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Tentative plans for Taketori Update

Aug
29
2008 in Taketori Katana, Updates, Testing, Mono, Bug Reports and C:SI.

I figured I’d present my tentative plan for an update to the Taketori, and give people a chance to provide feedback on it here before I release it.

What I’m thinking is that I’ll do some tweaks to the timing, since that’s been the hot-button topic of the instant messages I’ve been getting in-world, as well as revisit the kick push.

I think the smartest way for me to do the timing tweaks is to roll back that code to a previous version (thank goodness for SVN) and go from there, so that as much as possible I avoid the drifting effect of patching a patch, then applying whatever changes might be necessary.

I’ll do the same thing with the kick code. That code has a more easily understood reason for being off (remember when Kelly Linden told me I’d have to modify the push power to be consistent with the new Havok 4 changes?), so I’ll roll back to the original kick code and start the testing from there, tweaking if and where necessary.

I also downloaded the newly-released Release Candidate viewer that has Mono support, and will play around with that. There are a large number of known bugs with this viewer, and I have no idea where Mono support is, so it may not work out to test sword scripts in Mono on the main grid. If I can get it working without obvious disastrous problems, I’ll pass around some beta weapons running on Mono-compiled script to see how those do. No promises there, though, I just don’t know if Mono is worthwhile yet.

I do know that Archanox has been testing out Mono on the Beta grid, and has been working on refactoring the C:SI scripts to take advantage of the Mono runtime’s better memory handling and increased memory space. This should allow us to consolidate several scripts that were only split up due to limitations in LSL, and I’m quite excited about his progress so far. I can’t wait to hear more about his experience with this!

Popularity: 22% [?]

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Bitten in the butt by debug code again

Apr
28
2008 in Taketori Katana, Product Updates, Epic Fail, Bug Reports and C:SI.

12 Comments

508467119_49de142f07_m Yup… Those of you who’ve upgraded to the V1.0.5 Taketori Katana have probably already found the bit of debug code I had in there for the benefit of my beta testers, and which I should have taken out before releasing a general update. I know that a few people have already reported (why only a few? What’s up with that?) that when they kill an opponent with the Taketori they heal to 100% no matter how low in health they were during the duel.

Now, in my defense, I’ve got a couple of things to say about that. Firstly, it only works if during the duel you only had one opponent; This is determined by the number of people that attack you from the time you draw the sword until the time you die, and during a free-for-all you only get the standard 25% heal.

While it’s possible to be very careful to only get hit by one opponent in a 3vs3 match or a free-for-all, it’s highly unlikely. It is, however, a definite problem for the King-type matches where one person takes on all comers one at a time, since they’ll heal to 100% after the first opponent (but not thereafter).

Secondly, it has long bothered me that the only way to force an upgrade on users was to upgrade all C:SI weapons so that old versions would no longer work with newer versions, and with all of the talk lately about the Taketori being unbalanced (which I am not at all convinced of, by the way) I decided that this could no longer be the case for my weapons, and put in a "remote disable" feature that allows me to permanently disable any old versions.

Pobody’s nerfect, as this post aptly demonstrates, and there has to be a way for me to be able to distribute new weapons with the confidence that I can fix any balance issues that are discovered and people will upgrade to the newer, more balanced versions rather than simply continuing to use an older version.

THE PLAN

So, what I’m going to do is this: I have already taken out the code that is responsible for the problem, and I’ll work in a couple more update-worthy changes (like the ability to hide and show the tsuba) and will distribute another update in the near future. After that update is released, I will give it a few days and will start to announce reminders that upgrading is mandatory. After a couple of days of such reminders, I will permanently disable version 1.0.5 so that people will no longer have the option to use it.

The updates will still be sent to those who may be on vacation or for whatever other reason have not had a chance to see the announcements, so nobody will get left without an update. In other words, even if you log in six months from now and try to use V1.0.5 you will be sent an upgrade to whatever version is current at that time and the 1.0.5 version will cease functioning.

So, in the meantime, I think that it can be fun and convenient to heal 100% after a duel (remember, that does not work in 3v3 or FFA battles) but don’t get too used to it, because it won’t last long

Popularity: 39% [?]

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Taketori Controls - Observations and Problems

Apr
17
2008 in Taketori Katana, Bug Reports, products and C:SI.

2 Comments

I spent some time talking to Malachi today, and with his assistance I was finally able to reproduce the problem he’s having. It would appear that the timing necessary to successfully do two consecutive aerial kicks is just natural for me, which is why I couldn’t reproduce it before, but I’ve got it now.

After a little more exploration of the timing, and combining the idea that Aimee came up with for a HUD that displays which keys you are using at the time, I thought I’d throw together some quick little video captures of what the timing on the Taketori is like.

In these videos, you will notice that I can hit W very fast, and while the W slash is still "in progress", I can simply press and hold the next attack key and wait for it to fire off when the W slash is done. It’s possible to chain attacks like this for very long combos if desired, and you can still break the chain to go into block at any time.

Sorry about the poor video quality and choppiness, I still don’t really know how to capture video from Second Life. I did slow them down intentionally (and some browsers play them even slower than that), so if you’ve just come across my site randomly and aren’t already using a C:SI sword, please don’t think they are actually this slow

I’m still trying to figure out the best way to resolve Malachi’s issue, as I think it has implications for some of the other issues that have been reported, but I think it also helps if people know what to expect with the Taketori, and hopefully the above videos will help to demonstrate that.

Popularity: 23% [?]

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Taketori Katana Update V1.0.3

Apr
15
2008 in Taketori Katana, Product Updates, products, C:SI and Second Life.

3 Comments

I just released an update to the Taketori Katana that addresses some very important issues that have been reported since the initial release.

While it doesn’t address every issue that has been reported by customers, some of which I cannot seem to reproduce, the issues that are addressed were important enough to send an immediate update.

As I said last night, I am not trying to spam people or be annoying, but I really do feel that it is important to get this update out right away.

Please let me know if you have any problems with this update, and I will do my best to get them fixed.

Popularity: 21% [?]

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