Omega

A small followup to my previous long log entry. includes me completing some small quests in Dunbarton (learning that daily quests are a thing), going to Tara to talk to Padan just as Ferghus asked, and being rewarded with a Beginner Eagle Whistle. I guess the followup quest was the one where Ferghus tells you to continent warp. to talk to Ethna at Qilla Base Camp. Which I guess is a quest I had already completed out of order. I'm uploading this just in case you didn't capture it already before the new Lorna and Pan beginner quests. longlogfollowup_20161223_122640.txt

I've just started playing this old characters again. I gave myself an 8th Anniversary Lorna Bag and 8x8 Saber bag just to get some desperately needed bag space, did the MusicQ pre-reg and followup to pre-reg, talked to the current event Royal Musician Alliance Cadet to do her quests all without trying to talk to any quest related NPCs. Unfortunately I completed the quest about learning to continent warp without having that logged (but I have two more characters where I can capture that particular quest anyways. So today I decided to log my questing in Tir Chonail with my human. I did some talking to Duncan and then paused logging because I thought it would be a good idea to have many, many isolated logs. Unfortunately, while I was saving that log, I received a further part of a tutorial quest, so I realized that was the wrong thing for me to do, I should have just left MabiPale capturing. talkingtoduncan_20161223_072709.txt Because the game has that habit of delivering quests at delayed times, I just made a 1 hour session log. Again, I don't know well enough to filter unimportant stuff out. longlog_20161223_084041.txt Here is what is interesting about this log. I believe I ran through what two separate tutorial quest series. I can't tell which one I was doing at what point. For that, you'd probably have to look at tutorial quest information you already have to eliminate it as being separate from the new stuff you might not have. Duncan took my Eiry away very quickly soon as I started talking to him. Ignore the G19 quest, ignore the Ninja skill training quest. You'll also want to ignore the long sessions of me doing Combat Training from the training board next to Duncan. I hope logging this helps in some way. The Explorers League Patronage quest which is supposed to be exclusive for returning players sounds pretty cool from a daily quest design perspective. Let me know if I should log anything about that.

I was busy for a few days but I now have that log. I don't know well enough to clean it up, but essentially I started logging from the character select screen, pressed Start, appeared at the soulstream, waited for Nao, talked to her, chose Close Combat, ended up in the bank at Tir Chonail. I figure it's probably even better that I don't clean up the log because you can see something about added gestures, skills, and quests one might get. firststartselecttalent_20161109_042321.txt Here is an additional log of me stepping out of the bank, getting a Tir Chonail flyover cut-scene with the part where your character walks up to Duncan. It could also have more quest stuff, so I hope this is useful in some way. stepoutofbank_20161109_044036.txt

It was indeed a privilege issue. By my use of Kanan's patcher, I run Morrighan in administrative access but I had not tried doing that for running MabiPale or MabiCommerce. Thanks for the help: perhaps you should add this as a note to the instructions on how to use either program. It never used to be required before but you know how Windows 10 is: always changes things without notifying the user.

Restarting my PC did not work. Well... I am a programmer. So I could download the sources of one or both applications and breakpoint in an attempt to find out what is happening. However, I've never examined the source for either and I would have preferred not to spend so much time on this. If you'd like me to debug this issue, can you tell me where would be the most relevant file or lines to look at, and if you were having this problem, where would be the initial place you'd think to break at? I'm really doing this because I want to log an old account I retrieved from support. If I can't get Pale to work, I suppose the last thing I can just take screenshots, which is highly error prone and it's going to suck if I miss one. Fixing this issue is the better option.

Yeah, that gold color thing doesn't happen for me. It shows the the dialogue box with a combo box containing "TFormAlissa". I've tried connecting with that dialogue box before and it made no difference.

It's been a long enough time since I've used it that I don't remember the small Morrighan window or taskbar button lighting up being a feature. If that's what it's suppose to happen, then it's certainly not happening for me right now. For Some reason, now I can't even get MabiCommerce to show up in the Morrighan log anymore. Like it was just able to subscribe for that one run and now it won't show up Every subsequent Morrighan log I have now looks exactly like the one I most recently posted by with new time stamps

MabiPale's Connect button works just as one would expect, it grays out because it's supposed to be connected and the Disconnect button becomes available. There is no error pop-up (if hat's what's supposed to happen on error), and the error log in the Settings is blank. Here's something interesting. If I exit the game without disconnecting Pale, the Diconnect button grays out and the Connect button becomes available. The program knows that it successfully connected to Morrighan, so for some reason I am not getting any packets. My Windows Firewall is turned off in case you're wondering. I turned it off just to troubleshoot this. Perhaps I am not using the program properly in some other way? I thought I was supposed to open it up and hit connect, get packets or a running packet log then I could save those to file. Am I suppose to use the Open dialogue for something first?

