Captain The First
Wanderer
A quick Guide to searching
A quick guide to searching (why and how)
Welcome to runuo! Arguably one of the best (if not the best) UO emulator available to us today.
Even though the runuo Emulator is decently documented most of us that come to these forums don't necessarily come for here the idle chit chat or the friendly (yet slightly strange) people.
We come here because that damned script isn't working like we hoped it would. We come here because something is making our server crash, or Razor isn't working right.
In short we come here because we need help!
And like so many people that need help, after 4 hours of trial and error we are thouroughly annoyed and would like help right away (and by someone who knows what he/she is doing).
But chances are someone already fixed your problem! So hold out on posting your error for just a little longer and do a search. There's two very good reasons for doing a search (or multiple searches) before posting anything. which brings us to the question:
Why do a search when I can ask?
1. Reason number one is and always will be, if someone has had your problem before they will already have seen to it that it gets fixed. In other words instead of having to wait half a day for a more or less good answer you can just pluck the fix for your problem straight off the boards.
2. If you have any intention of using these forums again it's a wise thing not to annoy people who provide support for you (well, just a nice stab in the back once in a while hehe).
If your question in some shape or form has already been answered the best response you can expect out of the more experienced runuo users is:
"Do a #@$%#$ search!"
Not only is this not the response we hoped for (after all it didn't fix our problem did it?) but we also paved the way for never ever getting support from the runuo veteran again (some of which can hold a really nasty grudge
).
So why do these forum vets sometimes respond so hostile? Well imagine driving along in your car and with a little kid sitting in the back constantly asking you: 'are we almost there yet?'.
Now also imagine that your trip is going to take at least another 12 hours and you will come close to feeling what the runuo forum veterans feel. To them our question isn't new, nor interesting, nor very important and if we could've solved our problem by doing a search then they sure as hell won't repeat themselves (neither would we) by posting the fix again.
So the key to to a long and happy forum life on these forums is making a good search!
But finding a good search term isn't always easy. After all that crash log the server just spat at us (which we can find in our server console) isn't exactly wonderfully clear if we don't have some programming experience.
Which brings us to:
How do we find the _right_ thing to search for?
Let's take a look at a random crash report (taken from the forums) and see if we can't figure out what would be worth searching for.
Server Crash Report
===================
Operating System: Microsoft Windows NT 5.1.2600.0
.NET Framework: 1.1.4322.573
Time: 12/04/2004 6:44:01 PM
Mobiles: 16223
Items: 337441
Clients:
- Count: 6
+ ******: (account = *******) (mobile = 0x1 '*****')
+ ******: (account = ******) (mobile = 0x91B '*****')
+ ******: (account = ******) (mobile = 0x3567 '******')
+ ******: (account = ******) (mobile = 0x4A5D '*********')
+ ******: (account = ******) (mobile = 0x89A '*************')
+ ******: (account = ****** (mobile = 0xA189 '****')
Exception:
System.Exception: Items array is null--are you calling the serialization constructor? Type=Server.Items.StoneFountainDeed
at Server.Item.set_Map(Map value)
at Server.Item.AddItem(Item item)
at Server.Items.Container.DropItem(Item dropped)
at Server.Items.BaseContainer.TryDropItem(Mobile from, Item dropped, Boolean sendFullMessage)
at Server.Mobiles.BaseVendor.OnBuyItems(Mobile buyer, ArrayList list)
at Server.Network.PacketHandlers.VendorBuyReply(NetState state, PacketReader pvSrc)
at Server.Network.MessagePump.HandleReceive(NetState ns)
at Server.Network.MessagePump.Slice()
at Server.Core.Main(String[] args)
This basic crash report is made up out of two parts:
Part 1, contains basic account information (which I edited out with *'s as not to give anyone's IP, account name or character name away).
None of this is worth searching for. And if you ever need to post your crash log you can leave this area out without anyone ever complaining about you not posting a complete error log.
Part 2 however is the actual thing that caused your crash, straight from the horse's euh server's mouth.
Of course if you ever tried, you will notice that all this is too much to search for and in fact we rarely have to. In around 90% of the server crashes the actual problem can be found in the first few lines of the crash report.
A crash log in general is made up out of the following parts (in that order):
Back to our example crash log we can now identify:
What happened: 'Items array is null'
Server Comment: are you calling the serialization constructor?
What caused it: Type=Server.Items.StoneFountainDeed
How it was caused: not important to performing a search so let's not make our task harder than it already is.
The what happened generally doesn't tell us much about our problem (contrary to what we expect). Items array is null could be encountered in any number of items so doesn't help us much.
