Admin help

[Gigatek1]

It would be helpful to have a few more admin options add to the admin tools. I'll just make it easy and make a list of what I think is needed.

• Bind delete key to cursor target and deletevehicle on the spectate cam. Also log it.
• Option to teleport to player and teleport player to self. Log it of course.
• Option to teleport a few meters around them for players that are stuck (log it as well). Happens all the time.
• Option to re-spawn like the find a safe position logic sock has for when your player dies on Altis but you rejoin Stratis and have a prior position saved, to move players that are stuck as a option... Maybe oneway to go with this problem.

[AgentRev]

I don't know what you mean about the last point. With extDB, inventory and location are completely separate between maps, only bank money carries over.

[Gigatek1]

I guess you never played or didn't like Breaking Point. Just one more thing we loss with the migration I guess. Check it out next time you play. Join Altis gear up then leave and go to Stratis or Chernarus as long as you haven't died the only difference is your position which makes sense for someone leaving and going to a different place. Once you die you lose your gear and saved positions on all locations. If you gear up on Altis then switch to another server but never been there since you died you have that gear but it spawns you in a safe position not the last one on that map because that player is dead across all maps. It's unfortunate you picked such a arcadey system that doesn't have these options for community's that want hived servers. I guessing top had a lot to do with that.

[AgentRev]

Dude I was a dev for Breaking Point, at least a couple months. In fact, my experience with BP was used as a basis for the extDB system. BP had everything separate for each map.

I had a very lengthy discussion with other server owners about this before I started working with extDB, and we all concluded that it was not beneficial to allow people to cross maps with their gear.

[Gigatek1]

I guess I'm tripping because when micovery and I were discussing the hived persistence I pushed for this because I like that I could go from Straits to Altis with the same gear on BP. At least that's what I remember when we were discussing it. I guess it was some other mod but I can't remember what.

What's not beneficial about having gear persist over servers that aren't the same map or at least having the option to? Why even have the ghosting protection to begin with? If anything it fractures the community in my opinion and makes players see individual servers not a community. That's already a problem. This is why we named the servers by map not number.

It would be cool to have this with 2 separate groups that share just stats. Like have 3 east coast servers with the 3 available Arma (Tanoa) maps and have 3 west coast servers with shared stats but different gear, parking and storage. Even have the night cycles on the east coast servers a little before.

[Gigatek1]

Another thought I was having for this is if you go to far out in a certain direction on the ocean it would connect to Stratis or Tanoa. If BIS ever made it so you can connect to another server like that.

[Gigatek1]

Oh can you link to this discussion? I cant find it.

[AgentRev]

I could go from Straits to Altis with the same gear on BP

I quit BP in March 2014, back then the saves were separate for each maps. I don't know if it changed afterwards, but I felt that separate saves were appropriate, satisfying, and expectable, especially due to the risk and effort required to find (and keep) good loot in BP.

What's not beneficial

There were a couple points, mainly:

1. Players can use less-populated maps as storage areas, equip their stuff, jump back into the more populated map, and retreat back as needed. This applies regardless of ghosting protection, unless you have a 1 hour timer or something.
2. Players switching to a new map will mostly spawn in the middle of a town, and so are highly vulnerable to town campers, especially if they have all their previous gear. This would create a lot a frustration.
3. Teleporting between maps to specific saved positions is not very realistic. If anything, players should be forced to go thru a hub and prepare for transfer to other maps, e.g. buy a "plane ticket" so they get airdropped at a location of their choice on whatever server they log in next from the same hive, or arrive to a safezone like in PlanetSide 2.

Last but not least, there was the issue of maintaining the 2 different implementations with the same database structure. It would have been a nightmare to code, so I asked the owners to vote (LouD, wiking, lodac, and a couple others), the decision was unanimous in favor of keeping maps separate.

If BIS ever made it so you can connect to another server like that

I very highly doubt BIS will ever include anything like this. Gotta keep churning out those DLCs!

Oh can you link to this discussion. I cant find it.