No, it apparently does not: 11/1/2016 5:31:14 AM [Info] - Morrighan 1.0.5862.36118 11/1/2016 5:31:14 AM [Info] - Starting server... 11/1/2016 5:31:14 AM [Info] - Server listening on '127.0.0.1:12210' 11/1/2016 5:31:14 AM [Info] - Starting Alissa communicator... 11/1/2016 5:31:14 AM [Info] - Starting client... 11/1/2016 5:31:14 AM [Info] - Started client: Client.exe code:1622 ver:143 chatip:208.85.109.37 chatport:8002 setting:"file://data/features.xml=Regular, USA" logip:127.0.0.1 logport:12210 11/1/2016 5:31:14 AM [Info] - Morrighan is ready to serve you 11/1/2016 5:31:49 AM [Info] - Client connected from 127.0.0.1:12222 11/1/2016 5:31:49 AM [Info] - Tunneling connection to '208.85.109.35:11000' through '127.0.0.1:12210' 11/1/2016 5:31:50 AM [Info] - Client closed connection 11/1/2016 5:31:50 AM [Info] - Server listening on '127.0.0.1:12210' 11/1/2016 5:31:59 AM [Info] - Client connected from 127.0.0.1:12225 11/1/2016 5:31:59 AM [Info] - Tunneling connection to '208.85.109.35:11000' through '127.0.0.1:12210' 11/1/2016 5:32:17 AM [Info] - Client closed connection 11/1/2016 5:32:17 AM [Info] - Server listening on '127.0.0.1:12210' 11/1/2016 5:32:17 AM [Info] - Client connected from 127.0.0.1:12231 11/1/2016 5:32:17 AM [Info] - Tunneling connection to '208.85.109.45:11020' through '127.0.0.1:12210' 11/1/2016 5:33:00 AM [Info] - Client closed connection 11/1/2016 5:33:00 AM [Info] - Server listening on '127.0.0.1:12210' 11/1/2016 5:33:05 AM [Info] - Client is closing... 11/1/2016 5:33:05 AM [Info] - Server stopped Well then it's possible that MabiCommerce broke, and that's why it doesn't update prices after subscribing, but I need to get pale to work. Yeah I can play the game just fine with Morrighan

Morrighan isn't working for me: neither MabiCommerce or MabiPale can connect to it. My packet list stays empty just like it did with the guy above. It is very odd that it would be broken though, because Kanan Open Source Patcher added a "Start with Morrighan" windows batch file very recently. Seems odd that they would add this convenience to something not working at the moment. I didn't just try to run it with that patcher either. I also tried to use the included MorriOneClick tool. Here is my Morrighan.log from what I guess is my last attempt before coming here for help. I am shocked that It recognized MabiCommerce subscribing but nothing worked as it should. 11/1/2016 4:49:05 AM [Info] - Morrighan 1.0.5862.36118 11/1/2016 4:49:05 AM [Info] - Starting server... 11/1/2016 4:49:05 AM [Info] - Server listening on '127.0.0.1:11669' 11/1/2016 4:49:05 AM [Info] - Starting Alissa communicator... 11/1/2016 4:49:05 AM [Info] - Starting client... 11/1/2016 4:49:05 AM [Info] - Started client: Client.exe code:1622 ver:237 chatip:208.85.109.37 chatport:8002 setting:"file://data/features.xml=Regular, USA" logip:127.0.0.1 logport:11669 11/1/2016 4:49:05 AM [Info] - Morrighan is ready to serve you 11/1/2016 4:49:52 AM [Info] - Client connected from 127.0.0.1:11681 11/1/2016 4:49:52 AM [Info] - Tunneling connection to '208.85.109.35:11000' through '127.0.0.1:11669' 11/1/2016 4:49:53 AM [Info] - Client closed connection 11/1/2016 4:49:53 AM [Info] - Server listening on '127.0.0.1:11669' 11/1/2016 4:50:01 AM [Info] - Client connected from 127.0.0.1:11686 11/1/2016 4:50:01 AM [Info] - Tunneling connection to '208.85.109.35:11000' through '127.0.0.1:11669' 11/1/2016 4:50:26 AM [Info] - Client closed connection 11/1/2016 4:50:26 AM [Info] - Server listening on '127.0.0.1:11669' 11/1/2016 4:50:27 AM [Info] - Client connected from 127.0.0.1:11694 11/1/2016 4:50:27 AM [Info] - Tunneling connection to '208.85.109.45:11020' through '127.0.0.1:11669' 11/1/2016 4:50:39 AM [Info] - Application subscribed: 'MabiCommerce' 11/1/2016 4:51:27 AM [Info] - Application unsubscribed: 'MabiCommerce' 11/1/2016 4:51:34 AM [Info] - Application subscribed: 'MabiCommerce' 11/1/2016 4:51:48 AM [Info] - Application unsubscribed: 'MabiCommerce' 11/1/2016 4:51:53 AM [Info] - Client closed connection 11/1/2016 4:51:53 AM [Info] - Server listening on '127.0.0.1:11669' 11/1/2016 4:51:57 AM [Info] - Client is closing... 11/1/2016 4:51:57 AM [Info] - Server stopped

