TessEQ2 - Home of the DB Project

[John Adams]

Bleah... we just got hit with a freak summer storm (aka, Monsoon) that mimicked the apocalypse. Trees snapping in half, large objects blowing down the street, children being carried away by evil witches... it was quite exciting. I've been in a lot of desert storms out here in AZ, but this one freaked me out a bit Hail, but it was 110 degrees outside. You know what that means...

Microburst!!!

Anyway, the power got knocked out for a few hours. Sorry we've been offline. Getting the servers all working again and passing out for the night. Report any problems to me and I'll get to them tomorrow.

[Wdneq2]

Damn that sux, hope all is well now in your end of the world, and the weather settles down for you

[LethalEncounter]

Nice, nothing like a good storm

[John Adams]

FYI,

The TessEQ2 (the db project test server) is getting it's first "data transfusion" today, and will remain locked to the public til I verify the transfer went ok hopefully by this afternoon. Afterwards, you should see some of the Dev data we have been working on, including the following zones populated:

Beggar's Court (BeggarsCourt)
Big Bend (BigBend)
Castleview Hamlet (Castleview)
Darklight Wood (Darklight)
Graystone Yard (Graystone)
Greater Faydark (GreaterFaydark)
Longshadow Alley (Longshadow)
Nettleville (Nettleville)
Oakmyst Forest (Oakmyst)
Outpost of the Overlord (OutpostOverlord)
Queen's Colony (QueensColony)
Scale Yard (ScaleYard)
Starcrest Commune (Starcrest)
Stonestair Byway (Stonestair)
Sunken City (SunkenCity)
Temple Street (TempleSt)
The Baubbleshire (Baubbleshire)
The Caves (Caves)
The Circle of Elders (CircleElders)
The Elddar Grove (ElddarGrove)
The Forest Ruins (ForestRuins)
The Graveyard (Graveyard)
The Peat Bog (PeatBog)
The Ruins (Ruins)
The Source of Evil (SourceEvil)
The Sprawl (Sprawl)
The Willow Wood (WillowWood)
Timorous Deep (TimorousDeep)

Along with these new populations, you should find literally hundreds of new quests written by Scatman and the Content Design team.

Note: None of these zones are 100% complete still, but I thought it time to force an update to get player feedback on how things are working... and try to close some of our older bugs.

A few of the new zones are not even cleaned up completely yet, so I may remove them if it becomes a performance issue. Let us know what you think.

[John Adams]

Transfusion looks ok, opening the server. Let me know asap if there are any problems. I will be monitoring it this weekend.

[John Adams]

DAG-NABBIT!!

It's raining, slight drizzle, here in AZ... and the moment I left the driveway, apparently the router freaked out and locked up. Apparently, even electronics freak out when the weather changes. So until I get home this afternoon, Tess and the Editors are offline.

Sorry!

[John Adams]

K we're back. Odd router bug. We only 1/2 locked up I could still surf out, but no incoming data was being forwarded.

I think it's time for a new router.

[John Adams]

So why would TessEQ2 be down for 2+ days when it is the Official Test Server?

Because there are some critical issues/crashes with the new code that have to be worked out, and our sole developer does not have all the time in the world to log into my server to check it out every time there's a crash - so the server sits in debug waiting for him to find time - otherwise crashes may not get fixed properly. It's a good thing, really.

Sorry for the inconvenience, but we cannot fix these any faster than we are. Your patience is appreciated.

[John Adams]

Wow.

Just... wow.

So, the outage this week is now because my new ISP (2 weeks after becoming a customer) has decided they need to suddenly upgrade all the equipment out in the BFE-land I live in, so we can have more HD options on our cable TV.

This equates to "So sorry for the inconvenience, but your shit is going to be unstable as hell for the next 2 mos while we figure this out".

Sorry all. I can't win.

[Zcoretri]

That why IRC not working today?

I seem to get disconnected from IRC a lot more recently. 2 months to figure shit out? wtf!

[John Adams]

Anytime an ISP "installs new hardware", I can expect excessive downtime. sigh...

Yes, any services I provide are unavailable if my internet connection goes down

We're up now tho, so maybe they are finished

~wanders off to see if he gets Playboy in HD yet~

[Astal]

Anytime an ISP "installs new hardware", I can expect excessive downtime. sigh...

Yes, any services I provide are unavailable if my internet connection goes down

We're up now tho, so maybe they are finished

~wanders off to see if he gets Playboy in HD yet~

Curious, once all the bugs are out, your going to release the content correct?

[John Adams]

Yes of course. All content you see on the LE or Tess servers will (soon)tm be released to everyone via our update service.

I've set a deadline for what we call "DB Milestone 1" for the end of Oct '09... but the more changes SOE makes to their game, client, structures and data, the more burden it puts on us to meet this goal. We're trying. But keep in mind, the last year has been far more than simply placing spawns. We're building ALL server functions to support the content as well.

My hope is that by releasing some populated zones, fully functional, it will inspire more people to get involved and help the core project move along a little faster.

[Astal]

Yes of course. All content you see on the LE or Tess servers will (soon)tm be released to everyone via our update service.

I've set a deadline for what we call "DB Milestone 1" for the end of Oct '09... but the more changes SOE makes to their game, client, structures and data, the more burden it puts on us to meet this goal. We're trying. But keep in mind, the last year has been far more than simply placing spawns. We're building ALL server functions to support the content as well.

My hope is that by releasing some populated zones, fully functional, it will inspire more people to get involved and help the core project move along a little faster.

Oh no i completely understand all the hard work you guys have done, i dont expect anything, i was just curious, ill be mostly involved with editing the wiki and sharing the knowledge i gain, wouldnt it work to get everything working to a point and then update to live? or is it better to just keep pace with sony?

[John Adams]

Unfortunately since we cannot collect the entire games content at once, we have to do it slowly as we advance through the game as players. This means when SOE patches, we have to update our emulator to match it or our collection/parsing tools stop working.

The good side effect of this for players is, our Emulator stays current with live. I'd love to stop "chasing live" at TSO or expansion_x, unfortunately we wouldn't be able to gather more data.

Once SOE changes crypto or breaks our collector permanently (and I do believe they are working on that), then we're stuck with whatever data we have up to that point. Which is why you see me bitching about getting more people to collect, now