http://mystonline.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=326289#326289

johnsojc wrote:

The barrier in the Gallery was placed there in response to an exploit to circumvent the city population cap.

Now I wasn't in MOUL last time, and I don't think the gallery doors were even usable in UU, so... I'm having trouble figuring out how the population cap would be circumvented if the barriers weren't there. Yay instancing!

Here's what I'm trying to work with...
The Ae'gura book in Relto always links to your hood's instance of Ae'gura, as do all Bahro stones in your personally instanced Ages; I've never found the usual big list of people when linking via Relto. The linking book in Kadish Tolesa pointing at the gallery must either link to the public Ae'gura instance or to your hood instance; it's obviously not a personal instance, as the KI would show it and there wouldn't be any need for the book back to Kadish to have a share page. I ruled out the possibility of it being the public instance because, like all the other Relto Ae'gura links, I never saw the big list of players, and of course never ran into anyone while in there.

Now, the public instance of Ae'gura is limited to 50 people, which includes all the locations you would link to from the Relto book; if the Relto book went to the public instance, that is. That includes the Kadish gallery, and without those barriers you could go straight from your Nexus > public Ae'gura > your Kadish Tolesa, or the other way around. Without those barriers, you can go from your Nexus > public Ae'gura, or your Kadish/Relto > hood Ae'gura.

Maybe my problem is I'm assuming the population count would get incremented regardless of how you got to public Ae'gura.

So there you have it. I have no idea how one would possibly circumvent the population count, or how putting some construction barriers and collision walls in the way (in what I would assume are two completely separate instances anyway) would fix it. Can anyone help or should I just rejoice that I can walk down the stairs now?

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If you share the Kadish Bahro stone with someone, they go to the public instance of the city. If you use the stone to link to the Gallery, you end up in the hood-linked private city instance. This is how sharing Bahro stone links to the city works in MOUL. The pop cap was enforced by locking people out coming through the nexus. So, coming in through Kadish Gallery bypassed the lockout. It was simpler to turn on the barriers to discourage the use of this exploit rather than write code to disable the sharing of the Bahro stone when the nexus disabled access to the city.

Last edited by johnsojc on Wed Mar 03, 2010 1:10 am; edited 2 times in total

Ah so it was only the Nexus enforcing the cap. I guess that makes sense; no real IC way to say "you can't use this linking book" apart from clearly breaking it a la the Riven book in Exile.

Thanks!

Now behave people, don't make them have to put the construction barriers back.

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MarinaM wrote:

Now behave people, don't make them have to put the construction barriers back.

I think the idea is that there aren't enough people around right now for it to make a difference. Not sure if that's actually reassuring.

The barriers were added back in the first episode, Scars, after Wheely Engberg was trapped in a crack by the Kahlo Pub. The DRC shut down access to the city while they decided how to proceed.

In an effort to help rescue Wheely, vid organised a group of people who went to someone's Kadish Tolesa and then shared the gallery book with everyone in the group. Because of the bugs with sharing, this linked everyone in the group to the public city. vid and the others explored the city looking for ways to help Wheely, until some of them were removed by a ResEng, and Nick White contacted vid via private message. Out of respect for Michael Engberg, vid called everyone over to the rope bridge, and everyone in the group linked out.

The barricades in the gallery were added back the next day.


Also worth noting, the default state of the barricades is to be enabled, so it's possible that Cyan hasn't had a chance to change the default state in the Vault yet.

johnsojc wrote:

If you share the Kadish Bahro stone with someone, they go to the public instance of the city. If you use the stone to link to the Gallery, you end up in the hood-linked private city instance. This is how sharing Bahro stone links to the city works in MOUL.

I don't get this. If I share the Bahro Stone with a friend we will end up in different places linking through? Is this something intentional or something that should be fixed to comply with "Dni universe" logic ?

And if it was fixed so that we both end up in hood private city instance, wouldn't that by extension fix the exploit?

ShadowNate wrote:

I don't get this. If I share the Bahro Stone with a friend we will end up in different places linking through? Is this something intentional or something that should be fixed to comply with "Dni universe" logic ?

And if it was fixed so that we both end up in hood private city instance, wouldn't that by extension fix the exploit?

My understanding is that this was done by design. This is simply the rule for linking via Bahro stone. Early in MOUL, using the link to the high balcony in Bevin sent you to a random neighborhood (much to the irritation to those in private neighborhoods). The New Year fountain's fireworks could only be triggered by someone linking to the high balcony. To get someone to a specific neighborhood balcony, a hood member had to share that stone with someone. However, the person who shared the stone still went to a random Bevin. This was eventually changed so that you at least went to your own neighborhood.

