no climbing anymore? Great :(

[Vornne]

Hiya, I'm one of the testers that has known about this for months... and some people are confusing a few separate issues.

For a start there is the weird "portal displacement" bug that was known for a week or so, but we could never figure out how to fix it, release went ahead regardless. It happens randomly, best thing to do is just restart the client until the portal works for now; there are also some probably related bugs to do with random teleporting; my guesses are this could be a bug in cs, as I get similar things in walktest; or it could be a bug in the map exporter, or it could be ps's usage of cs.

Then the strange "dwarf ghosting, client message mixup", the invisible NPCs, this somehow slipped through testing, sorry The dwarf bug does not seem to happen on svn test servers. My opinion is that these are almost certainly not related to the redone movement system, more likely to do with the network handling code or other server side type stuff... Khaki did a lot of reworking of the net stuff, it's most likely the main reason for less 'lag'.

A few crashes related to buggy art; some crashes from meshes getting invalid positions somehow, maybe a dev made a little mistake...

Then there is the infinite steep climb bug that was fixed, there's no way the devs will put that back in, it's not realistic, similar things have been removed before and not put back... you could walk up walls for goodness sake

Then there is what I think is a valid issue, that jump height is less; and collision against edges is a little more 'sticky' than previous... from my testing there are a bunch of situations that don't get you stuck so much any more, but there seems to be a situation that you get stuck easier (against near vertical slopes). There is already a report opened.

As to the "can't jump off slopes" thing, I'm not seeing it, I just started my server to test; the only times I can't jump from a slope are when I can't get any further on a very steep slope, just turn around and I can jump a fair distance. You may be feeling the effects of the old bug, FS#205.

I asked the dev about the jump height, he said that's the way he intended it. And no, it wasn't some new guy going in and messing it all up, it's the same person that's always done it, as far as I know... The current movement system is not as "flexible" for exploring, and I miss that too; but all things considered I think there are more good things than bad things with the latest changes.

He wasn't trying to spoil all your fun; I think he spent weeks on it... and it can get complicated. When trying to fix it, you have to get an idea of how it should be in your head, and plan the code to suit; maybe it works well, maybe you missed a few things. When trying to do it the right way, you can't leave in all this old crap that doesn't fit with the new system; maybe it did have a nice side effect that a lot of players liked, but if you leave all the tricky little bugs in, it will eventually be a horrible crash causing un-debuggable mess, and PlaneShift 1.0 will never be released.

Remember, I'm not one of 'them' against you, I liked the climb 'feature' too, and was a bit disappointed when it went... I've just had a few months to get used to it being gone (and btw I think I was the first to find out how to do it, I remember finding it with svn trunk a few days after the commit that introduced it, and I had to tell the other testers how, nah nah bragging rights )

[verden]

Change happens, we will all still have fun. Vornne, you are a gentleman and a scholar.

[The Wandering Djinn]

*enters the thread and pauses to finish eating one of the 13 pies he has just looted from The Brigand...*

In games like PS we spend most of our time using one or other of movement controls which move our characters or avatars in a Forward direction. Some of the rest of the time we might use the movement controls which make our characters or avatars Turn Left or to Turn Right. Some of us may even make use of the movement controls that alter the camera view to Look Left or to Look Right. But that's pretty rare, because mostly we are moving Forward. That can easily make us rather tunnel visioned.

In a game like PS it might just be that the Developers have created areas / features in the landscape where the Forward movement controls do not work. Even create areas / features in the landscape where no movement controls work at all! But it might be, that these Developers have also created areas / features in the landscape where only the other, less often or rarely used movement controls are the ones that move your character / avatar through or around or under or over or up or whatever to get to the next part of the landscape.

Okay, so in the light of the recent major revision of the collision detection and other related code, the points I've made might not seem of much comfort. As has been said before, PlaneShift is a game that is under a constant process of development. Some of the changes and improvements will seem drastic and even world-changing of what we have become used to as we play. The changes get refined, tweaked, and eventually improved upon, as overall the game gets smoother and more stable and more feature-rich from update to update.


I reached the Brigand by a slightly different route to how I had become accustomed to reaching him in the past, but I got to him by normal running.

Oh, by-the-way... the ladder in the Death Realm wouldn't let me run up it in the manner I had become accustomed to in the past -so I brushed the dust off one of the seldom-used movement controls and got to the top without fuss. [the character I used was a male Enkidukai... perhaps other character models might have difficulty?]


*What? ... How did I happen to end up in the DR? ... Erm... -that's another story entirely!*

[Dilman]

Bugs That Have Been Fixed:
- Fixed the issue where the contents of a persons inventory would become invisible.
- Females now have their last name properly restored after a divorce.
- The command "/list_advice_request" doesn't crash your client anymore.
- Female Dermorians no longer crash if a helmet is present.
- Fixed item ownership issues during crafting.
- Fixed the enter key not responding on Mac OS.
- Many fixes to collision detection for NPCs and players.
- Attempting to attack an item with your pet no longer crashes the server.
- Armor will be properly removed from the body if dequipped.
- Some fixes to the /marriage divorce command for players.
- Fixed a major money exploit.
- Some spell bugs fixed.
- You can now actually change the leadership of an alliance to other players.
- Renamed characters now show up with their new name in the Guild's Member List window.
- When sorting spells in the spell book, alls spells show their correct descriptions now.
- Some small fixes to the shortcut and chat windows.
- Tooltips on mouse-over in the inventory now works better.
- In maps, you can no longer drag map objects past the canvas border.
- Many crash fixes!

