A simple server-side queue

Trevize

Sylvance said:

Trevize said:

I've already bugged this, but I got several instances just today of it running 'queued commands' different what what I queued - some not even balance-restricted commands. One a tell to someone I hadn't talked to in a while (and never actually said what it sent). 

@Sarapis was probably just effing with you.

No doubt.

Jakiro

this might be a long shot, but can we make it queue up to two commands at least? So I can queue stand AND still attack after I regain balance.

Rom

I think ideally you could be able to syntax ONBAL or something (as listed in Penwize's OP) in front of a command and it would be added to the next balance, first added executes first with maybe a cap on available commands in the queue. I found while using the queue system that I would often queue things by accident.

For example, I might accidentally queue a second pound (this is a bad thing) while spamming my alias going for a freeze pound. You may say that the whole point of the system is that I don't have to spam like that but I HAVE to spam it because you can't send morph gorilla and pound target simultaneously using the current system.
^But that's what "cq" is for!^ - Clearqueue was a good addition of course, but I'd much rather have to only clearqueue when I'm making a judgement over my queued action instead of having to do it every 10s as I do now. Selective queuing please!

That being said, thank you for implementing the system!

Makarios

Just a quick note.

The issue with commands you weren't entering randomly being queued was a legitimate issue. We think we've killed the chief offender, but its possible there might be some obscure cenarios when it can still happen. If you find one, file a bug with what you were doing at the time and we'll sort them out. (It might only have been the one thing, but just in case!)

Penwize

I spent some time messing around with the current implementation, just to make sure I wasn't dismissing it too early, but after using it I'm convinced it really needs to be able to queue multiple actions to be effective, and it will often need more than just 2 as some people suggested.  Here are a few really common scenarios I have off the top of my head of batches things you really need to do quickly on balance, in order to illustrate exactly why I think it needs to be taken a little farther:

As everyone has mentioned, when you're proned you want to STAND before your next attack, so you'd need STAND/KILL THING as your compound.

As a monk, you can only transmute on balance but transmute does not take balance.  In order to use transmute effectively at all then, without hindering yourself unduly, your next command would be something like TRANSMUTE 1000/COMBO PERSON SDK UCP UCP.  If you need to stand in there while you're bashing (pretty common), you'd need 3 entries to the queue.

As a dragon, summoning your breath requires balance but does not use it.  Part of your kill chain usually starts with a breathstorm, and then summoning your breath back for the blast if your target stands.  So, after the breathstorm, you'll need to queue up your arm break with something like SUMMON ACID/REND TARGET LEFT ARM/CONJURE TARGET ILLUSION YOUR FAVOURITE ILLUSION.  That's 3 at least, minus more if you need to stand before that.  It's similar in your next attack in the kill chain, where you generally need to queue up REND TARGET LEFT LEG/BREATHGUST TARGET for two attacks at once to prone on the break.  This is true for most two-attack combo classes, like blademasters and serpents.

Speaking of serpents, a serpent with an SoA would have trouble flaying on the current queue system.  If the serpent's wielding an SoA and currently dstabbing, their flay alias would be UNWIELD DIRK/WIELD WHIP/FLAY TARGET.  Subsequently, their next dstab would be UNWIELD WHIP/WIELD DIRK/DOUBLESTAB TARGET and such.  With illusions that's 4 commands, or 3 without.  That's true of any weapon swapping really.

So while the current system does help out in a bunch of scenarios, there are way too many scenarios I can think of that involve multiple commands spammed until balance hits that I really feel like one couldn't make proper use of this queueing system without switching it on and off constantly (get proned? Flick it off, spam your stand/attack macro, flick it back on), or not using it at all (compound attack classes like blademasters, dragons, etc).  That was my primary motivation behind having an explicit queue that you could add commands to and have them all fire on balance, since that sort of thing is very much a staple of Achaean combat.  It's very seldom that a single attack is needed.

I get why this first step was taken though.  Now the code is in place for a queue and you have a chance to iron out the kinks in getting an on-balance queue firing and queuing up attacks.  I just hope you plan to take it further to cover the most common bits of combat as well.

Tecton

Just a note that clearqueue/cq won't be affected by aeon/retardation any more.

Ellodin

Besides the random commands being entered at times, adding to what Penwize pointed out, biting with illusions in particular is really difficult to use with the queueing due to the independency between biting and illusioning.

edit: I mean the balance and equilibrium.

Trevize

Ellodin said:

Besides the random commands being entered at times, adding to what Penwize pointed out, biting with illusions in particular is really difficult to use with the queueing due to the independency between biting and illusioning.

edit: I mean the balance and equilibrium.

Not sure how viable this is - or even if it's what it's doing right now - but what about a check for if it would be stopped RIGHT NOW and if not, then sending it. If so, queue it. Applicable to anything stopped by any balance.

Iocun

I would appreciate manual queuing over this automated system in either way. It would give me more control and relieve me of the feeling that the game is making me do things on my own that I may not want to be doing.

