Messages

1

News Archive / Re: Want to play?

2012 Sep 28, 16:05:26

Seeding.  And... finally loaded.  Let's see if I can walk two steps.

2

News Archive / Re: Want to play?

2012 Sep 28, 15:34:29

Looks like I'll be installing in ten minutes or thereabouts, even with the computers around me doing all sorts of various stuff.  I'll kill off most of everything and concentrate on seeding the torrent and playing the game once I notice the download is done.

Back to retro gaming.  Trying to beat Mega Man 1 without using the select button boss mashing trick.

3

News Archive / Re: Want to play?

2012 Sep 28, 14:25:14

I'm making progress on all sorts of old games while waiting.  I'm still debating whether I'll play the part of a single player in stress testing once we're past the "site down" and "client distribution down" problems (yes, I fully expect the client to be near impossible to get to the masses), or whether I'll multiply myself like a parasprite and do the stress of dozens or more.

Maybe on day 3 if things are still running...

4

News Archive / Re: Want to play?

2012 Sep 28, 13:49:40

Resource limit is reached.

This is what I warned about; impatient folks hammering the site makes it impossible to hand out the client...

5

News Archive / Re: Want to play?

2012 Sep 28, 13:48:02

i hate when that happens to enemy snipers in tf2

What's really fun is when you're playing an online game where not only dos a character go invisible, but their hitbox is tied to their appearance, so they end up with a one pixel hitbox.

6

News Archive / Re: Want to play?

2012 Sep 28, 13:43:40

What's the bug?

[18:12] <!SweBow> http://i.imgur.com/a5yCx.png <-- this is the reason

Plenty of times that happened on private RagnarokOnline servers, and it would happen during the alpha on Hello Kitty Online as well, not to mention characters being able to be created with no name altogether, and glitch out half the server.

7

News Archive / Re: Want to play?

2012 Sep 28, 13:41:36

Oh, look, a website.  Well, sorta.

Back to retro gaming; I'm not stressing myself.  I'll get in when I get in.

8

News Archive / Re: Want to play?

2012 Sep 27, 18:41:02

On a lighter note, why would anyone want to DDOS this?

Because it's there?  Because it'll upset a bunch of people at the same time?  Because it's hard to upset a Brony in the first place?

9

News Archive / Re: Want to play?

2012 Sep 27, 17:26:50

Let's just say that if I were at the convention and had a high-speed net connection, I could probably single-handedly overload the servers if I were maliciously against this succeeding.  I pray that nobody like that will be there.  I've already started putting together a list of things I can do that will let me still be a moment's rearrangement away from getting on the game if things work out, and I'm waiting to see if there's anything worth doing away from home that are worthwhile enough to not participate in this test.

I refuse to post exactly what I'd do so that someone can't copycat it, but let's just say that if this were something based on Twilight or The Hunger Games, I'd actually think of doing some damage... no matter what the Fluttershy voice in my head would say.

10

Introductions Archive / Re: Charcoal Sketch here...

2012 Sep 27, 17:21:47

Odds are you won't see me in-game until the next event AFTER the stress test.  The new announcement raises so many red flags, I've stopped trying to clear my weekend schedule.  If I were out to knock the game servers down on purpose, I'd be already putting my plan together, and if I were at the convention, I'd probably be able to do it solo with the hour head-start on the files.

Everybody better start hoping there's nobody that malicious there.

11

News Archive / Re: Want to play?

2012 Sep 27, 17:14:27

Oh man.  No files released until an hour after they're put into the wild at the convention.  This might not end well... it won't take much to keep people from getting the client, and thousands of people refreshing a page looking for a DDL or torrent link might be enough to kill servers right then and there.

*debates making plans to do something else this weekend*

12

News Archive / Re: Want to play?

2012 Sep 27, 15:35:34

Well, at least so far, I haven't been contacted by any of my former groups about if I want in on an attack or test.  Then again, I haven't had an invite since starting watching the show around February or March of 2011.  The last time I had an urge to meanly mess with anyone's online games, professional or fanmade, I had a mental image of Fluttershy yelling at me, and decided against it.

I do know that a good number of former attack persons are watching the show and contributing 3D, vector, and standard art, music, animation, stories, and the like.  Let's just hope that the ones responsible for the more organized attacks have all had as much of a change of heart as I have.

13

News Archive / Re: Want to play?

2012 Sep 27, 14:30:43

I wonder if they're also testing stresses on lots of people downloading it. There'll likely be a lot more people downloading it at the same time when it comes out for real, after all.

I hope not.  As I've mentioned in my introduction post, I've done a slew of alpha and beta testing, and I've also "hacked" quite a number of games, whether to find vulnerabilities and report them, or just to be mean (but I haven't done THAT in ages).  Considering the game test is NOT a secret, there are a few things that should be expected:

1)  Either a single person or a collected group may purposely jam up the direct download link for the client as a denial-of-service attempt.
2)  The same as above or a second party might purposely grab the client, quickly add a virus, mirror it, and see how many people they can down.
3)  Meanwhile, groups 1 and 2 will share the real client around with a bunch of their friends, and they'll all flood the server with fake or real login requests for another DDOS.

