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Also - the top list can handle over 4.2 bil, ever since mod 9 came out..



You never saw that??????

Plat, think of the definition of 'designed'. I'm not saying people can't gain over 4 billion exp. I said several times they can. I am saying the game itself isn't designed for over 4 billion exp. If you can't train past lvl 65, then all exp after lvl 65 is useless, therefore, the game isn't designed for it. If you had a char with 500 billion exp and lvl 300, would there be a point? No, because the game isn't 'designed' for it. We are both correct, I just didn't make my point clear, my bad. I was just saying that the game mechanics aren't designed for it.

Originally posted by Platinum

Also - the top list can handle over 4.2 bil, ever since mod 9 came out..



You never saw that??????





Nope, I never noticed that. I had a couple lvl 70+ chars on a friends mod9 board a while ago and my exp rolled over. Other than that experience, I've never played on a mod9 board with over 4 billion exp. You know I don't stay on boards long enough for that =) Thanks for clearing that up, I had no idea.

I understand you but..



The game is not uhm.."available" for over 4.2 bil because of the max level..but designed? If it wasn't "designed" that way, it couldn't happen..yes the level cap is 65, and that's about 4.2 billion on some chars. However, in 1.11j they plan to cap it off at 75, what it is now is a "preparation" phase, they want the game to go over 4.2 bil, that's what the planned for it to do, so when 1.11j comes out all the level 65 chars weren't dicked before (little late I guess, I'm sure plenty were maxed at 4.2 bil in mod 8)

Nod..sinister urges top list is actually right (hah)

*nod* - from what you just said, I take it as you saying "Yeah, the games not designed for over 4.2 billion exp, but when they make the cap at 75, it will be" ... They are still preparing for making it useful. I consider "designed for" as being "useful". It's not really useful to have over 4.2 bil exp now, since you can't do anything with it really. When the game was first introduced and upgraded a couple versions, yes it was conceivable to get lvl 50 since the aged titan trained you to it, but was it really designed for it? The best area to kill was dragons, and the old version of the She-dragon could be solo'd by a lvl 50 easily. There was nothing really for a char over lvl 30 to do. I consider that not being designed for over lvl 30. Same concept with mud today, it's not really designed for anything above lvl 65 (which is about 4.2 bil exp on most people). I get where you are coming from, I just think that my definition of designed is a little more constrictive than yours. It will be nice when they cap it off at 75, if it ever happens.

not to beat a dead horse here, but I would have to agree that mud isn't designed for any number being over 4.2 bill (AKA: an unsigned long integer, AKA: FFFF FFFF, AKA: 4,294,967,295). after working with the dats for such a long time I've noticed lots of little tricks they've done to make it work, but not work how it should.



the biggest example is a character exp. they actually store it in two slots, or 'fields'. one for billions, and one for millions (two unsigned long integer slots). so someone with 111,222,333,444 experience would be stored:



0000 006F (111) | 0D40 8A04 (222,333,444)



so really, max exp now is (could be anyway):

4,294,967,295,999,999,999 :)



this is also why when you type exp that it gets messed up. they haven't tweaked the calculations on that to make it work with their new way of storing the exp in the characters dat.



*edit*

I should also add that this isn't completely metros fault. it has to do with btrieve, WG, and computers in general having problems dealing with numbers of that size (any non-16bit number). if WG, mud, and btrieve were built for a 32-bit architecture, this most likely wouldn't be as big of a problem.



-syn

Yea, there are several different ways to explain that a game is designed for something.



If looking at it just for basic facts, the game is designed for 4,294,967,205,000,000,000,999,999,999 exp, and therefore a player could reach level XXXXXX, and the game is designed for it.



If looking at it from the standpoint of usefulness, the game is designed for whatever exp gets you to level 65.



If looking at it from the programming standpoint, the game is designed to outfit the recycling bin quite nicely.



I never knew how they did the exp, but geezus could they have done it sloppier? I would hate to see what the code looks like. It's probably fucked up from the most basic standpoint, ie: formatting. I can't look at code unless it's formatted quite nicely with tabs and everything. I once took the code of Emlen mud (A very cool version of an internet mud, I wish I could get my hands on it again), and had to re-format everything before I would develop it for someone. The way they did exp looks like they took someone who dropped out of high school, tinkered with C++ for a couple days, and submitted a resume.

wow, all this because i posted the top 10..didn't mean to start a fire! just promotin' muh board

No fire here, just friendly discussion.