Vadimuses

Syntax: STRATAGEM LIST
        STRATAGEM CLEAR
        STRATAGEM NOW
        STRATAGEM PAUSE
        STRATAGEM ADD [<mods>] <action>
        STRATAGEM INSERT [<position>] [<mods>] <action>
        STRATAGEM REPLACE [<position>] [<mods>] <action>
        STRATAGEM REMOVE <action/position>

Your knowledge of the flow of combat is such that you may now develop
stratagems of assault. A stratagem can consist of no more than ten
actions, each of which can consist of no more than three subactions
(each separated by a single pipe character, '|'). If your stratagem
stops, you may attempt to start it again with STRATAGEM NOW. Inserting
points into your stratagem will add the new action BEFORE the position
you supply. You may substitute SM for STRATAGEM for brevity.

Modifiers can be applied to individual actions. The following modifiers
are available:
  ARM     - Requires only one arm on balance.
  SUB     - Requires the Sub Psionic Channel.
  SUPER   - Requires the Super Psionic Channel.
  ID      - Requires the Id Psionic Channel.
  FREE    - Does not consume equilibrium or balance.
  REPEAT  - Will remain in the stratagem after triggering.

You may pause your stratagem before creating it in order to compile a
list of actions to perform at a later date (which you can start with
STRATAGEM NOW), or pause a currently executing stratagem mid-flow.

If you specify an action as repeating, it will not be removed from your
stratagem when it is performed. It will continue ad infinitum until you
manually remove the entry from your stratagem.

Jonners

tl;dr (on phone). Summary please? 

Synbios

Jonners said:

tl;dr (on phone). Summary please? 

@Jonners: Basically an ingame version of SVO's DO/DOFREE system.

Xith

Vadimuses said:

Syntax: STRATAGEM LIST
        STRATAGEM CLEAR
        STRATAGEM NOW
        STRATAGEM PAUSE
        STRATAGEM ADD [<mods>] <action>
        STRATAGEM INSERT [<position>] [<mods>] <action>
        STRATAGEM REPLACE [<position>] [<mods>] <action>
        STRATAGEM REMOVE <action/position>

Your knowledge of the flow of combat is such that you may now develop
stratagems of assault. A stratagem can consist of no more than ten
actions, each of which can consist of no more than three subactions
(each separated by a single pipe character, '|'). If your stratagem
stops, you may attempt to start it again with STRATAGEM NOW. Inserting
points into your stratagem will add the new action BEFORE the position
you supply. You may substitute SM for STRATAGEM for brevity.

Modifiers can be applied to individual actions. The following modifiers
are available:
  ARM     - Requires only one arm on balance.
  SUB     - Requires the Sub Psionic Channel.
  SUPER   - Requires the Super Psionic Channel.
  ID      - Requires the Id Psionic Channel.
  FREE    - Does not consume equilibrium or balance.
  REPEAT  - Will remain in the stratagem after triggering.

You may pause your stratagem before creating it in order to compile a
list of actions to perform at a later date (which you can start with
STRATAGEM NOW), or pause a currently executing stratagem mid-flow.

If you specify an action as repeating, it will not be removed from your
stratagem when it is performed. It will continue ad infinitum until you
manually remove the entry from your stratagem.

I don't know what seven of those words mean.

Iocun

What Vadi posted sounds great, but please, if you do that in Achaea, don't go the same route of giving it some kind of pseudo-IC explanation.

Queues are an OOC mechanic and don't need to be dragged into IC discussions under some fancy cover name.

Vadimuses

That was a straight copy/paste from Lusternia's Stratagems AB file (that is how it is called).

Vadimuses

Iocun said:

Queues are an OOC mechanic and don't need to be dragged into IC discussions under some fancy cover name.

So are triggers. Yet there's a need to be able to talk about them, as ten years of Achaea has demonstrated. Trying to hide it again won't work and we might as well make it easy by standardizing on a semi-IC thing that we can talk about.

Tael

Vadimuses said:

snip

For the love of all that is holy please don't let this be one of those things we can't have because another IRE game has it.

Edit: Apparently quoting isn't working very well.

Iocun

Vadimuses said:

Iocun said:

Queues are an OOC mechanic and don't need to be dragged into IC discussions under some fancy cover name.

So are triggers. Yet there's a need to be able to talk about them, as ten years of Achaea has demonstrated. Trying to hide it again won't work and we might as well make it easy by standardizing on a semi-IC thing that we can talk about.

Calling triggers "reflexes" is a horrid thing, IMHO. No, there's no reason to discuss those IC and I don't believe ten years of Achaea have "demonstrated that we do". People will sometimes go a bit OOC in IC settings, yes, but that's no reason to facilitate and encourage it by giving it an air of IC validity.

