Just another random blog

Where's all my activity gone?

Fri, 13 Mar 2015 11:17:00 +0000

Hi people!

Quite a lot of time after my last entry, huh? Some of you may be wondering, what happens with my activity? Why have I had a gradual decrease while still being the most active user on the forum (based on forum post count)? Don't worry, I'm not leaving Hercules.

Well, I'm currently not in the best moment of my life. I'm having quite a lot of struggles nowadays, especially with a family from which I'm supposed to get support but just get bashed since they won't understand my problems, college studies in which my grades have come (even more) to a downfall and other problems I'm not writing here, which have driven me to feeling down pretty much anytime.

My available time is not much in general and when I come to give support here is usually via my phone while taking classes or at the end of the day when I don't feel like doing anything. Then I come here, give as much support as I can before ending my day avoiding to come up in IRC to keep me from using more time (and I guess not being in the mood for that helps, too). My goal here has always been to be of use here and will keep standing up here while possible, but I can't do wonders. I try to make each of my current posts as useful as possible because of this reason.

On other side, I know I've got so many unfinished projects here. Starting with one I don't remember what it is, the revolutionary WoE setter left as a broken pre-release since I hadn't time to fix it (Haru did a couple fixes to it to make it functional, but I can't find it anywhere on my HDD), a whole try at rewriting the script_commands.txt documentation and lastly, I cofounded the ExtendedBG project with Dastgir but did very little to nothing to it because that. I'll try to get back to these projects when possible, which is not at the moment.

For all this, I'm sorry to tell you all about my inactivity this way.

Small thought of a documentation issue that has been there for more than 9 years.

Sat, 07 Jun 2014 19:19:00 +0000

While I'm certain nobody of the people who caused this in more or less extent will read this blog post because of the fact that eAthena community has extensively changed since 2005 (9 years ago) to the point none of current Athena based communities are still there, I just had to vent it off and give a small advice to every people: report all possible issues you may have found on our bug tracker! Seriously! Devs and documentation makers can't do everything and they'll surely make mistakes, it's up to you (the final user) the amount of time that the errors are kept and thus, the amount of damage they can potentially cause to you and the whole community.

The problem I found and fixed could be easily classified as a serious one, because of the amount of people that may have made the same mistake I did on a script I couldn't test and just had passed Haru's script checker before giving it to a requester. I mean bugreport: #8226 and the misleading documentation for script command addtimercount, which has been fixed on the 1-line commit 60e3678. All of the following is just the same note I added just to let everyone know that this could even have been solved 9 years ago since my honest opinion is that we can't afford that as community:

I'd like to give a small shoutout both for the documentation makers and the scripters who have been using this script command because this serious documentation error has been there for as far as I've been able to track this file (eAthena SVN r2397) and its precursor (eAthena SVN r1891: doc/Script_Commands.txt, since May 30, 2005) when the source required it has always been wanting it on that order (proof). Its precursor on the same revision (eAthena SVN r1891: doc/script_ref.txt) had it on the right order since eAthena SVN r1 (proof, and src/map/script.c at that time).

I'm sure we all at Hercules and all predecessors until eAthena r1891 are very grateful that we have this documentation, and it isn't just a documentation maker mistake (since we can always make mistakes) but it's not a mistake but a fault for every scripter that has used that script command and received the server side warning (if it had) for inappropriate arguments order since then and haven't reported it or just fixed it for themselves because I refuse to believe that this script command (of moderate usefulness) hasn't been used by anybody in more than 9 years.

I'd like to honestly thank Fredzilla's efforts to make a proper documentation again (since previous one was illegible as you can see). And remember, don't shut it up on these issues: remember that even if you own a private server and fix it yourself, you got a full server package from us (any eAthena or subsequent emulator) for free, from which you may even get profit! We don't want the money, but what restrains you to pay it back to us on cute, nice bug reports even if it's because of documentation inaccuracies?

Just my two cents.

Just a little thought on donations & working for free for people who want monetization.

Sat, 25 Jan 2014 21:04:00 +0000

What is the reason behind this rant? I could've ranted about some other things, for example why I don't like temporarily upset blog entries even if I find they're right (as I've told Ind more than once) or about the fully original, uninspired by Hercules rAthena updates as always (even if I must admit that, without seeing the source code and despite a couple of glaringly obvious inconsistencies, I like this version just a bit more than ours). I'm ranting about money instead.

First of all, I must state that I hate money (not in an anarchist, communist or whateverist way, I simply dislike it mysel without any need of putting there some man with a beard who, when alive, once said money is bad). I've been offered money or donations more than once here at Hercules -some because of a "pay me" joke that turned on a real offer- and I politely said no (some users can witness that). I can't live getting money on the work I intentionally do for free with a clear conscience. I don't know yet, but (I hope) this doesn't apply to paid work I'd do IRL when I get to that time.

