Newsfiend
09-25-2009, 08:52 AM
gcubed wrote:
Beladonna wrote:
Noircogi wrote:
gcubed wrote:
Noircogi wrote:
This is a cool idea but it's not obvious how this would be less work to implement or require less storage on the server than simply increasing bank space.
Considering Tavid Dennent doesn't store any of the quest items you are allowed to sell him, this is the rough equivalent of increasing bank space and placing a new UI over the top of it.
I understand that, but they still need to store counts for every tradeskill item for every character. There are a LOT of tradeskill items in the game and only a (relatively) small number of quest rewards in SoD. There would also be some dev overhead of building and maintaining those lists for every new item added.
Any item already flagged with "this item can be used in tradeskills" the items are already flagged I believe.
I like this idea, though I have only played around with tradeskills a little, this is definately a good idea.
SOE Make it so!
I think you are missing the point.
The problem isn't identifying what items are tradeskill items, the problem is one of ownership. You can do a query on the item database/table and find Sprockets has the "used in tradeskills" tag. You can also find that an Anizok's Minimumizing Device has the "used in tradeskills" tag. But nothing in the item database/tables will tell you that I own them or how many I own or if there are charges on what I own, how many charges are left. Just to be clear. There is only ONE entry for Sprockets in the item database/table. Not one entry for you and another for me, just one, for everybody. So if you want to find out how many Sprockets I own or if I even own any, you have to crack open my character files.
In my character files, you will find not a sprocket or a minumizing device, but an item number with a few counters (this is really an over simplification). One of the counters tells you how many of the item number I own. There is a certain amount of space set aside in the character files to store the pointers and counters that indicate what I own. Currently there is enough space set aside to store something like 240 unique items numbers in my bank and inventroy plus the 24 item number that are the bags (with associated counters). This space is limited both by physical constraints (you can only store so many bytes on a hard disk) and by code. The code expects to look for a specific number of items. If my bank/inventory/whatever is not full it will find empty slots. If I have more than what it expects it will ignore anything extra.
The physical constraints are not as important as they used to be. Disk space has gotten cheaper. So SOE can increase the amount of physical space that is required to store my stuff so I can store even more of my stuff. They will have to do this for toon on every server, active or inactive. And they have to convert all the backup files. They also have to change the code to read the extra stuff and to write it to the disk when I want to store it. There are risks that are involved in doing all of this. These risks include, but are not limited to, items in our banks and inventory that we cannot use (something we have seen before), items that just disappear as if they never existed (we have seen this happen also), complete corruption of a character file so that the owner cannot log on (to the best of my knowledge only QA has seen this, thankfully).
Ok, you say, the answer is simple. Create new files with just the new tradeskill ATM in it. That way, SOE won't have to monkey with the character files. True enough, but they will have to monkey with the code. It will make the code more complex. The new ATM will still have to be checked every time you acquire (either make, loot, trade, purchase, etc.) a tradeskill item that is lore along with what it is currently doing with the old bank space/inventory. It will make the code more more complex and less maintainable. It also has the potential of impacting performance.
gcubed has the essence of the matter. The details are not important.
Currently we are not constrained as much by HDD space as mush as we are by memory... There is still addressable memory limits, and even with swap files you hit limits. Much of that information has to be stored in memory, and stored for many hundreds up to thousands of players. That ads up quickly.
to do something like a david tenant for ALL tradeskill items would be a huge amount of additional memory and flagging. That said... assistance for cultural patterns is coming soon.
More... (http://forums.station.sony.com/eq/posts/list.m?topic_id=155857&post_id=2295098#2295098)
Beladonna wrote:
Noircogi wrote:
gcubed wrote:
Noircogi wrote:
This is a cool idea but it's not obvious how this would be less work to implement or require less storage on the server than simply increasing bank space.
Considering Tavid Dennent doesn't store any of the quest items you are allowed to sell him, this is the rough equivalent of increasing bank space and placing a new UI over the top of it.
I understand that, but they still need to store counts for every tradeskill item for every character. There are a LOT of tradeskill items in the game and only a (relatively) small number of quest rewards in SoD. There would also be some dev overhead of building and maintaining those lists for every new item added.
Any item already flagged with "this item can be used in tradeskills" the items are already flagged I believe.
I like this idea, though I have only played around with tradeskills a little, this is definately a good idea.
SOE Make it so!
I think you are missing the point.
The problem isn't identifying what items are tradeskill items, the problem is one of ownership. You can do a query on the item database/table and find Sprockets has the "used in tradeskills" tag. You can also find that an Anizok's Minimumizing Device has the "used in tradeskills" tag. But nothing in the item database/tables will tell you that I own them or how many I own or if there are charges on what I own, how many charges are left. Just to be clear. There is only ONE entry for Sprockets in the item database/table. Not one entry for you and another for me, just one, for everybody. So if you want to find out how many Sprockets I own or if I even own any, you have to crack open my character files.
In my character files, you will find not a sprocket or a minumizing device, but an item number with a few counters (this is really an over simplification). One of the counters tells you how many of the item number I own. There is a certain amount of space set aside in the character files to store the pointers and counters that indicate what I own. Currently there is enough space set aside to store something like 240 unique items numbers in my bank and inventroy plus the 24 item number that are the bags (with associated counters). This space is limited both by physical constraints (you can only store so many bytes on a hard disk) and by code. The code expects to look for a specific number of items. If my bank/inventory/whatever is not full it will find empty slots. If I have more than what it expects it will ignore anything extra.
The physical constraints are not as important as they used to be. Disk space has gotten cheaper. So SOE can increase the amount of physical space that is required to store my stuff so I can store even more of my stuff. They will have to do this for toon on every server, active or inactive. And they have to convert all the backup files. They also have to change the code to read the extra stuff and to write it to the disk when I want to store it. There are risks that are involved in doing all of this. These risks include, but are not limited to, items in our banks and inventory that we cannot use (something we have seen before), items that just disappear as if they never existed (we have seen this happen also), complete corruption of a character file so that the owner cannot log on (to the best of my knowledge only QA has seen this, thankfully).
Ok, you say, the answer is simple. Create new files with just the new tradeskill ATM in it. That way, SOE won't have to monkey with the character files. True enough, but they will have to monkey with the code. It will make the code more complex. The new ATM will still have to be checked every time you acquire (either make, loot, trade, purchase, etc.) a tradeskill item that is lore along with what it is currently doing with the old bank space/inventory. It will make the code more more complex and less maintainable. It also has the potential of impacting performance.
gcubed has the essence of the matter. The details are not important.
Currently we are not constrained as much by HDD space as mush as we are by memory... There is still addressable memory limits, and even with swap files you hit limits. Much of that information has to be stored in memory, and stored for many hundreds up to thousands of players. That ads up quickly.
to do something like a david tenant for ALL tradeskill items would be a huge amount of additional memory and flagging. That said... assistance for cultural patterns is coming soon.
More... (http://forums.station.sony.com/eq/posts/list.m?topic_id=155857&post_id=2295098#2295098)