scafativ

Most of us have been playing EL long enough to have seen a few additions and changes to the game. Which ones have been your favorites- ones that really improved the game for you and invigorated your desire to play? I've been playing for a long time, so my list is on the long side (more or less in chronological order): Pay to play races The addition of C2 Hydro Crowns Summoning Stones Special Days Lenny Archery What about you? What did you like? scaf

Gossip has a couple of new features that are going to be helpful to players that don't speak english. Players can tell gossip their language with the following command: /gossip set language XX where XX is: HR for croatian hrvatski CS for czech česky DA for danish dansk NL for dutch nederlands EN for english FI for finnish suomi FR for french français DE for german deutsch IT italian italiano NO norweigan norsk PL polish polski PT portuguese português RO romanian română ES spanish español SV swedish svenska (If you speak english well, there's not much point in setting your language to a secondary language that you speak- it just makes more work for Gossip.) Then, you can communicate with players that don't speak a language that is common between the two of you with the following two commands: /gossip chat playerx bla, bla, bla.... (this will immediately send playerx a translated PM) or /gossip tell playerx bla, bla, bla... (this will send playerx a translated message the next time they're on) These communications do not need to be from or to english- someone set to swedish can talk to someone set to spanish. The translations aren't perfect, but they're close enough to manage a conversation. Gossip needs help translating a set of instructions to post in the various language forums here, as well as translating the instructions she gives in-game. If you speak one of the listed languages at least as well as english and have about 20 minutes to donate to Gossip, please leave a response below, or send me a gossip message, and I'll send you what you need to translate. Thanks, everyone- this is in Beta, so if you have issues, please go ahead and gossip me. scafativ

If you want to at least know when a pk update happens, you can sign up for pk gossip's twitter account: pk_gossip, and you'll get tweeted on server reboots. scaf

I'm surprised that many bots ignore rraisa. I find rraisa to be the second most useful bot in the game. When I want to buy something, the first thing I do is ask rraisa- what is the alternative? I've had poor luck on 4, and pming 190 bots looking for a widget is not realistic. I know that there are websites with available wares, but I, for one, prefer to stay in the game. As far as how rraisa was originally introduced... I think that's true, but that was years ago, and it was a case of poor judgement, not malice- people feel better when they let things go. scaf

Flawless, 72 FPS, NVIDIA GeForce 9400 GT 512MB Right-click-and-drag is great fun.

Gossip has a twitter account in which she announces main server special days / major invasions / server updates on Twitter. If you aren't familiar with twitter- it will forward those alerts to your cell phone via SMS in US, Canada, UK and India- more countries coming soon, presumably. Is there an interest in having Gossip provide a similar service for the PK server? Are there other events on the PK server that you may wanted tweeted? If there's interest, Gossip will get it set up over here too. If you are personally not interested, don't bother posting, because who cares if you're not. Scaf

Ok, so here's a question- what's a reasonable threshold for Gossip to twitter an invasion? Some options are: A GWIS Warning A #IL reports one or more monsters? A #IL reports ten or more monsters? A #IL reports 100 or more monsters? (like on the main server) Suggestions please? scaf

If you type "/gossip set loginalert yes" gossip will warn you about you an invasion when you first log on from then on. scaf

Boy does that seem to be ripe for a scam. What prevents a cell phone carrier from spamming its own customers and then charging them for that? Or what prevents a ex from sending lots of SMSs to run up your bill? You can send SMSs via email to most carriers, so you don't even need a phone to do it. I never heard of charges on incoming SMSs... seems crazy. Scaf

I hope that it isn't only harvestable by dvarves then... Scaf

What do you mean by "gossiping" a god? scaf

The main server requires Port 2000. If you think about it, since you can play EL on a modem, it's pretty lean on bandwidth. scaf

Just to be clear here- Rumors are both public and attributed. Anyone can read recent rumors by just typing /gossip rumor. Messages and admirations are considered private and can't be easily queried, but can be queried if Radu asks me to do so within 7 days. It's certainly not "monitored". Lastly- while I take the privacy issue seriously- it still isn't wise to exchange bag coordinates, passwords, bank accounts, or anything else like that, on gossip or even through email! It's just not a smart thing to do. scaf

