The Great Zero

gregbert · **Posted:** Wed Feb 21, 2007 8:10 pm

Hi Folks,

As many of you have noticed, the Great Zero has been turned on. As I mentioned in an earlier post, it will come up and down numerous times during the Live 3 testing cycle. I will be setting it back to its default state shortly (beam off, not rotating), so don't be alarmed. At 4pm Cavern Time (GMT-7) it will begin rotating once again, and at 4:15 the beam will come on again. Greydragon has requested that we witness the event from as many hood instances of the GZ as possible, so just go to your own hood instance of the GZ for the test. We will try our best to accommodate as many time zones as possible for this event in the coming days, so if there is a better time between the hours of 10am and 6pm Cavern Time, speak up and be heard and we'll see to it. I have perused the Great Zero thread and I'd like to address a few of the questions raised there:

- Should there be a visible beam entering the rotating "projector" portion of the GZ from the other end of the facility? It seems to just disappear into a hole as it travels above the water and never gets any further.

This is by design, and not a bug. The beam enters the GZ machinery from below, so the point at which it appears to terminate is actually the point at which it diverts and travels beneath the floor.

- ...should the blue beam be visible in the hoods?

It should, and it will - but not yet. This is still in the works. I should mention, though, that when the beam does become visible from the Hoods, it will not appear the same as it does in the City. Since the hoods are a lot farther from the GZ than the main City is, the beam will not visibly travel across the floor and walls as it does there, as the light would be too diffuse and move to quickly - much the same as the light from a lighthouse would not appear the same from a small room in the distance as it it does if you are at the lighthouse looking out.

- I went through all the links in my brown book, and it the blue beam appears everywhere on the island of Ae'gura except Sharper's office. No blue beam in the BCO.

This is a known bug and it is in our database for fixing, so no need to ticket it further.

So:

- The GZ will turn off shortly
- It will begin rotating at 4pm Cavern time
- The beam will come on at 4:15 cavern time
- We'll do this again many times until we get good testing coverage, then it will stay on for the rest of the cycle.

GB

p.s. Sparky two will also be toggled off, so if any of you still see it henceforth, it's a bug.

gregbert · **Posted:** Thu Feb 22, 2007 6:22 pm

Hi folks,

Great test yesterday. I've gotten some good feedback so far about what times work best for which timezones, so what I'm planning to do is to run the Great Zero test every few hours between 10am and 6pm Cavern Time (GMT-7) for the next few days, as best I can as our schedule allows. Tentatively, we'll shoot for even-numbered hours (so 10am, 12pm, 2pm, 4pm, 6pm - again, Cavern Time [GMT-7]). Same format as before: At the top of the hour, the GZ will begin rotating; at 15 after, the beam will fire. I'll try to work something out for our friends from New Zealand and Australia as well, which might give some of our local folks (i.e. PST time zone) a chance to get home from work and maybe have some dinner before the test. If something comes up here that prevents a given scheduled test from being run, I'll post it here, so keep your eyes on this thread for news on that front. Hopefully this gives everyone a chance to participate. One reminder: If you see the GZ off at any given time in the days to come, it is likely that we're just setting up for the next test, so no need to ticket that unless you are certain that it should be on. So the first of the regularly scheduled tests will begin today at 12pm Cavern Time (GMT-7), and then hopefully every two hours thereafter as noted above. Tomorrow, we'll begin at 10am and go every two hours unless something comes up and we need to cancel one of the tests.

GB

The Great Zero

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