Karavan IDEA!!!

[chuckrobbie]

Thanks Fulminus

When I say "bug Free" I understand and agree with you, but if we could get to a point that a pack has less bugs with each release, it would be like being on the road to Heaven!

I use both L2J and L2JFree (I have 2 Lineage servers plus a WoW server for the past 4 years) and yet bugs that come by default are not present on some servers run by Devs and other knowledgeable owners with a java background. My frustration has always been in trying to match them! In my personal experience, the L2J C4 pack was the best so far with the least bugs (Man I had a great server way back then). Oh those were the days!

I understand also the frustrations you have to put up with, and I certainly don't want to add to them, I truly appreciate everything you have done for the community for free over these many, many past years, and say a BIG thank you and your wonderful team!

A couple of examples from a player's wish list:
1. The manor system - Will this be working someday soon?
2. A few quests dont work properly
3. New Skills not implemented yet - (Some servers use their own formulae, but this will change the game completely and I try to be as original as possible)

Being free, many players tend to hop around from server to server with little sense of loyalty, and it is so maddening to hear..."but server A has it why can't we? This server sucks, I am going back to server A"!! I am sure you have also heard that a million times!! LOL

Gah I wrote novels!
Cheers

[Fulminus]

As things are, developing the server is a large iterative process. Say we have 10 bugs. 3 people are working on them and may take even a month before their solution is tested well enough to commit. Meanwhile, a new feature (or a really old feature that hasn't been implemented yet) comes around. 1 person starts working on it.
Let's say 2 out of the 3 bug fixes are committed. You'll find that those "fixes" have bugs that weren't identified because of lack of testers (even 1 month of intense testing by a small team isn't as good as a week of some testing from all servers that update). So perhaps 1 bugfix needs more work, one is acceptable. Meanwhile, the new feature will make it in and it'll be lacking some info, have some customizations, ect etc etc...So now you again have 3 devs working on bugs, one dev with free time to work on something else. The loop repeats...
Also, there are issues that aren't bugs, like code that works perfectly but is too slow, etc...so fixing those may break other things and so on...

Finally, you have some few admins who are good with Java. They will often identify some bugs and work on them, depending on how much whining they get from their users. Some of those fixes are very custom. Basically, instead of looking for info on how it should work, they just make up something and implement it just to keep the users happy. You may remember before clanhall auctions were implemented, many servers had "auctions working" in various ways that were not really correct. Such customizations may make a server seem better but that server will actually be worse. You don't want that. Some admins make proper fixes...some of them come and share, we test and commit...some of them keep it for themselves and there is nothing we can do about it. Basically, it'd take us less time to fix it on our own from scratch than to look for servers with good custom fixes, request the code, look at the code, make sure that the fix is clean, then test and commit.

Beyond that, if you really want to, you can look for servers with good stuff and ask them for source code.

EDIT: I deleted most of my last paragraph, due to a mistake. In that paragraph I was making a claim like "if they are running a modified server that is publically accessible, they have to share the modified code under GPL". This is NOT true. Quoting wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPL:
Note that the copyleft only applies to the software and not to its output (unless that output is itself a derivative work of the program); for example, a public web portal running a modified derivative of a GPLed content management system is not required to distribute its changes to the underlying software.
The GPL demands that all distributions of the executable are accompanied by code (or offer to send the code upon request). It does not demand that modification for personal use (without distributing binaries) and publically accessible results of the executed code are also accompanied by source code.

[chuckrobbie]

Hehehe
Indeed I do remember the auction issue! Oh how happy we were when that was finally committed!

Any ETA for the Manor system? I know you Guys have been pulling your hair out with this one for years!

Of course, the speed at which NCZ0ft are coming out with their expansions must be nerve racking to say the least, and you are right in the middle of it! I certainly don't envy you

To show my appreciation, I shall be making a donation ASAP.

Come on fellow members...3 cheers for these amazing Lads 'n Lassies! For without them, we would be nowhere!

[Fulminus]

The manor system is almost ready. Just some minor issues need to be worked out. Meanwhile, it should be fairly stable with recent releases, so you can activate it if you want (no promises though ).

And yeah...I don't look forward to CT1...lots of new features are in there. It'll be quite something catching up again...:/ But hey, that's part of the fun, too