Player Housing and Server Crashes
#31
The testing performed last week was unable to produce a server crash using a new, blank database. After further considering the benefits vs the drawbacks of starting over with the furniture database, and after all the work I and others have put into trying to resolve this, I've decided to proceed as planned and remove the furniture database at some point in the not-distant future.

To facilitate this, here is the plan:
1. First, I want to mention you can easily pickup all furniture from your home through an option you have when working with the exterior entrance to your building. I will also remove Vault storage limitations for PCs who will end up with more just a couple dozen pieces of furniture that they need to pickup from their houses. That way you can pickup all furniture from your affected PC's building, and put it in storage until the deadline has passed and the database has been deleted. You will need to PM or e-mail me the exact spelling of the PC(s) name you have with a player-owned building who will need this storage exception.
I do want to mention though that there is a 25-page limit to any chest inventory (a NWN limitation). If you put in more than 25 pages of stuff into a storage vault, you're likely going to lose some of it, and I'd recommend not going much above 20 pages, just in case. So it's still possible that if you have hundreds of furniture objects in your building you'll need to carry some on your PC or find non-vault storage for them elsewhere. If it comes to that, use the vault storage for your heavy furniture and keep the light stuff on you or on your pack slave, horse saddlebags, etc.

2. In addition, I will place a Vault container right outside your affected PC's building entrance for the ~1 week or so before the database will be deleted, and then for ~1 week afterward so you can easily move stuff out of and into your house without bogging down your character too much. However, you will need to PM or e-mail me the exact area and location of your building entrance. A screenshot of your building entrance in relation to other buildings around it will help with this.

3. As an "I'm sorry for all the hours of decorating this will cause you", I am also going to remove the fee associated with redesigning the interior of any player house. So if you decide you want a new building since you're going to have to redecorate it entirely, you'll be able to cycle through and look at all the interior options for your building type, then choose a different interior, at no charge, if you find one you like. Note that if you choose a different interior, any interior lock improvements for your property will be lost though...

To try and prevent any furniture database crash from occurring for another 8+ years, there are going to be some changes to how furniture and player housing is handled that everyone should be aware of:
1. First, due to the results of testing and my own concerns about the lag a heavily-decorated areas can cause, player house interiors will have a limit of 325 furniture objects that can be placed in them once the new database is in place
2. In the past, area furniture remained in the database even after a house was repossessed due to late taxes (typically because a players leaves or is inactive for a long period of time). This has caused the database to bloat as some of these buildings have never been claimed again (in literal real-time years), yet the furniture for them remains. So when moving forward if a house is lost due to late taxes, or if claim to it is relinquished, furniture within it will be immediately removed from the database.

Before I set a timeline for getting stuff out of your houses, I'll leave this open for questions anyone might have, or if I need to provide further clarification on the plan leading up to, and after, the removal of the furniture database for player housing.
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#32
Items will still be needed to be removed from containers before picking up so that will take up pages.

Since there will be a limit anyway as to how much furniture you can have, I was thinking maybe people just storing items that were in containers in the vault chest.

Wiping the houses clean and maybe give everyone lets say $5000 -10000 gold as a start to buy furnishings again?
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#33
You'll have a week to deal with it, extra vault space, a convenient vault chest, plus your own inventory and those of any pack horses, pack slaves, or your friend's inventory. Plus if you have more than 325 pieces in your house you should be able to get some coin trimming it down. The only reason anyone will end up needing to repurchase furnishings is inactivity.
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#34
(12-08-2015, 06:37 PM)DarkRanger Wrote: You'll have a week to deal with it, extra vault space, a convenient vault chest, plus your own inventory and those of any pack horses, pack slaves, or your friend's inventory. Plus if you have more than 325 pieces in your house you should be able to get some coin trimming it down. The only reason anyone will end up needing to repurchase furnishings is inactivity.

I am aware and have no problems with what Thayan is proposing. I was just suggesting a possible alternative plus also reminding people to remove items from storage first.
Caramiriel:Retired
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Rimeth: Merchant of Bezantur
Marister (dead) -Ranger -Robin Hood of Thay (death marked for pissing off a Daeron.)
Vil'a'w'en Mel'for'm - Blighter of Moander
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#35
(12-08-2015, 06:31 PM)Animayhem Wrote: Wiping the houses clean and maybe give everyone lets say $5000 -10000 gold as a start to buy furnishings again?