Personally I'm fine with an org having a few OOC help files to explain some basic triggers and such. I'd much rather have that than the same org having the same help files, using the term "reflex" instead of "trigger", but going on with explaining how to set them up in your client (or "soul portal"?) exactly the same way. That's just stupid, doesn't help with immersion in the least, and only encourages talking about triggers in IC settings far more often than necessary.

If you need to discuss OOC stuff, do it in an OOC way. "Semi-IC" is a term that shouldn't even exist. Cover words for OOC mechanics are one of the most detrimental things to IC/OOC separation. I'm sure we'd have an easier time stopping people from bringing up lag in-game so often if "aeon" wasn't such a broadly accepted alias for it.

Jonners

How do you explain people capable of doing mindless tasks with little effort? Ummmmm, reflexes?

Saying crap that's IC isn't IC is just stupid, there was that whole problem with Cause being OOC before they fixed the PK system. It wasn't OOC, if there's some set of rules restricting me from attacking you or giving me a reason to attack you IC then the rules are IC too!

Iocun

Jonners said:

How do you explain people capable of doing mindless tasks with little effort? Ummmmm, reflexes?

I don't know where you got the idea that I consider the term or idea of a reflex an OOC thing. Of course Achaeans have reflexes. I was talking about using the term as a perfect equivalent of the OOC term trigger and going wild with it. The situations I'm talking of aren't situations where the term "reflex" is used in a really IC sense, but situations where it's simply replacing the term "triggers" in sentences that are obviously of OOC nature to everyone involved. Used in this sense, it does absolutely nothing to preserve immersion, but simply promotes a superfluously excessive mentioning of OOC content.

Saying crap that's IC isn't IC is just stupid, there was that whole problem with Cause being OOC before they fixed the PK system. It wasn't OOC, if there's some set of rules restricting me from attacking you or giving me a reason to attack you IC then the rules are IC too!

Cause was never IC in any sense. There were no IC rules restricting you from attacking me. People who said "the gods forbid it" were wrong to say so, as the Achaean gods never laid down any sort of IC rules for killing other adventurers, nor would they have a reason to. IC, we were always allowed to attack anyone for any reason at all, unless your city/house/order/whatever forbid you from doing it. It was entirely our responsibility to come up with explanations of why our character didn't kill some other guy, if we were prevented from doing so because of PK rules. Attributing that to some kind of "Divine Ruleset" was never proper, IC.

Saying that "if there are rules that restrict me from doing something, those must be IC rules too" is as silly as saying "if there are mechanics that stop me from doing something, that thing must be known to be impossible IC too". Mechanics stop people from swimming across oceans, but that doesn't mean that swimming across oceans is a theoretical impossibility IC, even though we know that characters will have to fail every time they try to do so. Mechanics stop people from afflicting denizens, but that doesn't mean that denizens are immune to afflictions IC. Mechanics make us move in steps from "room" to "room" by walking in 12 possible directions, but that doesn't make our characters' movements similarly rigid. Mechanics stop us from planting potatoes and actually seeing them grow as items we can interact with, but that doesn't make potato growing impossible IC.

Jonners

Your examples aren't really that well tied to your point.

If I had 'cause' I could go and kill someone or hire a mark. IC ramifications to the supposedly ooc mechanism. If these restrictions weren't in place people like Bonko would be killing constantly with no rhyme or reason. Why don't people do that, because the PK Rules said no..

If you're going to complain about OOC stuff being IC then the term PK should be replaced with AK.

Iocun

Jonners said:

Your examples aren't really that well tied to your point.

If I had 'cause' I could go and kill someone or hire a mark. IC ramifications to the supposedly ooc mechanism. If these restrictions weren't in place people like Bonko would be killing constantly with no rhyme or reason. Why don't people do that, because the PK Rules said no..

What? Nothing was stopping Bonko from constantly killing with no rhyme or reason. But there were rules stopping his player from making his character do these things.

If you had cause you could go and kill someone or hire a mark. IC, your character could hire an assassin on anyone for any reason at all. But you'd better not have your character do that, because you, as a player, are bound by OOC rules to keep your character's actions in check, which means only to allow your character to do that if you have OOC cause.

Your character can argue IC that he hired a mark on Bonko because Bonko killed him earlier. He cannot, and couldn't ever, argue that he was only allowed to hire the mark because Bonko killed him earlier.

That's rather simple, no?

Jonners

Simple sure, I disagree with the premise though.

Iocun

Guess we'll agree to disagree then!

Jonners

I know I'm an outlier on this subject but I disagree completely with OOC rules that cause IC restrictions. Make it IC so it makes sense why I don't attack you for simply pissing me off but I do because you called me a 'butt monkey'.

Penwize

@Tecton, @Cardan, @Markarios, @Sarapis:
Back on topic, any word on whether this'll be expanded upon in the ways I mentioned earlier, for the reasons I mentioned?  So close with what we have now!

Tecton

It may be expanded to allow multiple commands, will require some reworking of things, we'll see next time I've got time to sit down and evaluate it.