The server comment will help us to identify if we found the right post to solve our problem once we have done a search
The important part however is usually what caused it, since that is generally a pretty direct indication of what script caused the problem:
Type=Server.Items.StoneFountainDeed
This is still a little on the fuzzy side but already something worth doing a search on. Try it and see what it comes up with.
If the search comes up empty (like in this case) use parts of the error message to repeat your search:
For example:
Type=Server.Items
or
StoneFountainDeed
The last search will finally bring you to the post I got the original error report from. Which means that not only did we just analyse a crash log (with 0 programming knowledge) we also found a thread that could possibly fix our problem (making it worth reading).
But what if I don't have a crash log but just a problem?
So you would like to figure something out, but aren't sure whether or not it was asked before? You already did a search and it came up empty?
Despite the fact that most of us here speak the same language everyone will have their own way of expressing themselves.
Let's just say you want to make it so that you can make extra stuff with your tailoring tool (for example you would like to make it possible for your players to make carpets via the tailoring tool).
There are two things you can do to make your idea actually findable on the runuo forums:
1. Condense your idea into 2 or 3 words. The fewer words you add in the search field the more results you will get. It is better to start broad and narrow yourself down than to come up with empty search results all the time.
2. Diversify! Use different words for the same thing. a tailoring tool is also a sewing kit or maybe even a tailoring kit or a sewing tool.
We know that making stuff on uo is called 'crafting' maybe even just plainly making.
so instead of searching for: tailor tool carpets (which actually gives us nothing as a result)
try: crafting carpet (which brings us to a lot of people blabbing too much)
if that doesn't work try:
make carpet (and bingo it's in the results list)
Also note that the search feature won't make any difference between make carpet and carpet make. To it those two searches are the same so feel free to just throw together words and see what happens.
Congratulations, you now know (more than) enough to do proper searches on the board and can even do most of your searches just using the quick search in the top toolbar!
So why would you take advice from me in the first place?
I spend an average of 2 to 3 hours a day (for quite some time) on these forums and have created approximately 200 custom scripts (which I may release once they have been tested for a long long time). I have run into over 10 times that many problems with my scripts and was able to solve 95% of these problems almost immediately by doing a couple of searches!
(Feel free to check my posting records to see how many script questions I actually had).
So save yourself the headache and the flames and do a search. No one will thank you for it, but then again no one will yell at you either
------------
- Captain the First -
undisclosed shard.
+-1200 hours of work, 45% completed.
A quick guide to searching (why and how)
Welcome to runuo! Arguably one of the best (if not the best) UO emulator available to us today.
Even though the runuo Emulator is decently documented most of us that come to these forums don't necessarily come for here the idle chit chat or the friendly (yet slightly strange) people.
We come here because that damned script isn't working like we hoped it would. We come here because something is making our server crash, or Razor isn't working right.
In short we come here because we need help!
And like so many people that need help, after 4 hours of trial and error we are thouroughly annoyed and would like help right away (and by someone who knows what he/she is doing).
But chances are someone already fixed your problem! So hold out on posting your error for just a little longer and do a search. There's two very good reasons for doing a search (or multiple searches) before posting anything. which brings us to the question:
Why do a search when I can ask?
1. Reason number one is and always will be, if someone has had your problem before they will already have seen to it that it gets fixed. In other words instead of having to wait half a day for a more or less good answer you can just pluck the fix for your problem straight off the boards.
2. If you have any intention of using these forums again it's a wise thing not to annoy people who provide support for you (well, just a nice stab in the back once in a while hehe).
If your question in some shape or form has already been answered the best response you can expect out of the more experienced runuo users is:
"Do a #@$%#$ search!"
Not only is this not the response we hoped for (after all it didn't fix our problem did it?) but we also paved the way for never ever getting support from the runuo veteran again (some of which can hold a really nasty grudge
).So why do these forum vets sometimes respond so hostile? Well imagine driving along in your car and with a little kid sitting in the back constantly asking you: 'are we almost there yet?'.
Now also imagine that your trip is going to take at least another 12 hours and you will come close to feeling what the runuo forum veterans feel. To them our question isn't new, nor interesting, nor very important and if we could've solved our problem by doing a search then they sure as hell won't repeat themselves (neither would we) by posting the fix again.
So the key to to a long and happy forum life on these forums is making a good search!
But finding a good search term isn't always easy. After all that crash log the server just spat at us (which we can find in our server console) isn't exactly wonderfully clear if we don't have some programming experience.
Which brings us to:
How do we find the _right_ thing to search for?
Let's take a look at a random crash report (taken from the forums) and see if we can't figure out what would be worth searching for.