The private hood instance of the city has always been restricted to members of that neighborhood. Even though there was a share spot on the stone, it never worked. Using the city Bahro link in any Bevin sends you to your neighborhood's city instance.

Enforcement of the city population cap is done by disabling access to the city in the Nexus. Since you do not go through the nexus using a Bahro stone, this bypasses this restriction. If you would change the rules to send a shared stone link to the private city instance, this would violate the rule of hood members only in the city instance creating a new exploit.

johnsojc wrote:

If you would change the rules to send a shared stone link to the private city instance, this would violate the rule of hood members only in the city instance creating a new exploit.

Oh, yes, I didn't consider that, thanks

Sharing is a very broken system IMO. If I share a book/stone/link with you, we should end up in the same place. That is the whole point of sharing.

...but it doesn't happen like that.

Not always anyway. It does work for personal ages but it definitely does not work for child ages (the hood instanced ages). So when several ages that were formerly personal or public were ported to the child age system their sharing broke. And in spite of many bug reports (and exploits) during Gametap MOUL Cyan never removed their share symbols.

_________________
D'Lanor (ɹǝʇunч puǝƃǝן uɐqɹn)

♪ KI# 33949 ♪

johnsojc wrote:

The private hood instance of the city has always been restricted to members of that neighborhood. Even though there was a share spot on the stone, it never worked. Using the city Bahro link in any Bevin sends you to your neighborhood's city instance.

I don't think everybody knows that. The planned program last Friday in the Institution Hood's version of the Kahlo pub had to be moved to the hood because people using the Bahro stone didn't arrive in the Institution Hood's version of the city, although that was the plan.

_________________

Donahoo: KI# 79779
Donahoo_DJ: Ki# 855773

That's a shame, Donahoo. Maybe that knowledge didn't get fully into the wild during MO:UL, but it was out there.

If you can't explain the sharing rules in a single breath, it still needs fixing.

_________________
MOULa KI #23298
MOUL KI #35129
D'mala KI #74265
Gehn KI #10113

johnsojc wrote:

My understanding is that this was done by design.

If your understanding is not wrong, the design is.

...oh. Oh God.

Look... I... *takes a deep swallow of rum, then shakes his head in disbelief*

The instancing anomalies are certainly NOT by design. If they are, it's the most terrible excuse for "design" I've ever seen from a usability standpoint. I'm going to explain this as well as possible, as I've been trying to do for new people coming into the cavern recently.

We're going to use the neighborhood book room as our starting point. As most of you know, there are five link-based exits from the book room in any standard neighborhood...

1. Nexus (Linking Book)
2. Gahreesen (Linking Book)
3. Eder Delin/Eder Tsogal (Linking Book)
4. Great Zero Antechamber (Linking Book w/ Yeesha Symbol)
5. Ae'gura (Bahro Stone w/ Share Option)

For the purpose of this demonstration, we're going to have three explorers to act out their roles...

A. vid from Uru Obsession's Neighborhood
B. Gondar from Uru Obsession's Neighborhood
C. Donahoo from The Institution's Neighborhood

So, we'll start from the top and work our way down...

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1. Nexus (Linking Book)
The Nexus book is the simplest of them all. It has no instancing, it has no share option, it has no Yeesha-magic. When you use the Nexus book, no matter what, you go to an unoccupied part of the Nexus. You won't meet anyone there.
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2. Gahreesen (Linking Book)
Gahreesen throws the first set of actual "rules" at you. The Gahreesen book is instanced to the neighborhood that the person using it is a member of.

Practical Example:
vid links to Gahreesen from the Uru Obsession neighborhood, followed by Gondar, and then Donahoo. All three explorers have used the exact same book, but will end up in two separate instances of Gahreesen. While vid and Gondar end up in the Uru Obsession instance of the age, Donahoo finds herself alone in The Institution's instance of Gahreesen.

It does not matter what neighborhood you use the Gahreesen linking book in, it will always link you to the instance of the age that is shared between members of your neighborhood.

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3. Eder Delin/Eder Tsogal (Linking Book)
The book leading to either of the garden ages implements another set of rules. These ages are also neighborhood instanced, but they are instanced to the neighborhood that the book is found in, rather than the one that the user is a member of.

Practical Example:
vid links to Eder Tsogal from the Uru Obsession neighborhood, followed by Gondar, and then Donahoo. All three explorers have used the exact same book, and will all end up in the same instance of the age. Despite being members of different neighborhoods, all three explorers will end up in Uru Obsession's instance of Eder Tsogal.

