Ok... NOW I'm sad.

that, but the server isn't real-time... at least not hard realtime... because the event loop can overflow.

You mean why you need a third person to be arbiters on the snow events ?

If I don't know how you name these things, I'm still as puzzled. I knew all these all along, these are on City Of Data, as well as attributes modifiers and scale. That doesn't make me budge.

Wait, you said you're asking me to also create powers and evaluate powers with this loop, which will call the attribmod calculator, not the other way around.

I said combination because that's one of the variability an engine has to deal with, the other being the variability of the effects, and your for(;{evaluate(power);} hides it even more. The complexity is in the evaluate, and I'm aware of that.

Just pointing I'm feeling the same. But I'm also kicking into touch here and going around the goal pillars because you don't necessarily need to be real time, after certain points, you *can't* be real time. So make the game "timeout" while you get things straight and send updates again afterward, the loop is on a sleep if it ends early, but continues on the contrary.

And you already spent all this time, it's now very easy to implement the details.

True, but as Codewalker said, it's easier to make the engine that takes each instruction laid out and carries them at normal pace than make a simulator.

Case in point: at work I have written many a Python script that's used for system management and task automation. My team had some special requirements for code deployment that the corporate standard tools could not meet, so we had to roll our own. I wrote something that can take a bundle of files stored in a tarball and extract it to a server. How long does that sound like it should be, described like that? 4, 5 lines?

Now what if I said it had to map files from the SCM system's internal project structure to directories on servers? That target deployment directories could be nested? (So "foo_build" might deploy to /bin/foo, while "data_build" might deploy to /bin/foo/data.) What if you needed ways to filter what you extract so you could exclude targets, even if they're in the bundle? How about filtering my filename pattern? What if it had to support rolling back extracts if the deployment needed to be able to backed out? What if you wanted a report of what was not deployed, along with the reason why? If I added all of that, how long does that sound?

Even after importing external libraries for command-line parsing, logging, tar/gz file handling, directory and permissions management, and separating the actual SCM-to-directory mapping logic into a separate module, the script is just shy of 1000 lines long, including comments and whitespace. The mapping module is another 250 lines. The module for parsing the embedded manifest file is about 50 more lines.

I don't remember how long it took to write at this point, as it's been revised several times based on updated requirements. I think it has to have been on the order of 10 business days, especially once testing is included.

And that's written in something very high level that's super easy to prototype in. If I'd had to write it in C? Oh, lord.

Always looks like this to me

Can't tell you how often someone shows me that cartoon.

Either we'll see, or we won't.

Well I wanted the old Dragon Mirth cartoon that had

1. A barbarian with an arrow through his chest and pointing at a page in an open book

2. A ranger with an axe through his noggin and pointing at an open book.

The word bubble above both their heads read "No look here I killed you"

But I couldn't find it.

Heh. I totally hadn't looked at that thread since the announcement.

The decision was made before my time, and I never pushed to have it changed. As far as I know, it was made so that the public-facing data was only things that could reasonably be determined by player experimentation (albeit a lot of it). Over time that eroded slowly as things like the exact text of the conditions became shown, but that was less of an issue since they were integral to the way that the powers function.

Also, going strictly of secondhand information here so I may be way off, but I was under the impression that getting in trouble for leaking NPC powers from the Hami revamp was part of why Iakona "left".

That link is pure win. I wish someone had handed me that article (and forced me to read it again and again) back when I was 17 years old.

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

He got temp banned for leaking I9 Hami data, but I think he got over it. He was still around in I10 but it may have contributed to his desire to move on.

Did a lot of hiking at 17, did you?

Metaphorically speaking, I certainly did take a lot of pointless and avoidable detours.

Maybe I'm just feeling philosophical as I sit here -- listening to a baseball game in the twilight of the season, the rich amber hue of my iced scotch reminding me of the onset of autumn, the first vague hints of which waft on in the air billowing the curtains of the open window, the faint whisper of shifting leaves outside complementing the lulling cadence of the broadcasters' call of every play. It's almost too appropriate a scene for browsing this forum, in what may be its twilight hours.

In any case, it struck me as I read the linked article the so many of life's disappointments stem from youthful arrogance, and youthful arrogance stems, in large part, from the albeit understandable tendency to over-simplify the simple -- to rely on our abstract or intellectual knowledge of a problem or a process without really understanding it in a practicable way.

Man, I'm a windbag.

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

OT, but I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank you and everyone else here for all the hard work you've done to make CoH what it is, for all of us compulsive build-tweaking junkies. Sláinte!

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

Should take about a weekend.

I think you lost everyone under 30 when you got to the curtains.

At some point, if and when the end seems certain, I'll have to say my adeius as well. When I do, I intend to point out that as visible and continuous as my presence as been, the community has always benefited from players willing to contribute to improving the gameplay of other players. There's a continuum from BuffyASummers tanker and scrapper guides to ZombieMan's guides of guides. Lots of people contributed to defense and tohit understanding from Amauros' SR guides to IronVixen (and many others) Invincibility testing to Stargazer and Pennelope's snowballs to my own guides. I'm embarrassed to say I probably don't remember everyone anymore although I'm trying to.

Even now we still have the legacy of RedTomax and Iakona and Mids. There are people who still use Brawl Indexes. Arcanatime and several other contributions of mine can trace their lineage back eight years to the Powers Quantification Project, which was my first encounter with TopDoc.

It would be false modesty to say my contributions haven't been large, but its not entirely clear what they would have been if there wasn't a community of generally cooperative and helpful players surrounding me. I don't do this for any other MMO I play.

The truth is if it wasn't for Snipefu's and Powerthrust's Energy and /Energy guides, I probably wouldn't be interested in the numbers at all. If it wasn't for the Brawl Index and the PQP, I probably wouldn't be interested in measuring the numbers at all. If it wasn't for the Tanker and especially Scrapper forums' unique character, I probably wouldn't have become a quant, much less the most visible one.

I only did what I did because I wanted to, and I wanted to because it seemed to be the thing to do around here. And that's what I will really miss most.

(>.<)

I never managed to understand that frigging file...

If it does come to that, while I don't think anyone would begrudge you (or anyone else) not soaking the time into a game that's not alive, I rather hope you maintain enough interest to linger on one of the community sites. Even if you didn't get seriously involved, I think your insights could do nothing but help the folks who, denied access to the full game, would inevitably seek to dig into the client and other info to build third party tools around keeping the memory and spirit of the game alive.

It's a selfish hope to be sure, but I'd do my part to try and keep the community interesting .

But yes, though I hope its implied above, explicit thanks is in order for your involvement in the game. If I have any intellectual claim to fame, it's that I manage to warehouse a lot of info I've learned elsewhere. A great deal of info I've learned about CoH can be tied directly to you, either through your own discovery, or through posts making succinct description or analysis using info others had gleaned.

Starsman, I didn't hang out in the same forums as you as much, I don't think, but I learned a lot from you as well.

I also may be incorrect, but I also believe that to be the case. There was a post outlining the particulars of the I9 version of the Hamidon entities. That post (or perhaps it was a whole thread) was removed, and I believe Iakona received a ban.