Daisypark

[jjohn]

Daisypark is down due to reparation work being done in my living room. I expect it will be back online by thursday, 10/17. Sorry for the non-existent notice.

[jjohn]

I started the 14-day tournament. I think I'm going to catch heat for this, but I deleted all the accounts. It seems to be that players need to be on a level playing field for tournaments. Just putting the game in tournament mode did not reset luck, rankings, BP coffins, hit points, etc. How do other admins handle this problem? I wonder if it might be possible to have an opt-in tournament. Players that want to test their mettle will be busted to a rank beginner while those that want to continue playing in open-mode may do so. Of course open-mode players won't be able to attack tournament players. This would get weird.


Some other changes:
<ul>
* Initial luck: 20
* All of stock events, risks and news_blurbs have been removed. All my custom modifications are particularly stingy about giving out luck.
[/list]



Hopefully, this won't make the game suck. :-)

[jjohn]

Other changes:
<ul>
* Reduced top seller luck bonus to 5
* Added very low ticket soft sell items
[/list]

[mimifish]

With your current luck setup, players can only pray that they will not get any luck events. You can boost your luck up to 40 by buying Yang's for yourself, but that's it. Even for the top player, he won't have top luck near the end of the game, and the rest of players can only pray. Not a very good move in my opinion, especially in a server that people often get 5 to 10 luck events per day.

As for the very low ticket soft sell items, they are not any better than high priced soft sell items for reaching within $50, $100, or even perfect sale. Players might be pissed if they lost a customer while trying sell a $3 pepsi. http://www.rtsoft.com/ib3/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[jjohn]

mimifish, thanks for your feedback. Daisypark is sort of a laboratory where I tweak FQ to make it better. Of course, that doesn't always work.

Risk events should be risky. Yes, I agree that the current setting is a little draconian (today I got screwed on a number of risks). That's the essence of gambling. I don't think any player, winning or not, should have anything close to a 100% luck -- where's the fun in that? Do the games in Vegas offer the player anything close to 100% odds? 50%? Yet, I love playing blackjack in Vegas. When you win, it's a tremenous rush. When you lose, you just suck it. http://www.rtsoft.com/ib3/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

The daisypark games do not produce the daily BP scores of stock FQ games, but that's OK. I will probably crank down the probability of risks to 15% (from %25) for the next tournament. I may crank down the turns from 25 to 20 too. It is true that I enjoy seeing the luck events (I spent a lot of time on them). I would love to see the risks re-worked in such a way that they allow players to come from behind (and make winning players lose). Again, risks should be risky.

As for the lower priced items, you may be right. The problem I was trying to address was that customers rarely have budgets in even fifty or hundred dollar intervals. It seemed like providing very small ticket items would be a way to get more "perfect" sales. Part of me wants to have more control over what items of offered for sell. Can this be a function of psychology? Wouldn't a perceptive salesman be more likely to offer items that won't excede the customer's budget? I'm just spitballing here. If I get more negative feedback, I'll certainly remove them for the next contest.

Thanks again for your comments.

Quote[/b] (jjohn @ Nov. 07 2002,08:23)]mimifish, thanks for your feedback. Daisypark is sort of a laboratory where I tweak FQ to make it better. Of course, that doesn't always work.

Risk events should be risky. Yes, I agree that the current setting is a little draconian (today I got screwed on a number of risks). That's the essence of gambling. I don't think any player, winning or not, should have anything close to a 100% luck -- where's the fun in that? Do the games in Vegas offer the player anything close to 100% odds? 50%? Yet, I love playing blackjack in Vegas. When you win, it's a tremenous rush. When you lose, you just suck it. http://www.rtsoft.com/ib3/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

The daisypark games do not produce the daily BP scores of stock FQ games, but that's OK. I will probably crank down the probability of risks to 15% (from %25) for the next tournament. I may crank down the turns from 25 to 20 too. It is true that I enjoy seeing the luck events (I spent a lot of time on them). I would love to see the risks re-worked in such a way that they allow players to come from behind (and make winning players lose). Again, risks should be risky.

