SVO Curing Problem?

Exelethril

Does anyone happen to know why this happens? - http://pastie.org/6262690

Iocun

Let me guess, Delos arena?

Yue

Svo, not SVO.

Eld

Exelethril said:

Does anyone happen to know why this happens? - http://pastie.org/6262690

There was a problem right after the recent changes to the Delos arena where svo wasn't automatically turning on arena mode on entering. Pretty sure there was an update to fix it not long after, though.

Iocun

I don't know the inner workings of Svo, but my hypothesis is this:

The area names in the Delos arena changed some times. Svo checks if you're currently in an arena by comparing your current area name to a list of "arena areas" to cure accordingly (i.e. no superfluous outrifting in arenas etc). Since the area names changed, and you didn't update Svo recently, it fails to notice that you are in fact in an arena.

Now, why would this cause Svo to consider herb eating messages illusions? I assume that Svo implements illusion checks against herb eating illusions by checking against the gmcp.Char.Items.Remove table. If Svo believes itself to be out-of-arena, gets a herb eating line, but didn't get such a gmcp event, it will assume it was an illusion, because no herb actually vanished.

So here, Svo mistakingly believed you were out of the arena, so it didn't get a herb removal gmcp event when you eat bloodroot, so it thought they were all illusions.

Which actually points out a rather big issue in GMCP, as it gives a definite combat advantage here. This should be addressed to make that kind of illusion checking impossible. I'm quite glad this bug exists, because otherwise I might not have found out how exactly Svo manages to illusion check this every time.

Also, I always have to chuckle evilly when illusion-proofing of systems comes around to bite them!

Exelethril

Awesome, thanks! Oh man.. at least I got some manual curing practice in.

Veldrin

Wouldn't it be just as easy to check if anything's cured after you eat bloodroot?

I'd only activate the triggers for checking the cure when I try to eat something 

Eld

Iocun said:

I don't know the inner workings of Svo, but my hypothesis is this:

The area names in the Delos arena changed some times. Svo checks if you're currently in an arena by comparing your current area name to a list of "arena areas" to cure accordingly (i.e. no superfluous outrifting in arenas etc). Since the area names changed, and you didn't update Svo recently, it fails to notice that you are in fact in an arena.

Now, why would this cause Svo to consider herb eating messages illusions? I assume that Svo implements illusion checks against herb eating illusions by checking against the gmcp.Char.Items.Remove table. If Svo believes itself to be out-of-arena, gets a herb eating line, but didn't get such a gmcp event, it will assume it was an illusion, because no herb actually vanished.

So here, Svo mistakingly believed you were out of the arena, so it didn't get a herb removal gmcp event when you eat bloodroot, so it thought they were all illusions.

Which actually points out a rather big issue in GMCP, as it gives a definite combat advantage here. This should be addressed to make that kind of illusion checking impossible. I'm quite glad this bug exists, because otherwise I might not have found out how exactly Svo manages to illusion check this every time.

Also, I always have to chuckle evilly when illusion-proofing of systems comes around to bite them!

This kind of concern about combat advantages comes up pretty frequently in discussions about GMCP, with the usual counterargument being that GMCP isn't telling you anything that you couldn't figure out by other means. In this case, you could do the same check without GMCP by checking INV and seeing if you had one less bloodroot in inventory. That doesn't quite hold up for this case, since checking the GMCP event allows you to do the check in cases where you otherwise couldn't or would pay some cost for it (such as stun or retardation), so I'm a bit ambivalent. It does seem to hold in most cases, though, with the exceptions being fairly minor, so I haven't generally been very worried about it.

What would be your preferred change to address this particular issue? Have a few classes of items for which the Char.Items.Add/Remove/Update events don't get sent? That would seem to have broader implications that would make inventory tracking in general a lot less convenient. And, come to think of it, would probably not be sufficient to solve the problem in this case.

Iocun

Veldrin said:

Wouldn't it be just as easy to check if anything's cured after you eat bloodroot?

I'd only activate the triggers for checking the cure when I try to eat something 

Any decent system, including Svo, already does that, but this only prevents illusions of cures that you are currently not attempting to use. If you're actually trying to eat bloodroot and I illusion yourself eating bloodroot (with whatever effect I desire), it's not so simply to detect this as an illusion.

Eld said:

This kind of concern about combat advantages comes up pretty frequently in discussions about GMCP, with the usual counterargument being that GMCP isn't telling you anything that you couldn't figure out by other means. In this case, you could do the same check without GMCP by checking INV and seeing if you had one less bloodroot in inventory. That doesn't quite hold up for this case, since checking the GMCP event allows you to do the check in cases where you otherwise couldn't or would pay some cost for it (such as stun or retardation), so I'm a bit ambivalent. It does seem to hold in most cases, though, with the exceptions being fairly minor, so I haven't generally been very worried about it.

