[Balanor]

Thanks to help from some guys on the scripting forums, I will be modifying the overland area transitions to ensure that additional action being caused by using the movement keys (or anything else) will not be affecting the jump to the next overland area.

In addition, since the root cause to the wrong side of the area jumping continues to elude any effort to find it, I am going to implement basically a ‘mask’ to the problem. This mask will be that when you travel an overland league, you will notice your screen quickly fade to black, and once you arrive it will slowly fade from black. Personally, I feel this gives a more cinematic and appropriate feel to having traveled a league and arrived at the next location, BUT it also provides a few seconds for the system to check if you are not near the point where you should have jumped while your screen is black, and then jump you to it if you are not there (and alert me with details about your travel, etc).

So the bottom line is that now several changes have been made which either should address the problem of jumping to the wrong side of the map, or else mask the problem and jump you back to the correct side - which you hopefully won’t even notice. Hopefully.

These changes will go into effect tomorrow morning, and after that time I am still particularly interested to hear if anyone encounters the problem of jumping to the wrong side of the next overland area.

[Alfa Kilo Nine One]

I just got jumped to the wrong side of the map.

12:06 GMT+1
Me (on a mount) + shackled NPC
Moved using keyboard and was running
Travelling from Tyraturos to Amruthar (west)
Was not moved back to the correct side of the map

EDIT - Actually I was wrong, I was not moved to the wrong side of the map, I did not transfer area at all but I did receive the message about travelling one league to the west. Had to relog to successfully transfer area in that direction (other directions seemed to work without issue)

[Balanor]

So your issue was unlike what we have seen before. In looking through the debug information, I see you were able to exit the area to the south and return back to it, but even then, you were unable to go west. This was because the system was apparently unable to assemble the correct location string to which you needed to be send and therefore could not find the correct point to send you. Unfortunately, my debug information did not provide what location string was being passed - just that it could not find the location point to which you should have been jumped. I have now included that information to hopefulyl determine where exactly that is gonig wrong. But again - this isn't really the situation we were seeing before with people getting jumped to the wrong side of the *next* area.

So far I have seen only one occurrence where the 'masking' of the problem has actually had to fire since the update on 2/8 - and that was only because the PC was slightly beyond 5 meters away from their desintation location point.

PS - Please remember to provide a character name here as well to help me more easily find the location in the logs.

[Muse]

I agree with Wing's statement about the letter keys on the keyboard. I use WSAD all the time in walking, running, and travelling. I'm on Jay Asher. And when I travelling on roads and I use the letter keys to move in between them, And lately i've been glitching ALOT. It'll either not send me to the next area but say "You've travelled one league xxxxx" OR it'll send me the next area, but send me to the other side of the area I enter. And i discovered when i use the mouse for the transitions, it's alot better.
I mean I still use WSAD to move but i use the mouse for transitions only travelling wise.

---

P.S. I've done an experiment. If you use WSAD in area transitions, one or the other of the glitches will USUALLY (not always, but it's common) happen. The only safe road i've experienced no glitches was from Bezantur to Tyraturos, likewise from Tyraturos to Bezantur.

[Hellstrom]

I had a problem traveling overland earlier today (about 5:55 pm PST). It seemed to be different than what's been described above. I was using the mouse to move, not WASD.

Azel was travelling south from Eltabbar to Tyraturos. He was on the road, I think it was 2 areas north of Tyr and 1 area east. He was repeatedly unable to transition south to continue along the road. Every time he tried he saw the following in the server messages pane: "Script random_areas OID: 80002ae5 Tag: S_OverlandTravel Error: Too many instructions".

Possible contributing factors:
-He was dragging two slaves, one of which died on the approach to the transition
-He was being chased by two creatures. As he approached the transition, he didn't leave so he ran east along the southern border and both creatures transitioned south.

I tried the transition a number of times, in different sections of the southern border and failed each time. As a workaround I traveled 1 west, then south to catch the road again.