As for the lower priced items, you may be right. The problem I was trying to address was that customers rarely have budgets in even fifty or hundred dollar intervals. It seemed like providing very small ticket items would be a way to get more "perfect" sales. Part of me wants to have more control over what items of offered for sell. Can this be a function of psychology? Wouldn't a perceptive salesman be more likely to offer items that won't excede the customer's budget? I'm just spitballing here. If I get more negative feedback, I'll certainly remove them for the next contest.

Thanks again for your comments.
[QUOTE]

I do agree that PSY should play a more active role - currently it only plays a small portion of the game. As PSY increases so should the possiblity of guessing customers $ in pocket, increase the luck possibility, treat customers proper so they dont get offended and also insuring that thier resistance lowers and possibly not going over a customers budget, but only if the the PSY level was extremely high (? 15-25 ?)

Currently a player need only have PSY at 4 to be really effective if they are experienced in the game. The players seem to focus on attacking others which I dont think is the main theme of the game.

Other parts of the game need to be utilized to be really effective, church, hospital, Di-Mart, Yangs and Spirit U. Perhaps, When these other elements come more into the game, the game will focus on managing a Funeral Parlor instead of just attack your opponant.

[wartortle]

I agree, the PSY and customers become a sideshow after a while. Having said that though, if your PSY is at/above level 15, you never get angry customers coming through the door.

[Seth]

Quote[/b] ] do agree that PSY should play a more active role - currently it only plays a small portion of the game. As PSY increases so should the possiblity of guessing customers $ in pocket, increase the luck possibility, treat customers proper so they dont get offended and also insuring that thier resistance lowers

High levels of Psy *does* do most of these things already. There are 4 or 5 things Psy can do total.

[jjohn]

Islander bet the pants/skirts off the players on Daisypark. The next 14-day Tournament starts Monday, nov 18. Soft sell items below $50 have been removed. Risks will occur %15 of the time. Top seller bonus is set at 10. Base turns are set to 10. Alliances are encouraged to improve luck.

Let's GET IT ON! *http://www.rtsoft.com/ib3/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/laugh.gif

[mimifish]

Quote[/b] ]Islander bet the pants/skirts off the players on Daisypark.

Well, Islander is most likely not going to play in your next 14-tournament, mainly because he experienced strange IE crashes in the past few days and could hardly finish his turns without interruption. He was not sure where the problem came from, his internet connection or IE settings or your tweak.

Besides, as mimifish, he's probably going to go back to the test server to meet some old friends. http://www.rtsoft.com/ib3/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[jjohn]

It would be remarkable if editing risks, events and whatnot could crash flash (and then EI). I have had the client crash on me while I was then only one logged in and my character Pip was at the bank.

Oh well.

[mimifish]

Well I decided to give your short 10-turn game a try. You should know what name I am playing with. http://www.rtsoft.com/ib3/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif *BTW, go to your server to see a very important post.

As for the crashing, I don't know if it's something to do with some possible firewall on the LAN in my working place that occasionally crash the flash. But you (and/or Seth) did add some extra flash to the original game. I don't know if the new flash has some weird things. I did notice that the game usually crashed when a flash animation was loading unsuccessfully. It crashed on both computers I had in my work (running on Chinese version of Win98 and Widows2000), but as far as I can remember it did not crash on my computer at home (WindowsXP English version). So, maybe I should check if I have the latest flash version.

The most weird thing is that the crash only started a few days ago... http://www.rtsoft.com/ib3/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/alien.gif

[Seth]

A woman emailed me the same thing not long ago, "My flash client has started crashing from just a few days ago, did you change something."

I told her no. I really have no idea. I have not changed the flash or .exe since right after Flash 6 was released and didn't work with FQ, I did an emergency patch to fix that and that was it.