The only trace I have of it is this: http://forums.a3wasteland.com/index.php?topic=2000.msg12767#msg12767

I think was on our Hall.com chatroom, which was used until early 2015. The site was purchased by Atlassian and migrated to HipChat, but it was a total mess so we ditched it. All our chat logs beyond 2013 were lost. I wanted to keep copies in case I had to refer to it, but the support team was like "We're sorry, it's gone"

[Gigatek1]

Why not leave this up to the community paying for the servers? I like the fact you and your buddies can go grind on a less populated server or build bases in peace. Also it helps when one server is dead to keep people logging in. If you want to spend the time going to a different map to avoid store campers that's fine by me and keeps players that don't have 15 members or play a lot to stay competitive or interested. I only think its ghosting when you go to the same map but different server in order to get that position on another server. I don't have a problem with 30 minutes ghosting protection for the same map. I really don't see why you even did it now that I see how A3W extDB hives work. Also I don't have a problem with using air drops to spawn at random locations or even using the spawn menu but having gear.

I would have just made stats and players a separate document then add map detection to the player saves for positions. Then if you want the system you like just change the player document for each server.

I think was on our Hall.com chatroom, which was used until early 2015. The site was purchased by Atlassian and migrated to HipChat, but it was a total mess so we ditched it. All our chat logs beyond 2013 were lost. I wanted to keep copies in case I had to refer to it, but the support team was like "We're sorry, it's gone"

I have all my same post and don't remember seeing anything about a chat room. I was there before any of the owners you mentioned either. I pretty sure micovery or I would have participated. I guess it was private? I was pretty vocal about wanting better persistence. I guess I wasn't one of the cool kids and/or this was during the catch up days to sock. This would have been useful knowledge during the dev of sock persistence. I think that contest and maybe that chat room killed a lot of the transparency and possibility's for knowledgeable devs to work together.

[AgentRev]

Why not leave this up to the community paying for the servers?

Well, you always have the option of coding it yourself. I am no one's employee, and I wanted to keep it simple as possible. I'm not a wizard. Having one or the other is simple, but an option to switch between both at any moment simply required more time and brainpower than what I had to give. If I can't do something right, I won't bother doing it in the first place. That's pretty much why I gave up on vanilla bounties too.

don't remember seeing anything about a chat room

The chat room was created before we even had a forum, because we needed a proper place to discuss other than GitHub comments. The forum used to be a complete mess, and it was mainly for technical support. A lot of the decision making happened on the chat room, because we needed to talk in real time. The people invited were those for who private messages were not sufficient for me to keep up with. In retrospect, the chat room should indeed have been announced publicly, although its usage was very low before work started on extDB, so the ramp-up in chatting was a bit unexpected.

It should be noted that many of those decisions were taken before micovery joined the forum. He started working on sock persistence after having been told extDB was already in the oven, and showed no willingness to cooperate with us until after sock was complete. Many server owners had been bugging me for MySQL since the very start, and that's what I was gonna give to them, not sock.

[Gigatek1]

I was there through it all and don't remember you being so welcoming to micovery or any a mention of chatrooms in my pm's or anything other then tables and a concept about extDB. I guess I should have pestered you more or be a brown noser to be enlightened. I'm also not saying that you should spend any time that's not wanted, doing this either. That's kinda of my point, it might have helped to have other coders help or if you helped communicate your plans better so they could put their focus else where. I think this cancer was somewhat self induced but that doesn't take away any appreciation people have for your work, including me.

[tylers-dev]

I got to interrupt at this point. I think the conversation is growing some tension and definitely becoming more unrelated to the issue. I'd like to say that we're all just trying to help each other out. Agent, we love A3W and like Gig said, we immensely appreciate your talent being put into helping us. Gig you run, in my opinion, one of the best servers for A3W, lots of cool people ready to help out. I've got a lot of respect for you two.

[AgentRev]

I would like a confirmation on whether or not Giga wants to continue with the migration, or if the lack of cross-map saves is a deal breaker, as it seems a touchy issue. I am still willing to continue porting sock features, but I cannot implement cross-map saves.