What would be your preferred change to address this particular issue? Have a few classes of items for which the Char.Items.Add/Remove/Update events don't get sent? That would seem to have broader implications that would make inventory tracking in general a lot less convenient. And, come to think of it, would probably not be sufficient to solve the problem in this case.

Sure, you could check differently, by attaching a send("ii bloodroot") after every "eat bloodroot" call. But not only does this have the limitations you mentioned (retardation, aeon, etc.), it also adds a further barrier of inconvenience, discouraging this practice. It also makes it easier to find out how a system is doing it with mind sapience, so steps can be taken against it, plus it adds further commands for you to send, slowing you down a tiny bit. The point here is that using a gmcp check is pure metagaming. We always accept slight degrees of metagaming when it comes to illusions and anti-illusion, but when something is so distinctly past this line, it's no longer acceptable, to me.

It sucks a bit that systems are apparently abusing gmcp for something like this, because this means we have to restrict gmcp to be less informative in order not to provide combat advantages, which in turn also makes gmcp less useful for different, more "legitimate" purposes.

My preferred solution would be systems simply no longer doing it, but we can't really force this, so it will sadly have to come down to restrictions in Achaea's mechanics.

Eld

Veldrin said:

Wouldn't it be just as easy to check if anything's cured after you eat bloodroot?

I'd only activate the triggers for checking the cure when I try to eat something 

If you mean to check if anything's cured based on the line after you eat a piece of bloodroot, then no, because the person could just illusion it curing something, or illusion eating off herb balance. Presumably, it will only accept the cure if it did try to eat the herb, but the problem here is that it DID try to eat the herb, it just doesn't believe that it actually did so, because the herb remained in inventory.

Eld

Iocun said:

My preferred solution would be systems simply no longer doing it, but we can't really force this, so it will sadly have to come down to restrictions in Achaea's mechanics.

I'm just trying to figure out what those restrictions would look like. All I can think of is to completely remove herbs from the gmcp.Char.Items tables, or possibly just remove them from the Add/Remove/Update events and forbid clients from sending the Char.Items.Request event (rather than actually sending an inventory checking command). The former, at least, seems pretty iffy to me; I'd almost rather not have those tables at all than have them, but with incomplete/incorrect information.

Iocun

I'm not sure yet what the optimal solution would be.

Sarapis

The optimal solution is to use a client that supports GMCP.

Vadimuses

@OP: Upgrade your system... this issue was fixed months ago. Alternatively, tn arena when this happens.

(you can't call yourself a PKer if you can't even upgrade your system every month or so )

Citrus

Yue said:

Svo, not SVO.

There's a difference?

Eld

Citrus said:

Yue said:

Svo, not SVO.

There's a difference?

She's just pointing out that the name is not an acronym, and therefore doesn't require capitalisation. It's important to a certain breed of pedant.

Citrus

Eld said:

Citrus said:

Yue said:

Svo, not SVO.

There's a difference?

She's just pointing out that the name is not an acronym, and therefore doesn't require capitalisation. It's important to a certain breed of pedant.

Ahh, just being pompous.  Makes sense.

Sena

If people frequently referred to me as SENA instead of Sena, it would probably get annoying.

Eld

Sena said:

If people frequently referred to me as SENA instead of Sena, it would probably get annoying.

True, though I don't think svo's AI is quite advanced enough for it to have feelings, yet. I'm pedant enough to care about the distinction and not capitalise the name, I'm just not nearly invested enough in it to correct people on it at every opportunity.

Anyway, the OP has been answered and the rest of this has gotten rather off topic. Thread could probably use some closure.

Jonathin

Sena said:

If people frequently referred to me as SENA instead of Sena, it would probably get annoying.

Super ExcellentExpedientExpress Numbers Automaton

Yue

You can call me a pompous pendant for correcting you..

..or say 'thank you', as your mother probably taught you to do as a young child.

If you have ever traveled to a foreign country and attempted to communicate with people in a language that is not your native tongue, you should understand that people who point out mistakes like that are actually doing you a favor and not doing it to make fun of you or to be pedantic. It is no different to me being new to Achaea and having fellow players correct me when I make a statement that shows my ignorance of a given ability or class mechanic, etc. etc.

edit: Also, your log shows your curing system refer to itself as (Svo), so I have to wonder wherefrom you came upon the idea to write it as an acronym in the first place. Second also: there are lots of players for whom English is not a first language. There is no reason to add further confusion to things by haphazardly capitalizing things that ought naught be capitalized.

