Guild Reagents not working: Gimme the source code!

[Renvar]

What makes you think that?


And what makes you think that?


And it's still ludicrous.

Your definition of developer is vague and wide in the extreme. It would not pass an HR Audit to have that same title refer to an individual with management responsibiility and direct reports as well as a staff programmer or analyst. I disagree with your opinion.

If you do not think that PR, customer service, or marketing has large voice in development priority in any for profit software development/hosting operation then you would be mistaken.

Why is it ludicrous? Because you labeled it as such? Making a statement that something is "ludicrous" without providing any data to support your claim is pointless and basically trolling. How about making a rational case to support your position?

[Angelus_dead]

Why?

Well, you said that "developer" means someone who manipulates source code. That's not what the word means (especially in this context), so I was wondering why you said that.

Why?

Why is it ludicrous? Because your point depends on specificity not present in the statement to which you responded.

What happened is a customer complained about a broken feature in the software. The complaint was not addressed to any particular person identified by name or even job description; it just said "guys", meaning whoever had responsibility for the problem under consideration.

Then, you attempted to dispute the complaint by saying that the "developers" are only following orders and lacked the authority to decide to fix the problem. That deflection of responsibility could only make sense if the complaint had been aimed only at the person implementing the decision, instead of the one who decided on it.

The "pass the buck" fallacy is rather typical: To observe that some people take orders from others doesn't negate complaints about the correctness of those orders; all it can do is change the target to which the complaints should be delivered.

Imagine someone says that Wal-Mart sold him an unsafe product, and was told that since the sales clerks are only following management instructions, his only recourse is to apply to become a clerk himself! That's ludicrous, as the sane approach would be to complain to the manager.

[donfilibuster]

http://forums.ddo.com/showpost.php?p...6&postcount=12

Components purchased from the Guild Reagent vendors in the House Kundarak Enclave will now work as expected.

Components previously purchased from the Guild Reagent vendors were not updated and may still not work for you.

[Angelus_dead]

Your definition of developer is vague and wide in the extreme.

That statement is incorrect in multiple ways, primarily in that I was not providing an affirmative definition of "developer" at all. I was instead disputing the definition someone else gave for "developer": a person who edits source code.

It would not pass an HR Audit to have that same title

As already explained, what's listed on someone's job description is not the topic here.

If you do not think that PR, customer service, or marketing has large voice in development priority in any for profit software development/hosting operation then you would be mistaken.

Good thing that bears no resemblance to anything I wrote.

Making a statement that something is "ludicrous" without providing any data to support your claim is pointless and basically trolling.

That is untrue and somewhat self-defeating.

[Angelus_dead]

In this case it wouldn't matter, since whether it's in English, German, French, Mandarin, Swahili, or Klingon, the two names for the same reagent with different itemcodes would still be identical

Programming tip: Be careful about saying "Oh this will never matter". In this case, it is indeed concievable that whatever internationalization process adjusts the item names for the purpose of the human viewer is not also applied to the back-end game logic server code, potentially causing freaky bugs that only happen to users of nonstandard languages.

And your solution is a bit more complex

It's unlikely that would be the case, although it depends on the nature of their software.

[rahubby]

http://forums.ddo.com/showpost.php?p...6&postcount=12

Guess they considered it such a minor fix they didn't need to announce it?

now if only I could get into the game....

[Missing_Minds]

Guild reagent vendors. Come on, guys, give me a weekend with the source code for the routine that searches through your backpack for reagents, and the data for the reagents, and I'll have it working right by Monday.

Well, you said that "developer" means someone who manipulates source code. That's not what the word means (especially in this context), so I was wondering why you said that.

Why is it ludicrous? Because your point depends on specificity not present in the statement to which you responded.

Developer.

[Alexandryte]

// note: I'm treating "itemstack" as an object type that contains the following information:
// quantity = How many items are in the stack type = {"Reagent","Collectable","Weapon", etc}
// itemcode = The game's definition of the specific items, probably an integer.
// Spell is an object type that contains things like the spell level, whether it needs reagents, energy cost, damage, targetting info,

boolean Spell.GetReagent(int item) // Returns "false" if not found, so calling routine would error out)
{
 for bag = 1 to player.maxbagnumber do
  for slot = 1 to player.bag[bag].bagslots do 
   local bagitem = player.bagslot[bag,slot] // player.bagslot is an array of itemstack objects
   if bagitem.itemcode == item then // Found the reagent we're looking for
     bagitem.quantity = bagitem.quantity - 1;
     return(true);
   end
  end
 end
 return(false)
}

Now this is probably vastly oversimplified, but I wanted it to be easy to read and follow. What it appears to be doing is looping through the character's bags looking for a specific ITEMCODE rather than a specific ITEM TYPE - The only thing needed would be to do this instead (Assumes the existance of a method GetItemName(itemcode) that returns a string containing the name of an item associated with the itemcode.

boolean Spell.GetReagent(int item) // Returns "false" if not found, so calling routine would error out)
{
 for bag = 1 to player.maxbagnumber do
  for slot = 1 to player.bag[bag].bagslots do 
   local bagitem = player.bagslot[bag,slot] // player.bagslot is an array of itemstack objects
   if GetItemName(bagitem.itemcode) == GetItemName(item) then // Found the reagent we're looking for
     bagitem.quantity = bagitem.quantity - 1;
     return(true);
   end
  end
 end
 return(false)
}

And that's it...by comparing the NAMES rather than the CODE, both items with the name "Level 3 Inscription materials" will work, even if they have different item codes.

At the expense of splitting hairs....what coding language are you attempting to use? It is quite obtuse from the usual code Ive seen using "end"s as a means to do what braces "{}" do. You seem to be addressing items and their methods in a Java type fashion.....but the code itself isnt java....nor is it C based from its structuring.