There is over 100k in furniture in Kalos' tower so 10k is not gonna cut it.

I would prefer to grab tons of bags, dump the furniture and start filling bags. Then I'll just stand there til the DB is wiped and server is reset. Of course being so overburdened Shebali can't walk, help will be needed when time to put it all back. One to stand outside with the furniture piled at his feet (so the server doesn't "clean" it away with the script) the other to shuttle items in, placing them in one or two rooms just to get them in the house. I've done this method twice now and it works wonderfully.
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#36
Pretty much the last thing I want is for DMs to be doling out money for reimbursement because, like the great server crash of '14, that reimbursement could go on indefinitely. If going that route (which we aren't), I can see players returning months from now and hearing of this furniture wipe in the house they were (barely...or not even) maintaining and wanting gold for lost furniture that they will have ample opportunity to save if they are even "kind of" around and paying attention to the forums. There is also going to be an in-game journal notification about this as well.

So this announcement today is also partly intended to give not only active players, but also "non-regular" players advance warning that they'll need to figure out what they're going to do with their houses and the furniture within. Because any player should not expect or need any DM assistance unless something goes horribly, horribly wrong for them when trying to work through the ~2 week period leading up to and after the furniture database deletion.

As for the items in housing storage containers taking up space in your inventory as well, I think now is a very good time for everyone with a lot of junk in house storage containers to reacquaint themselves with the Inventory Size, Persistent Storage, and the Problems of Item Hording thread that is stickied in the Announcement subforum. I cannot strongly enough urge people to sell what you really don't need. Right now the storage database is over 20 MB and in a week's time can grow to almost 30 MB before the weekly shrink. But almost every week, even after being shrunk down, it continues to grow. While we haven't had a zulkir seizure in a long time which results in that dreaded item storage database wipe, if many people continue hording a bunch of items in persistent storage it will happen sooner rather than later. So please, everyone, do your part and keep the stuff you store persistently to a reasonable volume of items.
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#37
I'm considering January 2 or 3 as the date that the furniture database removal will occur. Is there anyone reading this who has a building and will *not* be able to remove furniture from their building before then? There's no need to respond if it does work for you. Otherwise, if there are few/no people who can't get furniture out of their building by then, I will try to get the storage limitation exceptions and vault containers placed outside PC buildings either just before December 24 or after December 27 at the latest for those who ask for them.
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#38
(12-09-2015, 03:26 PM)Thayan Wrote: I'm considering January 2 or 3 as the date that the furniture database removal will occur.

Will we get the ability to place furniture back after that wipe?
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#39
(12-09-2015, 04:27 PM)MoreThanThree Wrote:
(12-09-2015, 03:26 PM)Thayan Wrote: I'm considering January 2 or 3 as the date that the furniture database removal will occur.

Will we get the ability to place furniture back after that wipe?
Yes. See first post on this page.

Thayan Wrote:2. In addition, I will place a Vault container right outside your affected PC's building entrance for the ~1 week or so before the database will be deleted, and then for ~1 week afterward so you can easily move stuff out of and into your house without bogging down your character too much. However, you will need to PM or e-mail me the exact area and location of your building entrance. A screenshot of your building entrance in relation to other buildings around it will help with this.
Caramiriel:Retired
Garbage:Retired
Rimeth: Merchant of Bezantur
Marister (dead) -Ranger -Robin Hood of Thay (death marked for pissing off a Daeron.)
Vil'a'w'en Mel'for'm - Blighter of Moander
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#40
Having heard no objections to the January 2 date, we'll be going with that. All homeowners should have any furniture they want to save out of their buildings by 12:00 PM Central time on January 2, 2016.

Anyone who has not yet done so and wants the storage limitation to be temporarily suspended for their PC, and/or a vault container placed outside the door to their building, should get me the *exact* spelling of their PC's name and the location of their building door no later than December 22. That's one week from today.
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