Visions

Historically the dungeons of Covetous, Deceit, Despise, Destard, Hyloth, Shame, Wrong and even Doom have been a place of peril and possibility. Great riches and great pain walked hand in hand within the realm of Ifs and buts, but on this day they were host to a new group of foes.

The events began with a rash of ponderous night terrors the Priestess Coranstine had been suffering from. As the populous is aware it was been a time of turmoil for the for the third estate of Britannia as of late, with the calls of the Crimson Hordes still echoing, and the wounds left from Clainin's end still fresh, it came as no surprise that the visions were but a precursor to more bloodshed, but as the citizens of Britain have time and time again proved, they are more than willing to shed blood.

After the arrival of Kaden Marsten, Captain of the Britanian Guard, and the, if not belated, arrival of Clainin's replacement, Shelly the Novice, it was decided the gathering should make for the Dungeon Doom on the Malas Facet to investigate. The findings were peculiar even for that area, eight nude bodies covered in fresh blood, and a large crystal globe swirling and barking with a foreign energy. A short report to Shelly provided the force with a goal, to investigate each of the traditional Anti Virtue dungeons, and if need be, cleanse them of any odd creatures.

Violence

The gathering made for the Dungeon Covetous where a new threat was encountered. The Spawn of Averice, a ponderous gaunt ethereal figure resembling a mummy. The creature placed a peculiar musical instrument to it's rotting lips and the battle began, after a short exchange the force pulled out, returning to the Castle British.

The following is an account of the battles and creatures encountered during the campaign, for the sake of brevity. Despise, a ponderous ethereal ogre who seemed to have an accord with the ratmen, calling it's self Tainted Love. In the halls of Deceit an odd ethereal lich calling it's self White Lies. In the cavernous dungeon Destard, an ethereal dragon referred too as Coward's Bane. On the Isle of Fire, within Hythloth, a gargish fiend possessing the qualities of a spider claiming to be Pride's Fall. In a return to Covetous, The Spawn of Averice met it's end. In the small corridor of Wrong a peach colored Mystic Llama Herder claiming to be known only as Jury Duty lasted for some hours before finally being brought to justice. Shame hosted the quarrel against an Ethereal Gazer known only as Failed Truth. After yet another return to Shelly the origins of the assault, Doom, acted as host for the climactic battle against an Ethereal Skeletal Dragon deemed Atheist. On returning to the Castle there was only a lantern informing the force to return on the 22nd promptly at Six.

During the battle two mysterious figures made their presence known. A ghostly robed woman who took great distress in the destruction of the creatures, and spoke of a role of servitude to a master. A strange knight wearing an entire plate mail suit commented to appear to have been crafted from the volatile and dangerous substance known as Blackrock, seated atop a dark steed. Perhaps the most entrancing happening of all was the items recovered from the monsters, dark blue crystals that can only be assumed to be receivers matching the transmitters situated outside the dungeons, almost surely linked to the peculiar dark energy surrounding the day's events.

Victory

For every success and answer of the day, a multitude of questions seems to have been spawned. It is the acute hope of this reporter that no loss of life or serious loss of equipment was suffered today, and while the adventures can "safely" delve into the dungeons once more, that a state of caution and vigilance be taken by Britannia as a whole. Goodnight and good luck, Sosaria prevails.

Falling Trees

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

Ultima Online is a big world, containing a myriad of virtual objects of every type and description. Animals, monsters, people, plants, and yes, trees too, all abound over nearly seventy million square meters of territory that exists merely as a figment of data in some server's RAM, dutifully backed up on a daily basis.

If UO is a persistent world, does everything keep going, even when players aren't there?

The short answer is: no, unfortunately not. A somewhat commonly known thing amongst our playerbase, for instance, is that mobiles (any dynamic object that can move: animals, monsters, NPCs) don't move when players aren't nearby. This "sleep" behavior was implemented some time ago in order to combat wasted CPU time that bogged down performance for the rest of the game.

The behavior itself is very simple to understand. Every mobile has its own basic AI loop that executes, sets a short delay, and starts over again. This allows every mobile to evaluate its current situation and respond to it, and then turn control of the CPU back over to the rest of the game.

In fact, these loops are very short, and we call them ticks or heartbeats. Rather than give every single object in the game its own individual share of the CPU, we have a main thread that runs as a loop as well, which gives short amounts of time to each object on an as needed basis.

Now, imagine a normal server, like Atlantic. There are over sixty thousand mobiles up and running, all potentially handling their AI loops at any given time. If every mobile tried to execute all the conditions and possibilities available to it, the game would take a gigantic hit in performance. Even worse, imagine if every mobile wanted to actually move.

And so, instead, if players aren’t within a certain distance, those mobiles just go to sleep, waiting for their time to shine.

This became a problem, though, while we were working on the Stygian Abyss expansion.

We wanted to do something we thought would be relatively simple. One of the newer dungeon levels has a series of tombs, each blocked by a gate, hooked to a lever in another room. When the lever is pulled, it should open the gate, releasing the monsters inside.

Now, normally, that means we just send a message to each monster saying "move down the corridor and get ready to meet the player in the main hallway."

So we pulled all the levers, eager to see the suddenly full hallway, and to our surprise, found the hallway quite empty. At least, for a moment! Suddenly the monsters came streaming from left and right, coming out of the tombs, now that someone was there to see them.

Even though we knew about the "sleep" mode for mobiles, we thought we could override it just by directly sending commands to them. This had worked in many other game systems added for live events, such as Sherry the Mouse, an NPC who had a full daily schedule of running around the castle, eating lunch in the kitchen, popping through mouseholes, and generally being cute.

It turns out, we were wrong! The only reason Sherry worked at all when players weren't around was because she could teleport when her movement checks failed, a failsafe originally designed to deal with griefers trying to trap her in the corner.

Ultimately, our resolution is a simple one: we've designed a flag that allows some mobiles to avoid the sleep system, which will be implemented in the new expansion. From here on out, parts of the world will come to life more than ever before, existing and evolving apart from the comings and goings of the average observer.

And while we may not be able to hear a tree chopped down in the woods, and least we know a horde of undead Gargoyles won't be standing idly by when you raid their tombs!

Shelby pens first public works!

Visions

Violence

Victory

Falling Trees