[Balanor]

Rinith/Everyone - I need specifics, not generalizations. Use the template that Wings provided if you need a guideline for posting something helpful.

Hellstrom - I tested that earlier in the evening with Captain_Chaos. After going through the logs and doing further checking, the problem for that issue was because someone logged out in an overland area previously in the day (probably because she was lost) and the area never got properly reset so it was always marked for that particular overland area. When that happens, that causes a big problem because there are only a set number of templates per area type - in this case it was a road area with the road running from west to north. That specific type of road (west to north) only has two templates. So when the other one was in use, there was no area to fallback on and the script got caught in an endless loop trying to find an available area. That is what caused the problem.

That particular problem has been resolved with the reset I just did about a half hour ago so that 1) if someone logs out in an area -ANY area- that area *will* now be properly reset and in the case of overland areas it will be released so it can be reused again and 2) I have modified the overland travel system so if it loops through the maximum number of area templates for an area it will fall back and select one from our largest category - the plains templates. If that should happen though, I also have it written to the logs so if it starts occurring more often I can add more area templates of a specific type.

[WingsOfStardust]

Just a gentle reminder!

Thought I might make a copy/paste list for those who want to have an easier time filling in the blanks and write what's relevant. (By personal experience!)

Time:

Character name:

Account name:

Type of tile (Road, plains, forest etc):

Traveling direction (North, west, east, south):

Jumped to (North, west, east, south):

Error message ("Wait before traveling another league..."):

Closest Static Area (Town, Keep, city etc):

Mouse (to move) or keyboard:

Party member(s):

Fights in previous tile:

Tried standing still to jump back:

Additional information:

Edit: Added another line. "Closest Static Area".

[Balanor]

So there has finally been a minor breakthrough in regard to the less pervasive problem:

1. When traveling overland, you get jumped to the start location and receive an OOC error message indicating a problem

After this occurred multiple times yesterday, I was finally able to consistently recreate it and fix that particular cause this problem occurring. It’s possible this may also fix other oddities from occurring as well.


If anyone is interested in the details and to show you just how important (and extremely frustrating) the minor details are, the problem for this cause of the OOC jump back to the start location was repro’ed by doing the following:
1. Leave a static area that has a clickable transition to the overland. I did my testing from Tyraturos - Central, for example.
2. After you arrive in the next area, do not travel anywhere else and log out.
3. Upon login, attempt to move in any direction from that area and you will get the ‘OOC Apologies’ error and be jumped back to central Tyraturos.

The problem here was that the clickable overland area transitions were deleting the persistent overland area marker on the PC immediately after it was set. But if the PC would travel another league and then logout, the persistent area marker would only then be properly set on the PC - so then a logout/login would result in the PC being correctly (re)jumped to the overland area after they would log back in. This problem has likely been an issue since around the time that horses were first introduced to the Thay module - so probably 3 years or so.

Due to some of the problems we have been seeing that appear to occur around static areas (cities, castles, etc), this issue could have been affecting other things as well. I am by no means closing the books on any of the overland travel issues, but this was a long-sought-after ‘win’ for fixing one of the most long-running problems we’ve had with the system.

[kta]

This is great news!

KTA

[Balanor]

Just as a heads-up, this thread/problem has been moved to the Tavern for collaboration purposes only. If you do have a problem with overland travel, you may post it either here or in a private problem report in the PR forum.

As an update though, since the latest change on February 20, the increased overland travel logging that has been running has not reported problems with the overland travel system - whether it has been getting jumped to the wrong side of the area to which a person is traveling, or the 'OOC Apologies' issue that jumps a player back to Tyraturos. Again though, I'm not saying the issues *are* 100% resolved, but at least from information I am capturing in the logs and the lack of new reports in this thread, it *appears* things have gotten better. However, if you do encounter an overland area problem, please post again with as many details as you can think of.