Category Talk to Simutronics (34)
Topic Complaints -- General (2)
By DR-RIEL from PLAY.NET (Riel)
On Nov 6, 2001 at 19:26
Subject The Janitor, Character Corruption, and Us Rotten GMs (17167)

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In a world where millions of items are constantly being manipulated, there is a lot of potential lag associated with making the calculations that track the state of those items. The "janitor" is part of our object and memory management system - it is there to reduce lag, increase the number of players that can exist in the game, and generally improve the overall performance of the game.

Having over 500 items in your inventory seriously increases your character's risk of being corrupted. A corrupted character loses everything, including all their experience, and may take several months to restore. (And in some cases, will not be eligible for item restoration at all.)

So, many of you have been getting nudged by us rotten GMs, with SENDS telling you to clean up your room, or to lower your inventory. (Some of you are getting both.) And even if you're not getting nudges, many of you are noticing that the Janitor is a lot more efficient of late. (Incidentally, the Janitor may be expressed as: a rolling fog, a breeze, a wizened gnome and several other "IC" manifestations.)

For those of you who are irritated, annoyed or outright angered at our clamping down on this, consider:

At any given moment, there are approximately 1200 people in the game. (Sometimes as many as 1500-1600, other times as few as 800-900, so we'll use 1200 as an average.)

If each of those 1200 people are holding 100 items apiece, that's 120,000 items that the system has to keep track of. Even if it's just laying in your backpack, the system has to maintain it for you. Nudge that up to 150 items each, and we're at 180,000 items.

Now, consider the treasure system, and all the items laying around on the ground in the game. All the items stuck on shelves in guilds, and so on. Think of all the items in each room as well. You're usually talking about another 100-120,000 existences at any given moment.

Add those to the number being carried about by players, coupled with all the room information and creatures in the game at any given moment, and the interactive items you find throughout the game (things you can touch, or move, etc.) ... and remember that the system must keep track of every single one of those items and not mess up a single one!

When you consider the sheer volume of information on which the system is keeping tabs, perhaps you can better appreciate the need for us to nag about cleaning up your room and dumping excess items.

We'll try to give you a nudge before the janitor comes in, and we'll try to catch you when you have over 500 items so you don't wind up in the Junkyard. But we need you to help us help you! And if you could manage to, please appreciate the nudges, instead of getting angry at us! <G>

And remember, there will be times when we DON'T manage to catch you before the janitor zips thru, or before you find yourself in the Junkyard. We're sorry, but when that happens, you'll just have to consider it a lesson learned -- we can't replace those things, the system literally has wiped them out to help prevent overloading the game when that happens.

Please refer in game to NEWS 5 5 and INVENTORY HELP for further information, and help us to help you!

Riel

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