich: personal northgate zombies!
Aposiopesis Fullstop: It would rez the something when the quest started, right?
NeoBokrug Elytis: I could be mean like WOW. Bring back 6 wolf ears. Wolf ears have 5% chance to spawn per world.
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Because critters are just… not exactly plentiful.
NeoBokrug Elytis: Apo yea. and I think only the questee can initially damage it and unlock it being hurt by anyone.
NeoBokrug Elytis: Special quest critters.
Aposiopesis Fullstop: That could be fun!
NeoBokrug Elytis: or dune trappers.
Aposiopesis Fullstop: That could be aaaaugh!
NeoBokrug Elytis: Any questions about game stuff?
Irk (shannonwilsonbell): I have 2 game questions: #1 – Can Aeg be changed to allow a choice between the 2 quests? I love the potion quest but the mushroom quest is not much of a challenge any more, so I don’t go to Aeg at all because EXP is precious and it’s a 50/50 chance.
Irk (shannonwilsonbell): And #B – Accidental flying used to be “forgiven” with a click on the HUD, now it suspends for 5 min. Any chance of going back to the forgiveness thing?
NeoBokrug Elytis: Irk: No, that’s ripe for exploitation — but I could maybe double the exp cost for a choice. IDK.
NeoBokrug Elytis: Maybe Irk, I will look at it.
Aposiopesis Fullstop: You can’t double it; it caps at 50. :/
Irk (shannonwilsonbell): how is that ripe?
NeoBokrug Elytis: Full BARS then.
NeoBokrug Elytis: Certain rewards for certain quests could flood the market if people keep doing one singular thing all the time.
Irk (shannonwilsonbell): Ah.
Aposiopesis Fullstop: I mean… then again, there was no mushroom quest for HOW long?
NeoBokrug Elytis: I will think about choice, but it will come at a cost.
NeoBokrug Elytis: Haha true. But options now change things. I know people who would do nothing but one type of quest over and over because it’s easier.
Irk (shannonwilsonbell): If they have the EXP…
BlackWidow Sinister: I second the request to have a choice on the AEG quests.
BlackWidow Sinister: I get the potion one a lot
NeoBokrug Elytis: I like that the NPCs have “random” needs from the player. So they randomly want you to go do a thing for THEM.
Verity Goodnight: me! I would do easy quests and then….hoard my winnings like a wastelands mesh dragon
NeoBokrug Elytis: Right now quests are 50-50.
BlackWidow Sinister: yes, but it appears you get the same one over and over
Aposiopesis Fullstop: People might also not have a lot of time, and might want to be able to pick whether they had to get four mushrooms or, like, twelve.
BlackWidow Sinister: because you DO :)
NeoBokrug Elytis: Well, isn’t the choice of quests sort of built in? Alden for hard quests with nice rewards, Aeg for easier quests with a more laid back approach?
Dexter Bogdanovich: maybe longer cooldown, if its a choosen task
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Oh, that’s a cool idea.
BlackWidow Sinister: yeah
NeoBokrug Elytis: And I am not opposed to introducing more NPCs for quests, but I think the TYPE of quest should be choice among NPCs. I am not thrilled with getting that ONE SPECIFIC QUEST that you want.
Irk (shannonwilsonbell): Fair enough.
Dexter Bogdanovich: ok^^
BlackWidow Sinister: speaking of NPC’s I see that Saul’s parcel has changed names. Is he coming back or something will replace him?
NeoBokrug Elytis: It’s not off the table, if we can balance it out in “costs to start quest and consequences” of chosing a quest, then I am more liable to make it a thing.
Irk (shannonwilsonbell): how about #B – fly suspension>?
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Brought to you by the number B and the letter seven.
NeoBokrug Elytis: I will look into fly suspension. I am pretty sure at the time of changing it I had a reason — I just can’t remember that reason now.
Irk (shannonwilsonbell): hahah! opk :)
Irk (shannonwilsonbell): ok*
Aposiopesis Fullstop: It really had been nice, though.
BlackWidow Sinister: Haven’t seen a potato plant in months, are they out of the game?
