in game speedwalker

Irruel

I don't recall what thread this began in, but @oleis called for suggestions.
People apparently want to use the in game speedwalker, and it reduces load on the server not to be spamming all those directions, but we all love our wormholes, wings blah blah - and the in game pathfinding won't ever be able to include those things.

Solution?
Allow us to:
path go n,se,we,u,s,s,s,s,w
That way we can use our own mappers to determine the best path - including wormholes etc - and the in game speedwalker to do the actual movement.

We'd still need gallop/dash to be included, though, for it to get plenty of use.

Ashmer

This idea gets the minimalist, cleanliness-obsessed coder in me all hot and bothered.

Oleis

I do really like this. Let me make sure it's possible and suss out some guidelines.

Ashmer

I love that @Oleis actually uses the expression "suss out" in standard conversation. I'm probably just glad I'm not the only one. <.<

Moirean

You are not riding something capable of galloping. We'll walk like normal!
You start speedwalking.

Could you have a config, maybe, to not autowalk if not mounted and just give a message about not being mounted? I know that I, myself, am lazy, and have a trigger to recall/mount if I try to gallop when not mounted, with my current mapper. It also means that I can dismount and just use go instead of go gallop, if I have newbs without mounts following me. There's no flexibility like that with this new setup.

Lim

I'm loving the quick implementation of this idea.

Oleis

Moirean said:

It also means that I can dismount and just use go instead of go gallop, if I have newbs without mounts following me.

I absolutely see your first point, but wouldn't you say this is exactly how the current situation works?

Moirean

Kinda. I have to make multiple aliases now, however. Currently I can type my alias GGS to go to Spinesreach. If I'm dismounted, my mapper calculates the path, but doesn't actually walk it (being dismounted stops go gallop from executing). I can then sit and see what the path is (maybe I want to give directions to someone or rp walk or I'm waiting for someone else or whatever) and decide if I want to walk. If I want to just travel fast I can just hit the alias again or hit GOG (my alias for go gallop) and my triggers will have kicked in and gotten me my mount. There's no option to determine the pathing functionality from my end, unless I split up the path finding and the actual movement into two aliases. It may sound minor, but I use path aliases all the time and having to type a second alias every time I use one is enough on its own to deter me from using it.

Irruel

Can't you just do 'path find blah' (or use an alias for this) to get the path without starting the walk/gallop/dash?

So rather than making multiple aliases, just make one alias to suit all, something a bit more intuitive? (hint: use an oninput trigger instead).

Stick your locations into a table/dbvar:
s = "vnumforspinesreach",
d = "vnumforduiran",

Alias: ^go(d|g|w|f) (.+)$
Script: something intuitive
USe:
go 12345 (will path find this number, and walk to it)
go s (will path find the number in the table linked to 's')
gog s (same as go s, but will gallop)
gof 34567 (will path find but not start walking)


Edit: I didn't go into specifics because I don't remember enough zscript. BUT I know it is possible because I had a table and alias like this way back when I did use cmud, to drive imapper. I annoyed (or entertained?) the pools with it for a while too, because "gods vnum" was meant to "go duanathar sprint" but didn't work and had me saying random numbers/places to the gods channel >.>

Moirean

That's me having to type more and change what I do, when path aliases are memorized and reflexive to me. I mean, I was under the impression they want us to switch over - mudbot works great for me as-is and I'm not going to sit and redo all of my aliases and stress myself out unless I need to, so I'm just pointing out a way they can help keep the functionality flexible. I can just keep using mudbot, you know?

Kaeus

I believe when pathing and dealing with water when inputting a gallop/sprint/dash/whatever, the mapper doesn't seem to handle situations where you shouldn't gallop well. In this case, it is trying to gallop across water without Zephyr when it should just move normally instead to fording.

It also appears GMCP room info is a bit funky when pathing. Would be really useful if the GMCP room update could fire before the message as it does when moving normally. Would help a bit with matching the room info and displaying it while pathing.

I've also heard feedback from people not liking the fact that when changing rooms you only see the room name and not the full room. Is there a way to perhaps enable this as a config option (pathlook or something) for people who want to see the contents of each room.

Might have more feedback as I get more responses from people using it over the old mapper I had. I seem to be always faster with the ingame mapper, but I've had people claim they used to be faster. Not sure if it is slower, or if it moves as fast as possible.

Oleis

I'm going to release some configurability as to what displays on path movement (Room descs, maps, etc.) in the next couple days. Same with water issues -- that, in theory, is an easy fix but it's difficult to manage repercussions with code like this.

It's possible but not very likely to be faster in any significant way with an external mapper. They're likely to be small differences (at huge resource costs for us).

Irruel

Moirean said:

That's me having to type more and change what I do, when path aliases are memorized and reflexive to me. I mean, I was under the impression they want us to switch over - mudbot works great for me as-is and I'm not going to sit and redo all of my aliases and stress myself out unless I need to, so I'm just pointing out a way they can help keep the functionality flexible. I can just keep using mudbot, you know?