This is taken from release topic. I've change some colors for you.

I shouldn't post anything  as I'm newbie in PS, but...
As a newbie I see how many bugs were fixed(yellow). This topic is about fixing collision(other will tell about spoiling fun). I'm happy all those bugs were repaired and I'm VERY happy that you can't use bug to get areas where you shouldn't be or where you can get by exploring.

For those explorers who love to "climb" and look from above:
I think you play very long and explore all places in PS. Now you have a chance to explore all those places once again. Try to get all those beautiful places by your feet, explore it one more time in NORMAL way(not using engine bugs). Raport bad working stairs, roads...

For those who use "climbing" to kill monster(abusing rules) - not sure if it's possible (as I'm newbie)
You should report, not expolit.

For those who cannot jump on barrels etc.
Report, report, report . If you see it's unrealistic that you can't jump on something  - collect all those things and make topic somewhere, send it to bug tracker. I think Devs will be happy to repair this in due time.

For all:
As for now you all lived in somekind of waterworld. PS is under water?. PS have gravity like earth. Try to climb wall (in real) without any support(climbing set)- is it possible? I don't think so. As I'm newbie I enjoy finding a route to climb(in normal way) some places, like in DR where you must go around to get top. All those places where you can't go now could be accessed by talking with somekind of NPC or by doing quest(NPC could teleport you somewhere). Don't you see all good things Devs made(those yellow marked are very important IMO).

For Devs:
Thank you for all fixes. I hope you will fix many more bugs. Keep that good work.

PS.Some of you said Devs doesn't accept criticism. Do you accept criticism? Try to find good things for all , not a bad for few. This is not accusing post and I do not think you are egoistic.

[RichardShru]

I'm happy all those bugs were repaired and I'm VERY happy that you can't use bug to get areas where you shouldn't be or where you can get by exploring.

If I may draw attention to this sentence for a moment, what exactly is so negative and unsatisfactory in your opinion about exploring? And why should we not be able to get to areas that happen to be above ground level? Its not like there is an over abundence of places to explore at the moment. I remember when they had climbing in that I was able to get to places in the DR I had previously though unreachable. Bridges that were far from the main path, that large Goblin looking head lol. Long story short, why limit yourself?

For those explorers who love to "climb" and look from above:
I think you play very long and explore all places in PS. Now you have a chance to explore all those places once again. Try to get all those beautiful places by your feet, explore it one more time in NORMAL way(not using engine bugs). Raport bad working stairs, roads...

Would you consider it unrealistic, or abnormal, to climb a tree? Maybe a ladder, or a mountain? I apologize if this sounds sarcastic, but take for example Mountain Climbers, you see them "climbing" mountains in real life, so why should we stay on a road or path and not "climb" as well?

For those who use "climbing" to kill monster(abusing rules) - not sure if it's possible (as I'm newbie)
You should report, not expolit.

I don't think I've ever heard of that happening. I player is engaging in legitiment combat to kill "anything" no bug is being abused as far as I am concerned. How the player gets to it I'm not concerned about. If the player climbs something and the act of doing so kills "anything" I consider that a bug/exploit that should be reported.

Report, report, report . If you see it's unrealistic that you can't jump on something  - collect all those things and make topic somewhere, send it to bug tracker. I think Devs will be happy to repair this in due time.

I have supported this thread from the begining because it adresses an issue that I believe was a core part of the game before its removal. I find it unrealistic that we are now unable to climb. Period.

For all:
As for now you all lived in somekind of waterworld. PS is under water?. PS have gravity like earth.

We are not going against settings by climbing. We are not making "gravity defying" leaps or climbing vertical walls, we are climbing places that would normally be reachable in real life situations. The reason for that is because we are "not" able to make "gravity defying leaps", PS had gravity functions like a real world.

I Apologize if any of this might have been offensive to anyone, it was not intended to be.

[Dajoji]

What climbing fans don't seem to acknowledge is the fact that it wasn't a simple bug. Nobody went ahead and said "Oh, they climb trees and they shouldn't... let's turn that off." The climbing "ability" was an afterthought of another more complex bug. By fixing it, it got removed.

This does not mean there won't be a climbing skill or that climbing trees is OOC or against the rules. It just means that, for the time being and due to more important things, that "ability" is no longer available. Maybe there will be tweaks to that fix and something better can be done about it but that's still work in progress so be patient. It's not the end of the world.

Not having this ability at the moment does not ruin the game.

Not having this ability at the moment does not make PS unplayable.

Not having this ability at the moment does not kill RP.

