Bug - Fixed "You are now in away mode, chat will update more slowly until you say something."

Lord_Kobel

Member
Is there any way of disabling the away messages again? A lack of idling was always a plus point to mafia for me...
 

Theraze

Active member
I suppose the charitable way to interpret the question would be, "Is there any way to gag the away messages, so that while chat will still refresh slower, I don't really care about seeing the messages telling me that it's happening?"
 

Crowther

Active member
Oh man, have my clannies been bitching about these changes. I know the intent is good. I keep telling them, it's okay, it will end better.

There's no reason to log the away-mode messages, right? Because that seems like a legit gripe to me.
 

lostcalpolydude

Developer
Staff member
I guess plain KoL chat is pretty horrible for people then.

At this point I'm not even sure if people dislike it in the relay browser (using older chat or new chat, I can't tell), or in mafia's GUI, or maybe the fact that it gets logged (since that was mentioned now). Changing something would probably not change what some people are actually upset about.
 

roippi

Developer
People complain about change because it is change. Give it a week and it will be the new norm.
 

Veracity

Developer
Staff member
Oh man, have my clannies been bitching about these changes. I know the intent is good. I keep telling them, it's okay, it will end better.
It was a large amount of work, it was really difficult, it was all unfamiliar territory to me, it's good for KoL itself, and I am really proud of it.

There's no reason to log the away-mode messages, right? Because that seems like a legit gripe to me.
I could put in a kludge to not log them, I guess. You do realize that with mchat in the relay browser, KoL itself sends the messages as Events and we have always logged them, right? So now we have equivalent messages for lchat and for the GUI, and somehow it is intolerable?

My first reaction is "what a bunch of whiners".

I've not moved beyond that reaction, yet. Maybe I will, eventually.
 

Bale

Minion
I guess that one of the reasons they prefer mafia's chat window to the KoL chat pane is because of the lack of messages telling them they are in away-mode? Maybe. They might feel that a features was just removed. Yeah, they're whining, but it is legitimate. I know I get very upset whenever a program I use removes a feature and the developers tell us that we're wrong to want that feature since they've decided it isn't in the user's best interest.
 

Veracity

Developer
Staff member
I see. We "removed" a feature. Of course, the way I see it is that we just "added" a feature.

They are whining, but it is "legitimate"?

I'm out of here. If there will be further changes to this, it will be by somebody else, since I'm just "la la la!" about it at this point.

Sheesh.
 

Bale

Minion
That's cool. I was just trying to explain another viewpoint.

Maybe I have stayed out of this.
 
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Lord_Kobel

Member
You mean, "Is there a way of using up more of Jick's bandwidth when I'm not actively using chat?" No.

But following along with what is being said in chat IS actively using chat, even if you're not saying anything yourself.

I guess plain KoL chat is pretty horrible for people then.

At this point I'm not even sure if people dislike it in the relay browser (using older chat or new chat, I can't tell)

Pretty much, and it's something that I always notice. Also, yes, relay browser...
 

Darzil

Developer
Perhaps start the conversation with TPTB in KoL. Bandwidth is cheaper than it was, it might no longer be a real issue.
 

lostcalpolydude

Developer
Staff member
Chat is intentionally slowed down during twitch events, so performance isn't a non-issue during high load times at least.
 

roippi

Developer
It was a large amount of work, it was really difficult, it was all unfamiliar territory to me, it's good for KoL itself, and I am really proud of it.


I could put in a kludge to not log them, I guess. You do realize that with mchat in the relay browser, KoL itself sends the messages as Events and we have always logged them, right? So now we have equivalent messages for lchat and for the GUI, and somehow it is intolerable?

My first reaction is "what a bunch of whiners".

I've not moved beyond that reaction, yet. Maybe I will, eventually.

+1 to all of this.

I've seen the goalposts moved a lot as to what people are complaining about with the new changes. Is it a logging issue? I can't make myself care about that. Is it a UI issue? Maybe that's a feature request - a clickable "you are in away mode, click to leave" pane at the top of the chat GUI wouldn't be the worst thing.

But mafia respecting kol's desire to go into away mode is very much an intended behavior; the old behavior was more bug than feature.
 

lostcalpolydude

Developer
Staff member
My (sarcastic, in case it isn't obvious) response to this complaint in /hardcore was for people to tell Jick that his chat sucks. I expect some people actually will send Jick a radio show comment about it, and Jick will respond or not as he sees fit.
 

xKiv

Active member
But following along with what is being said in chat IS actively using chat, even if you're not saying anything yourself.

I can imagine wanting /idleoff when, say, participating in a hobopolis speedrun - when slow reactions in chat can add time for several people (not everyone has reason to say something every few minutes during the *entire* thing).


Chat is intentionally slowed down during twitch events, so performance isn't a non-issue during high load times at least.

IIRC there were contention issues on chat tables?
Or was that actually something else, because one of the thing said on the stream was that there were issues "everywhere except db #" (where db # was the server handling chat, which CDM *just* switched to more effective settings)?
 

roippi

Developer
Really chat systems should be written with (web)sockets that can simply "subscribe" and accept new entries as they come, rather than a "polling" paradigm which enormously wastes server resources. In order to implement this you have to understand stuff like message queueing, websockets, etc. But that ship has looooong since sailed and I don't see them going back and rewriting the chat backend, it would be a waste of dev time at this point.
 

roippi

Developer
- a clickable "you are in away mode, click to leave" pane at the top of the chat GUI wouldn't be the worst thing.

I just implemented this, didn't take that long.

Is there some chat command that I can send that won't echo anything (but will take me out of away mode)? I'm drawing a blank.

n.b. you can put yourself into away mode via /afk (though only if you have the relay chat open simultaneously? weird..)
 
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Veracity

Developer
Staff member
you can put yourself into away mode via /afk (though only if you have the relay chat open simultaneously? weird..)
Yeah.

Since "away mode" is local to the browser in lchat (although it does result in submitting polls with afk=1, which tells KoL to tell other people that you are "away from keyboard"), /afk (and /away) are local commands to lchat that set "paused=1" and give you the green message .

In mchat, KoL decides if you are "away" - but if you type "/afk" or "/away", it just passes it on to KoL, which responds with a green Event telling you that you are away and starts requesting a longer delay.

Since that chat GUI is, essentially, lchat, I considered implementing local commands for "/afk" and "/away", which print the green message and start polling with afk=1, but the issue is that if you are also in chat in the browser, there is no way to tell it that you are in "away" mode and that it, too, should slow down. In the absence of that, it will continue polling at the normal rate (and with afk=0, if it is lchat), we notice that, and speed up again ourself.

If the browser is running mchat, we COULD submit an mchat message with "/afk" and the browser will respond with the event and the browser will slow down, and we will pick up the event and slow down - which I assume is what you noticed - but if the browser is running lchat, KoL will not tell it anything.
 
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