hey all, this might get a little technical but try to read this and understand it from a programmers and computers ( yes, pretend you are the computer ) standpoint. Everything in this game is stored in a database ( basically its a huge excel spreadsheet ), so when you log on they verify your user name, password, and set a column called something like "log_in_time" and then you play the game. They have a script that goes around and looks at this "log_in_time'' column and compares it to the system time ( time of day) and if it is greater then 45 minutes or whatever the particular time-out time is, you crash. Its a very effective way to keep inactive players out of the game.
Now for those of you who think "just boot the players that arent moving", there are a few reasons this isnt practicle. 1) what if you are in a room chatting, or trading??? Now here comes the technical stuff again. They would have to have the "kick people out'' script i talked about earlier, check a different column, that they would have to make. Thats simple enough, right? Yes and no. Its easy enough to make it look at another column, but how do you populate that new column with data? If everytime you moved, it had to edit that column with the time of day you moved, VMK wouldnt run. There are over 1000 users at any time and i would say 75% are active, so that means everytime anyone of them click to move, the computer would now have to edit that new column, lets call it the "last_moved_time" column. If you thought vmk was slow now, you havent seen anything.
Now that we looked at it from a computers standpoint, lets think about it from the programmers point. They are trying to get this game up and out as fast as possable without sacraficing quality. So K.I.S.S., or Keep It Simple Stupid. Basically it means dont over code the site, make it functional for now and we can always come back and improve. They have done this with several things, like fireworks and moving furniture ect. While i dont claim to know the 100% best way to code for this, i would think something along these lines would help fix the crashing bug. When you enter a line, it will set a new column in the database to Y, meaning you are in a line. If the "crash" script came to you, saw your log_in time was 90 minutes ago, it would ignore you bc you have this new flag Y. Once you get into the room it should give you a pop up saying something like "welcome to the room, are you still with us" and give you a few minutes to click yes, once you click yes it should reset your log_in time to current time, and remove the Y from the in_line column. Now you are in the game and have a full 45 minutes to play. Something similiar with HM and fireworks, when you start the game, it should set a in_game flag and blah blah blah. Is it possable, SURE IS, would it take a lot of coding, re-doing code that is there already, and put a HUGE strain on already strained servers, SURE WILL, Now that you all think im a nerd, i will leave you be. See what college does for you? it makes u nerdy! lol (BTW, dont mind my spelling, i stink, i know )