[Kaerli]

The issue right now for me ISN'T that climbing is removed.  It's that the coldet changes are causing hangups on sharp edges and effectively inserting an invisible wall before unclimbable slopes, leading to nonsensical and annoying behavior as compared to other games I play/have played.  NOTE TO DEVS: a blocker before an unclimbable slope is NOT the correct fix to being able to climb that slope!


P.S. How feasible would it be to migrate PS over to Bullet for physics+coldet as opposed to ODE physics + OPCODE coldet?  OPCODE (or at least the old implementation of it) is looking more and more like a steamin' heap of Trepor dung to me!

[Birot]

I think we have lost focus of the climbing issue, i thought we were testers not sheep, to take away something that a majority of people like to do including building guilds based just upon exploring, seems totally riduculous when we tell you we enjoy something and you just ignor us then are we really part of the game or just someone that devs do not care about, why make PS so beautiful if all you can do is look up at it, without explore you have taken all the work put in by the art department and made it useless that seems a little like the right hand doesnt know what the left hand is doing, and i have to say if theres a mountain there then i want to climb it, if its a tree i will attempt getting on a branch, lets hope the rain doesnt fill some of the gutters on the house noone would be able to clean them and yes this is sarcastic 

In otherwards you stopped us from exploring and enjoying what the art department spent lots of time creating.
I can see were if i was the only one complaining it wont be a big issue but that is not the case, this game was very enjoyable the way it was before.
So when a majority complain someone should listen for the sake of the game
And this is not a bug fix as so many have said, it is a complete disregard to the ability of exploring

Please BRING BACK CLIMBING 

[SerqFeht]

Birot, when it digressed from the the issue at hand, Neko locked it. Ever since it has been dead on topic. It has been explained by testers and Doajoji. You'll survive, somehow, until the climbing skill is implemented, or the walls that prevent you from glitching are for whatever reason removed. And I would recommend going back and rereading your post. It reads like a direct attack to the devs over something that isn't game ruining, and has been explained.

[Parallo]

Indeed. Plus, it is not a democracy. The game is being shaped in a certain way because that is how it is intended to be made. If everyone turned around and said I think Hydlaa should have a castle floating above it do you really think it would make Talad put it there?

[verden]

No more climbing. Time to focus on other features. Give them time to understand the new system, and formulate a kickass new climbing skill. Really miss it though, was part of the charm of the client. Life goes on...

[Parallo]

Climbing wasn't a feature.

[Morla Phlint]

*Morla wonders already when this discussion will end. And goes looking for new bugs to get down*

[Qia_Fask]

You people just keep on going on about the removal of the climbing-steep-surfaces bug.  That is far from the most major change with climbing!  You can't even jump on a barrel now, without a great deal of effort and risk of getting permanently stuck.  You can't jump over the waterwheel bars in the sewers.  You can't jump over the railing in the Tavern.  You can't jump onto or over numerous walls that used to be easy to climb.  On and on the issues go, and none of those are related to the CLIMBING BUG.  Give it a rest, you all sound like a broken record saying "It was just a bug removed, get over it".  I for one am NOT discussing the bug that was removed -- fine, that can be replaced with a climbing skill.  I am talking about all realism being taken away from us players in exploring the environments.  A person in real life is not going to have any difficulties climbing on a waist high barrel!

I have been researching the new object collision system in *great detail* for several hours, and I've identified around ten distinct bugs/problems in it so far.  I will be submitting bug reports with the screenshots I took, once I have time, maybe tonight.

The primary problem with the new system is the difference in how jumping is interpretted.  Before, you could walk up steps while on the ground.  For instance the foot and a half high steps in the Plaza.  And more importantly, before if you jumped into the air and were within a foot and a half before the top of an object, your character would "pull themselves up", as if they were walking up a step.  In the new version, you can no longer pull yourself up.  Unless your foot CLEARS the top of the object completely, like an Olypmic high jumper, you won't make it on top.  This creates painfully fake scenarios like jumping on a barrel, where your foot is around one inch below the top of the barrel, yet you can't get on it.

That is the most glaring issue, but there are tons more that I have identified:

• Jump height is reduced the steeper the slope is until you can't jump at all.
• Turning speed with keyboard is reduced the steeper the slope is until it takes 30 seconds to turn around.
• When walking onto most angled surfaces, you walk into the object, which looks fake.
• There are holes at nearly every map change place where you can fall out.
• When colliding with various objects you will be teleported nearby, usually within 15-20 feet, sometimes down through the floor where you will fall out of the map.
• Getting stuck by an object happens constantly now, and when it does /unstick will put you in the same spot every time.
• When jumping against objects you will run on the spot in the air until you walk backward.
• You can jump against any wall and stick yourself to it by moving forward.  If you wiggle around while stuck on the wall, you can normally get a second jump, even further up the wall.  It seems two jumps up a wall is the limit.
• Related to the sticking to the side of things: sometimes you will get sucked upward on an object and end up on top, even though it shouldn't be possible to climb. For instance the hanging lights in Jayose's Library can be climbed easily and they are much higher than jumping height.
• More....

All of these can be demonstrated easily by me .

[Parallo]

Some of those look awfully familiar. I'm pretty sure that some if not all have been here a long time. Perhaps I'm wrong though and during the time I was away they were fixed.