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Messages - MrRedwood

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1
General Discussion / Re: Think NPCs are dumb? Click here!
« on: May 13, 2009, 10:42:53 am »
Well, I didn't post anything that would inform someone about where the quest originated, or even how that quest would end up at the two NPCs I mentioned, so I don't think it actually gives anything away.

The (undisclosed) quest-originating NPC explicitly tells the questor to go to Harnquist, so that isn't a give-away; and Harnquist explicitly states the next step, including the grammatical mistake.

I understand the point about not giving away quests, and I think I was adequately cautious here.

2
General Discussion / Re: Think NPCs are dumb? Click here!
« on: May 13, 2009, 09:23:13 am »
Well, I tried to follow the style I'd seen in previous posts in this thread, starting at here.

Given what the original post asked for -- successful and unsuccessful queries to NPCs -- I don't see how this could be too much less of a spoiler, though. Of course, that was Jeraphon almost two years ago -- is that still the right person to PM, or is it Rizin? Grammar problems aren't really any more of a bug than any other textual alteration, I would think.

And I can't PM anyone yet  ;) -- still fewer than 10 posts, although I think I only have one or two more. But who to PM with this stuff?

3
General Discussion / Re: Think NPCs are dumb? Click here!
« on: May 12, 2009, 11:28:50 pm »
Barrin Dhorod is frustrating during a quest. (U) for unanswered, (A) for answered and (I) for improperly.

U   about experimental blade [Note the unfortunate use of *correct* grammar]
A   about experiment blade [the incorrect grammar used originally by Harnquist]
U   give me experiment blade
U   give me experimental blade
U   harnquist sent me

The "give me" and "harnquist sent me" are somewhat understandable, but in real speech would probably trigger some more specific response than "I don't understand you, sorry." But the use of improper grammar (nouns cannot modify other nouns; the correct word must be the adjective) in the original NPC statement made this a nasty puzzle in a way that contributes nothing to the game.

4
General Discussion / Re: Quests break too easily -- or are NPCs just too dumb?
« on: May 12, 2009, 09:23:21 pm »
Quote from: Parallo on May 11, 2009, 04:04:18 am
Quote from: MrRedwood on May 11, 2009, 02:03:56 am
[...] if NPC1 says "Tell Frodo to give you to MacGuffin", then I think Frodo should respond to "Give me the MacGuffin", don't you? Or is that somehow brainless?

Emphasis my own. 'Nuff said.

Honestly, this is silly. Didn't it occur to you that it was more likely I had mistyped a fictional interaction than seriously expected that an NPC would instruct me to have another NPC give me to another NPC or to an object? As far as I've been able to tell, giving oneself to an NPC hasn't been implemented, but sounds rather kinky.

In other words, I have many times experienced stuff like:

NPC1 says "Tell Frodo to give you the MacGuffin", and then "Give me the MacGuffin", elicits no productive response, and neither does "Give the MacGuffin to me", nor "Give me MacGuffin", nor "Give MacGuffin", nor "about MacGuffin", nor "NPC1 sent me". It isn't that I'm getting 'stuck' on variations of some sixth form, but that I'm trying a dozen significantly different variations and Im despairing whether the quest is broken (which seems likely at that point) or if there is some trick that I haven't mastered.


Re: PM'ing a developer with the phrases that didn't work but that I thought should have (@ http://hydlaaplaza.com/smf/index.php?topic=29353.0) --
I'm usually good at my research, but you're right -- I missed that one.

A better idea would be to create a table of NPC queries -- discussed in that thread but discarded. Instead of a table keyed by NPC and char:
  • On an NPC-by-NPC basis, accumulate queries that produced the equivalent of a "Huh?"
  • Tabulate the number of times NPC-specific keywords (and, perhaps, game-wide-keywords) are in those queries.
  • Tabulate how many queries that contain *no* known keywords on an NPC-by-NPC basis.
  • Generate reports periodically showing which NPCs generate the most confusion along with the list of queries and keywords they have seen.

BTW, any idea how long before that point-and-click ui makes life better? I haven't been around long enough to know how aggressive the development cycle is.

5
Linux Specific Issues / PS crashes on Ubuntu 9.04
« on: May 11, 2009, 05:18:43 am »
I have an extremely similar problem to the poster titled Ubuntu Crash, but the single reply to his post didn't help me.