I call it the "4chan effect" -- they've done this to quite a number of online games in the past.  When Trickster first launched, they not only managed all of the above, but they flooded the server with real accounts and had a player sitting on every single available space to stand in near the main buildings, effectively blocking anyone from completing any quests, while spouting filth and memes.

Hey, just my personal experience.

14

News Archive / Re: Want to play?

2012 Sep 27, 13:47:37

Considering the stress test starts tomorrow, shouldn't the client be available now so we don't end up stressing the client download sources along with the server?  Or have I just missed the client release somehow?

15

Introductions Archive / Re: Charcoal Sketch here...

2012 Sep 26, 18:40:58

Haven't decided if I will or not; I do know that all I'll do during the test, or at least at first, is enjoy myself as a player and not as a tester, since all we're supposed to be doing is stress testing.  Safeguarding the server from code error induced crashing isn't part of it, and I'm not about to try to crash anything. 

This time.

16

Introductions Archive / Re: Charcoal Sketch here...

2012 Sep 25, 22:24:39

Same here.

In the meantime, I'm digging out old testing, hacking, and/or moderation notes from, among other sites and games:

• Ragnarok Online alpha and early closed beta


• MapleStory


• acmecity.com


• Pangya US closed alpha


• Multiple MapleStory, Ragnarok, and World of Warcraft private servers


• Kingdom of Loathing


• Hello Kitty Online closed alpha

As you can see, pretty darn varied, and that's just a random sampling.

I think the largest bug I ever found was in the early days of Ragnarok Online, and I got banned for exploiting the game's economy thanks to the language barrier.  Let's just say that for a week, for those familiar with the game, it was possible to warp from Prontera to Payon or Alberta and pick up as many empty bottles as you could, fill them with milk, sell them, and repeat for a profit.  I found similar bugs in a ton of private servers; one person who thought they took care of every possible bug was astounded when I was able to make millions in 10 minutes flat.

I miss the simpler days of the net, back when AcmeCity was around and I was moderating their Pokémon pages, and running a site called "222 Pikachu Street"... just about every site on the internet was stealing my card scans for the first five sets... even after I started putting some red herrings in my file system so anyone trying to grab by directory or filename got some fake or altered cards.  The only reason I ever stopped working on that site was that it was constantly targeted by hackers, and all the different free hosts finally decided I was too much of a security risk to allow to stay on their servers.  There are still a few Pokémon items hanging around in my room; there's a glow in the dark Mew hanging with Zecora and the blindbag glow ponies, and a poseable stuffed Charizard hanging with the small 5 buck Target pony plushies.

17

Introductions Archive / Re: Charcoal Sketch here...

2012 Sep 25, 21:45:03

I'm still not sure if I'll even have the chance to be part of it; my schedule has been so random this month it's not funny.

For right now, though, my cat is demanding my time more than anything else.  I went over 35 years without any pets because they hadn't invented Zyrtec yet.  I ended up adopting a stray off my doorstep, and it turns out he's part Maine Coon cat, and he's STILL growing bigger.  He'll be three years old (estimated) next month.  His blog is linked in my original post, and he also has videos at bakaohki.youtube.com

18

Introductions Archive / Re: Charcoal Sketch here...

2012 Sep 25, 21:01:39

I haven't really decided yet; there's only so many hours in the day.  I'm juggling work, projects I'm doing for someone else privately, a few craft projects of my own, taking care of my spoiled cat, taking care of myself (I've been sick a lot lately, and just spent a few days in the hospital thanks to kidney stones), and trying to decide how to split up my free time, how little there is.

I'll probably browse through the rest of the forums here a bit at a time, and decide whether to stick around depending on what I think of the actual LoE game and whether or not anyone or anything in the forums either catches my fancy or rubs me the wrong way.

I'm older than your average Brony.  Much older.  Trying to predict my movements is a futile task.  The fact my 80 year old mother can recognize Pinkie Pie on sight is an accomplishment...

19

News Archive / Re: Want to play?

2012 Sep 23, 23:08:22

Let's just hope we don't have any bugs like one I found on Ragnarok Online when iRO was in alpha; I managed to create a character glitched so badly that as soon as I would log in, I'd get booted offline, along with everyone in visual range of my character.  It's not my fault they didn't secure the packets you sent while making characters and I created one with bad paramaters...

I'm going to have to control myself to not go poking into things...

20

News Archive / Re: Want to play?

2012 Sep 23, 22:59:16

Understood.  Stress only.

If, by some miracle, everything's still running on the final day, maybe I'll give an extra effort to give the server a mental breakdown... or not.  Still, if I enjoy myself, I'll keep a personal bug list in case I end up testing again in the future so I know where to start poking around.