Walk Lock

[RideTheDivide]

So I was following a group of kanks the other day (I was on foot) and I noticed that the "walk-lock" bug/feature is still in the code.  That is to say, if I am following someone with a "longer stride" than me - i.e. less movement lag, I cannot do anything until they stop moving.

Now, I'm fairly certain this was discussed a while back - and if I recall correctly, there's a reason for it to be there.  Somehow it prevents abuse.  Just wondering if there were any ideas/plans to change this.  I know I had one char. die a while back because he followed someone who abused the bug and dragged me into the 'rinth where I was jumped and killed...

[ashyom]

This is taken from the follow helpfile:

Use "follow me" or "follow self" to stop following another character. Use "unhitch <target>" to stop leading another visible character or mount.

RidetheDivide, I've never heard of this "lock" bug nor have I experienced it, so if this is indeed the case and "follow self" didn't work, please email the mud and explain further in detail.  

...Although, having thought this over, I suspect that the "lock" is due to combination of the leader speed-walking and being on a faster internet connection than the follower, rather than an actual bug.  During spam - speed walking, in your case, the slow-internet follower's computer is furiously trying to process the mud's activities (caused by the speed-walking) and is unable to submit any commands until it has caught up in the queue.  This, I have experienced before, and seen it happen to others.

If that's what happened in your situation, I'm not sure there's much we can do, code-wise, aside from recommend a faster internet.  You, however, can email the mud to ask the staff to check into the player's behavior.
Trust this helps.
Ashyom

[Quirk]

...Although, having thought this over, I suspect that the "lock" is due to combination of the leader speed-walking and being on a faster internet connection than the follower, rather than an actual bug.  During spam - speed walking, in your case, the slow-internet follower's computer is furiously trying to process the mud's activities (caused by the speed-walking) and is unable to submit any commands until it has caught up in the queue.  This, I have experienced before, and seen it happen to others.

I can say with some certainty that this is not an Internet connection issue, having personally experienced that very same problem a great many times on my luscious broadband connection and on an even fatter pipe. Even if both of you have exactly the same walk lag, the net result when your leader spam-types commands is that you follow them into the room, their spammed direction sets them moving again and hence yourself moving again before any other commands are processed. I suspect when they type "w, w, w,  s, s, s", your command stack is interpreted as though you'd done exactly the same thing.

Not terribly long ago I lost a character that way - he was asked to follow a templar, which he did, and that templar then spam-walked to what he would have considered a Bad Place. By the time the coded lag had subsided to the level where his query about where they were going was eventually spat out, he already more or less knew where they were headed, and had he been capable of reacting he would almost certainly have employed one of a range of escape options open to him. I made the best of a bad job, had him resign himself to his fate and plead for his life, but the efficiency of the follow-lag was almost every bit as brutal as a subdue in getting him there. Merely unhitching from the templar would have been a suboptimal option too, as although the templar would have spammed on regardless there should have been consequences from his sudden balking.

I certainly don't think it was intentionally done on the part of the templar's player, but the net result was another death in which a coded feature which I regard as a bug played a large part. I'm sure quite a few deaths have taken place this way, and I'd be really glad if I saw it fixed.

Quirk

Edited to add postscript:

That said, there were a couple of moments where if I'd reacted fast enough, I could have possibly used one of the escape options. I was rather thinking of opening with an emote though, and the idea of having the emote, then being dragged into a place where the action following it was inconceivable after another stack of coded directions hit him, would have greatly prejudiced his chances of being able to talk his way out.

I understand that giving the follower a chance to react might prejudice the leader's ability to counter-react if said leader's spammed a load of directions - but I'd prefer to see the edge given to the person who didn't spam the directions in this case.

[Anonymous]

Its certainly not an internet connection issue.

I remember having a noble who hadn't stopped following another PC who either typed without noticing there was someone following her or had a script that would take her from the commoners quarter to the gates of a merchant house.  On erdlu.

It literally took me till the middle of the bazaar before the movement lag accepted my 'follow self' command and I stopped following.

It's happened to me recently as well.

[Tamarin]

I experienced this about a week ago.  I was following someone who spammed...I guess...11 wests from meleth's circle to the 'nak stables, and I couldn't do anything until well after we stopped moving.  I bugged it, but I want to test it further to make sure.

[X-D]

I think he is talking about delay buildup from built in Move delay when following something much faster then you, not exactly a bug.