Well, Vanyel, you've posted two two links that are quite different. In the first, which is a misleading snippet that's out of context- as I have admitted before, I exercised extremely poor judgment. I acknowledged that immediately, apologized for it, and made assurances that nothing of the sort will happen again. That was a year and a half ago. Regarding the second post- have you actually read the post? What about it makes you uneasy about using Gossip? At the time, I was compelled by rules to keep old messages. Radu relaxed that to a 7 day period, after which delivered messages now get deleted. More importantly, I began encrypting the stored messages, as an added protection, which is more than most email systems do. Gossip has taken and delivered over 185,000 messages, and has stats on many thousands of players, without a single instance of someone complaining about a breech of confidentiality. That, on top of the hundreds of private emails addresses that she uses to send out thousands of emails every week. So- if you don't want to use Gossip, Vanyel- that's fine. If you want to bring up issues from years ago- that's your prerogative too. But don't infer that what goes to Gossip is anything less than private- never once has anything private been revealed, not even in the incident that you bring up from years ago. Not even then. Scaf

Well, the lottery occured this week without an issue- Gossip noticed, sent the winner a message, and posted it on el-cel.com. I guess last week either there were no ticket buyers, or Gossip missed the announcement for some reason- she's been drinking again. scaf

wth!? I can write the same thing in LISP in 7 lines (but it takes 95 seconds to run). scaf

No, its not, i saw her gruing several times. And yes, radu, iirc that was when the lottery was or should have been drawn. Anyways, in my chat log the last winner of the lottery is Learner, but i dont have all lottery announcements, of course. Piper Gossip was offline for a total of less that 60 seconds on the 28th, so it's unlikely (but possible) that she missed the announcement. If the lottery was awarded, can we found out who won to record it in the historical record please? scafativ

el_pre_rc_26_02_07.exe: Normally, I get 20-30 FPS. When I run this executable, things start out ok, but then *suddenly*, after several minutes of walking around, the FPS drops to 2, and things are horribly choppy. el_pre_rc_26_02_07_no_vertex_programs.exe: Seems to work ok, at a normal FPS. No *crashes* from either one. NVIDIA Driver 6.14.11.6375 Video card: GeForce FX 5500/PCI/SSE2 Vendor ID: NVIDIA Corporation OpenGL Version: 2.1.1

Absolutely not. I think it's great, and appropriate, for the pk server, but I think that it would hurt playership on the main server- you'd have less characters, and far less players. scaf

RC3 does not work. NVIDIA Driver 6.14.11.6375 Video card: GeForce FX 5500/PCI/SSE2 Vendor ID: NVIDIA Corporation OpenGL Version: 2.1.1 Supported extensions: GL_ARB_depth_texture GL_ARB_fragment_program GL_ARB_fragment_program_shadow GL_ARB_fragment_shader GL_ARB_half_float_pixel GL_ARB_imaging GL_ARB_multisample GL_ARB_multitexture GL_ARB_occlusion_query GL_ARB_pixel_buffer_object GL_ARB_point_parameters GL_ARB_point_sprite GL_ARB_shadow GL_ARB_shader_objects GL_ARB_shading_language_100 GL_ARB_texture_border_clamp GL_ARB_texture_compression GL_ARB_texture_cube_map GL_ARB_texture_env_add GL_ARB_texture_env_combine GL_ARB_texture_env_dot3 GL_ARB_texture_mirrored_repeat GL_ARB_texture_rectangle GL_ARB_transpose_matrix GL_ARB_vertex_buffer_object GL_ARB_vertex_program GL_ARB_vertex_shader GL_ARB_window_pos GL_S3_s3tc GL_EXT_texture_env_add GL_EXT_abgr GL_EXT_bgra GL_EXT_blend_color GL_EXT_blend_func_separate GL_EXT_blend_minmax GL_EXT_blend_subtract GL_EXT_compiled_vertex_array GL_EXT_Cg_shader GL_EXT_draw_range_elements GL_EXT_fog_coord GL_EXT_framebuffer_blit GL_EXT_framebuffer_multisample GL_EXT_framebuffer_object GL_EXT_gpu_program_parameters GL_EXT_multi_draw_arrays GL_EXT_packed_depth_stencil GL_EXT_packed_pixels GL_EXT_paletted_texture GL_EXT_pixel_buffer_object GL_EXT_point_parameters GL_EXT_rescale_normal GL_EXT_secondary_color GL_EXT_separate_specular_color GL_EXT_shadow_funcs GL_EXT_shared_texture_palette GL_EXT_stencil_two_side GL_EXT_stencil_wrap GL_EXT_texture3D GL_EXT_texture_compression_s3tc GL_EXT_texture_cube_map GL_EXT_texture_edge_clamp GL_EXT_texture_env_combine GL_EXT_texture_env_dot3 GL_EXT_texture_filter_anisotropic GL_EXT_texture_lod GL_EXT_texture_lod_bias GL_EXT_texture_object GL_EXT_texture_sRGB GL_EXT_timer_query GL_EXT_vertex_array GL_IBM_rasterpos_clip GL_IBM_texture_mirrored_repeat GL_KTX_buffer_region GL_NV_blend_square GL_NV_copy_depth_to_color GL_NV_depth_clamp GL_NV_fence GL_NV_float_buffer GL_NV_fog_distance GL_NV_fragment_program GL_NV_fragment_program_option GL_NV_framebuffer_multisample_coverage GL_NV_half_float GL_NV_light_max_exponent GL_NV_multisample_filter_hint GL_NV_occlusion_query GL_NV_packed_depth_stencil GL_NV_pixel_data_range GL_NV_point_sprite GL_NV_primitive_restart GL_NV_register_combiners GL_NV_register_combiners2 GL_NV_texgen_reflection GL_NV_texture_compression_vtc GL_NV_texture_env_combine4 GL_NV_texture_expand_normal GL_NV_texture_rectangle GL_NV_texture_shader GL_NV_texture_shader2 GL_NV_texture_shader3 GL_NV_vertex_array_range GL_NV_vertex_array_range2 GL_NV_vertex_program GL_NV_vertex_program1_1 GL_NV_vertex_program2 GL_NV_vertex_program2_option GL_SGIS_generate_mipmap GL_SGIS_texture_lod GL_SGIX_depth_texture GL_SGIX_shadow GL_SUN_slice_accum GL_WIN_swap_hint WGL_EXT_swap_control

