PlaneShift
Support => Server Status => Topic started by: weltall on August 19, 2010, 02:28:22 am
-
Books and sketches inner working has been changed radically in the server side: they won't make a new item any more, like before, in place they will keep the basic book (the item you buy which was then changed in another when bought) as their base and store the book/sketch content in the particular instance of the item (any item in a slot is an instance, a stack of items is an instance too, when you do crafting you destroy and make a lot of instances of items just to make it clear).
In the next days I will proceed to update the servers to the last version starting from ezpcusa, so new fixes and functionalities (mostly to who has a more up to date client than the current binary release) and this big change explained above will go in the production servers.
What does it mean in a practical basis?
Various thing some positive some not so positive.
First of all, as it's obvious, there will be a downtime, which will be higher for zeroping, considered the bigger db, which will have to be backup, and then have a script run in order to convert the old books to the new format.
Second. If a book is missing an instance (due to old code all books would be preserved even lost ones or available only on deleted characters) all it's content will be *lost* from the conversion process. A database from 2 months ago says there are about 6000 of these cases. So, if you have a book you've lost due to selling it to a merchant or for other reasons, it would be better if you took the time before this upgrade to have it recovered by a dev or gm as after this procedure it will be more complex to retrieve them (having to load an old db and extract them by hand while now it just needs an /item "bookname").
Third. As all the books are run through a script and converted to their instances problems might happen: I've tested it carefully on a real db and it worked well but let's say ... better safe than sorry. DO A BACKUP OF YOUR BOOKS and SKETCHES!
Forth: gm and devs won't be able to recover your books any more if lost due to selling them to merchants or any other destructive practice for the item instance, this isn't the case for setting items as they will be created in the old style, being game data and not player data, but will affect the new and old books from the time of the update upon. While it's still possible to load a backup of the db and load the book from there you can't be assured we have such a backup or the time for it. So proceed like if you knew there is no such a backup of your precious book for the future.
Fifth: due to the fact 23929 books and sketches won't be any more in the basic items, they won't be loaded any more on boot up, but only when your character items are loaded. This will mean at least 30/60 seconds less of wait time when the server is restarted and less cpu/ram stress on the server.
sixth: As now books are taking their base from the original item, changes to it will change your book characteristics. Things like weight, size, mesh, icons will change according to the basic item just like any other item in game (excluding random loot for now)
seventh: probably the most visible change to players. Now it's possible to name books in any way as they aren't basic items any more. So you won't get any more those funny names with numbers after the book or have to call your books with an ending number or something similar in order to be able to do copies.
I think that's all enjoy and let me remind me again: BACK THEM UP!
-
(^seventh)
__
It will be not easy to remember possibly lost books now if that mistake happened months and years ago... About 6000 lost books is quite a number. How could you help those in doubt discovering if there are any books they might have interest in them being recovered?
Do books previously owned by now deleted chars belong to that category? (Did someone say "Octarchial yard sale"?)
And even more important: What is the deadline for making backups?
-
(^seventh)
__
It will be not easy to remember possibly lost books now if that mistake happened months and years ago... About 6000 lost books is quite a number. How could you help those in doubt discovering if there are any books they might have interest in them being recovered?
Do books previously owned by now deleted chars belong to that category? (Did someone say "Octarchial yard sale"?)
And even more important: What is the deadline for making backups?
i could get the names of those items but that's the maximum i could do generically.
yes any book owned by deleted characters, sold or otherwise destroyed belongs to that category.
probably just some days depending on the success of ezpcusa upgrade which will be today or tomorrow.
I've tested the upgrade process with a zeroping db dump and it went with success so probably nothing will be lost and all will go well as far as you still own the item but better to always backup things being a bid db change.
-
these books will be deleted from the server due to the upgrade process:
http://planeshift.zeroping.it/result
http://planeshift.ezpcusa.com/register/result
no one owns these books at this time.
-
So basically every existing in game book/sketch is going to be deleted and wiped, and a new book/sketch system is to arrive in the near future?
-
No.
Every book and sketch which belongs to an existing character should be converted to the new system (if it works well, the backup was not really required).
Every book and sketch which does not belong to an existing character will not be converted and therefore lost.
-
I want to request at least two days time (until sunday, preferrably longer) to let players backup existing books.
-
sunday i'm on a plane so it's excluded i will start ezpcusa today and do zeroping probably tomorrow. the backup are just for being safe but are most probably unedded (if the test set which i used failed all would have failed). that's also because i want to make sure it works after deploying it.
-
Oh well, great.
As if all players play daily, read the forums daily, have time to make backups of books of all their chars daily...
You are again going to provoke the hate of the community. Well done.
-
Oh well, great.
As if all players play daily, read the forums daily, have time to make backups of books of all their chars daily...
You are again going to provoke the hate of the community. Well done.
why you would provoke the hate of the community if all goes well? ezpcusa was updated and 100% of the books were ported correctly according to the database. 496 valid books were ported to the new system, those 266 books not owned by anyone where not so the upgrade of ezpcusa was a success. plus the thing had a pre alert on svn a week ago and it's stated in game in irc and forums.
the real problem won't be this but will be random loot porting to the new schema plans which will be a big problem to obtain. for those who understand programming it will be a text based match as nothing else it's possible with like queries.
-
If it was tested and ran well, and there are backups, then no problems. Otherwise, weltall is worse than Hitler. Don't ya just love dichotomies?
