Just gonna keep this post short and maybe a little stream-of-conscious-like…
I finally met up with JulieAnne, who has been reporting problems performing a combo using the Wave, and now I see the problem pretty clearly. For one thing, I hadn’t tested it in lag quite as much as apparently I should, because we were getting Time Dilation from 0.75 to 0.95 with frequent fluctuations. Secondly, apparently the problem is very clear when attempting to combo from out of block.
People keep asking if all of the C:SI devs use the same codebase, and of course the answer is Yes. Sort of. We all get the same core code from Archanox, the primary developer, and from there we customize the code to fit each individual sword. I’ve never seen the code for any of the Musashi or Ashes swords, so I cannot comment on why any of those might be different except to say that there are factors that Second Life® introduces that can introduces some subtle differences in response to jumpslash for one well known example. But the big point is that even with customization, over 95% of the code is the same. None of us, that I am aware of, make any customizations to the core functionality.
In my case (and the case of the Wave Katana), it’s also quite possible that as an RL software developer I get cocky and go a little overboard on the "customization" part of that and actually introduce subtle changes without realizing it, and that’s going to be my focus tonight as I seek to discover the cause of and a solution for the combo problems JulieAnne and a few others are reporting.
Brenna Beck was talking with my wife tonight about (among other things) the fact that I had recently reported working on a new weapon which I had hoped to release in the not-too-distant future. That work has been significantly delayed due to Second Life® instability and building and inventory issues. It is tremendously frustrating and fundamentally unsatisfying to attempt to create a product in Second Life® when you are getting logged off every 5 minutes, or your changes are constantly reverting, or any of the 100 other problems that I’ve encountered lately. Second Life® used to be so much more stable for me, and I expect that it will be again someday. That is when I will resume development on new weapons with full enthusiasm. I’m simply not motivated to "fight the system" in that way. Second Life® is supposed to be fun, and when it’s not I simply don’t choose to participate. I know it will get better eventually.
Okay, that’s a much longer post than I had anticipated, and I did promise JulieAnne that I would look into this issue tonight, so….
Popularity: 21% [?]
Darn. Some C:SI users including myself were celebrating the fact that the Wave did not allow auto-combos. I’d actually improved my tanking skills lately using the Wave!
That is interesting, and I’m actually extremely glad to hear that
It also highlights the fact that it’s incredibly difficult to produce weapons that everyone will like, and may in fact be a very good case for having weapons that are not simply “different looking” but actually slightly different in operation.
Nevertheless, it’s also good for me as a developer to look into the issue and try to discover the reasons for any differences, as differences should be intentional rather than incidental.
Thanks for the input, Solace!