When I had my first and only private server (that I remember most of my users still want to remark it was one of their best servers ever, even if I did modify a couple minor things in source and almost every novelty was because of my scripts, not state of the art but they simply did their job well) I made all the donations go towards my co-admin friend even being me the owner, since I always said I was paying for the host myself and would do provided there's still a community wanting to play the server, because I wanted to open it because I love RO and didn't want any monetization out of it. In fact, I wouldn't have put any donation feature. "Pay me with a beer if we ever meet", is what I said most times. But the rule was there and I had to respect it even if I was against it. Moreover, I'm still paying for the host without any donations even if the server has become abandoned, and I don't mind it.

The "farm XYZ x 1000 things and I'll give you the donation ticket" way wasn't invented yet. And yes, I think it's another way of making people go frustrated even more than without that feature and overexploiting the spawns for these monsters. Overexploiters are often comprised by bots and some well-built macros you couldn't catch most of the times, with people who try to resell the items behind them, sometimes for real money or accounts in other servers (I've seen that myself). That creates a side effect that deprive the legitimate player his respawns and forces him/her to try to get the experience or loot wherever else.

Monetization is always there on 99% of the private servers. This is (yet another one) of the reasons I don't like main Spanish-speaking private servers, these that have become famous for one reason or another, or these that their admin closes when he considers he hasn't enough "clientele", rebuilds some of its features and then reopens when he builds up some more "clientele" (and, speaking of a server I know that is in Spain and located by native Spanish people, they also send out an e-mail to all registered users of its previous versions, in a blatant violation of Spanish privacy laws). Donations is the only important thing measured there. I mean, they are important since you can fund your server based on these and not everyone can afford paying them out of their pockets, but from that to only keep a server online while it's profitable... Well, I won't make an exact opinion of them or name specific servers that do or did that, just take it as a huge disservice to everyone else that is or has been out there.

And here we reach to the motivation of this entry. I love scripting but don't usually find time for that (I have a pending WoE setter ready to kick other's asses ). I like lending a hand when needed, especially in any Spanish-speaking support section IN official forums (I don't have a good opinion on dedicated sites for that, at least the main Spanish ones once again) because I like to feel compromised with RO in Spanish. Sure I don't know many things (especially source and/or client side) and that my knowledge is getting old due to Hercules updates and that I can't set up a proper test environment to see myself, but I'll try my best whenever possible, even asking devs if needed.

That's true, but I've become bored of these script support or request topics from users asking you to make a basic donation NPC (never telling you directly because 1 Proof of Donation or 1 TCG card isn't evident enough, just in case), but for free. As if we were some kind of free-paid customer service, wanting us to earn their money, some times by bumping or trying to redirect the attention from other topics to the request if needed.

Don't get me wrong. I still like scripting and will answer any questions I have an answer (and time) to, and I will keep developing systems when I still have time (and, ideally, open another private server of mine). I don't mind people using my systems for whatever they want as long as they are not a direct part of a donation process. Aw, c'mon. I part of the base everybody is a (respectable) newbie who lacks the creativity or scripting skills for thinking new, adapting and/or improving some existing systems, but there are already lots of answered basic donation NPC systems on the forum! Or you need the basics of the basics of scripting to make your own.

Athena/Hercules scripting is one of these languages easy enough you can actually teach to children at school, despite it being a dissimulated C and even though the fact that it's useless out of a server. What does stop you from that then?

P.S.: Why do I write all this wall of text when I just wanted to write a little piece of text as the entry title says? Why?
P.S.#2: I have nothing against people that contribute here on the forums and also requested a donation NPC. At least they have contributed to the community and it's perfectly reasonable for them to request a way for monetizing their efforts in exchange, despite the fact that they're asking the same thing. At least they get it much like a sort of reward for contributing, which is always good.

--------

SPANISH:
Si no me olvido ya haré una traducción rápida . Solo quería decir que aunque tenga semi abandonado mi WoE setter, es por motivos de estudio y cuando lo tenga listo no faltaré a la cita con una traducción al español del que espero sea el mejor, más poderoso (y casi que ligero en cuanto a proceso) y mejor comentado (¡servirá para aprender!) WoE setter del momento.

