On Wed, 11 Jul 2001, George Greer wrote: > The command worked...for 5 minutes. Five minutes or less; probably less. Or is saved permanently. There are three possible (visible) outcomes for 'set file' on an online player, as it stands: 1) The command had a visible effect, for up to 5 minutes. 2) The command had no visible effect (overwritten before observed). 3) The command had a visible, lasting effect. The first two are the obvious cases. The third would happen if the set character data was loaded by starting to login just before the unset, online character quits. The person logging in can then type the wrong password, causing the set character to overwrite the now offline character data. In other words, "the command worked...for 5 minutes," isn't the only observable outcome. Actually, the outcome is mostly unpredictable and can be influenced by seemingly unrelated activities by unrelated parties, that can occur within a fairly arbitrary interval (however close you are to an autosave). > Moving from bad situation to bad situation isn't an improvement, ... And keeping a bad situation, but presenting a warning about or an extra step to evoke the braindead behavior is an improvement? If assuming that the immortal wants something set when they type 'set file' (and not some random effect) is wrong, then there's only one legitimate reply: tell them they can't do it and return. Adding 'set force file' isn't necessary. I assume if the person can create a need for 'set file' to work on online players (without comitting to memory), they can remove the three lines the warning would constitute; otherwise, it's undesirable to be able to evoke random behavior from a valid command. -dak -- +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | FAQ: http://qsilver.queensu.ca/~fletchra/Circle/list-faq.html | | Archives: http://post.queensu.ca/listserv/wwwarch/circle.html | +---------------------------------------------------------------+
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : 12/06/01 PST