News

News ::  Jun 29 2009 9:28:10 pm  -  TC1 updated with SQL engine updates + latest data
Added lot of functionality fixes to the SQL engine, cache file system for when SQL server goes down, and fixed most of the major issues. More details on the SQL project can be found here. Also added latest game data as of June 29 09's backup. The command [savequeue is also accessible to players on TC1. This displays information on the current saving status of the shard. Right now there is a file->SQL conversion in progress so expect big numbers but those should lower over the next few hours as it syncs up.
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News ::  Jun 05 2009 10:21:03 pm  -  SQL Save Engine Launched on TC1
There are still lot of issues to fix with the MySQL engine, but I decided to open it up to public testing on TC1 anyway. There is also a large performance issue that only seems to affect TC2 (private test center) which I still need to fix. This launch was actually to test if the issue would happen on TC1 as well. If you think you find a bug (such as a missing item) post it here. Note that some books may go missing as there are still some issues with certain UTF-16 characters. As I speak there is a conversion occurring to migrate from file to SQL based on the latest backup (last night). From a player point of view the only thing you may really notice is the lack of world saves, and if the server is restarted (once conversion is done) it will go back to it's original state. There is pretty much no visible saves. Every now and then there may be a small lag spike followed by a save message. Some buffer saves sometimes take a few secs but most are 0.25 secs which is not noticeable as run speed is delayed by that much. These saves occur once every few seconds and only save what changes. UPDATE (June 15 09) : Auto account creation has now been enabled on TC1 Note that there is still a lot of work to be done on the account system so results may vary.
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News ::  Jun 01 2009 8:41:54 pm  -  General revamp progress update
I've been doing my best to keep the revamp forum up to date with progress so that is still the primary spot to check for progress. Basically so far I have MySQL working fairly well other then a few issues, one of them is kinda major and is out of our control, but I still have some options, and for now I will work around it. To sum it up, on my local dev shard things are really comming along with minimal errors, still lot of string format stuff to figure out due to the fact that UO uses UTF-16 to complicate things. Some UTF-16 chars don't work well in SQL and is a whole can of worms as far as SQL injection goes as instead of worrying about 255 various chars I have 65535 to worry about, some of which can possibly be used for injections. That stuff must be secured before this even goes to test, let alone live. Now the major issue is that for some reason the performance is piss poor on the test shard. That's .net for you. Bloated crap. My 2 thread program actually has like 20 threads, and one of those threads is taking up all the cpu but it's not even one of my threads, it's .net that throws all that crap in there. Only does it in win2k3. Now this is not directly related to the shard, but may add some delays. I bought a house! So I will be rather busy getting that all setup and what not. The beauty is once I am setup I will have my own peace and quiet and probably be more productive. Also the finances will be very tight. I hope it does not come to that, but I may not even be able to afford to run the shard anymore. That's almost 200 bucks per month out of my 2k that I make. If my calculations are correct I will make it by though. The US dollar has gone down a little so that helps a lot. Now once SQL is ready for production testing to my tastes it will be released on TC1 for public beta. At this point, there is a possibility I actually release it to live before doing any content related fixes, but not sure yet. After this is finalized there will be a constant phase of background testing while we test other new content. Ex: May run into an issue that needs fixing. Next big system will be the property system, and the craft/bod system may also tie into all that as well. After the property system, then we can finally get into the actual content. Things will realy roll once we're into that. The core system revisions are what take long and seem to make it look like no progress is being done but it is after all the foundation of everything else. RunUO is a mess. It really is, so we are only going to fix the worse but try not to waste too much time. TBH had I known what I was getting into I would have just gone C++ and that way we'd also get a performance boost. But what's done is done. Things may be tight, but I think we may possibly be able to meet our deadline of 2010. Just need to keep in mind I'll be really busy with my new house. The actual signoff date is June 26th so at that point the work will begin but there will be lot of preliminary work involved such as meeting with the bank, lawyer, and all that stuff.
