Author Topic: And the mask comes off.  (Read 1712686 times)

FloatingFatMan

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Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #880 on: September 04, 2014, 07:36:41 AM »
That quote from Matt makes me think of a developer I used to know. He put a time bomb in some of the old code just in case he ever got layed off. He had to reset it every month or so to stop it from going off.
He always thought no one would ever be able to find it or determine what it did.

I got the axe a couple months after he told me so I never found out if anything ever happened from it. Then again, the company did go under just a little while after that... hmmmm.

What an idiot.  That would be classed as industrial sabotage. People have gone to prison for that.

LaughingAlex

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Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #881 on: September 04, 2014, 07:40:33 AM »
What an idiot.  That would be classed as industrial sabotage. People have gone to prison for that.

Programmers are known for their hubris.  Big time.
Currently; Not doing any streaming, found myself with less time available recently.  Still playing starbound periodically, though I am thinking of trying other games.  Don't tell me to play mmohtg's though please :).  Getting back into participating in VO and the successors again to.

FloatingFatMan

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Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #882 on: September 04, 2014, 07:41:26 AM »
Programmers are known for their hubris.  Big time.

Only a very small number of us!

LaughingAlex

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Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #883 on: September 04, 2014, 07:44:39 AM »
Only a very small number of us!

Almost every information security expert I met very noticeably thinks otherwise.  I still see very stupid password systems out there in place on very modern and very new websites and i'm left utterly facepalming for it.  Then there are those who try to make encryption, and the horror stories of how easily said programmer-made encryption gets utterly busted since it wasn't made by professional cryptographers.  The NISTS are out there for a reason.
Currently; Not doing any streaming, found myself with less time available recently.  Still playing starbound periodically, though I am thinking of trying other games.  Don't tell me to play mmohtg's though please :).  Getting back into participating in VO and the successors again to.

Cailyn Alaynn

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Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #884 on: September 04, 2014, 07:47:11 AM »
Ok guys, recall, this is still still very much tentative, so I would not recommend buying anything just yet.

I've gotta re-iterate this as well. There's still no guarantees. Don't start spending a bunch of money on stuff just yet.
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Ankhammon

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Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #885 on: September 04, 2014, 07:52:50 AM »
What an idiot.  That would be classed as industrial sabotage. People have gone to prison for that.

I absolutely agree, but this was back in the late 90s. No security experts around. Heck, our server room at the time was a group of about 30 NT machines linked together.

IT students thought a great way of getting ahead in the business was to hack into something big, get caught, do some jail time, get recruited upon release.
And folks, that is true. Not only did people think that way, some actually pulled it off.
Cogito, Ergo... eh?

Ankhammon

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Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #886 on: September 04, 2014, 07:55:05 AM »
Programmers are known for their hubris.  Big time.

Yep. None of them saw the real potential that I knew. Control of the world in two short words, IT Union.

Want to ship our jobs oversees? Ok... where's your data again?
Oh, we can keep our jobs. Let's talk about a raise.

I really should have played more villains. :)
Cogito, Ergo... eh?

LaughingAlex

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Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #887 on: September 04, 2014, 07:58:17 AM »
I absolutely agree, but this was back in the late 90s. No security experts around. Heck, our server room at the time was a group of about 30 NT machines linked together.

IT students thought a great way of getting ahead in the business was to hack into something big, get caught, do some jail time, get recruited upon release.
And folks, that is true. Not only did people think that way, some actually pulled it off.

Of course, these days you get a criminal record, and then bet barred from ever holding any reasonable paying job for your entire life unless you get lucky somehow.
Currently; Not doing any streaming, found myself with less time available recently.  Still playing starbound periodically, though I am thinking of trying other games.  Don't tell me to play mmohtg's though please :).  Getting back into participating in VO and the successors again to.

Ankhammon

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Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #888 on: September 04, 2014, 08:03:40 AM »
Of course, these days you get a criminal record, and then bet barred from ever holding any reasonable paying job for your entire life unless you get lucky somehow.