The differences -- I don't know if he sees this, but here are things that his post didn't mention:
  • The PS windows (PSsetup and PSclient) have a yellow box show up in the upper left corner which fades away after a while, with the lines:
    crystalspace.canvas.openglcommon.driverdb:
       No 'version' attribute
       [note: gldriverdb,rules,rule,conditions,comparever]
  • If the window is dragged, some graphics are left on screen in the old locations.
  • When the character selection screen is displayed, no character is seen rotating in the center (which is what I expect from when I run on a MacOS machine).
  • The PSclient crashes either during or just after the "Loading World" step.

If PSclient is run from a Terminal, the output is very similar to the mentioned post's, so I'll delete most of the long sequence of "[...] flag deactivated with no filter" lines.

But my error log includes " PSLoader: step 2: success", which he never seems to have gotten to. Is this even the same problem?

# ./psclient
Your configuration files are in... /home/robert/.PlaneShift
DEBUG: Initializing OpenAL sound system
DEBUG: Retrieving available devices.
DEBUG: Default OpenAL device: '((sampling-rate 44100) (device '(native))
DEBUG: No device specified
DEBUG: Falling back on default device
DEBUG: Can't retrieve attributes size: OpenAL error ALC_INVALID_DEVICE
ATTENTION: default value of option force_s3tc_enable overridden by environment.
get fences failed: -1
param: 6, val: 0

crystalspace.canvas.openglcommon.driverdb:
  No 'version' attribute
  [node: gldriverdb,rules,rule,conditions,comparever]

planeshift.application.client:
  PlaneShift Steel Blue (0.4.03)
  This game uses Crystal Space Engine created by Jorrit and others
  1.4.0 [Unix-x86-GCC]
Sun May 10 19:31:20 2009, LOG_ANY flag deactivated with no filter.
Sun May 10 19:31:20 2009, LOG_WEATHER flag deactivated with no filter.
...
Sun May 10 19:31:20 2009, All LOGS are off.
Mounting skin: /this/art/skins/elves.zip
Mounting skin: /planeshift/art/skins/base/client_base.zip
  psEngine initialized.
Using fontsize 16 for resolution 1024x768
WARNING! Object '_s_walls_01' is not closed!
WARNING! Object '_s_sigil_01' is not closed!
WARNING! Object '_s_sigil_05' is not closed!
WARNING! Object '_s_bridge_01' is not closed!
WARNING! Object '_s_sigil_03' is not closed!
WARNING! Object 'spikes_06' is not closed!
...
  PSLoader: step 2: success
Sun May 10 19:31:41 2009, <src/client/pscharcontrol.cpp:880 LoadKeys SEVERE>
Sun May 10 19:31:41 2009, Failed to map 'F10' to 'Brightness reset'
  PSLoader: step 3: success
Sun May 10 19:31:42 2009, <src/common/util/psxmlparser.cpp:282 ParseFile SEVERE>
Sun May 10 19:31:42 2009, Could not find file: /planeshift/world/hydlaa_jayose/sound.xml
Sun May 10 19:31:42 2009, <src/common/util/psxmlparser.cpp:282 ParseFile SEVERE>
Sun May 10 19:31:42 2009, Could not find file: /planeshift/world/terr_common/sound.xml
  PSLoader: step 4: success
Sun May 10 19:31:42 2009, <src/client/psclientdr.cpp:248 HandleStatsUpdate SEVERE>
Sun May 10 19:31:42 2009, Stat request failed because CelClient not ready for EID:37119
Map hydlaa_common loaded successfully in 181ms
Sun May 10 19:31:42 2009, <src/client/psclientdr.cpp:248 HandleStatsUpdate SEVERE>
Sun May 10 19:31:42 2009, Stat request failed because CelClient not ready for EID:37119

crystalspace.collisiondetection.opcode:
  OPCODE WARNING: found 1 degenerate faces in model! Collision might report
  wrong results!
Map hydlaa_plaza loaded successfully in 9819ms
Sun May 10 19:31:53 2009, <src/client/zonehandler.cpp:189 HandleMessage>
Sun May 10 19:31:53 2009, Still loading maps, ignoring crossing to sector hydlaa_plaza.
(0) : fatal error C9999: *** exception during compilation ***



I tried the fix mentioned in the reply to the aforementioned post, but couldn't figure out step 3.

Quote
Possible fix for graphics based sluggishness when running PS on a laptop with intel video.

