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A Favor to the Players, An Apology to Koi, A Statement of Intent

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Tary
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Joined: Mon Apr 28, 2014 9:09 am

A Favor to the Players, An Apology to Koi, A Statement of Intent

Post by Tary »

I know many of you are jonesing for your Underlight fix. To a great extent -- or maybe to the greatest extent -- the current outage is my fault. Due to a stupid off-by-one bug on the client it caused the client to think you had arts you shouldn't. While this was an easy enough bug to fix it also necessitated a server rebuild and an audit of the database to ensure nothing slipped in. At that point I'm sure they realized something else terrible: the live server has a different build system than dev. I hacked it together to rebuild the server on the prod server but I only did it "well enough" to build the server. This almost certainly left artifacts of libs strewn all over the filesystem, not to mention any other security flaws which I know nothing about.

When a person who has been coding for almost 15 years introduces a catastrophic bug it is a blow to the ego: professionally and personally. I take full responsibility for the current outage.

Then fix it! you say. And I should. I could, I think although I couldn't tell you for certain. Unfortunately I let my pride get in the way of a fix.

After Wish livestreamed the patch video and I watched it I was hurt. I felt like I deserved a shout-out of appreciation; nothing more, but at least a, "Hey, Tary (macobas) did amazing work on 3.1.5 and 3.1.6, AE items and flight weren't even stuff the team asked for but it made the environment cooler." I know Wish thinks that, and I know the others did too. My pride demanded an acknowledgement and that's my own personal flaw.

Unfortunately I tend to also have a bit of a temper. My temper glows white-hot but it's like one of those old magnesium camera flashes: super bright and then it goes away. I don't hold grudges, but I can fly off the handle at least verbally (I am not a violent person, thank goodness, I would never ever dream of raising my hand against someone else, even in the throes of my anger, but boy can I yell). I flew off the handle. In Discord. In the internal Koi slack. I said things I shouldn't have and I apologize for that. I apologize to Wish, Drama and Copyright. But most of all -- and no offense to you three -- I apologize to Jor.

I need to tell you something about JorKyrin. I have worked with some of the best sysadmins in my career in the financial sector. Jor is a level above; he's a great sysadmin but he also gets the dev side. It's a rare combo, not one you see often. And unfortunately, when Jor told me I needed to cool off, I lit into him as well. Guy just had hernia surgery, by the way, and now he has to deal with my bug on top of this. To be fair to me, Jor kinda embodies the BOFH persona which, when combined with an angry macobas does not end wonderfully. Maybe Jor keeps the servers locked down a little TOO tight, but it's better than the opposite. So I apologize to you, most of all.

Do I think I deserve acknowledgement? Yes. Do I think I could have handled myself better? Definitely. To that end my offer that I made privately to Wish still stands.

This isn't an "I'm sorry, let me back" post. I badly burned myself out on these two patches, dedicating more time to UL coding than to work, than to my family. I have a hard time working in half-measures; I am all-in or not in at all. I can't just do an hour a week, especially when a cool idea comes to me, I need to do it NOW NOW NOW or else I can't sleep, can't stop thinking about it... it's not a healthy personality trait, and I daresay it's probably what drove a lot of my anger when I blew up.

Finally I want to publicly acknowledge some individuals who have just been kicking butt:
Wish, Drama, Jor, Seeker, Scribbles, Copyright: you guys have been going hard. Thank you.
Cipher: Thanks for helping me with the testing, sorry for hitting at you so hard with all the invis shenanigans.

If you're not on this list it's only because I don't play UL and I may not know what you do outside of it. Either way: thank you.
Let' s keep kicking ass.
Last edited by Tary on Thu May 17, 2018 9:22 am, edited 1 time in total.
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SnowAngel
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Re: A Favor to the Players, An Apology to Koi, A Statement of Intent

Post by SnowAngel »

Tary,
Thanks for the explanation of what happened. I cannot imagine that was an easy post to make , opening yourself up like such.. I barely know you in game, but am beyond impressed by your openess,honesty, humility, ability, skills, etc.
I do hope hope all of those on the Koi team accept the apologies and openess you have shared ( I can't imagine they wouldnt). We all lose it from time to time, for whatever reason. We are all human. We live, we learn, we grow. It is part of life.

I think we appreciate more than anything, knowing what actually did happen. The post left many questions in my mind and I am sure in others. You answered them.

I thank you for all you have done for Underlight. I know you and the entire Koi team have made many sacrifices for this game. Everyone's time does not go unnoticed, even if we bitch and complain about things :D That sadly is also a part of life!

Thank you again for your post, explanation, and everything you said.
There are times when we stop.. We sit still... We listen and breezes from a whole other world begin to whisper.
James Carroll
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Arnaya
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Character Name(s): Arnaya

Re: A Favor to the Players, An Apology to Koi, A Statement of Intent

Post by Arnaya »

Snow Angel summed up everything I'd say beautifully.. and probably a lot more eloquently. So, I'm just going to +1 her words. As someone who's been known to "Go Off" a time or two, I understand what its like
The most important lesson I've learned over this past year, is not to let anyone make you cruel. No matter how badly you want to give the world a taste of it's own bitter medicine, it is never worth losing yourself.
Dina

Re: A Favor to the Players, An Apology to Koi, A Statement of Intent

Post by Dina »

Tary, thank you for all you have done. I do think your name should be visible on everything. You have worked hard, just like the others.

Right now everyone needs to set aside their differences for the sake of the community. Not many are playing and I am sure it is half due to everyone having their own families and etc, but I do know some of it is because of how they were treated. Why play a game where you are not respected? Been there done that.

This goes to show that yes, it is happening and it is sad. Get over your pride, bring back Tary, get it working, and then people can go back to having fun again.

A clean slate needs to happen. We need to get people to come back too. Many of us feel the game is dying and we don't want that!

Please work it out.
Tary
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Posts: 264
Joined: Mon Apr 28, 2014 9:09 am

Re: A Favor to the Players, An Apology to Koi, A Statement of Intent

Post by Tary »

As a favor to the players and to Koi, I've restarted my personal UL server. Note that this is not a canonical server, it is not IC, and as soon as Koi's Underlight is back up it will go down. This isn't an attempt at fracturing the community and isn't me saying I'm going to run my own iteration of Underlight. Let me be very clear: I will NOT run my own iteration of Underlight. And I'm missing LOADS of infra that would be required anyway. This is just for those of you who are jonesing to see a portal spin.

Link to client:
Place the above downloaded file in C:\Underlight or wherever your Underlight folder is.

All passwords are 'test.' This isn't a gm client; gm clients will only be given to current Koi GMs.

Thanks,
Michael
Gorgunsun
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Re: A Favor to the Players, An Apology to Koi, A Statement of Intent

Post by Gorgunsun »

I already do this all t he time. Just tickled to be here. OOC I love all of the community and that's why I never do kudos, it all goes without saying with Gor/Nick.
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