Emergency Revives and Connection Problems
Fr, 06/12/2015 - 15:25
I was having a nice time at Dreams and Nightmares when my internet decided to crap out on me. When I was finally reconnected, I discovered that it still used my emergency revive while I was still disconnecting. Nova pointed out to me that one of the old patch notes (http://wiki.spiralknights.com/Release_Notes_2013-08-06 Thanks, Nova) says that an emergency revive won't be used while you're having connection problems. Apparently, having connection again for half a second makes the revive activate.
With Nova's help, I'd like to suggest that we be able to click a button that uses our emergency revive, rather than the revive using itself automatically. While you're down, it shouldn't grant any loot from killed monsters/treasure boxes to prevent AFK/alt farming. The revive should also not do the energy burst that stuns monsters upon use.
This would seriously help those of us who have connection issues often. I hate seeing that I have to spark rev when I still had my emergency rev when I first started DCing.
EDIT: As Nova said, there could also be an option to choose if the emergency rev activates automatically or if you can press a button.
Fr, 06/12/2015 - 17:41
#2
+1 and coding idea
A useful suggestion, that would make a number of our less-fortunate players happy.
I know OOO prefers to repurpose good code rather than design something new, so how's this for a coding idea:
1. When someone enters the clockworks they get a mat in their inventory (invisible to the player). That mat triggers the free res (non-stun) effect.
2. Hook the free rev mat into the same system as the spark rev. You die, you get a pop-up window to rev yourself. BUT! Change the res menu. Now you have two buttons: free res or SoL. The free res would burn the invisible mat from your inventory so if you don't have any, the button is greyed out.
Side effect: this would let people use a SoL instead of their free res. That's not really a problem though. Just different.
3. Possible issue: Res another player from the portrait dropdown menu. Right now you can click their portrait and spark them. But if (as I assume) that menu option is tied to using a spark of life (not this new, invisible mat) this is a non-issue.
4. Database check suggestion: to prevent someone from ending up with twenty free res mats, instruct the database that this column can only have a binary value? I'm not a DBA so I'm reaching a bit with this suggestion.
Alternate idea: use ping times (the connection bar in the upper right) trigger the free res. You don't free res after a DC until you have 5 seconds of good pings.
I think either could work well!
--Chesh
A hah here's the release notes.
I also have this problem sometimes. The option to simply use the ER when you want to would be far more ideal (staying on your back getting 0 additional loot and minimal mooching abils in the meantime like it is now). Hey! What would be very fantastic: an option in the menus to toggle "choose when to use ER" or not - so like the "activate ER" button is either there when you die, or your ER kicks in like it does currently and there's no button. Most people would want the ER to kick in right away most of the time, unless they 1) have connection issues or 2) want to analyze the battlefield to write up a nice guide, and I'm sure there are many other reasons.
Of course, they should just polish up this DC coding period, but the problem has inspired a different solution.