[mimifish]

Most likely it has to have something to do with the new add-ons. I never experienced such a crash in other server(s). Maybe you can ask jjohn to send you or tell you all he changed. Is it possible that some of the new flash animations are not completely compatible with FQ server program or something else weird?

[jjohn]

I haven't added any flash (I don't have Flash MX). I can't draw to save my life. The only modifications have been to the text files. I have used flash files that I found lying around in the FQ public/flash directory. I figured those were fair game. That said, it is remarkably easy to make typos and the like that may be throwing the FQ engine for a loop. Debugging this is tricky, since I can't run a debugger on the server without the source code. However, I have zipped up all my currently loaded files and made them available here (http://151.203.46.214:81/jjohn-11-19-2002.zip). If you can spot the syntax errors, please post the the fixes here. I'm sure the last thing anyone expects is a bug in a windows program. http://www.rtsoft.com/ib3/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

Isolating the Flash crashes is difficult. I have seen my sessions crash when the winning money bag animation comes
up (a stock file). I have crashed at the Bank, a game element I can't touch. I have crashed in other places too. I recall that my crashes began after I rolled up my XP box to the latest Winders and IE patches from Microsoft. Again, this maybe be entirely concidental. *

Daisypark is also behind a Linksys firewall. Earlier this week (or last week), I patched the firmware in it (a serious exploit was discovered for the firmwear I had). The FQ server is in the DMZ so that it can talk to the licensing server correctly. The box is a 333 Celeron running Win 98 SE v. 4.10.2222 A.

With any luck, FQ V.1.0 will quell the cranky Flash client.

[Seth]

Well I'm playing on Daisy Park now and have not had any disconnects. I'm on W2K with Flash 6, have not upgraded for a while so there might be a newer flash 6 version out there.

If it is an XP/ie/flash combination that's pretty bad.. ugh I hate when stuff just doesn't work. Oh well, I have XP here so I'll do some tests on it.

[mimifish]

It's not XP/IE/Flash combo problem. In fact, I cannot play it under either Windows 2000 Chinese Edition or Windows 98 Chinese Edition. I CAN play Mr. Brown's server under those 2 machine. However I can play Daisypark at home using XP home edition (English version). It appears that I am not the only one who experienced some strange behavior.

Is it a virus? http://www.rtsoft.com/ib3/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/devil.gif Or the Daisypark server computer has a virus! http://www.rtsoft.com/ib3/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/alien.gif

[jjohn]

Quote[/b] (mimifish @ Nov. 20 2002,23:35)]Is it a virus? *Or the Daisypark server computer has a virus!

There is no malicious code on the Daisypark machine. I have strip that machine bare and turned off all networking services except for FQ (although sometimes VNC is on too). What you and I are experiencing are application failures due to unknown causes. Is it bad flash? Bad scripting? The only way to solve the problem is to identify it.

One clue to the problem is that other machines, running stock FQ don't seem to have as many client crashes. This does point to something screwy on Daisypark. I have posted the modifications that I have made and that are currently running on Daisypark. These include my own events and risks as well as commenting out the stock events and risks. You are encouraged to "spot the bug" and help eliminate the problem. I have also created a bug report form for Daisypark users to report crashes.

Magically, V1.0 may fix these problems and we can worry about sticking it to grieving customers rather than hunt computer bugs.

[jjohn]

Why you should care about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

The machine that I used to run Funeral Quest has lost all its data. It was running Windows 98. During the reboot that occurs after installing the lastest service packs, I was greeted by an ugly DOS message accusing me of violating the DMCA. There was no way around this message, it appeared to be installed on the master boot record (just as "old skool" DOS viruses used to do). When I rebooted the machine with Win95 rescue disk, fdisk reported that my partition was changed to NOVELL. Although I tried several recovery methods (I used to have to deal with broken DOS boxes a lot before I became a Unix hack), I was forced to remove the existing hard drive partitions, destroying all the data on that machine.

