Why Not Prevent Equipment Loss From Crash...

UC tosses a bone onto the pile

Reading again that players lost their equipment to no fault of their own which also happened to me 2-3 times when i was playing here last, why keep punishing them because of code bugs?

What I did with my version of the code was added [crash_eq] to the pfiles. Every time you put on or took off a piece of equipment it recorded or removed that equipment's vnum into the appropriate wear slot,  in the event of a crash where you got stripped of your possessions the code would auto load everything you had lost.

A simple check when a char loads to see if you are wearing your crash_eq is all thats needed. I did not expand the code to inventory items as it would make the pfiles too big, a check also needs to be added for rare purge to set the crash_eq slots to 0 if the char got purged.

Please enjoy my way of thinking :) 

UC

Please look forward to more happy.

This idea started out really great until I read this:

7 hours ago, Unknown Criminal said:

I did not expand the code to inventory items as it would make the pfiles too big

The reason why people usually lose EQ during crashes is that they are forcefully logged off with too many rares in their inventories, and usually only the items that go above the limit and are in your inventory disappear, so excluding inventories from such a check is quite strange....

Do you know what a building block is @f0xx? All eq vnums can be recorded if it's worn, inventoried or in bags if the coder so chooses to. @Ereleiis very capable of expanding this idea if he wants to. 

Now we also might be talking about 2 different types of eq losses. What I was preventing against was a crash that 'stripped' a char, what you have touched on is having too many rares in an inventory and being forcefully logged out.

I can't recall off the top of my head if eq is purged on the log off or log on, however I'd just suggest a few extra code calls to check confirm_quit before purging. If a char didn't confirm their quit (i.e. forced logout from a crash) then the code shouldn't purge that char. 

UC

 if (ch && !IS_NPC(ch) && !ch->pcdata->confirm_quit)
 rare_limit = 999;

@Erelei can just add that into fwrite_obj under the bounty check and your inventories would be safe.

UC

What you are asking for, though, is for us to eschew rare limits to make it easier to sidestep rare limits. You make the choice to hold more than your limit. You accept the risks. You can always control what you want to keep/lose by sorting your inventory.

I'm just happy that we don't need to drop all our extra rares on the ground anymore during normal shifts.

@Lloth What you are saying is that players need to hold themselves responsible at all times in case of a 'crash', then if a crash happens and a player lost equipment its their own fault for not keeping themselves sorted. Good to know.

Guys, we've been very forwardcoming in restoring stuff that was lost due to crashes. You just have to post what exactly you lost and you have to take into account that anything you did from that point on will be erased as we restore the file to that time. We can do this only if you post soon after the crash, so not overmuch is lost.

Erelei also already has code in place that prevents loss of any rares in case of a controlled shut down.

@Anume why have players take the extra steps and go OOC by posting to a forum what they lost?  Im probably just speaking for myself but id prefer to take comfort in knowing that if there was a crash my equipment was recorded, the absolute last thing id want to do would be posting my woes to a forum and wait for someone to come rescue me. 

Nobody cares about a controlled shutdown because 'its controlled', its the crashes that happen out of nowhere with no warning that you guys dont want to add a safety net for. But hey, like ive said before where if something keeps happens and you guys keep letting it happen then you guys want it to happen for your own reasons else you would fix it. Its your game :) 

UC

What Anume said. We restore items regularly. I am speaking from a standpoint of personal responsibility. I take extreme care whenever I mort that my rares are sorted, so I don't ever have to worry about crashes. To me, "why isn't it easier to circumvent rare limits?" is a bad approach to "is it possible to get items restored in the instance of a crash?". Did I ever blame players for crashes? Did I hold them somehow at fault? No, I did not. You just chose to do as you do so often, and distort a statement to say something very different than the original. It's annoying.

What I DID say, is that asking us to make it easier to sidestep rare limits is pretty brazen. I DID say that you make the choice to risk having more rares in your inventory  than you should. I DID suggest sorting your rares at all times, to cover yourself

What I did NOT say is that we hang you out to dry if a crash happens. I did NOT say that players are to be held responsible for crashes.

1 hour ago, Unknown Criminal said:

if (ch && !IS_NPC(ch) && !ch->pcdata->confirm_quit)
rare_limit = 999;

@Erelei can just add that into fwrite_obj under the bounty check and your inventories would be safe.

UC

Changing this allows people to void out and hold onto more rares than they should be able to.

Just now, Erelei said:

Changing this allows people to void out and hold onto more rares than they should be able to.

Correct, add a reverse check for when people void out to automatically set the confirm_quit to TRUE.

Plus. During a crash all the open connections aren’t put through the “quit” function. Your example would help voided out players. That’s it.

So id go back to my original post where all worn (and or inventoried) vnums are recorded, if a crash happens and chars log on the code should check for the worn (and or inventoried) vnums and load them if they dont exist.

They are recorded already. This is an issue with “save”. The game doesn’t save every second. That would mean continually writing the pfiles every time someone picks up an item or drops it or wears one. Ever heard of IOWAIT?

I don't ever lose worn items.  Not once ever in over a decade of play.  I'm with the manage your inventory crew on this one.  Don't walk around with an excessive amount of rares.   I always keep my rare consumables sorted to the bottom so if I do get hit with more than 4 I just lose those.  But it is a very infrequent occurrence. 

Now if you die and a crash happens you can lose your corpse and items.  But that is infrequent from my experiences, and you just request a restore.  

Managing your inventory and keeping at the rare limit is part of the game.  And really, people would find whatever crack they can to try and hold them.  This has to be strict so someone doesn't horde everything.

So id go back to my original post yet again to where I said I only recorded worn eq vnums, everything 'after that' I stated that you were "very capable of expanding this idea if you wanted to". 

The game doesnt have to save every second which is a little bit of dramatization, however its not a 'save' issue, its a purge issue where players that 'arent quitting' are getting forcefully purged. P.S if you can force purge people on a crash there must be a reason why you wont dont force 'save' them.

And with IOWAIT... Are you expecting to save the pfiles of 100 players who all 'remo all; drop all; get all; wear all' over and over again at the same time causing a 3 second lag spike? Come on now ;) 

It all comes down to if its just over the limit inventories that are getting purged on these crashes or everything the player has on them. I was under the impression from past playing that it was everything on the character.   

Bottom line is that if characters are kicked because of a crash purge_player should NOT be called, thats just my opinion,  opinions are like a**holes, everybody has one :) 

UC

Purge_player isn’t called in a crash.

And actually nothing is called in a crash. It’s a crash. The game literally gets a signal 11. You can’t run a command before the crash as if you knew it was coming.