I understand your point. My reply wasn't meant as a "but you can just alias it your end" response, but more as a "whoa, you've actually written separate aliases for every place you want to go? Save yourself time/effort and use a table. A bit of indirection and you only need to tweak a single alias."

Irruel

@kaeus @Oleis‌
I'm definitely faster with the in game speedwalking.
Having said that, imapper is faster than mudlet's IRE mapping script as well, so I don't know how the game speedwalking holds up against imapper.

Moirean

Naw, aliases are easier since I can add a new one on the fly directly via the command line (that sort of quick and dirty alias making is one reason I stick with cmud).

Riluo

This happens a lot sadly is it fixable? It appears to think I am not mounted, yet I clearly am and I check to be sure. It appears to happen a lot after fording through water areas.

You ford your way to the down atop a menacingly-armored donkey.
You travel to the down entering 'A frigid, open tunnel'. PATH STOP to halt.
[6053(100%)|5376(100%)|0|99%|100%|72%|35.4%|R:98|Md:0%] [HMsdb eb] (-2e)
There's water ahead of you. You'll have to swim in that direction to make it through.
[6053(100%)|5376(100%)|0|99%|100%|72%|35.4%|R:98|Md:0%] [HMsdb eb]
You have moved away from your path.
You stop speedwalking.

Riluo

Loving the in game mapper but the traveling in water issue is still causing problems. On a side note I did a few tests with speed from loch to Spines and I have found that I can cut off 3-7 secs off travel time using the IG mapper compared to system side.

Joul

I would like this idea if the path find system accounted for things like divine_speed and celerity. As it sits now either one is much quicker than the in-game system, doubly so with both, and especially with galloping.

Oleis

Joul said:

I would like this idea if the path find system accounted for things like divine_speed and celerity. As it sits now either one is much quicker than the in-game system, doubly so with both, and especially with galloping.

I'm almost positive it does, since it's tied into the same functions that tell you when you cannot move any further. However, it operates on a quarter second "tick". I'll be sure to investigate.

Amberlea

The tick may be the problem, then. Supposing one has managed to buff themselves up to moving 5+ rooms per second (2/second natural, +1 grace, +1 celerity, +1 trotting, and maybe some other stuff I don't know about), if they can only move every quarter of a second they are still missing out on some of their movement speed.

Oleis

Just wanted to solicit feedback after the last set of changes. How is the speedwalker handling water? Has the more frequent tick improved performance?

Anything else you'd change? (Except for the map displaying on room change, which is still on my whiteboard.)

Riluo

The water issues seem much better thank you.

Ishin

only issue I've had is when I'm mounted and it tries to gallop over water. Seems like if the water's in a straight line and I'm mounted, it tries to gallop in the straight line still. If I use the waterwalking enchant, will it change my need to ford so that I can straight gallop while riding on my Battle Cat?

Riluo

Yeah I just got this too! I was galloping from the tear to Bloodloch and it started to play up a bit.

Lim

@Oleis‌ :

I've noticed speed being better. More frequently now I get a few movements in a row (no prompt in between, non-gallop). I wonder if it's because of lowering the movement tick, or it could be because I've stopped using Tripwire. Regardless, I wonder if lowering it further could make it faster. I make this observation as someone without celerity; with celerity, a man would be faster, and it would require a shorter movement tick to reach full potential. However, I assume that you've already lowered it as much as you think it can go, so if that's the case, what we have is fine.

Can't speak to the water issue since I use zephyr.

Oleis

I lowered it pretty drastically, yeah. In theory, I could maybe drop it slightly more, but I'm not sure it would have much an effect.

Okay. I was pretty sure I had sorted the issues with dashing/sprinting and water. Let me see if I can figure out gallop.

Amberlea

There is a spot near fengard on the water where it gets confused and I have to re-path when dashing. Probably has something to do with the exits up there being a bit circuitous.

Moirean

I sat and played a bit with mapper vs speedwalker today, and I'm getting fairly similar times to gallop fairly long distances. Without celerity, mapper is faster, but with celerity the IG speedwalker seems a slight bit faster. Not a huge difference for either one, so I think I may stay with the mapper. The way the speedwalker spits out rooms in blocks of 3-5 kinda makes me feel seasick.

Ishin

@Oleis - The Speedwalker doesn't work if you have waterwalking if you're going over water. It won't dash if you tell it to dash and such. Not a huge deal, but I was wondering if that was something that could be added?

Nalor

@Ishin - path go dash - I use it all the time to dash.. Unsure if you mean with the waterwalking arti.. never used that.

Ishin

Nalor said:

@Ishin - path go dash - I use it all the time to dash.. Unsure if you mean with the waterwalking arti.. never used that.

Arti/enchantment. If you path go dash, and have to cross water that's in a straight line, the speedwalker won't actually dash - despite us mechanically being -able- to dash over the water due to waterwalking.