Category: Geekery

Java Barbie says “kill -3 [pid] is my new best friend”

The same problem I mentioned in Rants and Revelations » Java Thread Locking cropped up again. This time it was quite random, but repeatable. I dreaded going through the crap I went through last time to find where the lockup was happening, until I discovered a nifty new trick – if you do a “kill -3” of the java process id, it dumps a stack trace of every thread, including what locks it’s holding, to stdout.

Going through the stack trace, I could see where one thread on the client had three locks and was calling an RMI method on the server that was locked waiting for the delete thread to finish. And the delete thread was calling a callback on the client that was waiting for one of those three locks, so the delete thread was locked as well. Not good. I removed most of the locks and things started working. Maybe eventually I will put some of the locks back.

Rohan suggests that I might have to rewrite parts of the server to take care of the next bug report on my list – the complaint is that deleting content takes too long. Unfortunately the bits he wants me to rewrite are his code, and it will take me 2 weeks just to understand it well enough to start to make the changes, and I’ve only got 10 days to clear all the bug reports off my list.

Another MMORPG question

In general, how important is “crafting”? Does it vary from MMORPG to MMORPG? I read a bunch of web comics and blogs, and some of them are MMORPGers, and they talk about stuff like “I worked on my knitting craft last night and managed to finish this lovely sweater” (ok, that’s not quite right – it’s usually gloves or boots or something). But to me, the only thing more boring than actually knitting or fishing would be to sit in front of a computer watching a simulated “me” knitting or fishing.

If I decide to spend all my on-line time questing instead of doing boring crafting stuff, will I find myself unable to reach higher levels or to afford decent arms or otherwise held back?

Another MMORPG question

How legitimate is it to “game the system”? If you exploit flaws in the AI, is that cheating or just making the best of the situation? Two instances from last night:

  1. I was attacked by two enemies, and they kicked my ass. When I came back, I discovered that if I shot one with a distance weapon where there was a fence between me and the other guy, the one I hit ran up and attacked me but the other stayed behind the fence. This enabled me to kill them one at a time which was way easier.
  2. A “boss character” of a minor quest came up and attacked me while I was busy attacking his lackey. He kicked my ass. When I came back, his AI was acting weird – I’d shoot an arrow at him, and he’d run half the distance between us and then run back to where he was. I’d shoot another arrow, and he did the same thing. I got 3 or 4 good hits in that way before finally closing with him and defeating him in hand-to-hand.

Jeppesen Responds

After receiving the email I mentioned in Rants and Revelations » Who’d have thunk it?, I responded with

I have renamed the part of the Wiki that uses the trademarked word
“NavData” to “DAFIFReplacment”. However, I am going to continue to use
the “/navdata/” part of the URL as that is a generic term and
untrademarkable and changing would break people’s bookmarks. You can
have a look at http://xcski.com/navdata/ if you wish.

I hope that meets your requirements.

Evidently their lawyers work nights, or they’ve outsourced it to India or something, because I got a response at 8:47pm:

Mr. Tomblin,

We appreciate your prompt action and reply to our notice.

While we cannot agree that the navdata term is generic, we understand the
bookmark issue and are satisfied with your action regarding this matter.

John Jaugilas
Jeppesen Intellectual Property
(303) 328-4178

Question for the MMORPG players out there

I’m participating in a beta for a new MMORPG, which one I probably can’t say because of the NDA that I clicked to agree to without reading very carefully. I’ve never played an MMORPG before and I can really see the appeal – far better for us old farts than the fast twitch first person shooters that I used to play.

I’m playing a “hunter” class, and the hints say to stand back and fire distance weapons rather than getting involved in the hand-to-hand, but I’m also in the initial quests that are very small and don’t make much sense to do in a group. So I spot an enemy, fire an arrow or maybe two, and the enemy comes over and starts hand-to-hand, so I respond in kind. That’s fine and dandy, since so far I’ve had not much trouble with the hand-to-hand either. But on one of the quests I found myself in a very target poor environment with dozens of players running around trying to find enemies to defeat and every enemy already engaged in some battle or other. I basically had to spawn-camp. While waiting for an enemy to spawn, I’d see other players fighting enemies nearby. In order to experience that “hunter” life-style, I’d fire some arrows at the enemy they were fighting to give them some help. Is giving this sort of help a good thing or a bad thing? I’m pretty sure the game system will give the kill to them and not me. But I don’t know if I get XP for the kill or not, and if so would the other players think I’m stealing from them?