Summery of the initial thread that can be found here.

The idea is to change the order of the results of shooting so that if a user has wack protection this protection doesn't end until the other results of the shot have taken affect.

As an example, Player A has taken a pro wack and is shooting at rogue Player B. Player B shoots someone and loses pro allowing Player A to fire, Player A gets a jail wackback and ends up in jail but Player A's pro wacker gets off the shot the second Player A fire's and pro's before Player A lands in jail.

With this change Player A's pro wacker wouldn't be able to pro wack until Player A has been busted from jail.

Since the it has been coded like this, I presume the action of drawing a gun removes your pro.

From then on it is perfectly reasonable that two people would shoot within micro seconds of each other, one chap gets caught by the cops since he shot slightly first and ends up in jail. The other gets away.


Ditto if two people shot and hit, again, it is perfectly reasonable that they could kill each other.

I can see this being the same as what we call double kills or triple kills. If we changed this aspect wouldn't we need to take out double kills all together as well?

I fail to see any way in which this is similar to double kills, except that both are glitches which happen when requests go to the server at very close times. In the case of double kills, you have the server literally unable to tell who shot first because to the smallest time increment it records, the requests were sent at the same time. Therefore the server is awarding both shooters with kills. "Who shot first?" has no right answer. The answer is "to the smallest time increment the server can discern, they shot at the exact same moment."

In the case contemplated by this suggestion, you have someone who has wack protection shooting but then being shot at during the tiny gap before the result of the shot is processed. "Who had to shoot first?" has a clear 100% unambiguous right answer: the person who had wack protection must have clicked first before they become a valid target for the rest of the site to attack them. If they must have been first, why not run through 100% of the calculation before they become a valid target? They actually were first, so they deserve the advantage of being actually first.

This prevents two odd occurrences: (1) someone who is supposed to be sent to jail because of their shot would no longer be able to get killed at while in server-limbo before arrival. (2) If two people under wack protection are attempting to kill each other, and one of their protections runs out naturally (four hours expire), the one whose protection runs out first will no longer have any possibility of killing the other. This makes sense, because that target should register as having been shot at too recently up until the moment they have killed the now not-protected player. Sure, (1) is less problematic than (2) in terms of RP and terrible unintended consequences. But both are "odd" and could be eliminated.


So basically, to rephrase, the requested change is:

Server currently thinks: (1) I see a wack attempt. I'm voiding this player's pro. (2) I wonder what that wack attempt did? I should calculate that. (3) Results calculated. I'm doing that.
Server would think with this proposal: (1) I see a wack attempt, I wonder what that attempt did? I should calculate that. (2) OK, I have the results, I'm running those through. (3) Oh yeah, this guy should be shootable now that he's fired off his round. I'm voiding pro now.

The server has to process a transaction.

Taking a wild guess it takes x nanoseconds to lock something in, there is the potential that it is unable to do this quick enough.

However using your example I truly fail to see the problem.

You draw your gun you lose your pro. It is fairly simple roleplay. If the Deadlysin shot had come in before yours then I agree there was an issue, however the reality of the situation is it didn't.

Maybe a coder can try and repeat this situation and see if it is possible for someone who is pro'd and someone shooting at them to see if the second shooter came through first and see what the server does. However I doubt it is possible since we lack a test server to run it all on.

They have in the past tried to close down the multi kill occurrences with various code changes it is now far far far far more rare to see double or even triple kills.

{Surely as a player commission we are to look at the game from a roleplaying perspective not a coding one. Far to many people complain far to much about coding problems and go to admins regarding them asking questions to work out the individual details of what happens. Do we really want them to rework the whole wack code because something happened once that might occur once every 30'000 shots}

From what I understand;

X has pro
X shoots at Y
X wackbacks to jail
Before X goes to jail, Y shoots back

If that is the case, then I think that is wrong and it should be reordered so that the outcome of the shot goes through before someone can shoot back. If you miss, pro void. If you hit, pro void. If you wackback, either dead, lose gun or jail, then pro void. Not before.

Why is that wrong from a roleplay point of view.


Lets ignore coding totally because tbh it isn't for us to decide a code order it is from a game play/role play function.

I totally disagree that it's not for us to decide code issues. If we can see that something in the code is wonky, why should it be off limits to suggest it because "that's just code?" Heck, what is the entire suggestion about adding links to profiles in witness statements if not a simple coding issue where users see a result that they think is wonky? There's no RP value whatsoever in the WS-link suggestion. Fundamentally, I think we're here to suggest changes that would generally be good for the site regardless of what they are.