I have an old account that I asked support staff to unlock for me. The character's age is 2553 days today. Meaning it was created roughly before Tuesday, November 3, 2009. Character has the spirit sword, Eiry, The significant quests: (In Tutorial Tab) [Tutorial] Rescue Resident, [Tutorial] Nao's Letter of Introduction, [Tutorial] Go to School. (In Basic Tab) [Guide] Select Advent of the Goddess Renewed, [Return Incentive] Explorers League Patronage. The "Rescue Resident" quest rewards 3 AP, so I am guessing it will lead to me doing the tutorial quests that existed prior to the most recent revamp of beginner quests which are led by Lorna. Nao's Letter of Introduction is possibly an old one, and will lead to old quest followups. I have no doubt that going through these quests will have to continue to where where I say goodbye to Eiry. Maybe you'd like to know Eiry's dialogue? Upon logging into the character I only had Combat Mastery skill. Learned sword mastery by equiping Eiry and Shuriken Mastery by picking up a dropped one. I remember Mabinogi in G1 did not have any quests to teach you the skills, you had to learn all your basic combat skills through Tir Chonaill NPCs using the Skills keyword. Then they changed Nao's Letter of Recommendation into being the start of a quest chain that made you learn Defense, Smash, Counter Attack, and Windmill. Remnants and information from the past is scarce, so if there's any way my use of this account can help, let me know. Also of note, I have an Elf and a Giant character on the account that I haven't logged in to check yet. When I logged in to my human I was taken straight to Nao who explained to me that I need to choose a Talent. If you were going to use this for an Aura server you'd have to have it so players can exist without talents at an early Generation, and then when the server operator turns on the generation that added talents, you would have players go through this talk with Nao on first log in.

You're right, in ways it is amazing that the game is still running considering the initial designs of chapter 1 doesn't seem to have the correct type of provisions for things that came afterwards. It looks like Mabinogi's initial world design would have had growth in various directions in much the same style as the existing world. I remember Tir Chonail appeared to have a closed path west of the school/church yard, Dugald Isle had a closed path east of the logging camp, Sen Meg and Bangor both had different exits to the south, and I figured there would be more teleportation devices like the one that goes to Sidhe Sneachta but that one ended up being unique. Every time new areas were added, what was added felt wildly out of place. Emain Macha is the best addition, IMO it does everything right. The housing areas are the largest offenders because they house a profoundly large amount of people compared to NPCs who have presumably created their own towns. I guess this what happens when you have different people with different ideas at different times working on expanding the same game. I guess I can't fault DevCat for in-cohesive design: it is expected. I wish I had the 3D modelling experience. I will have to learn it eventually out of necessity, but hopefully someone else can take apply their skill for Aura.

It has been some weeks since the cease and desist and subsequent re-branding or new goals of the project. You have my sympathy, I would absolutely refuse to drop a project that has gone this far and would do exactly what it takes to continue working on it. That's why I think you guys continuing the project are sincere when you say you want to continue to make your own game. I myself am absolutely a game engines guy: the only time I design is when I look at an existing design and think "this could have been done better" or "if we do this, maybe it will be more fun". Which leads me to the topic I want to discuss: What does Not-Mabinogi look like? --- I like the idea that everyone starts off in a small and friendly town where the player can practice very basic combat and production skills. Collecting eggs, milking cows, shearing sheep, collecting wheat, is super excellent for the basic systems of an MMO even though 99% of the time I play the game, I'm not doing any of those things. So you'd definitely want to keep the starter village. Getting sent from the village to a nearby town to talk to somebody for a quest is pretty much a given. I mean, you could get sent to giant city straight to deliver a message to the knights order or to the king, but it just seems unlikely that whatever happened at your village is going to be that important. In the town you would be free to talk to more people and do more stuff. Here's where my complaint about Mabinogi comes in: Literally everything in the game is tacked on and it has no cohesiveness, every map in Uladh is straight hallways. The only time you have ever been able to not pass through a town is when you go between Tara and Dunbarton and you take the southern path of Taillteann: and that's still awful because you had to go through Corrib Valley and Abh Neagh as separate zones. If I was doing world design, start with an X. At the dead center of the X is the town, There would be 3 small villages and 1 other town going away from the center. There would be paths between the 3 villages surrounding the central town. An adjacent village has a path to the other town, and the other adjacent village would have had a path to that other town, but instead it just ends up leading to a hard difficulty dungeon. And speaking of dungeons. There should be an easy difficulty dungeon around the starting village, medium difficulty dungeon near the central town. and additional medium difficulty dungeons on the paths between towns. adequately spaced away from other existing dungeons. Everything should be designed in a way that you could fly around. This means everything is on a big connected map that properly loads and unloads. Since Aura project is going to need it's own game client, I don't think you're going to have such a shit problem as the game pausing 1+ seconds every time you move between a set square piece of land. World of Warcraft doesn't drop frames when you go from one area to another: it's an embarrassment that DevCat couldn't do Iria correctly, it's god damn pathetic. The quest markers in the game make your client pause to recalculate every second, just imagine how much more intense algorithms are being used in bigger triple A games that don't even choke as bad as that. --- Anyhow, I am just throwing ideas out there, If anyone else has better ideas for world design, I'd love to hear them. I'm not saying this is the way it has to be, whoever knows how to use a 3D program and prides themselves on level design probably has their own design methodology. Who is going to do world design anyways?