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4. Great Zero Antechamber (Linking Book w/ Yeesha Symbol)
This particular book has been the nuisance of quite a few explorers, new and old alike. The Great Zero is instanced in the same way as the Gahreesen book, linked to the neighborhood that it's users are members of, rather than the location of the book. However, since the neighborhood and the Great Zero are both located in D'ni, that means that by using the book, one of the primary laws of linking is being broken, with no apparent repercussions.

Practical Example:
vid links to the Great Zero from the Uru Obsession neighborhood, followed by Gondar, and then Donahoo. All three explorers have used the exact same book, but will end up in two separate instances of Gahreesen. While vid and Gondar end up in the Uru Obsession instance of the Great Zero, Donahoo finds herself alone in The Institution's instance.

Except, this is logically impossible, and should have torn a hole in the space time continuum, or something. But it doesn't, because it has a Yeesha symbol on it, therefore "it just works" *waves hands*.

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5. Ae'gura (Bahro Stone w/ Share Option)
The link to Ae'gura is, like the Great Zero and Gahreesen books, instanced to the neighborhood of the person who uses it.

Practical Example:
vid links to Ae'gura from the Uru Obsession neighborhood, followed by Gondar, and then Donahoo. All three explorers have used the exact same stone, but will end up in two separate instances of Ae'gura. While vid and Gondar end up in the Uru Obsession instance of Ae'gura, Donahoo finds herself alone in The Institution's instance.

I'm willing to give the stone linking to Ae'gura some leeway. It links within the same age, but it's also not a linking book. A bahro stone is a relatively new concept to the laws of linking as we know them, and not something that has been set in ink for years. HOWEVER, to horribly complicate matters, this stone features a "Share" icon. And that's where it all falls down.

Impractical Example:
vid shares the link to Ae'gura with Gondar and Donahoo, and then links through himself. vid will end up in the Uru Obsession instance of Ae'gura as normal, however, Gondar and Donahoo will end up in a completely different instance. Against all rhyme and reason, the two explorers that vid shared the stone with will end up in THE PUBLIC INSTANCE of Ae'gura.

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Five links from the neighborhood book room, and every single one of them has a different and conflicting set of rules attached. If this is by design, someone on the usability team at Cyan spent their workdays drunk off their chair.

The Ae'gura sharing issue doesn't just apply to that single stone... it applies to ANY LINK TO AE'GURA THAT CAN BE SHARED. The original one that I discovered was the link to the gallery found from Kadish Tolesa. During Scars, when the city was inaccessible via the Nexus, I led a group of people into the public instance of Ae'gura using that sharing bug so we could split up and search for the missing girls. That's why the barriers were put back into place in Ae'gura. You can blame us for that.

BUT WAIT. THERE'S MORE. Just in case things weren't confusing enough, here's a real twisted link for you to get your head around.

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BONUS STAGE - Ae'gura City Office (Linking Book w/ Share Option)
In Teledahn, you can find a link to the Ae'gura city office in the alcove beneath the fish tank. If you're still reading this mumbo-jumbo, you've PROBABLY seen it a few hundred times, and used it almost as many. This book is instanced in the same way as the Gahreesen, Great Zero, and Ae'gura stones, linking the user to the instance of the neighborhood that they are a member of. But...

Hilarious Example:
vid shares the Ae'gura city office book with Gondar and Donahoo, and then links through himself. vid ends up in the Uru Obsession instance of the city office... while Gondar and Donahood end up in vid's instance of the city office. That's right, the people who the book is shared with end up in the PERSONAL INSTANCE of the person sharing the book. And since that person cannot share the book with themselves, it's a personal instance that they themselves cannot actually access.

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Seriously. I'm not making any of this up, it's all true, and ridiculous. Try it for yourself. Back when MOUL started, Victor Laxman mentioned something about people figuring out how the instances were all tied together. So I took it upon myself to do it. I made a big chart of it all and everything, then submitted the chart along with bug reports of my findings. Nothing ever changed. Even after the "break-in" on Ae'gura during Scars, nothing was done to remedy the problem, except for putting barriers up in the gallery... which is hilarious, because even though it confined people to a smaller space, they were still able to take up slots on the population cap of the city.

By the way, if Ae'gura is too full to link in via the Nexus, the sharing thing will totally let you bypass the cap. Knock yourselves out.

_________________
-vid (KI: 00201880)
The Age Linker's Guide
It is up to you to create your own adventures today!