Yep. Barred by the same people who used stunts like that to get into the industry in the first place. :)


OH, I never actually said this, but thanks to all of you who have worked so diligently on this. Those who have gone before and failed and to the new crew who is coming closer than many of us thought possible.

Not to be sacrilegious, but https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2SkqaCO9c4

And finally, just thinking back on all of this Task Force Hail Mary stuff over the years. One thing keeps rolling over and over in my mind. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ib43Lfdivdw
« Last Edit: September 04, 2014, 08:09:48 AM by Ankhammon »
Cogito, Ergo... eh?

Kistulot

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Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #889 on: September 04, 2014, 08:10:34 AM »
Yep. Barred by the same people who used stunts like that to get into the industry in the first place. :)

This makes me want to link to a Youtube clip from Hackers - the part where the villain on a skateboard rides by holding onto the car and grabs up the disk without stopping.
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Arcana

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Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #890 on: September 04, 2014, 08:15:21 AM »
That quote from Matt makes me think of a developer I used to know. He put a time bomb in some of the old code just in case he ever got layed off. He had to reset it every month or so to stop it from going off.
He always thought no one would ever be able to find it or determine what it did.

Not that you necessarily were implying this, but that wasn't what Matt was referring to.  He was referring to the fact that half the time the programmers were altering the code, they didn't always know why previous developers did what they did.  Then the next guy would make changes, wondering just what the heck that guy was thinking when he did what he did.  To understand the codebase, you didn't need to just be a programmer, you needed to be an archaeologist.

Back around 2010ish, I believe, the players started to post about yet another one of those crazy conspiracy theories about how the game rewards were rigged in a particular way.  Except I started to get a weird jibe about this one, and started following the discussion carefully.  Based on the tests the players were posting, there was no way random chance could have accounted for their observations, all but eliminating observer bias.  So I began collecting my own data and adding it to the data being posted, and started talking to pohsyb about those observations, emphasizing that in my opinion, this particular problem (rewards sometimes being given in nearly identical amounts in similar ways in multiple runs of the same mission) was not just another "accuracy is nerfed" threads.  He decided to look, and discovered that deep within the code of the reward system one of the developers had written their own random number generator rather than use the standard rand().

Why, why, WHY?  Who knows.  But they did, and it was totally broken, and under certain circumstances could generate "random" results so bad they essentially made certain mission rewards predictable.  Which, in an MMO played by dozens or hundreds of people at a time, is a *really* bad rand.

Now imagine you have ten years of that lurking around, mixed in with code written back when 8 gigs of ram was a really big server and bit-masking was the official Cryptic Studios sport.

You know how you can spot the Cryptic/Paragon developer in a crowd?  Yell "physics engine" and see which one ducks.

Cailyn Alaynn

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Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #891 on: September 04, 2014, 08:25:36 AM »
-facepalms- That's...special, and sadly...Unsurprising.

I didn't know you were so knowledgeable about CoH's code base, Arcana.
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Kistulot

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Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #892 on: September 04, 2014, 08:30:13 AM »
That story was... impressive. It really is one of those moments where a part of me goes "how did CoH never just randomly implode from someone walking backwards, to the left, and then hopping twice?"

Thanks for sharing it :)
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The Fifth Horseman

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Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #893 on: September 04, 2014, 08:37:29 AM »
I just thought of another problem with speech. Suppose you want to update something down the road. You have the following choices:
  • You try to hire the original voice actor to voice the new content
  • You hire a new actor to redo all the content so the voice is consistent throughout the game
  • You hire a new actor for the new content and hope the change in voices doesn't break immersion for people
  • New content gets no voice overs

It's different in a game that isn't going to be seeing a lot of updates but I wouldn't want theme to be held up over concerns like this.
Option five: Employ speech synthesis.
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The end occurred pretty much as we predicted: all servers redlining until midnight... and then no servers to go around.

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Cailyn Alaynn

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Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #894 on: September 04, 2014, 08:41:21 AM »
That story was... impressive. It really is one of those moments where a part of me goes "how did CoH never just randomly implode from someone walking backwards, to the left, and then hopping twice?"

