Items disappearing on floor?

[ArgieD]

Guys, another question I have for you..

I have noticed that when you drop thingies on the floor and then log off, next time you or any of your alts try to recover them, they are either missing or seem to be kind of under the floor (but still pickable on this occassion).

I have tried it on many occasions by the entrance of my starting appartment (where observing players can follow me and nick them), but I have also tried it on a customised appartment where nobody knows the pass. I know that the synchro-bug make peops appear just outside your appartment, but the ratio of losing things this way is 7 out of 10 (plus if you find them and don't pick them up and log off again, the third time round they almost certainly go..)

Does this happen to you too?


Cheers


PS another one is that every other time you click on the DEPOT button within the ingame stocksmarket, the game crashes. Does this happen to you too?

[Capt. Rik]

afaik there is no guarantee that items will remain on the floor for any given time length - due to cleanup code i guess to prevent loss of performance - your best (and safest!) bet is to use a box or another runner to transfer items between chars

[[TgR]KILLER]

yea dropping items on the floor aint that good.. i do it sometimes ( not anymore since all my chars are in clan or else i double log if its between 2 accs ) but just make sure your other char is already in that app so it doesn't take alot of time to relog. but as said it aint save and never was ment to be save :)

[Selendor]

I've always gone by the midnight rule, items will vanish at 00:00 in-game time. Same as mobs and loot.

Careful dropping items close to things like main doors though, because as you say, they can either obscure or vanish sooner.

Edit - I think items can hang around in your appt floor a lot longer if you aren't logged in when midnight happens or something.

[Nidhogg]

If no one is in a zone (e.g. an apartment or any other world zone) for certain amount of time then the load balancer detects that that zone is no longer required and "swaps" it out. This frees up space on the cluster for another zone that may be required.

If a zone is swapped out then all counters associated with that zone are swapped out with it, i.e. they stop, meaning that items may be left on the floor until the next time someone enters that zone and it's swapped back in again (and its counters become active again). That's why if you've lost an item under a cabinet in your app you should leave immediately and report it from somewhere else.

This also explains why vehicles in the wastelands sometimes take much longer to reappear in the garage. If it's a rarely visited zone then the timer on that vehicle will have stopped because the vehicle and the zone that it's in essentially no longer exist. One way to speed up the process is to go visit your vehicle. ;)

The old question "If a tree falls in the forest and there is nobody around does it make a sound?" can therefore be answered thus: There is no tree. Hell, there is no forest! ;)

That may not be a perfect explanation but it's pretty close from a non-dev's point of view.

N

[Original monk]

The old question "If a tree falls in the forest and there is nobody around does it make a sound?" can therefore be answered thus: There is no tree. Hell, there is no forest! ;)

that certain question alone brings back memory of discussions where every minute seemed hours :)

[Torg]

If no one is in a zone (e.g. an apartment or any other world zone) for certain amount of time then the load balancer detects that that zone is no longer required and "swaps" it out.
i believe you, nid... but doesnt this apply to half emptied ammo packs, soda bottles and other crap i use to litter my (ingame) app with?


The old question "If a tree falls in the forest and there is nobody around does it make a sound?" can therefore be answered thus: There is no tree. Hell, there is no forest! ;)
i think, Kurt Gödel has explained this all. i'm not sure if he was FA or crahn, tho...

[imper1um]

If no one is in a zone (e.g. an apartment or any other world zone) for certain amount of time then the load balancer detects that that zone is no longer required and "swaps" it out. This frees up space on the cluster for another zone that may be required.

If a zone is swapped out then all counters associated with that zone are swapped out with it, i.e. they stop, meaning that items may be left on the floor until the next time someone enters that zone and it's swapped back in again (and its counters become active again). That's why if you've lost an item under a cabinet in your app you should leave immediately and report it from somewhere else.

This also explains why vehicles in the wastelands sometimes take much longer to reappear in the garage. If it's a rarely visited zone then the timer on that vehicle will have stopped because the vehicle and the zone that it's in essentially no longer exist. One way to speed up the process is to go visit your vehicle. ;)

The old question "If a tree falls in the forest and there is nobody around does it make a sound?" can therefore be answered thus: There is no tree. Hell, there is no forest! ;)

That may not be a perfect explanation but it's pretty close from a non-dev's point of view.

N
I get what your saying, but if you disable the timers, won't you just reset the timers on the item, or delete the item? Most of the zones are like caverns. It seems that if you leave a zone for a specific time, the zone will reset, and the items will return to normal. Seems like the cleanup code is just disabling the zone, freeing up the memory, and saving all the static items, such as unmovables (furniture, terminals, boxes). When you revisit the zone, the zone becomes active and has the NPC Server run it's spawn code (if there is one) for all the NPCs needed in the zone (mobs).

[Selendor]

Thanks for that Nid, that makes sense. Do you agree with me though, that when you are present in a zone, the timer that clears the zone is triggered by the 00:00 time on the Neocron clock? We know for sure that if you don't loot a mob by then it gets wiped.

I think this is what happens in appartments too, which is why I always transfer items when its not near to midnight in game time.

I also found recently that dropping items in certain places, then relogging an alt, meant that they seemed invisible, but if you looked hard they were still selectable. Not sure if this happened in Neocron 1. So if you think you might have lost an item, be sure to actually check the spot where you lost it!

[capt-o]

It's been my experience that if you use the apt drop thing, drop you stuff and run as fast as possible out.

If your apt is in a relatively unused area your stuff will stay for a long time as they are essentially frozen in time.

But since your apt is on the same cluster as others apt. These others would affect the timer. Maybe get an apt in the old canyon? Doubt many apt dwelling tradeskillers hang out in a canyon apt.

[Nidhogg]

It certainly does appear that things get reset at 00:00 but I suspect there's a good reason for that. As for the other question, it's impossible to second guess a load balancer because you cannot know the state of the entire server. It will only swap out zones on a least recently used basis (or similar scheduling scheme) and even then only if it needs to. So, for example, if the people on the server stay where they are for a while then the zone may stay in memory (with timers running), but if people start to move around (especially to lots of different zones) then it is likely to get swapped out much faster.

N

/edit - I must make this clear that the above statement is based on informal discussions with the devs and evidence collected so it's not absolutely guaranteed to be correct. CoDi would know the 100% official answer but it's not likely to differ from the one above in anything other than fine details.

[Original monk]

But since your apt is on the same cluster as others apt. These others would affect the timer. Maybe get an apt in the old canyon? Doubt many apt dwelling tradeskillers hang out in a canyon apt.

my riflerfullcombatspy's appartment is located in the canyons :) he can get he's inq armour there :P

i dont think its ideal there for a tradeskiller tough, unless he has tc for stealth :)

its a great place to have an appy btw :) close to levelinggrounds and all ya like

[Freaky Fryd]

Sometimes stuff disappears fast, sometimes it takes a long time.
In one of my DRE Epic apts in NC1, I hadn't been in it in months (almost 3 months) and I finally came back into it, and stuff was still sitting on the floor that I had dropped.
8|

[eprodigy]

yep ive lost things in 5 minutes, or returned days later to find things still there (things i dropped because i didnt want, etc)

[athon]

Feature re-request: Containers anyone can access available to buy as apartment items.

Athon Solo

[ArgieD]

Ok guys, thx for your input; much appreciated.

Though, what about the Stockxx; do you crash a lot?