Eld

Yue said:

You can call me a pompous pendant for correcting you..

..or say 'thank you', as your mother probably taught you to do as a young child.

If you have ever traveled to a foreign country and attempted to communicate with people in a language that is not your native tongue, you should understand that people who point out mistakes like that are actually doing you a favor and not doing it to make fun of you or to be pedantic. It is no different to me being new to Achaea and having fellow players correct me when I make a statement that shows my ignorance of a given ability or class mechanic, etc. etc.

edit: Also, your log shows your curing system refer to itself as (Svo), so I have to wonder wherefrom you came upon the idea to write it as an acronym in the first place. Second also: there are lots of players for whom English is not a first language. There is no reason to add further confusion to things by haphazardly capitalizing things that ought naught be capitalized.

I'd just like to point out, as the person who brought the word pedant into this, that I never said there was anything wrong with pedantry, nor did I mean to imply such, as I do it too. I just don't feel the need to make that particular correction. Having bothered to post this, though, I do feel the need to point out that it's "pedant", not "pendant".

Yue

Eld said:

I'd just like to point out, as the person who brought the word pedant into this, that I never said there was anything wrong with pedantry, nor did I mean to imply such, as I do it too. I just don't feel the need to make that particular correction. Having bothered to post this, though, I do feel the need to point out that it's "pedant", not "pendant".

Yue said:

If you have ever traveled to a foreign country and attempted to communicate with people in a language that is not your native tongue, you should understand that people who point out mistakes like that are actually doing you a favor and not doing it to make fun of you or to be pedantic.

(concerning 'pendant')

- http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20091227220544AAaXE0N

(concerning irony & double irony)

- http://cantb2serious.livejournal.com/848.html

Eld

Yue said:

Eld said:

I'd just like to point out, as the person who brought the word pedant into this, that I never said there was anything wrong with pedantry, nor did I mean to imply such, as I do it too. I just don't feel the need to make that particular correction. Having bothered to post this, though, I do feel the need to point out that it's "pedant", not "pendant".

Yue said:

If you have ever traveled to a foreign country and attempted to communicate with people in a language that is not your native tongue, you should understand that people who point out mistakes like that are actually doing you a favor and not doing it to make fun of you or to be pedantic.

(concerning 'pendant')

- http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20091227220544AAaXE0N

(concerning irony & double irony)

- http://cantb2serious.livejournal.com/848.html

Fair enough. This is what happens when I try to be funny.

Rangor

I'mma call sena for SENA ig now.

Idelisa

Daeir said:

ctrl-f'ing 

I read this as ctrl effing and it took me a moment to figure out how fornication factored into this conversation at all.  

I think working the graveyard shift is starting to get to me...

Trevize

The quotes above are broken and I'm  too lazy to fix them. But pendant != pedant, despite what is said by one person on yahoo answers, urbandictionary, and many people who misuse words!

Eld

Trevize said:

The quotes above are broken and I'm  too lazy to fix them. But pendant != pedant, despite what is said by one person on yahoo answers, urbandictionary, and many people who misuse words!

Pretty sure the point of those links was that she was using "pendant" instead of "pedant" intentionally as some sort of joke.

Trevize

Eld said:

Trevize said:

The quotes above are broken and I'm  too lazy to fix them. But pendant != pedant, despite what is said by one person on yahoo answers, urbandictionary, and many people who misuse words!

Pretty sure the point of those links was that she was using "pendant" instead of "pedant" intentionally as some sort of joke.

I'm aware. Doesn't make her right! Just saying.

Citrus

Yue said:

You can call me a pompous pendant for correcting you..

..or say 'thank you', as your mother probably taught you to do as a young child.

If you have ever traveled to a foreign country and attempted to communicate with people in a language that is not your native tongue, you should understand that people who point out mistakes like that are actually doing you a favor and not doing it to make fun of you or to be pedantic. It is no different to me being new to Achaea and having fellow players correct me when I make a statement that shows my ignorance of a given ability or class mechanic, etc. etc.

edit: Also, your log shows your curing system refer to itself as (Svo), so I have to wonder wherefrom you came upon the idea to write it as an acronym in the first place. Second also: there are lots of players for whom English is not a first language. There is no reason to add further confusion to things by haphazardly capitalizing things that ought naught be capitalized.

My mother did teach me to say thank you, to those that deserve it. Not to pompous jerks that have to correct every period, comma, or grammatical error to make themselves feel/look better.

Eld

Wat, how is this still going.