Server Crash Report
===================
Operating System: Microsoft Windows NT 5.1.2600.0
.NET Framework: 1.1.4322.573
Time: 12/04/2004 6:44:01 PM
Mobiles: 16223
Items: 337441
Clients:
- Count: 6
+ ******: (account = *******) (mobile = 0x1 '*****')
+ ******: (account = ******) (mobile = 0x91B '*****')
+ ******: (account = ******) (mobile = 0x3567 '******')
+ ******: (account = ******) (mobile = 0x4A5D '*********')
+ ******: (account = ******) (mobile = 0x89A '*************')
+ ******: (account = ****** (mobile = 0xA189 '****')
Exception:
System.Exception: Items array is null--are you calling the serialization constructor? Type=Server.Items.StoneFountainDeed
at Server.Item.set_Map(Map value)
at Server.Item.AddItem(Item item)
at Server.Items.Container.DropItem(Item dropped)
at Server.Items.BaseContainer.TryDropItem(Mobile from, Item dropped, Boolean sendFullMessage)
at Server.Mobiles.BaseVendor.OnBuyItems(Mobile buyer, ArrayList list)
at Server.Network.PacketHandlers.VendorBuyReply(NetState state, PacketReader pvSrc)
at Server.Network.MessagePump.HandleReceive(NetState ns)
at Server.Network.MessagePump.Slice()
at Server.Core.Main(String[] args)
This basic crash report is made up out of two parts:
Part 1, contains basic account information (which I edited out with *'s as not to give anyone's IP, account name or character name away).
None of this is worth searching for. And if you ever need to post your crash log you can leave this area out without anyone ever complaining about you not posting a complete error log.
Part 2 however is the actual thing that caused your crash, straight from the horse's euh server's mouth.
Of course if you ever tried, you will notice that all this is too much to search for and in fact we rarely have to. In around 90% of the server crashes the actual problem can be found in the first few lines of the crash report.
A crash log in general is made up out of the following parts (in that order):
- what happened (sometimes with a server comment)
- What caused it
- How was it caused (and 'where')
Back to our example crash log we can now identify:
What happened: 'Items array is null'
Server Comment: are you calling the serialization constructor?
What caused it: Type=Server.Items.StoneFountainDeed
How it was caused: not important to performing a search so let's not make our task harder than it already is.
The what happened generally doesn't tell us much about our problem (contrary to what we expect). Items array is null could be encountered in any number of items so doesn't help us much.
The server comment will help us to identify if we found the right post to solve our problem once we have done a search
The important part however is usually what caused it, since that is generally a pretty direct indication of what script caused the problem:
Type=Server.Items.StoneFountainDeed
This is still a little on the fuzzy side but already something worth doing a search on. Try it and see what it comes up with.
If the search comes up empty (like in this case) use parts of the error message to repeat your search:
For example:
Type=Server.Items
or
StoneFountainDeed
The last search will finally bring you to the post I got the original error report from. Which means that not only did we just analyse a crash log (with 0 programming knowledge) we also found a thread that could possibly fix our problem (making it worth reading).
But what if I don't have a crash log but just a problem?
So you would like to figure something out, but aren't sure whether or not it was asked before? You already did a search and it came up empty?
Despite the fact that most of us here speak the same language everyone will have their own way of expressing themselves.
Let's just say you want to make it so that you can make extra stuff with your tailoring tool (for example you would like to make it possible for your players to make carpets via the tailoring tool).
There are two things you can do to make your idea actually findable on the runuo forums:
1. Condense your idea into 2 or 3 words. The fewer words you add in the search field the more results you will get. It is better to start broad and narrow yourself down than to come up with empty search results all the time.
2. Diversify! Use different words for the same thing. a tailoring tool is also a sewing kit or maybe even a tailoring kit or a sewing tool.
We know that making stuff on uo is called 'crafting' maybe even just plainly making.
so instead of searching for: tailor tool carpets (which actually gives us nothing as a result)
try: crafting carpet (which brings us to a lot of people blabbing too much)
if that doesn't work try:
make carpet (and bingo it's in the results list)
Also note that the search feature won't make any difference between make carpet and carpet make. To it those two searches are the same so feel free to just throw together words and see what happens.
Congratulations, you now know (more than) enough to do proper searches on the board and can even do most of your searches just using the quick search in the top toolbar!
So why would you take advice from me in the first place?
I spend an average of 2 to 3 hours a day (for quite some time) on these forums and have created approximately 200 custom scripts (which I may release once they have been tested for a long long time). I have run into over 10 times that many problems with my scripts and was able to solve 95% of these problems almost immediately by doing a couple of searches!
(Feel free to check my posting records to see how many script questions I actually had).
So save yourself the headache and the flames and do a search. No one will thank you for it, but then again no one will yell at you either
------------
- Captain the First -
undisclosed shard.
+-1200 hours of work, 45% completed.