I was accused, judged and prosecuted by Microsoft's updating software. I had no chance to plead my case, nor recourse to the punishment. In fact, I do have a license for the copy of Win98 that was running. This point is moot now, of course. The DMCA allows large corporations, such as Microsoft, to assume control of my personal property. A more reasonable approach for Microsoft to have taken is, on determining that my machine had an invalid license, to refuse to install the software. Although that still would have angered me, I would not have lost my (and my player's) data.

And this all happened because I was installing patches to fix Microsoft's bug-ridden software.

This is not an urban legend. This happened tonight, at 9:45 EST 12/30/2002. Whether I like Microsoft's software or not, the destruction of MY intellectual property has galvanized my opinion about the DMCA and companies that abuse their customers under the guise of protecting their business. This isn't healthy development for America or business in general.

To more learn about the fight against the DMCA, take a look at the Electronic Frontier Foundation's page about it (http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/).

In the meantime, I've cobbled together another system to host Daisypark's FQ game. Those angered by the needless interruption of their game should direct their wrath towards eliminating the DMCA once and for all.

UPDATE: I was hoping to run FQ under Linux using Wine. That *nearly* worked, but the server choked when trying to seen the flash client down the pipe. Then I install FQ on a win2K VM that was hosted on Linux. That looked promising, but began crashing regularly with any kind of use.
I'm install NT 4.0 on the old Daisypark machine. With luck, that will be stable enough. Seth, consider developing your next game in cross-platform scripting language pleasepleaseplease *http://www.rtsoft.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/laugh.gif

[jjohn]

For the first time in weeks, I have a little time to work with FQ. I have set a new virtual machine (via vmware) that's hosting FQ. I hope the performance adequate. Enjoy.

I don't know if you have found out more about this in the intervening months, but since nobody has posted anything, I felt like I should post lest some be mislead by your experience to believe that the DCMA or Micro$haft had anything to do with it.

You were infected with the Dangit I can't find the name of it anymore but i had to remove it from several systems at the sites I'm responsible for. It put that up there to stirr up controversy. It's a politcal virus. Anyway, search on google and you should find the name of the virus. :/ I'm supposed to be working, so I can't take the time to find it right now. http://www.rtsoft.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/laugh.gif

[jjohn]

Quote[/b] (Guest @ Feb. 14 2003,2:21)]I don't know if you have found out more about this in the intervening months, but since nobody has posted anything, I felt like I should post lest some be mislead by your experience to believe that the DCMA or Micro$haft had anything to do with it.

You were infected with the Dangit I can't find the name of it anymore but i had to remove it from several systems at the sites I'm responsible for. It put that up there to stirr up controversy. It's a politcal virus. Anyway, search on google and you should find the name of the virus. :/ I'm supposed to be working, so I can't take the time to find it right now. *http://www.rtsoft.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/laugh.gif
Ah! Well that makes sense. Thanks for the pointer.

[InsanityBoy]

Try as I may
I just can't seem to play
This server crashes IE
Does it only happen to me?

[InsanityBoy]

YaY I got on the server
Boo Everytime I go on the Map it crashes (well i say every time, I only mean 6 times)
So I can't buy or visit
o well redink1 has prolly already won http://www.rtsoft.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[InsanityBoy]

o wait nevermind
i was trying in 2K, so I tried XP, nope, so I tried 98, bingo! http://www.rtsoft.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/laugh.gif

Sometimes I am able to log in, sometimes I'm not (the box where you enter name & password doesn't appear). Whenever I log in, the game freezes as soon as I reach my desk. Occasionally I'm able to wait for clients; if so, the freeze invariably happens when the first client is standing there —*and the next time I log on I get a message about having fainted. I've been having occasional difficulties logging in to the other FQ servers as well, which is usually solved by switching browser (IE/Mozilla/NS7), but this kind of freeze I haven't seen elsewhere, and it happens regardless of browser. Is it a Mac thing - I run OS 8 at work and OS X at home - perhaps?