Movement speed in arm is simulated by having a delay dependant on race/size.

Now I have not timed the actual delay, so I will make one up.

Say humans get a 2 second delay after moving, then dwarves get a 4 second delay, halflings get 6 seconds, elves and muls get 1.5 seconds, half-giants get 1 second.

Now, if a dwarf follows a half-giant and the half-giant spam moves 10 rooms then his total delay was 10 seconds, so, say he moved the distance in about 20 seconds including screen scroll.

The dwarf following him builds up  another 30 seconds on top of what it took the half-giant to move and he must wait for that time to pass before any command will go through.

If you really want to see this in action, get a kank and a sunback, a kank is several times faster then a sunback, I found this out in the byn, riding a sunback, the sarge was riding a kank and spam walked 11 rooms out the east gate of nak, I had a full60 seconds + lag.

[ashyom]

I stand corrected, and I'll amend what I said to be more clear.  The modifications are in italics.

...Although, having thought this over, I suspect that the "lock" is due to the leader speed-walking or stacking commands and sometimes also being on a faster internet connection than the follower, rather than an actual bug. When someone stacks commands - speed walking, in your case, the mud has to process commands in a queue, and yours won't be acted upon until the mud has caught up in the queue. This, I have experienced before, and seen it happen to others.

Hope this reads better.

[Quirk]

I think he is talking about delay buildup from built in Move delay when following something much faster then you, not exactly a bug.

Movement speed in arm is simulated by having a delay dependant on race/size.

Eh, not quite the same thing, though speed differentials make things suck oh-so-much more. Try following a fellow human/elf/dwarf or what-have-you, and you'll still find you get the movement lag from their spammed directional commands.

Quirk

Edited to add:

The revised version sounds about spot on ashyom, thanks for clearing things up.

[Quirk]

Bleh, double-posted. Sorry.

[RideTheDivide]

So I guess the lesson is to not spam-walk if you're leading a group.  If you're goins a ways, stop ever third or fourth room to allow commands and emotes to go through...

[UnderSeven]

Like I said before, this is a flaw in the code.  Because it CAN be abused. you can not unhitch, as stated above, the mud has to catch up before your commands can be entered.  In the event that this happened to me, I did not die, nor was it intentional, but if someone intentionally killed another pc using walk lag, I'm fairly certain the staff would come down very harshly.  In Quirk's case I'm sure it wasn't delberate, but I still wish tehre was a way that this could be fixed so that leaders couldn't inevertantly kill pcs this way.  

I guess the best we can do for now is hope everyone keeps in mind not to spam directions with followers.

[Lazloth]

Like I said before, this is a flaw in the code.

Lazloth agrees, to some extent.  If nothing else, the ability to break away from the leader should supercede anything else in the command queue.  It's fairly ridiculous to assume that your pc needs to "catch up" to the leader to follow self.

[Malifaxis]

Perhaps make 'unhitch' and 'follow self' as higher priority commands?  Commands that would defeat the dreaded 'walklag'?

Have the command go through IMMEDIATELY, but have the walklag still add to reaction time after the command goes through, as to prevent people from abusing the abuse-fix.  Simply explained as 'Some time to catch your breath'.

[Tamarin]

God dammit...I had no idea how much this pissed me off until I read this thread and started experimenting...we -have- to fix this.

[Quirk]

Have the command go through IMMEDIATELY, but have the walklag still add to reaction time after the command goes through, as to prevent people from abusing the abuse-fix.  Simply explained as 'Some time to catch your breath'.

If you mean by that the total walklag that would be the case if they'd stayed with the spammer... it sounds almost workable, but well, used against a dedicated direction spammer, I think people would still complain. "I typed unhitch five minutes ago, and I'm still lagged, and a halfling's come in and is chewing on my kneecaps!" I think at most you should suffer the lag of two or three rooms, no more, after unhitching, and then catch your breath. If that's roughly what you originally meant, my apologies.

Quirk

[Xygax]

Yes, this is a known behavior of the movement delay system.  I'll take a look at it.

[Tamarin]

Ok...this can happen, I think.

follow badassmofo.

badassmofo types:
s
s
s
s
s
(50 more souths)
kill you
kick
kick
kick
kick
kick
kick
kick
kick
kick

....


etc etc.


Now...you can't flee until all those commands have cleared.  And now you're dead.  See the problem?