NeoBokrug Elytis: Oh, I think it was because I made the window for unsticking yourself with double tap work again.
NeoBokrug Elytis: No, they’re still here. I forget if the grow or not in the winter months. I am dumb enough to have coded something like that in.
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Is there any way we can see a sort of local chat message when some of our food gets used to heal a DoT?
NeoBokrug Elytis: But I will also look into it, maybe LL broke something.
BlackWidow Sinister: could be, I look for them every day
Aposiopesis Fullstop: I went from full food to around 25% food at Fight Night – and, yeah, I was hitting the gas HARD, but I forgot that was even a mechanic; it doesn’t really communicate what’s going on well.
NeoBokrug Elytis: People did science to figure out how potato plants spawn.
Wasteland Drifter (wastelanddrifter): SCIENCE!
Aposiopesis Fullstop: People *tried* to, anyway.
NeoBokrug Elytis: As for notifications about healing dots, probably. I will look into it when I am in there next.
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Keen!
Verity Goodnight: when a mummy potato and a daddy potato love each other very much….
Koni Lanzius: heheh
Aposiopesis Fullstop: The metabolism changes have been pretty great – especially now that your health stays stable.
NeoBokrug Elytis: All notes written down.
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Grood.
NeoBokrug Elytis: Any other questions about game stuff?
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Do cave grubs still spawn?
NeoBokrug Elytis: Yes
BlackWidow Sinister: where are my 10 rare crates?????
NeoBokrug Elytis: They all exploded.
BlackWidow Sinister: BLEH!!!
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Can critters spawn… more? Like, hunting is really a fun thing, but it’s so haphazard and random that it’s not something you can plan to do.
BlackWidow Sinister: I got a cave grub this morning
NeoBokrug Elytis: I will think about it.
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Sometimes new players haven’t believed me about the hunting, because they just never saw a buzzard.
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Oh! Did you say that EEP is soon to be released?
NeoBokrug Elytis: Before we move on, those that regularly hunt the dune trapper. I am making one significant change that you need to know about. If it’s hovertext is white, it is invulnerable to damage, ebcause as a boss, it’s not distracted enough to leave an opening to hurt it. Even if it is invulnerable it still counts damage contributions, but it won’t take damage until at least three people have done something to it.. So you will NEED AT LEAST three people to have done damage to it, and they MUST be alive and in the region fo rthe dune trapper to not be invulnerable.
NeoBokrug Elytis: EEP is soon, I gotta clear my plate of project work, and WL game work before I can push out EEP related changes.
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Iiiiiiinteresting…
III. THE ROLEPLAY
NeoBokrug Elytis: These last 5 minutes are reserved for RP and Events discussion, go!
Irk (shannonwilsonbell): This Monday 6pm is RP at the drum circle. Mutants are encouraged but everyone is welcome to participate or observe! I’ve been unable to attend drumming lately because RL is a MFer but I’m going to try like hell to be there.
NeoBokrug Elytis: I enjoy watching those. :)
Irk (shannonwilsonbell): Also, The Make os Soup Game is perpetually on. Ingredients can be found only on owned land, not public land. Here is more info: http://www.samwyx.com/soupgame.html
Irk (shannonwilsonbell): of*
Aposiopesis Fullstop: I’m working on a set of roleplay character creation helpers! Like the big one that you may have seen, but now in smaller, more-easily-approached bitesized chunks!
NeoBokrug Elytis: Also the more people you have fighting the dune trapper, the more bonus damage you do.
BlackWidow Sinister: Okies
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Well, not necessarily bitesized. Some are still pretty thorough. But I’m hoping to make something that’ll help people take what they learn in the Wiki and RP wing and such and actually apply that to what they wanna do. If you’d like to help me test some things out, lemme know!
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Also, two-month warning about THE RED REVIVAL! If you’ve ever been tempted to go Ghoul… it’s a fine, fine time. Get in touch, and we shall scheme. :D
Irk (shannonwilsonbell) will bring the torches.
NeoBokrug Elytis: haha!!
Aposiopesis Fullstop: NOOOO.
NeoBokrug Elytis: Time for Warzone!