Bug Report: Teledahn

[Acorn]

thanks, johnsojc, I'm a bit of a Shroomie fan, and do visit her regularly via MOULA, Minkata etc and I do the same things you say you do and all is well. But in Gehn I do the same things as I do in the other shards/games yet it doesn't work for me! Just tried again and still no Shroomie!

[johnsojc]

I set up the conditions traditionally needed to see Shroomie but I will have to wait until tomorrow before I can check again... visiting once every 24 hours makes this a bit of a long term project. Then again it took me 5 weeks of mucking about to figure out the pods and I spent months figuring out the pellet recipe algorithms. Considering all the changes under the hood in this shard, I'm happy to see as much working as is currently available. (It's always something...)

[janaba]

No, Shroomie for me too ... Inspired through your little conversation here I've been trying to meet her several times during the day,
waited a few suns more than usual, but I didn't ... I didn't use any tricks though besides the general feeding, I've never even heard
of the need to lure her in any way than since recently lol, I've met her whenever I wanted to ... and I just thought to try if I'd be
lucky on the Minkata shard and as always after a few feeder activations she showed up with her familiar welcome greeting ...

[Wamduskasapa]

I was goinging to wait for a few more days of testing before I reported this bug. But My experience is the same no Shroomie. And yes My power Sun Collector is off, the Lock door between open sea and inner lagoon is open and I have been offering food. All to no response...

[johnsojc]

I've never seen Shroomie anyplace other than just off the area where the vapor miner gun is... although I never tried to look anywhere else. When I made my daily visits, I heard Shroomie bellow just after I arrived. Each day I faithfully arrived and checked, Shroomie would be a bit closer to the shore. I was sure to operate the feeder after each encounter. If I missed a day, Shroomie would get farther away. I was never able to see her more than once in any 24 hour period.

Whether this is actually the way this works or not, I can't say. It appeared to work this way in MOUL on Gametap. I can't say that I've tried in MOULa that I can remember. I assume that there must be code that controls the way Shroomie behaves but I tend to resist looking at the code to see if I can figure out exactly how things work... it takes some of the magic out of the game. After all, the goal for the average player is to figure out what to do by playing the game, not to decompile the code to see how it works.

One of the little secrets inside the code is the use of timers and flags. It is entirely possible that visiting more than once in any one day period may keep Shroomie away. I know for a fact that this is the way the animal appearances in the pods work. The game keeps track of the time since you last visited a pod. If you return to a pod and it's been less than one local day (15hr, 43min, 5 sec IIRC) the routine will not calculate new spawn times for the two-tailed monkey, the Urwin, and the Sandscrit. You must stay stay away for an entire Pod Age day before the animal appearances can be scheduled again. Visit too often and you will never see a critter in Negilahn or Payiferen.

[janaba]

The appearances and events in the Pods are exactly calculated and fixed within their respective time
sequences (15h 43 sec 5min) which you've already mentioned, johnsojc, which you can also follow in
this nice Negilahn Portal-Calculator, maybe you've seen this already, but I don't know if there's a
predefined timeframe or trigger for Shroomie to appear ... I only know that I've met her in the
majority of the cases when I sporadically linked in to Teledahn and thought about paying her
a visit ...

[Leighana]

I see my Shroomie every time I feed her, but she never gets any closer than off the big rock outcropping off the right side of the dock. It usually takes pulling the spore lever 10-15 times, but she always shows. (I've got my power off and the gate down.)

[Ron Landry]

Shroomie seems to be one of the most famous creatures in Uru, I think. As johnsojc pointed out, it is very helpful to stop the harvest machinery, to lure shroomie. But doing so, you will overlook the following bug:

Linking into Teledahn, I found the harvesting machinery working, as expected. But looking thru the telescope I detected a surprising fact: although the telescope (and the solar power tower) is rotating with the same speed as the sun it was not focused on the sun. The difference was about 60 degree. I stopped the telescope - but the harvesting machinery was still working.

Not until I've synchronized the telescope (the solar power tower) with the sun in an accurate way - the situation turned into usual behavior: slowing and/or stopping the telescope subsequently stops the harvesting machinery as expected.

[D'Lanor]

But looking thru the telescope I detected a surprising fact: although the telescope (and the solar power tower) is rotating with the same speed as the sun it was not focused on the sun. The difference was about 60 degree.

So someone managed to revive that old UU bug?

[johnsojc]

The appearances and events in the Pods are exactly calculated and fixed within their respective time...

This is true of the portals and the day/night cycle but not for the animal appearances. When you enter a pod, the code checks when your last visit was and, if you been away one local day, spawn times offset from local sunrise are generated (apparently randomly) usually resulting in 2 to 4 spawn times during daylight hours. Spawn times can actually be before you arrived if you come late in the day. The monkey also has its spawn point set so it can appear at two different locations... many times I was looking out of the wrong window when it spawned so I missed it. (at least this is my interpretaion of the info in the log files from MOUL before logging was disabled back in the dim times... was that when the release of Scars happened? It was long ago )
And now back to Teledahn... Without delving into the code, it is impossible to say what should happen under what conditions. If we knew what we should expect to see depending on what we do, then we could actually say something is or is not working correctly. Maybe I will check the logs from this shard to see if there is any clue about Shroomie's behavior. I don't have a current download of the source to look at (not that I can read Python code intelligently) but I'm not sure that would help me in any case... getting stupid in my old age. (Ummm is logging running for this shard? Or is that Minkata Shard? Have to look... Is /startlogs working on Gehn?

edit: appears logging not on by default nor can I find any logs. I dug around in my old files and came across tldnShroomieBrain.py.It appears Shroomie has 3 spawn points in the lagoon... near, far, & med. Shroomie performs one of 4 "tricks" when seen. The game keeps track of the last time seen and the number of times seen. Causing Shroomie to be seen appears (to me) based on the probability that she will be attracted by the feeder (25%)
and being spawned by entering the zone only 10%. The status of the power tower only controls whether Shroomie spawns near, med(ium) or far. Noise does scare her further away. IF I'm reading the code right, once shroomie disappears, she cannot be retriggered for at least 240 seconds. I saw no reference to the gate.

Behaviors that trigger shroomie to be seen: Triggering the feeder (power tower state determines how close); just going to the lagoon zone.

It also appears that Shroomie can self-spawn based on a random chance.

Final observation: I still can't understand Python code very well...