That's a shame, are you planning on making a list? It would be nice to have a list of commands available somewhere. Speaking as a mod, it would be nice to have something to show players when they ask about it, and a place to get answers from when they ask before I show them how to help themselves And what better way to engage players in the game than having them PM gossip herself, in-game? The list of commands that you're looking for is available somewhere, it turns out. If a player PMs gossip with "Hi" or "help", or "Giraffe" for that matter, she responds with a nice, comprehensive list. She also gives detailed information on each command if it is typed by itself. You should try that out. It has worked pretty well for the community so far. Oh, and Melisande- all of Gossip's standard commands are in that help message now- I've heard that she may have a few secrets, but I guess they're secret, unless you figure them out. scafativ

Gossip also isn't totally accurate, shadow was last on much more recently then 400 days ago. But unlevel chars are deleted at times when Entropy takes the server down for some extra maintenance (often while doing an upgrade). Each time he's done that it's deleted 50k-80k unused noob names. Gossip can miss someone if they're only on for a couple of minutes. Gossip also erases people from her address book if she hasn't seen them in ages, so she's not a good indicator if a character name is taken. The best way is to use the following url, and put the person's name at the end: http://game.eternal-lands.com/view_user.php?user= So if you wanted to check on the name 'shadow', you'd use: http://game.eternal-lands.com/view_user.php?user=shadow If it comes up completely blank, then the name is available. I would strongly suggested not to abuse this- if you start pounding the site with requests, my guess is you'll be IP blocked. Paying for website bandwidth is expensive. scaf

They are not available on the cel site, or any other site, to my knowledge. Gossip will explain her commands to you by just pming her. Scafativ

Implementation details purposely left out so that the developers can figure out what's easiest- I think that it would be nice to be able to create short, written notes on pieces of paper (that could presumably be purchased.) The notes could be left in bags (for contests, for instance: "Congratulations- you found Lord Vermor's bag of magic rings", could help identify death bags "You have found scafativ's death bag- reward if returned!", and could be passed between characters "Will you marry me?". This would be nice after the other 32465 planned features are implemented, tested and deployed. scafativ

I want to let everybody know about a CEL sponsored bot named 'Gossip'. You can use her to leave a message for a player that is not online, and when that player logs in she will automatically deliver the message by PM. Being a gossip, she also spreads rumors- if you tell her a rumor, she will pass it on to the next player that she interacts with- be careful though- rumors are attributed to you, so if you're stuipd about what you say, you'll have to answer to the game mods. The best rumors will be recycled periodically. Also, she will tell another player that he or she has a 'secret admirer', but not tell them who, of course. Lastly, she can tell you about another player, such as when they were last logged in. More fun features in the works.... A full explanation of Gossip use can be found at: http://www.el-cel.com/info/gossip.php scafativ