(on a slightly related note use the code tags when posting code.....forums ruin indentation otherwise)

[rahubby]

At the expense of splitting hairs....what coding language are you attempting to use? It is quite obtuse from the usual code Ive seen using "end"s as a means to do what braces "{}" do. You seem to be addressing items and their methods in a Java type fashion.....but the code itself isnt java....nor is it C based from its structuring.


(on a slightly related note use the code tags when posting code.....forums ruin indentation otherwise)

It's pseudocode based on mostly Java and a bit of Lua (And I think the "end" statements were a Pascal Flashback (Shudders)) I haven't written much actual code in years (the one exception being the addon I wrote for WoW about a year ago, so my pseudocode is a bit clunky without a compiler to correct my programming grammar (I literally just typed it in without trying to compile it, since it's just pseudocode)...but if I had an actual programming job, I'd probably have to learn an all-new language anyways...here, I'll go back and edit the post to use code tags and fix it so it's "real" Java code...

[rahubby]

Programming tip: Be careful about saying "Oh this will never matter". In this case, it is indeed concievable that whatever internationalization process adjusts the item names for the purpose of the human viewer is not also applied to the back-end game logic server code, potentially causing freaky bugs that only happen to users of nonstandard languages.

I can't think of any reason why they would want to call two reagents that are essentially the same item ingame by different names based on which vendor sold them.

"Oh no, we want to call the 'Bull Dung' sold by this over vendor 'Bovine Poo' "

Somehow I don't see that happening

I picked the name because thats something I know can be accessed easily and quickly. I suppose you could also compare which icon is being used (each reagent has a slightly different icon, having a roman numeral in the upper left indicating what level it is, and a different picture) but that may not be as reliable as a string, since the icons could actually be stored as different files and thus have different identifiers, even for the same object based on whether it is selected, ghosted out, or whatever.

[Eladiun]

I can't think of any reason why they would want to call two reagents that are essentially the same item ingame by different names based on which vendor sold them.

They wanted to make them BTC and screwed up.

[Renvar]

Assigning priority to different tasks is part of development, making the person who does that function also a developer.

Really? The above quote is not you defining an alternate, and incorrect, definition? Self-defeating, ironicly to use the word you selected, would be an example of you reversing yourself repeatedly in the same thread to try to cover the fact that you posted an erroneous statement.

Also you are the one that opened the door on the discussion of what is or is not in a developer's job description with the above post. Now that multiple posters have called you on it, it is no longer a relevant part of the discussion. Odd how it was relevant when you were choosing to discuss it.

You are correct, my PR statement bears no resemblance to you your flippant and sarcastic "Why would you think that?" at another poster's statement that PR has a significant role in development prioritization. Mine is actually a lucid statement of opinion that brings something to the conversation, regardless of whether you agree or disagree with it.

Once again, you labeling something as "untrue" or "self-defeating" does not make it so. Do you realize how often you make a short generalized statement with no support? You might as well just type "/fail" or "No" or "False" or "This" or any of the other one word, why waste your time pressing Submit Reply, add nothing to the conversation postings that other people give.

I can only theorize that you do not provide an actual agruement because you have none that supports your comments.

[Renvar]

Well, you said that "developer" means someone who manipulates source code. That's not what the word means (especially in this context), so I was wondering why you said that.


Why is it ludicrous? Because your point depends on specificity not present in the statement to which you responded.

What happened is a customer complained about a broken feature in the software. The complaint was not addressed to any particular person identified by name or even job description; it just said "guys", meaning whoever had responsibility for the problem under consideration.

Then, you attempted to dispute the complaint by saying that the "developers" are only following orders and lacked the authority to decide to fix the problem. That deflection of responsibility could only make sense if the complaint had been aimed only at the person implementing the decision, instead of the one who decided on it.

The "pass the buck" fallacy is rather typical: To observe that some people take orders from others doesn't negate complaints about the correctness of those orders; all it can do is change the target to which the complaints should be delivered.

Imagine someone says that Wal-Mart sold him an unsafe product, and was told that since the sales clerks are only following management instructions, his only recourse is to apply to become a clerk himself! That's ludicrous, as the sane approach would be to complain to the manager.

Actually your analogy is inaccurate for the situation at hand. In your scenario, the manager has told the sales clerks to not refund/replace the unsafe product. That would be analgous to the feature being discussed being determined as WAI by turbine management. If that were the case then the proper recourse would be pursue your complaint with the correct person.

In this case, however, the feature is not WAI. It is an acknowledged bug. Therefore it will be resolved based on a priority tree and available resources. As the project management pyramid of time-features-resources dictates, the options to change the timeline for particular deliverable is to alter the requirements (i.e. get it prioritized in front of other things) or to increase the resources available (get hired on as a developer).

Thus, the statement is not ludicrous nor is it insane. It is simply an alternate path to the same goal.

[Renvar]

Programming tip: Be careful about saying "Oh this will never matter". In this case, it is indeed concievable that whatever internationalization process adjusts the item names for the purpose of the human viewer is not also applied to the back-end game logic server code, potentially causing freaky bugs that only happen to users of nonstandard languages.


It's unlikely that would be the case, although it depends on the nature of their software.

Honestly, without access to their database diagram, access routines, or application architecture anything you say or anyone else says with regard to which method would be the most reliable or maintainable over time is pure conjecture and has no basis in fact. Why even argue it? Neither one of you could ever prove you were correct.

I'm sure the poster was not suggesting they could cut and paste his code sample into the application and it would work. He was simply illustrating the complexity level of potential solutions. Certainly there are many ways to skin the cat. It appears that none of them would be all that challenging, however, thus his original frustration with why it can't be fixed quickly stands as a valid statement.