[Gigatek1]

Well there's a lot in the air about that. Still need to get micovery to help with the database migration with his script I sent you(I guess you didn't read because of the headache it might cause). To tell you the truth I don't think he's interested in helping. Also we loss the web stat system he developed. Either way at least something similar will pop up from the ashes, if you do the ports for the more difficult addons. To be clear, the lack of transparency, communication, and unconstructive mean comments about micovery's contributions is the touchy subject. I would think it's kind common sense but I don't know. I also have been doing this for to long (over 2 years). The migration is my exit strategy. I was hoping to hand over a clear git and sustainable community. https://cdn.meme.am/instances/500x/34056086.jpg

[AgentRev]

micovery is gone, no matter what you and I say, and you need to accept it. You can't just rely on expectations of an eventual comeback.

Stop accusing me of lacking transparency just because I didn't consult you for a couple decisions I took 2 years ago. I could do quite a lot worse in this respect. I've been trying to pull this mission together by myself ever since the other devs bailed out. I don't want to linger into public debates and vote over every little feature, I just want a clear path to go forward. I'm a coder, not a politician. It's just a video game.

You need to make compromises if you want extDB. "there's a lot in the air" is not a satisfying answer. I've got a couple weeks left before starting my summer job. Do you want me to carry on with porting the stuff, yes or no?

[Gigatek1]

This isn't my job so I will help if I can. If you want to help A3Armory please do. I can't think of anything I have ever not compromised when talking to you about how to do things. Man I even go out of the way to keep things vanilla as possible. Even if you do the 4 addon ports, we still have web stats, database migration, and the 100 tweaks and addons I can do. I'm not a coder so this is a month or so of work for me and most involved. To be clear, yes of course I will compromise (I really thought the stats and players being in separate documents would be easy to do and you just didn't see that). What I was talking about with communication and transparency was not just me but everyone not in the chat but on the forums and github, about the plans for extDB and the 3 votes that counted. You even admitted you wouldn't do that now, so yeah I don't know just not a good way to do open development. I still talk to micovery sometimes but he has made it clear he's not interested in doing anything unless he has some time off and feels like it. For someone living where he lives, that has a house, he's basically in indentured servitude :smile:

Anyways no hard feelings. It is what it is. To answer your question about the port, only if you want to. I really do not want you over extended or really do anything you don't enjoy.

[AgentRev]

I really thought the stats and players being in separate documents would be easy to do and you just didn't see that

I never said it wasn't easy, I said I can't put both in the mission at the same time, both require different code and database structure, I just can't adapt the mission to make this available at the flip of a switch, so I made people chose whatever they wanted so I could move on with it. I did not wish and still do not wish to make and maintain 2 separate implementations. If you can engineer me a solution that can be switched between both modes during a server restart, without undefined or unexpected behavior or lost data, then shoot.

[Gigatek1]

I'm still a bit confused but no worries. I just thought that would have been the way to do it so we can have both ways; past tense. I'm not a forward thinker sometimes. I must admit I was a bit upset when I heard about a dev/owner chat micovery and I didn't know about. Sorry man. micovery was also a owner. He paid for a server for about a year (old stratis 1). We barely been able to get by since micovery and I stopped paying for servers. Donations are a lot better now though since community support perks have been added.

[AgentRev]

Well, it took 2 hours, but I got it working. And I didn't even need to change the DB structure. And I've been whining against this for so long. fml

[Gigatek1]

Well done, it's appreciated.

[Gigatek1]

I just watched this. It made me think of this issue and how awesome git is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8NPllzkFhE

[AgentRev]

Completely unrelated, but I just watched this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0bMeDj76ig

Fucking Elon Musk man, he just landed an orbital rocket on a sea platform 20 mins ago. For the second time.

[Gigatek1]

What a time to be alive :+1:

[mooneymoon]

Sock's idea of a 'safe space' yesterday was putting me into a hot gunstore circle in Pyrgos. Just saying.

[Gigatek1]

It uses the same function as random spawn in A3W I believe. I don't know what Agents method is. Maybe for now just add it 1000 meters up and rename it to jump zone or something. Whenever your player dies you lose all your save positions and gear on each map. That player is dead now you have to start over. Where ever you start over you are going to have to get back to a new position on a new map because that player has never been there.