10 November, 2010

learn to be paranoid, fear pulls my strings, too

The dropdown upon entry, during the Tainted hunt, said:
Greetings Emilly Orr, Welcome to Venom Rahne (ALL HUNTERS IF YOU USE AREA SEARCH,DERENDER MY SHOP,SHOUT OUT THE LOCATION OR ANY OTHER FORM OF CHEATING YOU GET ONE WARNING AFTER THAT YOU WILL BE EJECTED AND BANNED I DO NOT TOLERATE IT.)Happy hunting!
Disregarding the grammar issues and spelling errors, this got to me. Area search? Okay, some non-official viewers come with that, and it may not be playing by the rules to use it. How is it externally detectable by a merchant?

Second, going into wireframe--which I'm making the big assumption he means when he says "derender my shop"--is not cheating. It's an option to understand the structure of the world mesh and the mesh of items; it's been in the official viewer for...ever, I think; and again, how can a merchant know I'm using that method to find things? First, I could be using it to trace the shape of prims in a sofa, or to understand what's flat and what's sculpt in something I'm seeing.

Though he could mean more direct rendering, like, removing alpha textures, or simple textures, which would partially de-render his shop, yes. Again, I have the same two questions: first, how is a merchant to know when one is doing this, and two, how is it cheating? What I don't render can't lag me. Some hunts get really laggy. It's either that or cut out avatars rezzing in, or killing flexi skirts and hair on everyone. Get real.

Third, "any other form of cheating" would assume that the methods listed above are cheating. They're not. And it's ludicrous that any merchant thinks they are, and will auto-ban for something that is a) largely indetectible, b) largely silent, and c) helps to find things in laggy sims...

I mean, shouting out locations in main chat or on voice? I totally get why that's a bannable offense. But the rest of the items aren't, or at least shouldn't be. He wants to ban me just because he wants to ban me, fine--it's a jerklife move, but hey, his store, his rules. He wants me to cave to things that aren't against the ToS or hunting in general and holds over my head the threat of being banned?

Bite me, fanboy. Unless there is a sure-fire way to detect when I'm "de-rendering" a shop or poking about in wireframe, you're not only not going to know, but I'm not doing anything wrong.

"[S]hutting down the teen grid, then a few weeks later saying they’d let teens access the main grid, then later saying costs are going up. eegads, if that isn't writing on the slowly rezzing texture, [I] don’t know what is [...]"

She's not wrong.

Also, this is beautiful and everyone should read it. For the funny, if not to make you fans of the show. (But if you become fans, you could do worse than Netflix, domestically at least, because Netflix has all the episodes.)

Now, then. More Minecrafting. This morning, in excavating another long hallway to...nowhere in particular, actually...I discovered one patch where I was hearing a lot of zombies. I mean, a scary number of zombies. I walked back and forth, and it was really localized. And right under my feet.

Dungeon, I thought.

In Team Fortress 2, I'm very reckless. I strap on my flamethrower and charge into the fray. I count it a good fight when I manage to set ablaze two of the opposite side before someone guns me down.

But in Minecraft? I'm very careful. It can be an unnerving game at times, and I don't like the sense of panic when I die, and I have to go back to where I died to pick up my toys.

So...slowly, carefully...I started to dig out the floor. Never straight down, always in small patches, and three cubes down, I finally cracked a corner of the dungeon. And it was packed with zombies. Yeek. I cracked through more of the dungeons and the zombies went crazy trying to get to me. Unnerved and slightly desperate, I started dropping cubes of gravel on the ones I could see. It seemed to kill them, and I went off to make iron swords.

When I came back, I'd created enough of a space to drop into, which I immediately filled with light. Then--carefully, again--I began to dig out the gravel, and put torches around the spawner, flickering with eldritch light, because I had been told that would stop the spawning.

It seemed to; now there was just the zombies already there to deal with. (I should note, I didn't think to take pictures until after it was all over, because I was pretty much fighting for my life!)

I managed to kill seven zombies in a row, a somewhat astounding feat for me, before the eighth one leapt and killed me off. Then it was a race against time to get back to the little dungeon before my stuph went poof; I stopped only long enough to grab a pickaxe before I ran for the opening in the tunnel floor.

I leapt into the far side, turned, fended off the last zombie, lost a few more hearts....but I was safe. It was dead, and the treasure--MUAHAHAHAHA--was mine!

Well...almost. There was the mossy cobblestone. Which I craved like a drug. With more care, and no little trepidation, I began to mine out the blocks. I didn't know if removing the torches to get the stones would start the auto-spawning again. It was mine and patch, mine and patch, mine and replace torch and patch, all the way 'round.

Miss Neome had come in to the computer room by now, and was watching over my shoulder. She swears a zombie was hiding under one of the cobblestones. I don't know how that's even possible, but it wasn't one of the blocks beneath a torch, so...I really don't know how he suddenly manifested and came for me, but he did. And I killed him!