Si queréis haceros una idea de a qué iba esta entrada, era una queja sobre los sistemas de donaciones actuales, decir lo poco que me gustan los tres o cuatro grandes servidores hispanos que hay porque están orientados a donaciones más que a trato con el público y que por mucho que me guste ayudar (especialmente con el scripting), no aguanto cuando se me pide que haga de balde un script o algo que tenga que ver directamente con las donaciones de un servidor, en que el tipo que me lo pide se embolsa todo el dinero y la mitad de las veces no recibo ni las gracias, más aún habiendo ya cientos de scripts para ello. Y lo digo desde el punto de vista de alguien a quien no le gusta el dinero de por sí y que lo ve por desgracia como un mal necesario. Ya si tengo tiempo la traduzco completa porque contiene algunas perlas que quizá os gusten o, al menos os haga pensar. Pensar os hará libres .

WoE setter script pre-release (Eng, no Spa ATM)

Fri, 06 Dec 2013 18:37:00 +0000

(English)

Wait! Didn't you see you'd have it ready for last Wednesday? Yes. I actually HAD it ready (proof is in ossi0110, Mumbles and Haruna who gave it a first quick read to assure there are no evident bugs) but I couldn't post it due to some techical (and not-so-technical) problems.

Yeah, you've read right: It's now here in a pre-release format! Wait, pre-release? What did you cut out? Answer is nothing. It has full functionality but it's still a work in progress so it's not that I cut out anything, it's simply not coded in yet. What's missing in here? In short, all this:

An interface. I mean giving it a physical clickable NPC sprite, with its respective menus. This also means all of this:
- Possibility of having a NPC chat in which the remaining time for WoEs is announced.
- Menus and dialogs.
- All session moving, skipping, addition, deletion, reloading or so.
- Warp function.
- Whatever functionality you could expect from an NPC with sprite.
Right now, only way of interacting with this script is via whisper system. You may ask the NPC to reload the OnInit label by sending it "init" and the OnLoadParseSessions event by sending "load". You have to load the sessions manually at the moment.
As it's a preview, obviously some bugs may appear. You play here by helping me squash them (because this is the main NPC engine, it's supposed big changes won't be made on these).
For Spanish-speaking people: no Spanish translation until official release .

I've made a list with all popular WoE setters I know (3) and their main strengths and weaknesses (not trying to despise their work, they've contributed their scripts for free) but it turned out to be so large I'll keep that one for another blog post.

Now, what are the benefits of my script? Why use it instead of others? What does it do that others don't? Apart of the planned features you can see above, my WoE setter supports this:

First and most importantly: it's Hercules compatible. Some other WoE controller scripts out there need editions prior to making them compatible with our emulator.
Has @reloadscript persistence. You're not reccommended to use @reloadscript anyways, but it's @reloadscript safe, maybe except using it near WoE regular ends.
WoE sessions are stored in a dedicated table in your MySQL system, so that you won't mess with permanent variables.
Comprehensive error tracking, saving in logs any issue you could find running the NPC (not fully functional yet). It also screams the error on the server console and even announces it if you want to debug it.
You can start multiple WoE sessions at once, so that you can have different independent sessions running on the same time.
Your WoEs can also overflow through midnight or even last more than 1 day if required. A session can last up to a week.
You can set the same castle on WoE more than once, so that you can also lift the previous 1-week limitation by adding a session that runs on that/these same castle(s) from the previous session end to after the next session start.
You can specify a number of weeks your sessions will last alive. After that, they'll be deleted.
Last but not least important: The script is fully documented with profuse comments and encourages you to learn scripting and also edit it. Its syntax is as simple as I could imagine (you can't help some difficult statements out there, but they're also commented) so that you can easily modify it to suit your needs. Script was also made having performance in mind but prioritizing readability, so performance isn't notably harmed as it's also been optimized keeping that in mind. Sample easy modifications you can do with this script are:
You can add all your timed events to this NPC, so that you won't have loads of NPCs that act based on the time on your server, just one. This can also save some space and process time on the long run if you don't go messy and add lots of NPCs that work that way.
You can take advantage of the admin menu of this NPC to also build your server's GM control panel upon this, saving you of having tons of small NPCs for quick server configurations.

Feel free to point any flaw on it, or even if its documentation isn't enough self-explanatory. I'd like you to help me debug it and add enough documentation on it before I can release a full version with every planned feature.

Link to release:

Hope you get fun with it!

P.S.: Spanish translation of this entry will be made shortly. Sorry!

(Spanish)

La traducción al español de esta entrada del blog ha sido suspendida porque no tengo tiempo para ello de momento.

La pre-release está solo en inglés. Ya traduciré todos los textos del NPC cuando termine la versión final, así evitaré duplicarme el trabajo. ¡Lo siento!