Because Paragon Studios worked very, very hard to keep things in a state of barely-falling-apart.
Things like that explain why occasionally...a server or two would just suddenly stop running. Used to joke that an intern kept tripping over power cords.
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Burnt Toast

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Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #895 on: September 04, 2014, 08:41:51 AM »

Just a little nitpick: MWM is not part of the negotiations for the IP/license. Nate (Downix); who is President of MWM, headed the efforts, but his involvement is his involvement and not MWM. At least that is the way I understood things....

Sooooo...

8.  Am I concerned MWM solicited Kickstarter money when they were working to try to license CoH?  Not at all.  This was, and still is a long shot.  I funded the Kickstarter knowing that many Kickstarter developments fail, that even if it succeeded in shipping a game it might not be a game I ultimately wanted to play, that no matter what happened it would be years before I saw final results, and knowing that there were other things in motion that might or might not preempt that work.  I don't know anything more today than I did when I funded the Kickstarter, and I don't honestly believe anyone else really does either.

Kistulot

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Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #896 on: September 04, 2014, 08:43:14 AM »
Because Paragon Studios worked very, very hard to keep things in a state of barely-falling-apart.
Things like that explain why occasionally...a server or two would just suddenly stop running. Used to joke that an intern kept tripping over power cords.

I always believed them when they said Mot spilled blood on the servers.

...well okay secretly I believed Mot had a taste for Clamato...
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LaughingAlex

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Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #897 on: September 04, 2014, 08:50:37 AM »
Just a little nitpick: MWM is not part of the negotiations for the IP/license. Nate (Downix); who is President of MWM, headed the efforts, but his involvement is his involvement and not MWM. At least that is the way I understood things....

Honestly I just want to understand what they mean by a central company licensing the CoX IP, tbh.  Would NcSoft still own the IP or are they licensing to the central company liscencing the CoX IP to the successors?  To my understanding the company owns the IP but I want to make sure I understand it right.
Currently; Not doing any streaming, found myself with less time available recently.  Still playing starbound periodically, though I am thinking of trying other games.  Don't tell me to play mmohtg's though please :).  Getting back into participating in VO and the successors again to.

Cailyn Alaynn

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Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #898 on: September 04, 2014, 08:55:47 AM »
Just a little nitpick: MWM is not part of the negotiations for the IP/license. Nate (Downix); who is President of MWM, headed the efforts, but his involvement is his involvement and not MWM. At least that is the way I understood things....
This is correct.

Honestly I just want to understand what they mean by a central company licensing the CoX IP, tbh.  Would NcSoft still own the IP or are they licensing to the central company liscencing the CoX IP to the successors?  To my understanding the company owns the IP but I want to make sure I understand it right.

The plan, as I understand it, is for a new company to be formed. NCSoft would sell the I.P., and license the CoH engine to this company.
This company would then set up and run the Legacy City of Heroes server, and then license the I.P. to MWM and Revival. (and eventually, others I believe.)
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Thunder Glove

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Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #899 on: September 04, 2014, 08:58:38 AM »
I'm one of the few people who was really disappointed by the outcome of "Praetorian Fatigue." I'll agree Primal Earth needed some love, but it felt a very unsatisfying way to end things. I get that their Hamidon is uber in a million ways, but evacuating what few people we could and leaving a world to be overrun just made me feel really disappointed.

I don't think that was how it was meant to end.  I24 had a new Incarnate Arc where you went back to Pretoria and help them power up their anti-Hamidon defenses, as well as take down a number of Avatars of Hamidon yourself, so there seemed to be plans to let the player fight back against Hamidon in Pretoria, and possibly eventually win.

Sadly, we'll probably never know what Paragon had planned for Pretoria in the future.  Of course, with a new team at the helm, there's no reason that Issue 25 (or, more likely, Vol 2, Issue 1) can't have some Incarnates dealing with Pretorian Hamidon while the majority deals with the Battalion.