[InsanityBoy]

It's a weirdy crazy magic bytes thing

I'm up on all the technical jargon http://www.rtsoft.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/laugh.gif

Ooooooooh! * * http://www.rtsoft.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[Death of Rats]

I tried to join the new Daisypark game this morning, but it crashed my IE on the loading page. Hmmm, Maybe Windows XP does stand for Xtra Problems after all. (Truthfully, in the three months that I've been running XP, this is the first time I've ever had any "odd" problems with any of the programs.) Anybody got a hint (besides reverting to an older Windows)? Should I try netscape (if it's available... Haven't used that since I stopped using Macs in the 9th grade.)?

[Néa]

Yes, same here —*and this was incidentally not one of the problems I encountered yesterday. (I was able to log in and play, finally, last night.) So it's not an XP thing... and hopefully it will pass.

When the game works, it's great *http://www.rtsoft.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/laugh.gif

[Edited to add: It crashes Mozilla, too, today.]

[jjohn]

Tonight, I'm moving Daisy off my DSL line and on to a T1. *Not only will this make the game more pleasant for y'all, but I suspect that the "magic byte" problem will disappear. *I'm hopeful that this will be the case. *I've been busy with non-fq related programming lately, but I'd like to get my hands wet with FQ scripting. *I suspect that Seth is either working on a new game or perhaps a new FQ update. *In any case, I wanted to thank you all for continuing to play daisypark even with its rather poor quality of service. *I hope that this "upgrade" will fix the problem.

On a technical note, daisypark is a win98 SE Virtual Machine that runs on a Linux host running VMWare workstation. *VMWare is very cool software. *There's also a little VNC action thrown in to the mix for good measure. :-)

[update: *The file transfer didn't happen last night due to some fat-fingering by me. I'll try to get daisy up tomorrow. *The file is too large to move while I need the bandwidth for work.]

[jjohn]

Daisypark is running on the new server. I hope this solves some of the problems we saw while the machine was running of my DSL line.

[jjohn]

From the Deathsville Tribune's Metro section:



<blockquote>
Area church begins Bingo Night

&laquo; Deathsville (AP) *In a move of financial inspiration, Father Smyth of Deathsville's First Church of the Holy Cow has declared every night to be Bingo Night. *The move comes after years of dwindling contributions at the offering plate. *Father Smyth entreats locals of all faiths to come and "play bingo for Jesus."

Those interested in picking up a few extra wood tags should make their way the Church. *But hurry. *Already Bingo Night has attracted a rough element. *Teams of elderly ladies have staked out permanent seats close to the bingo balls.

"N-5! *Come on, N-5, you dirty sonva-[explitive deleted]," exclaimed Ethel Peterson, a bingo regular at the church. *"Who do I have to [explicit sex act deleted] to get a B-1?" said another exasperated bingo player.

"All of my flock are welcome at the bingo tables," said Father Smyth. *"As long as they have at least two wood tags." &raquo;
</blockquote>
</p>



Thanks to Seth for answering my silly questions and rapidly fixing a bug (that doesn't affect this mod). * Also, thanks to Dan Wilma for leading the charge into FQ scripting. *While I did look at the Casino mod for inspiration, Bingo Night is my own twisted idea of a good time. *:-D



The code for this will be release soon, I hope. *More details to follow.

I think I may go on DP if it's there and check it out.

COME ON GET DAISY PARK BACK UP PLEASE!!!!

[jjohn]

It's up. Is the licensing server down? The URL for daisypark is
edith.careersearch.net (http://edith.careersearch.net/).

[jjohn]

Daisypark is down until Monday, I think. A reboot went astray. I think I need to beef up the hardware. Bummer.

[jjohn]

Daisypark is back up. *It's a new machine now. *Much faster. *Added new items: body armor and brass knuckles. *Enjoy.

[Fakeblood]

Blah. The one time I have a chance to get on DP is when it's down...

[jjohn]

Quote[/b] (Fakeblood @ June 25 2003,11:54)]Blah. The one time I have a chance to get on DP is when it's down...

Sorry about that. *There was a MAC address conflict. *Weird. *It's up and running again.