-
sixth: As now books are taking their base from the original item, changes to it will change your book characteristics. Things like weight, size, mesh, icons will change according to the basic item just like any other item in game (excluding random loot for now)
Will this mean that the original author can change the original and then all copies will be auto-magically updated?
- Nova the curious book collector
-
This kind of made my head spin. ;)
Will you now be able to buy multiple books at once from Jayose? Or still just one at a time?
-
Oooh, lots of books belonging to me in there.
No original copies though, so I'm all good.
-
sixth: As now books are taking their base from the original item, changes to it will change your book characteristics. Things like weight, size, mesh, icons will change according to the basic item just like any other item in game (excluding random loot for now)
Will this mean that the original author can change the original and then all copies will be auto-magically updated?
- Nova the curious book collector
no copies are independent. the original item is the basic book not your book. before we had a basic book which was copied and made as a new basic item which was then referenced from your instance of the book. now the book lives within the instance only and for the rest of the data grabs from the basic book which is what's in jayose inventory (players never had such a book because it wouldn't work)
-
This kind of made my head spin. ;)
Will you now be able to buy multiple books at once from Jayose? Or still just one at a time?
you could do that since around 0.5.1 at least
-
What will be the IC explanation for the deletion of some of these books and sketches?
-
game updates aren't meant to be considered in an IC way.
-
Why not?
-
What will be the IC explanation for the deletion of some of these books and sketches?
there's no need for one, nobody knows about them as nobody holds a reference
-
actually those book are ooc already as you really want to find ic and ooc explanation for technical things.
-
What will be the IC explanation for the deletion of some of these books and sketches?
Far as most here playing Planeshift know that Planeshift is still a beta game, very much still in development, and there will be many times that changes will result in game data changes that can affect anything in the game. Therefore no explanation what so ever is needed. Game being beta is all the explanation one needs for major visible changes.
-
What IC reasons for lost books could exist? - Quite as many as ways how they lost their owners technically:
- accidently or intentionally sold (to NPCs)
- given away to people who started traveling away from the Dome / buried with corpses (lost with their owner chars)
- lost in the wild, rotten away (dropped and forgotten)
- burned (in the furnace)
-
Aww shucks guys, you know they don't bother to to explain stuff as IC anymore. ;) Like Neko and some Devs have commented, RP is solely the responsibility of players. They aren't concerning themselves with it. However, some day when some parent is threatening a lawsuit because their kid was propositions by a hooker ICly about bondage stuff, I think it might merit taking a greater interest. But whatever... :) The last example of an IC explanation was the crystal eclipse right before the release of Steel Blue. I thought it was rather nice at the time, but I guess with a reduced Dev team, they don't really have time or resources for such things anymore. Shame many of the devs that used to care and went out of their way for such things are gone. Oh well...
-
the point is that you want an ic reason from us for books which were lost years ago already. I'd call it a bug that they are still in the database actually and probably even against the will of who destroyed them, even though the terms of use allow this case (keeping of old data even deleted). you should ask who destroyed the only instance of their book for the reason for doing it.
-
Well at least LigH isn't lazy.
-
lazy? sure... maybe we have other things to do.
-
Nothing happens ICly. No real visible change.
Only 2 things can happen here:
1) If a very unlikely accident happens, some current books may end up corrupted or lost. Hence the call for individual backups.
2) Obsolete books are not going to be asked for after years or months have passed. Maybe, just maybe, if someone sells a book by mistake to a NPC just before the conversion process, GMs won't be able to help him out.
That's what I understood.
-
Nothing happens ICly. No real visible change.
Only 2 things can happen here:
1) If a very unlikely accident happens, some current books may end up corrupted or lost. Hence the call for individual backups.
2) Obsolete books are not going to be asked for after years or months have passed. Maybe, just maybe, if someone sells a book by mistake to a NPC just before the conversion process, GMs won't be able to help him out.
That's what I understood.
Well done on interpreting the first post correctly. \\o//
-
Since I updated I can not play I crush some seconds after the world is loaded.
-
I thought you left Illysia.
...LOL j/k, I knew you were just attention whoring. <3
-
I thought you left Illysia.
Venorel works frantically on a backup of her book, "Epic Goodbyes"
-
*chuckles*
-
I did, I left the game long ago. Did you see me in game recently? ;)
Not that I expect that you actually read the post, but for the record, the goodbye was one line long, the rest is critique. You should read it sometimes, you might learn something Nova... or not. ;)
-
I did, I left the game long ago. Did you see me in game recently? ;)
So now you're just a giant hypocrite? You were one of the ones that complained about all the oldbies sitting on the forum, completely detached from the game but acting like they know everything about it. And instructing everyone else about it.
Like with critiquing.
...huh.
-
Not at all. I did the critique as I was leaving not long after. ;)
-
Blah, blah, I'm passive aggressively attacking the devs for something that doesn't even matter because I ran the stonehead and that gives me authority. Also critiqueing their non-IC-ness! NO ONE CARES ABOUT RP ANYMORE, THAT'S WHY THE STONEHEAD FAILED!!!1
...huh. Didn't that occur like, yesterday?
-
*sheds a tear* Why can't we be friends?
Oh my. We have lots of books lying down at our HQ and I've lost my keys. Only Parallo has the key and he doesn't seem to be around.
We'll lose our library? Man, I have to try and contact him.
-
Nah, that's just being bored and avoiding doing the work I should be doing. ;D If the post short enough to read, my heart's not truly in it. However, yes... I will take potshots from time to time. I just don't outright troll like you. ;)
-
looks like people here can just flame so let's close this as it's outdated too.