Friday with Means - August 28th, 2009 - The joys of jetlag

I can't even begin to explain how good it is to be back. My "vacation" was exhausting...those of you with two small kids who have been on a multiple week vacation are certainly laughing knowingly at my expense right now. I am back in Oslo for 9 days before I fly over the ocean again to attend DC. Needless to say I won't be making any important decisions in my current zombified state this week.

It is always great to come back from vacation and see all the progress the team has been making while I am gone. Kintaii deserves a huge round of applause for the great job he did keeping things running on an even keel while I was away and doing such a great job at keeping you all up to speed on the horrific goings-on of the AO team. I'm toying with the idea of asking him to continue this weekly post as I suspect he did a superior job on putting this together...the scream of horror heard over Oslo when I post this is probably him.

Flaptoot has been killing himself for the last three weeks working on getting the new version of the opifex female character model working. Smoothing out the body and fixing the low-poly stretching issues of the original model sounds easy...but I can assure you it is not. This is a soul-destroying nightmare working with horrible old files and poorly/undocumented animation code. It would have been much easier to make a completely new body and start from scratch...unfortunately not possible as the new models need to work perfectly with all the original armors/textures and animations. It was fantastic to see the model animate correctly with the shoulders rotating correctly without texture stretching and most importantly the upper arms not going flat as a sheet of paper in certain movements. A lesser man would have given up a long time ago. He deserves a goddamn medal for his efforts on this. It is directly because of the dedication of of individuals like Flaptoot and their absolute refusal to surrender that AO is still here and the fantastic game it is today. I can't wait to see what he does with the other models as this work progresses.

We hope to get the next version of 18.2 to TestLive soon and I have a specific favour to ask:

Please take the time to play a little on Test in the upcoming weeks.

With time and work on the new engine we have finally been forced to update the AO codebase from Visual Studio 2003 to 2005 (for intergration work with the Dreamworld engine.). This is creating some client instability we would REALLY like to resolve before the update makes it to live. The sheer complexity of the AO codebase and world needs players and activity for us to see these issues...it is impossible for us to discover these issues through normal/sane testing routines. The sooner we get these issues out of the way the sooner we can bring the Nightclub and the new Shadowlands instanced playfield to the live dimensions. Thanks to all who have already been a huge help in eliminating some issues that will be repaired in the next version.

Great to see all of you again! I can't wait to get things rolling again :) I will get to my forum mails as soon as the dust begins to settle here....so sorry about the delay for those who wrote to me in the last few weeks.

Edit: MstrBstrd requested I link this "Cyberpunk enough for ya" work-in-progress Opi head image.

First omg!

boom first! (?)

... oh well second then ;)

omg a post!

Seventh!

8th

Thought I was going to be first, maybe next week :)

first page for me

Means, can somebody...anybody, please look into and figure out why our forum usernames keep changing themselves back and forth for no reason whatsoever...and then fix it? Please? It's really annoying. From my experience, I think something broke around the beginning of July, that's when I started seeing randomly change back and forth between what it used to be and what I requested it be changed too. There are a couple threads on the Tech Help forums from several other people having the same problem as well...

http://forums.anarchy-online.com/sho...d.php?t=558732
http://forums.anarchy-online.com/sho...d.php?t=557160

Means? Who's Means? Where's Kintaii? (Just Kidding! Good to have you back :D)

Ooh. First page :D

All hail ME!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Memreck

Means, can somebody...anybody, please look into and figure out why our forum usernames keep changing themselves back and forth for no reason whatsoever...and then fix it? Please? It's really annoying. From my experience, I think something broke around the beginning of July, that's when I started seeing randomly change back and forth between what it used to be and what I requested it be changed too. There are a couple threads on the Tech Help forums from several other people having the same problem as well...

http://forums.anarchy-online.com/sho...d.php?t=558732
http://forums.anarchy-online.com/sho...d.php?t=557160

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I've passed on your links and issue to the guys who should fix it. Thanks for letting me know about this issue.

omg, first page..

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Means

With time and work on the new engine we have finally been forced to update the AO codebase from Visual Studio 2003 to 2005 (for intergration work with the Dreamworld engine.).

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Oooh, the joys of switching IDE and random new bugs.
I'll light a candle for Macrosun and the other codemonkeys.

