I know, I know, more on recalls. Trust me -- I want to be done with this rewrite as much as you guys want me to be done with it. I officially owe every Bard who can make it to Simucon a drink.

... Anyhow, I circling around the same problem and trying to decide the best way to resolve it and I figured I'd get some input. In order to convert the entire recall system over to the new evoke style system, I have to manually update every recall in the game -- and we're talking editing, revising and mechanics. As you might imagine, this isn't a trivial amount of work. What's more, due to the way the code is intertwined, that's holding up the new versions of all the other recalls (holiday, immortals and whatnot).

So I have a proposal for how to make it more manageable:

I just convert them over time (most likely one province at a time). That's still a LOT of work, but it's a manageable amount of work. The problem is that even if I do it at a quick pace (Over the span of a month or so -- there's a LOT of them compared to evokes and most of them need more work than the evokes did) that leaves people without functional recalls in most of the game for a reasonable amount of time.

Would that be too much of an impact on people's ability to train? Recall Area would still work to find them, you just wouldn't be able to recall them until they were updated.

On the bright side, if I went with that plan, it would let me roll out the other recall updates at the same time -- which under my current plan should fill the training gap reasonably well.

-Raesh

"Ever notice that B.A.'s flavor text swells in direct proportion to how much one of our characters is getting screwed?" - Brian Van Hoose

Well, I'm not the best example, because I just used my cleric recall script for my bard, and it stuck to immortals and holidays.

So I wouldn't mind losing all the area stuff for a while.

---

Let's save us all some time: I'm a troll who rarely has anything helpful. There.

There are ulterior ways to train. Don't drive yourself crazy friend. Knock out a couple a day.

I was hoping to wander through a particular area and read through some, but if it's just going to be a month or two at a time, I can wait.


-- Player of Eyuve

I train the same way as kroon. Immortals, holidays, so I'm unaffected.

>>A good heads up is always appreciated though :)

Yeah, I'll make sure to give a heads up if I end up going this route.

>>Recall Area would still work to find them, you just wouldn't be able to recall them until they were updated.

>Sort of boggles my mind that the system is constructed this way.

It makes sense if you understand how the system works -- but then again I'm use to looking at the guts of it. The old recalls will still be there for Recall Area to find until I manually remove them, but the Recall code itself is changing dramatically and would no longer recognize them.

I could comment that part out of Recall Area before finishing the conversion if people wanted, but I figure doing it this way leaves Recall Area as a viable training method and I could stick in a suitable IC message to indicate a non-updated recall.

>>As I recall, there were supposedly a number of recalls never "found" in the past scavenger hunt. Will this update process allow you to ensure that they are actually released and didn't have any glitches keeping people from finding them?

I'd have to go back through the scavenger hunt data to figure out what ones were never found still. Since I'll be, effectively, rebuilding each recall from the ground up it should fix any bugged ones. In theory.

-Raesh

"Ever notice that B.A.'s flavor text swells in direct proportion to how much one of our characters is getting screwed?" - Brian Van Hoose

I wish there were evokes you could do regardless of where you are, kind of like recall famous/herb/immortal. To tell you the truth, the few times I run through town the last thing that's on my mind is remembering to go to the 1 specific spot to EVOKE.

But based on my testing from before I was quite happy with how the exp was awarded.

~Leilond
http://tinyurl.com/Leilond-Portrait
http://drzeal.forumotion.com Learn How to PvP!

> But the only significant thing I can think of that would have that kind of importance to every bard would be actually joining the guild.

Your most recent death might be personally significant. Not that I think you'd want to relive it. Maybe evoke death to regain some of your lost memories at the cost of increased death's sting? Assuming you departed, of course.

>>Considering what Evoke is, I doubt there would be many "portable" Evokes... if it were attached to an item, it would have to be something like an artifact or a relic to resonate with history enough to experience it.

This is actually 100% correct. There are currently no plans for "Evoke Immortal" or any such thing (though I'd like to see enough static ones out there so it's less looking for that one specific room each trip to town).

Of course, there is this:

>get poke
You get a pokeball from inside your sturdy backpack.

>evoke poke
You focus on the pokeball, seeking any impressions of the past.

You find yourself happily wandering a grassy field. Your life is one of serenity.

Then it happened. She appeared. You know not where she came from, or what her motives were but there was an almost visible aura of malice about her. You wanted to flee but stood paralyzed by her malevolent gaze. That's when she threw it at you. That hated red and white ball.

Home.

The years flash by, the blood of countless innocents on your tail. ZZZZAAAAP after ZZZZAAAAP, an endless wave of death.

With a start, you find yourself drawn back to the reality of the here and now.
Roundtime: 22 seconds.

Which is one of the pay offs for all this (And they're super easy to build vs. the old system) The time just hasn't been right to release anything with one to the game, and I doubt they're ever going to be super common (Recalls done that way will be somewhat more common).

-Raesh

"Ever notice that B.A.'s flavor text swells in direct proportion to how much one of our characters is getting screwed?" - Brian Van Hoose

>>evoke pokeball

On a completely unrelated note, any chance for a Pokemmon-like minigame? The critter-capturing prize from the new quest made me think of it and I would so be down for that.

You get a pokeball from inside your sturdy backpack.

>evoke poke

You focus on the pokeball, seeking any impressions of the past.

What is wrong with you?

_______
Want to be a Necromancer? Use this flowchart. Totally Xerasyth approved.

http://www.elanthipedia.com/wiki/User:Ysselt/Necroflowchart

"EVOKE (or maybe just RECALL) EXP" would be a fun easter-egg-like widget to remember what you need to circle.

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hypocrite, thy name is teveshszat, and i just hope i'm there to see you when you're broght down. - GERSTEINJ2