Just a quick update

Wed, 20 Nov 2013 12:12:00 +0000

You thought this would be one of these abandoned, one-entry blogs? Then you're quite wrong I guess. I was thinking to update this blog regarding the rAthena to Hercules converters I made, but I felt that would be similar to double posting. What extra benefit do I get for blogging that? And what do forum users get from double reading the same text? That's why I decided not to do that.

I still have very few time available for me even if you can see me active on the forums and on the IRC at the expenses of my study time (and it's exams season once again here!). Such a guilty pleasure because my studies are supposed to make me not have something like a social life, even in Internet.

So what's the point of this entry?

I think that in some days (I expect not longer than a week) I'll be advanced enough to show you one of the two projects I'm working on. Or at least just a sneak peek. I aim to break usability records with that. I aim to make complicated things simple. I aim to encourage people learn, or at least understand what the code they're reading with their eyes mean, and make them try to do edit that by themselves and see if it works, while also providing what could be a main cornerstone on their private server.

Want to see part of it?

(Yeah, I'll finish the bog entry here because I love being the hype guy )

(Translation to Spanish isn't literal, I've rewritten everything so don't expect to learn much Spanish if you compare both texts)

(Spanish)

Conque creíais que iba a hacer un blog de una simple entrada y abandonarlo a su suerte, ¿verdad? No podíais estar más equivocados. Pensaba haber hecho mi segunda entrada con el conversor de bases de datos de rAthena a Hercules, pero no quería haceros leer doble. Quizá a quienes no entendieran el inglés les vendría mejor, pero tampoco suelo usar vocabulario muy complejo de entender, así que no es para tanto. Así pues, decidí no publicar nada al respecto.

Como sabéis que soy un tipo muy atareado y tengo muy poco tiempo (y los exámenes de diciembre se me vuelven a echar encima como malas víboras que son), a pesar de que me véis por aquí y por IRC. Cosas del estudiante desmotivado, porque una ingeniería industrial espera que dejes de vivir para tu familia y para tus amigos, en particular también los que conoces a través de Internet.

¿Y cuál es el motivo de redactar esta entrada?

Muy sencillo. Creo que, si me dais unos pocos días más (espero que no más de una semana), tendré uno de los dos proyectos avanzados lo suficiente como para mostraros lo que llevo hecho. O al menos una fotillo mal hecha. Con este proyecto espero romper moldes de facilidad de uso, hacer que su uso sea sencillo e intuitivo. Además, pretendo hacer que la gente entienda el código que lee, e intente editarlo y compruebe que lo que hace funciona, a la vez que se provee de algo que bien puede ser una piedra angular en un servidor privado.

Además no se verá en la "preview" pero, ¡también lo liberaré completamente traducido al español.

¿Qué? ¿Os entra ganas de saber lo que es?
(Sí, voy a cortar la entrada aquí para que veáis lo mucho que me gusta teneros en ascuas )

(La traducción al inglés no es literal, así que evitad ir comparando el texto para tratar de aprender un poco más)

Introducing this awesome blog! (Eng/Spa)

Sun, 27 Oct 2013 10:57:00 +0000

(English / Inglés)

Hello people! (everybody: Hello jaBote!)

This is just your regular blog opening entry. If you can read this, it means that its owner has successfully ~~installed and~~ opened his blog. Jokes aside, I'll try to update you in misc things about what happens to me. I'll possibly write about controversial topics given you're mature enough to have a polite argument. I'll even write about Hercules if you're lucky enough!

I have a couple of Hercules-related projects at the moment, but I can't show you much of it now. They both will be fully contributed to Hercules in the event I'll ever finish them, since I progress on them quite slowly.

Ah! It's possible some entries will be only in Spanish since general English-speaking public may not be interested about it at all. Will try to keep them at a minimum, though.

See you again!

(Spanish / Español)

¡Hola a todos!

Esta es simplemente una entrada de prueba al blog. Si puedes leer esto, significa que su propietario ha ~~instalado y~~ abierto su blog de forma satisfactoria. Bromas aparte, aquí trataré de hacer alguna que otra entrada sobre algunos de mis más frecuentes problemas (tiempo, familia, etcétera). Puede que incluso hable de algún que otro tema controvertido, siempre y cuando los lectores sepan mantener una discusión civilizada. Puede que, con suerte, ¡incluso abra alguna entrada sobre el emulador Hercules!

De momento estoy realizando un par de proyectos relacionados con Hercules, que contribuiré religiosamente si mi ajetreado ritmo de vida y mi paso de tortuga en su desarrollo me lo permiten, aunque de momento no tengo nada que mostrar.

Es posible que abra alguna que otra entrada únicamente en español, debido a que puedo prever que no tendrá mucho interés para mis lectores angloparlantes.

En fin, ¡hasta más ver!