Server Fail-Safe

[Earowo]

Well, my wish involves the annoying little message telling you how the server has failed.

Weather it being you lost connection or the server actually went down, you get a message telling you the server has failed, and you click ok and it closes your game.

When that happens, you miss what was in your chat tabs, say you had main open, you miss your tell, Guild, Allience, and channle chat.

Now not everyone has the game log their chat, for whatever reason, and not everyone can get to their logs, [becuase they dont know how] Since they are in a hidden folder [for windows XP not sure bout others]

My wish, is that when the server failed menu appears, that you can still click and open the other chat tabs, so that you dont miss what people have said to you. and so you can answer them, when you get back on.

Thanks.

[Vakachehk]

Since 0.5 release the last 10 (or so) get logged when you return. It is placed in main tab in white text. That is all I know, though it would be nice if it was 10 in each tab, that way it would far better.

[Maisent]

Vakachehk is right. Also you can just ask them to repeat what they said .

[Earowo]

Since 0.5 release the last 10 (or so) get logged when you return. It is placed in main tab in white text. That is all I know, though it would be nice if it was 10 in each tab, that way it would far better.

Yeah, but if you go Afk you generally miss a lot of stuff.

Vakachehk is right. Also you can just ask them to repeat what they said .

You cant ask a person what they said, if you dont know if they said anything

[Vakachehk]

Since 0.5 release the last 10 (or so) get logged when you return. It is placed in main tab in white text. That is all I know, though it would be nice if it was 10 in each tab, that way it would far better.

Yeah, but if you go Afk you generally miss a lot of stuff.

Either you go AFK for too long, or you are just very very popular.

[Earowo]

when you have main, channle, tells, guild, and allience all yapping at you, and the server goes off, there aint no way you can catch up on it all in the 10 lines that come back

[Aiwendil]

Linux:

Code: [Select]

less ~/.PlaneShift/logs/<first name>_<last name>_chat.txt
Windows:

Code: [Select]

notepad %AppData%\PlaneShift\logs\<first name>_<last name>_chat.txt
MacOSX:

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open ~/Library/Application Support/PlaneShift/logs/<first name>_<last name>_chat.txt
make shortcuts like this and you don't have to bother yourself anymore with finding the logfiles or making invisible directory visible in windows (what in fact wasn't even needed before if you use "%AppData%" as path). Can be even used while running PS to be able to quickly search your logs for some infos. For the people playing in windowed mode (what I guess is default for most anyway) it's pretty comfortable like this. Those who still insist on playing in fullscreen have to <alt>-<tab> out of the game to run the shortcuts (or use <alt>-<enter> to switch to windowed mode) but will get much more than just a few lines from the session before the crash and even the ability to search in the logs.

For a bit more comfort in linux use:

Code: [Select]

less `kdialog --getopenfilename ~/.PlaneShift/logs`
Then you can even choose which char logs you want to view. Exchange "less"  with the editor you prefer (for example gvim or kate). You will need kdialog installed for this.

[Edit:]
You can even only show infos from a specific tab with this. Just change the linux command to

Code: [Select]

grep "\[NPC\]" ~/.PlaneShift/logs/<first name>_<last name>_chat.txt | less
or

Code: [Select]

grep "\[NPC\]" `kdialog --getopenfilename ~/.PlaneShift/logs` | less
to only view the NPC chat tab.
Change the "\[NPC\]" to "\[Guild\]", "\[Group\]" or "\[Tell\]" for other tabs.

If you turn of logging of the chat then in my opinion it's your own fault that you miss some stuff. That is what you requested...you turned off the ability to read again what happened some time ago.

[Earowo]

At Awendil, the whole point of the suggestion is for people who choose NOT to log their PS chat, some people Dont need the space taken up, some people dont want to scroll through the loooonng page of chat, ect ect.

[Vakachehk]

you don't scroll you drag the side bar down, much much faster.