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News ::  May 25 2009 10:16:27 pm  -  New accounts disabled
While we understand the shard is not as active as before and is in dire need of players, we have waited months until all the drama has cleared so we can actually concentrate on coding so I'm not willing to add more potential for drama at any given time. There are hackers, spammers, and other troublemakers dying to get in every second and I do not want them to get in. Period. The manual account activation is too tedious so it has also been canceled. With the redrum gang the ice rocker gang (may be same gang) and others constantly hounding our gates, we will not open them until the perimeter is secured to the max. Part of the revamp involves a very intense security audit of all the code, as well as the implementation of extra security measures/engines which will continuously be tweaked as needed. We will get right down to automated packet analysis and generalized situation analysis that will detect weird activities that are not really humanly possible. There is also the possibility of splitting the revamp in several releases, which may possibly involve opening registrations when we feel that enough tracking systems have been put in place and tested. At this point the revamp is on schedule, but it will be a bit more tight then I hoped, so I cannot make any promises at this point.
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News ::  May 14 2009 9:39:58 pm  -  Potential network latency
I have finally decided to perform offsite home backups my most important data for in the case of localized disaster such as a fire, flood, etc. While these things are rare, they can happen. This involves pushing about 50GB worth of data to the server AoV is hosted on so there may be some network latency, though it should be ok as the bottleneck is my DSL upload speed. I expect the initial job to take several days. I'm only backing up the most important data, as if I backup everything it would be nearly 1TB. Hopefully I never need to use those backups.
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News ::  May 08 2009 11:44:05 pm  -  Forum avatars
I just realized when I uploaded the data for all the forum fixes I accidentally deleted all the forum avatars that were uploaded. It looks like my backups have overwritten as I do not have any rotations set for site data as they are simply in place in case of disk failure or other such event. I will double check to see if there are some older backups somewhere but you will probably all have to reupload. Sorry for the inconvenience, and my lack of better backup rotations. :p
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News ::  May 08 2009 9:35:21 pm  -  Officially supporting UOGateway here
Rather then maintain another forum, I decided to setup a section here for UOGateway support and discussion. Death has also done a great job at making a brand new template for the site, which was added today. We struggled for about 3 hours to make it work in IE and called it quits. If you're using IE, just get a real browser and thank me later. Here are some of many options: - FireFox - Opera - Chrome (it's brand new, and it still kicks IE's ass)
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News ::  May 07 2009 8:37:08 pm  -  Forum (not game) registrations now open
I have now open forum registrations back up. There is a bit of live testing required but everything should be good. The following changes were made: - A custom captcha was added, so OCR spam bots that target popular and well known captchas such as the phpbb default, wont work without tweaking them - Email validation has been turned back on, with a 1 hour period to activate. Failure to activate within 1 hour results in account deletation - All new member posts now need to be validated by a moderator, and the moderator will manually disable post validation at their discretion. - Inactive members are not visible in the member list. Lot of spammers just register for the sole purpose of putting a scam site in their profile. These will get deleted before anyone sees them. I may also add a forum section for UOgateway as it will save me from setting up and managing another forum as I wont have to create one on the uogateway site.
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News ::  May 06 2009 8:18:38 pm  -  Ventrilo Server Update
Age of Valor now has a dedicated 50 slot Ventrilo server. I got tired of the previous host dropping the server when ever they felt like it. So I fired them and got a new host with more then quadrupole the slot count and loads of better features. Everything stays the same except the port. vent.uovalor.com:5733 I have also opened the Ventrilo server up to other users and gamers so there is a high possibility that the server will have people in it at all times once the word gets out about the server. No worries about the slots for Age of Valor. Ive dedicated 50 slots just for us. So feel free to talk on. If you were a channel admin, I will need you to log in to the server so I can re-add you to the list.
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News ::  May 03 2009 10:21:13 pm  -  Getting back on track with UO revamp
For those wondering we have not given up on the shard. I've just been busy with UOGateway as it could not really wait (did not want to put a $600 domain to waste) and now that it's fairly settled I've been working on opening forum registrations which is going well, such as coding a custom captcha and a post validation system. For now it will be kinda hackish as I don't want to put too much time into it. I have plans for a full custom forum later on. (http://squirrelbbs.iceteks.com) That's like duke nukem forever, but it WILL come out, eventually. :p Anyway once the forum is reopened to registrations I will then keep working on the SQL which is about 60-70% done I'd say. Hopefully this week I can get back to that. So yeah, right now it's a slow and hard time for the shard due to registrations being closed, but we ARE working on it. We just can't afford to open registrations at this point as there are too many people wanting to attack us, which wastes our time trying to code.
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