Code: [Select]
Kayden: glxinfo | grep Mesa     ....I'm presuming you have Mesa 7.x
Kayden: edit data/config/gldrivers.xml
Kayden: near the bottom there should be a rule
Kayden:     <rule description="Intel DRI: Disable ARB_fragment_program">
Kayden: change the pattern from 6\.5\.. to 7\.0\..
Kayden:         <regexp string="glversion" pattern="Mesa 7\.0\.." />

I ran glxinfo and got
     OpenGL version string: 1.4 Mesa 7.4
So guessed that I should set it to "Mesa 7\.4\." -- right?

Quote
Step 2:
Install Driconf (I used synaptic package manager on kubuntu and searched for driconf).

Worked fine.

Quote
Step 3:
Go into your main menu > settings > 3D Acceleration (DRI Icon) and disable both options for graphic quality (texture compression, support for big textures)

Huh? I'm on Ubuntu 9.04 with Gnome and couldn't find any "main menu > settings > 3D Acceleration (DRI Icon)" --

Quote
Step 4:
Start PS and enjoy! Might be a bit bright overall, but it should run smoothly.   8)

That'd be nice, but nope.

As I said, I'm on an x386 running Ubuntu 9.04, Gnome 2.26.1, and PS downloaded and installed just before all of this.

And clue as to what "main menu > settings > 3D Acceleration (DRI Icon)" means, or broader advice on getting this running?

6
General Discussion / Re: Quests break too easily -- or are NPCs just too dumb?
« on: May 11, 2009, 02:03:56 am »
Quote from: Xemmas on May 10, 2009, 01:22:58 am
That is not true.. many for not saying all accept different responses, but you have to say it right and say it with some brains (not something really stupid that will never work), many quest can vary just with that simple thing...

I can understand why the lengthy dialog I included in the first post was redacted, but if you had read that I can't imagine you telling me I didn't include at least one variation "with some brains", to use your arrogant term. I also used the exact phrasing the original NPC had suggested I used, although given that the NPC doesn't exactly provide a word-for-word quote to parrot, there has to be some flexibility. For example, if NPC1 says "Tell Frodo to give you to MacGuffin", then I think Frodo should respond to "Give me the MacGuffin", don't you? Or is that somehow brainless?

I'm astonished at how many posts I've read in this forum where people defend this user interface. One even said something "It's so simple -- just ask the bartender -- they know everything" as if in everyday life that is the most sensible course of action. Yeah, sure:

     Today I got a parking ticket. The police officer wrote it out in front of me, and said "Take this to City Hall."
     So I ask, "Where is City Hall?"
     The officer, sensibly, said "I know where many things are, but not that. You may want to rephrase your question"
     So I said, "City Hall?"
     The police officer said "I don't understand. Can you be more concise?"

     Then it occurred to me! Bartenders know everything. So I went across town to the only bar in town and, sure enough, they were able to tell me.

Yeah, that makes sense to me.

7
General Discussion / Quests break too easily -- or are NPCs just too dumb?
« on: May 09, 2009, 07:20:15 pm »
I've found in my limited time here that quests seem to break awfully easily. Four or more of the quests I've attempted have gotten broken between the NPCs that I have to work with, so that the later ones never respond to any query about the topic. In one case I was able to Discard the quest and do it again, but three others tell me I can't discard them because they can only be done once.

[Deleted Spoilers]

Am I the only one fighting this kind of problem?
--
Richard

[Edit: Please do not post quest logs here the system is being overhauled at the moment please have patience]

8
Newbie Help (Start Here) / Re: No running? o.O
« on: May 06, 2009, 05:29:49 am »
Windows uses LShift and RShift (or is it ShiftL and ShiftR?), whereas the Mac doesn't have those keys, just a simple "Shift".

So if you are on a Mac, you'll have to switch Run and Creep; the Mac guide somewhere here switches them to Shift and Alt ("Option").

9
Technical Help: IN GAME bugs (after loading world) / Re: No account found with that name.
« on: May 05, 2009, 06:01:22 pm »
It is also possible that you'd accidentally clicked on the wrong server.

Look to the right of the login space and you'll see the two servers listed. If you are only registered with one (probably typical?), then clicking on the wrong one will give you that "no account" error. Try clicking on the other one.

10
Technical Help: Problems BEFORE entering the game / Re: unable to login
« on: May 05, 2009, 05:58:53 pm »
Quote from: Caarrie on February 04, 2009, 01:15:25 am
please run the updater.

Quite possibly not necessary.

Look to the right of the login space and you'll see two Servers listed: Fragnetics and Ezpcusa. If you accidently clicked on the wrong one -- the one you didn't register with -- then you'll get the 'no account' error. Try clicking on the one that isn't highlighted before doing a complete update.

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