[eechick]

Just trying to figure out what the deal is with the clock on DP. The days are like 30 hours long.

[jjohn]

Yes. The clock is slow. So times, I've had to "goose it." Such is the life of a Virtual Machine.

[eechick]

OK. Thanks for responding so quickly.

Sorry for picking on you ee

[Tuttle]

Quote[/b] (jjohn @ July 07 2003,11:02)]Yes. The clock is slow. So times, I've had to "goose it." Such is the life of a Virtual Machine.
It's been ages since I used VMware, but isn't there an option to link the VM's clock to the real system clock and avoid the drift?

[jjohn]

Quote[/b] (Tuttle @ July 11 2003,8:31)]It's been ages since I used VMware, but isn't there an option to link the VM's clock to the real system clock and avoid the drift?

I haven't seen that option on my version (3.x). *I don't want to run a real windows box. *VM works well enough, although the win98 VM is probably less than ideal. *Perhaps I'll create a win2K VM for the next release of FQ.

I was away this last week. *It appears FQ crashed at some point. *I had to "soft boot" the machine. *It will be available soon.

[Tuttle]

It's on the Other tab of VMWare Tools.
http://www.vmware.com/support/ws3/doc/ws32_newguesta12.html

[jjohn]

Quote[/b] (Tuttle @ July 18 2003,5:33)]It's on the Other tab of VMWare Tools.
http://www.vmware.com/support/ws3/doc/ws32_newguesta12.html
Ah! That's probably why I missed it. Let the synching begin!

[outsider]

Just wanted to say that the 30 day tourney seems like a fantastic idea for Daisypark. It will be my first attempt at a 30 day tourney. Also gotta compliment you on the implementation of the "Father from the church" giving players a referral. Thats a great idea for helping parity imho.
yee haw.
Outsider

[jjohn]

Quote[/b] (outsider @ Oct. 26 2003,9:32)]Just wanted to say that the 30 day tourney seems like a fantastic idea for Daisypark. It will be my first attempt at a 30 day tourney. Also gotta compliment you on the implementation of the "Father from the church" giving players a referral. Thats a great idea for helping parity imho.
yee haw.
Outsider


30 day tourneyments are the default. I like having short "sprints" of 14 days because that's not too much of a time commitment for most and new players can join the game readily. In 30 day tourneys, you need to join the game within the first few days or you'll have little hope of doing well.

I'm happy you like the free turns. It does help to randomize the outcomes of tourneys. I was working on creating an advertising feature that players could buy to increase their turns. Perhaps I'll finish it off some day.

[jjohn]

Howdy.

Daisypark is down for a bit. *It appears that the whole VM crashed (not just FQ which does happen from time to time). *This hasn't happened before today and oddly, today was also the first time I was asked to intervene in a player feud. *Now, it would be quite a leap to suggest that someone DOS'ed my very humble Win98 server because I asked them them to stop behaving like an ass on my system. *It would take a very dark mind indeed to believe that any user of a freely provided online game would feel the need to break said system to "get even." If I thought that was the case, I'd be really angry and sad.

Instead, I like to think happy thoughts! So I'll assume that the crash is purely coincidental and enjoy all the moments I spend on this Sunday night patching a stupid Win98 box so that it won't be "crashed" again. *Because that's a much better use of my time than creating new FQ mods.

Onward and upward.

[jjohn]

A few notes about Daisypark. First is that there is a forum for discussing daisypark-related issues:

Aliens, Aliens, Aliens BBS (http://aliensaliensaliens.com/bbs/)

The second note is that due to some sloppy programming, the mod_weapons add-on fails to reduce the players back to their original HP/Strength when the items have worn out. I have corrected this problem in the latest archive:

mod_weapons.zip (http://aliensaliensaliens.com/~jjohn/fq/mod_weapons.zip)

[jjohn]

FQ on Daisypark is likely to be down this weekend until Monday. I won't have physical access to the machine to reboot it until then.

Sorry for the inconvenience.