As for what's wrong with the current order from a RP point of view, I'm not entirely sure how to respond to that for the simple reason that nothing about wack protection makes any RP sense. It's a game feature that's entirely designed for actual game-play and balance purposes rather than RP purposes to make it so that, roughly speaking, people have to take turns shooting at each other (or at least have an opportunity for that before a pro shot arrives) in wars. I mean, it's the equivalent of someone IRL saying "Oh yeah, don't worry guys, I know we're going to war and people are trying to hunt us down and kill us, but I've got this friend of mine that will shoot a bullet at the wall near my head and that'll keep me safe for the next few days. No need for a safehouse for me. It'll be my turn to shoot at them after he misses me." Doesn't make any sense at all. Arguing about the RP of protection is somewhat like arguing about whether having a link to the victim of a shooting in the witness statement makes more RP sense than not having a link. You might be able to come up with some creative arguments, but I'd still say all of them miss the point.

Anyway, with that in mind, it seems to me that from a gameplay point of view if someone has protection from being shot until they shoot or four hours elapse, then their shot should 100% go through before the protection lapses. What the shot does can make a important differences in what happens next. And protection is basically the gameplay equivalent of "someone shot at you, so you get the next move." Let's have that move actually be made and completed before it's someone else's turn to act. People should be able to bank on the fact that if they have wack protection the next thing that happens is either (1) they shoot someone and get some sort of a completed result, or (2) they wait four hours.

Just for clarity

Order of actions currently (I dont know if this is right but I haven't spent the time asking the admins)

You shoot
(Pro is voided)
result of shot decided Hit/Miss/wackback/jail



You are saying

You shoot
result of shot is decided hit/miss/wackback/jail
pro is voided

Is that correct?

If the above is the case, a wackback to death is an attempt on you but you are protected so it can't happen.

Hence removing the "protection" has to be done early. In doing that then you open the small window that a shot will get off at you.

Surely WB death isn't an attempt it should be more like and admin wack and ignore protection. Because a death WB isn't someone actually shooting back at you, it doesn't use their timer & gun stats to kill you, you just die.

Also if that was the case it counts as an attempt then surely if you are saved by one the 3 50/50 save rolls you would have to be pro'd again.

Who knows I don't know the ins and outs of the code, just working on obvious reasons why the first thing of the order is the removal of pro.

To me this is pretty logic, I actually see the current happenings more as a bug/fluke, something that shouldn't have happened and it must be fixed.

The way I see, you press wack and the game must process that wack first, it gives you the result, you either kill someone, miss or wackback and together with those results also gives you the possibility of landing in jail, dying or getting a save. Those results to me are the ones that must be proccessed first. If you wackback die, no one should be able to kill you, cause after all there is no way to kill someone who's already dead.

If you hit/miss and land in jail, someone must break you out of jail before shooting you. That's the way the game was coded, it was always the way it was intended to be. Getting a shot through someone who has wackbacked to jail and is sitting in jail shouldn't happen, unless admins code jail kills into the game.

Either that or remove wackback jail all together, because if we will let people shoot through it, whats the point of having a wack result in jail, if you are not letting the game give you the result before another action is taken?


So I'm all in favor of this idea, or this fix:)

The million dollar question is it even possible?

Bearing in mind the time frames we are talking about, a matter of nano seconds. Tita you are talking about potentially locking down a record on a database, which is going to add an extra line to the code. That is going to take time to action.

Over the past 2 years, we have seen the coders tighten the wack system up so that triple kills are almost non existent, double kills are now exceedingly rare. At what point do we get to a situation of diminishing returns?

{Do we really want to slow down the current wack speed to implement this change? It is a one in a million shot!!!}

{Has a coder clarified that will be necessary? As with any change, I think this is a time vs reward argument. Yes it seems to be a worthwhile fix, but no it doesn't merit spending hours and hours on as it occurs so infrequently.}

{Yup spoke to Izzy about it, it is a one in a million shot, to fix it will increase server load, therefore they will have to change the wack speeds to offset the increased server load.}

{Can a coder please confirm the above so that this can be dismissed as not viable?}

{Keep in mind that the speed in which we have the wack set at, is directly tied to the performance gains we have by the current order of operations. Changing the order of operations would mean that we would have to slow down the speed at which people wack.
Reply by: Squishy at Aug 13, '12 12:50}

{Squishy posted it}