Monster spawner from above

This is the dungeon--and the spawner--after clearing out a few things--like zombies, moss-covered cobblestones, and adding more torches. Also carving a mini-staircase into one wall.

Monster spawner, ground level

And this is the monster-spawner seen from the same level, looking over to the mini-staircase.

I found the mini-dungeon; I faced down the monsters; I survived (well, sort of.) My treasure (in the little chest)? A loaf of bread; three ingots of iron; 4 piles of gunpowder.

Healing, a new iron pickaxe, and my first chunk of TNT, and all I had to do was die once! That's a good day's work.

I am reasonably proud of myself.

12 comments:

itsdavidvc said...

Wait...DROPPING BLOCKS on zombies kills them? If that's true I can finally save up on arrows.

Lalo Telling said...

Miss Em ~

"Derender" is another feature available with some TPVs; I believe Emerald was first, and Imprudence has it now. It's not wireframe, it's telling your viewer to omit displaying such-and-such object/linkset (I suspect it works via the UUID) I use it quite often to keep junk prims out of the results when photographing mainland sims. It also derenders other avatars -- they'll still be there, only your viewer will omit showing them to you.

As far as I know, the use thereof is completely undetectable, even to a person who has been derendered. The shopkeeper whereof you speak is blowing smoke.

By the way, the effect is temporary: it only lasts during one's current "session". Relog, and everything is again visible.

Emilly Orr said...

Yes and no. First, you have to have a height on the zombie and be able to drop blocks in the first place--and dropping only works with sand or gravel. Gravel is slightly heavier, and it works best if said zombie is not moving, or doesn't have a lot of room to get out of the way.

Emilly Orr said...

*looks up de-rendering on Imprudence*

Maybe I still have no idea where it is.

But if it's under Advanced > Rendering > then any other option on that list, that's been in the main client since I started in 2007. This is not new, it's not cheating, and it's still stupid to warn people about like it's going to result in the merchant ARing the avatar.

It's ridiculous.

Sphynx Soleil said...

It's a pie menu option, you have to go down a level or two of "more >>" to see it.

And yes, it's handy when you're taking pictures. I rarely do hunts, so the rest is irrelevant.

Emilly Orr said...

Ah-ha.

Now, see, that sounds extraordinarily useful, especially if I'm just stubbornly not rezzing something in.

But again, as a cheat? Why is that a cheat?

Sphynx Soleil said...

No more cheating, IMO, than people who hide the actual hunt prims IN objects. :P (i.e., twisted lose-your-brains hunt...)

Some people are just crazy - like the ones who think your av height means you're a child. Or the ones that banned a few Fallen Gods group members because the "chibi" arboreals looked like peodphiles out trolling for prey because they weren't (a) adults and (b) pretty.

Emilly Orr said...

.....

Pedophiles looking for prey, on SL? First, aren't going to go for actual children, because all the actual children are adults. And secondly, pedophiles looking for prey aren't going to be Tinies; by and large, Tinies are perfectly comfortable in smaller skins, and want nothing more than to stay Tiny and have fun.

Some days I really loathe people.

Sphynx Soleil said...

What irked me was the shopkeeps insistence that only humanform avatars could BE pretty or nice looking. I mean, hell, SL is a canvas, not RL, where's the fun in only being humanform all the time?

(The "chibi" arboreals aren't tinies, btw...they're small, but not need-their-own-specific-AO level of small. It's just compare to my usual amazonian heights *grins* they're 'chibi'.)

Emilly Orr said...

Pffff. I really want to kick people like that in the head.

You have a virtual world; you can be anything, you can build anything. Absolutely anything imagination can dream up, SL can do (within the limits of the mesh, and even that's supposed to change soon).

And most people? Drag their RL selves into the mix, complete with their RL prejudices.

Non-Tiny, that's even worse--that means it's back to the height thing. As if, if I'm not nine feet tall, I'm obviously either a child looking for sex, or an adult looking for child sex.

Morons.

iliveisl said...

nice post, lots of great points, and compelling with a dead on smack on the side of the head

(plus anything with zombies is pretty great)

i wanted to concur with your pedophile comment and add to it. any teen that happens to be sneaked into the main grid will not fall for any line coming from any adult about hooking up! give kids the credit they are due, they are not sex-crazed idiots wanting to hookup with middle-aged freaks (even if that mid-aged person has a really cool PS3 in the back of their van, well . . .) =p

sex-crazed maybe, but idiots, nope, not when it comes to things online =)

Emilly Orr said...

Well, they're no more sex-crazed than anyone else on the grid. :p

hide away, they say, 'cos we don't want your broken parts

Yeah, so...remember that thing I was recovering from? You know, last year ? Yeah. I did it again. So this is Em Faw Down Go Boom part ...