Well Main, Whispers, Guild and Alliance can't get that over loaded, For me, Alliance is pretty quiet till HC finally joins mechanically, Guild even when there's 2-5 online it still doesn't get that quiet, Whispers I don't use that, that much only on my good friend, and Main only when I am in an RP but no one really goes to Ojaveda these days so, yeahh...

[Earowo]

Guild and Alliance can't get that over loaded, For me, Alliance is pretty quiet till HC finally joins mechanically, Guild even when there's 2-5 online it still doesn't get that quiet,

well not all guilds are quiet, mineis usually pretty chatty, and allience kinda goes in and out, but i pay attention to channle, as do a lot of other people, and most guildless people use tells

[Aiwendil]

At Awendil, the whole point of the suggestion is for people who choose NOT to log their PS chat, some people Dont need the space taken up, some people dont want to scroll through the loooonng page of chat, ect ect.

That's what I don't get...If you turn off logging then you request from the game that you can't look at previous chats. Logging is a comfortable solution that gives you the ability to exactly do what you want but also for so much more. No need to keep in mind what the question before the crash was for the time it takes to restart the client (what can be a very long time for some people). You just keep the logs open and answer to them as soon as you and the one who asked are logged in again. If you are concerned about the space logging takes just remove the logfiles once a months and it will hardly ever exceed 1MB.  For the too lazy to scroll...computers have such a nice (but I know it's almost forgotten now) feature that is called keyboard. In windows <ctrl>+<end> brings you to the end of every document in a text editor..two keys to get you exactly to the place you want to read. Even esier than having to switch through 5 tabs to make sure you haven't missed anything.

And while I usually am with people requesting new features I really don't get it this time...in the end you want something that is already there just done another way. If you don't like logging like it is now maybe think of some suggestions to make it better suited for you...something like giving it an option to only keep the last 2MB of the logs or like Vakachehk suggested to put the text from the logs in the correct tabs after a restart and maybe make it possible to define how many previous lines you want to see there. It was even suggested recently to give logging the ability to write the different chat tabs in different files..then you only can look through the guildchat. And several times in the last years it was suggested that it would be nice to be able to read the log from within the game. Or maybe ask having the chat removed at all and replaced with a voice communication system as reading logfiles seems already too much for the PS players nowadays...must be the same with the chat in game then.

And don't get me wrong...I completely agree that showing a pop-up saying the server failed and after you click it you get thrown out of the game and have to restart it is not a good solution. I would go without the pup-up at all and just kick player back to the game lobby and give them a notification there that the server failed.

[Vakachehk]

I like that idea Aiwendil, how it goes back to the lobby screen. I was once wondering about if it is possible to reconnect through the pop-up instead of having an OK button (That makes the client quit) have a try again or reconnect, a quit, and back to lobby button would be a great idea.

I think the way logs are now are fine other than I hate it when I am connected to Gossip that uses up all my 10 lines when I re-log. But if it is really important I will go to my other logs.

Well when members are online in KIC we do talk but we only talk about important stuff, its only when Maisent and X-Celawat are online that we talk about random stuff 

[Earowo]

Well when members are online in KIC we do talk but we only talk about important stuff, its only when Maisent and X-Celawat are online that we talk about random stuff 

yup mais is llike that..

[Maisent]

when you have main, channle, tells, guild, and allience all yapping at you, and the server goes off, there aint no way you can catch up on it all in the 10 lines that come back

Then i sujest you try fixing your logs

At Awendil, the whole point of the suggestion is for people who choose NOT to log their PS chat, some people Dont need the space taken up, some people dont want to scroll through the loooonng page of chat, ect ect.

I dont think thats a good enough reason to create this fail-safe thing, just because somoene is too lazy to go to their logs and check. And as i said ask them if they said anything like 10 minutes ago before you crashed, or if you are in an RP then just do something so they repeat what they say.

[mikeloeven]

as an additional failsafe for merchant characters can you make any items being guarded by the player continue to be flagged as guarded for 10 minutes after the client disconects??? this would allow people who crash with rp props to come back and collect them without fear of theft.