Means,
We need to be able to test on test if we are going to help you test.

To encourage players to play on test you need to offer us an incentive, otherwise you will only have the miniscule numbers of the hardcore folks helping out.

::::Incentive Ideas::::

:on live:

Social items:
T-Shirt: I tested it.. and it broke
Shoulder Social item: Compiler Cube (make a cube with an animated texture that looks like the cube used in making nanocrystals.. part of the animation cycle should be a Stop Error screen and the words MSVC2005 should cycle in and out of view, cube should also rotate slowly on all axis)
Tshirt: The Coder (animated like the compiler cube but on a tshirt).
Tshirt: I helped the Devs and all I got was this stupid T-Shirt
Back Item: Compilers Helper (something cool and virtual like.. like a Holographic computer interface system of some kind)

-Notes- You can only get one of the above items, you have to get flagged as helping during a Test Day/Week

:on test:
Free Level boosts to levels other than TL7
Free 150 Temp bugsies for getting gear to get going on testing.
Any of the above social items.

:Methodology:
Organize Testing Days where BHs/Arks/GMs are on test to assist the testers at listed prearranged times. These times need to be advertised in the Forum (not the closed tester forum that even those of us with enough poits cant seem to get into) and in the Launcher. This should be viewed as a community EVENT. There should be at 3 test days in a week. These should be active testing times. Either directed testing or free form testing, the idea is that all the help needed is available and that there is some kind of incentive reward for doing it. After all, WE are already PAYING to play. We are not going to pay you to TEST. Instead you need to PAY US.

welcome back :)

kintaii indeed do a very good job keeping us informed.maybe if he is up to it he could work with famine on the professional program or create a new one that throws Dev teams ideas and wants for the games future out to the playerbase and document the ideas that come back.

as appose to dev team deciding to push an idea and then lumping it on the playerbase,wait for bugs flames to come back and fix it 3 years later :)

i realize you guys are up to your neck. i just wish you would let some of the experts of this game help you more. rather than shutting us out of how you want to game to end up.

i think then suggestion forums would not be filled so much with random ideas as more selected ideas based on your relay with the community.

just my thoughts.


ps meatybtz has a valid point also. the reason i went to test originally was to meet players from the other servers and generally see whats up on this test server.
atm there is no incentive for regular or hardcore players to go to test because it does not effect them directly on live servers and they feel they have nothing to show for it.i myself have helped find a few bugs that would have otherwise been missed,but i dont even have a bugsy account because why would i want new items etc on test? my only reason for helping in those times was you guys just asked and i volunteered.so imo the items on test as rewards are not really an incentive. afaik if i make a testborn character you have the right to wipe whole server inc my character so material possesions on testlive have no standing with me :(

pps. another idea. since the community is paying Funcom for the game and its updates etc maybe when funcom wants something back they can pay others for there services?
forms of payment could be live server items,credits,paid points.
imagine if some guy logged into live servers and told his orgmates " guys i just heard if you register to help on live servers with bugsy etc you can transfer your testpoints to paidpoints and buy that apartment u always wanted."
i guess somethign along those lines would grab the attention of the whole community and youd find no end of volunteers to work on projects even!
i wonder is it possible to even use some of these trusted players to relay with the community and dev team so famine or whoever has more time for more inportant work. this should imo push things out way faster and cleaner than currently.and all with exactly the same number of people in your dev team now.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Means

I've passed on your links and issue to the guys who should fix it. Thanks for letting me know about this issue.

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Thank you very much Means!

I think that if you created a new set of guys in ICC to help with leveling that would be good. Talk to the NPC and get yourself set to an X level, with the START level of the current patching content being given.

1 guy to set the players UP to a title level (2 - 6) (you'll have to talk to a CoT member to get the rest of the items for that level)
1 Guy to set your new player to the current event level. Example would be the current 150-200 field being put in place, it would set the player to level 150. (you'll have to talk to a CoT member to get the rest of the items for that level)

First page omg! :d

Can you guys work on the faces with the afros next? :D

lol, very cyber.. "PUNK". I dig it. Big pink Mohawk... that rocks on so many levels.

The opifex head looks awesome, but...I thought opis had pointed ears like vulcans or the magic elves of old kingdom :p

At least that was the impression I got off the current models.