Tokugawa Shogunate Kumite

The post is cross-posted from http://www.daikonforge.com/webtab/2007/11/29/tokugawa-shogunate-kumite/

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I have decided to make an exception to my policy of not announcing unofficial tournaments on my blog, largely due to the demonstration of widespread interest in the specific tournament in question, which looks like it will be fun for the entire C:SI community.

The Tokugawa Shogunate is planning a large tournament for the new year, which looks like it’s shaping up to be quite the affair. 

It’s not an officially sponsored event, though from the buzz I’m hearing most or all of the C:SI clans will be represented at the tournament, so it should be a great time for all!

Following is the actual announcement I received via notecard in-world.  Note the part in bold about the tournament date being changed, as it does not match the dates in the rest of the invitation.  Any questions should be directed to someone in the Tokugawa committee (such as Moondance or Arishia), of which I am not a member.

[UPDATE] Colin provided more information in the comments to this post:

Schedule & Programs
Dec 29 - 12PM SLT Saturday - Arrival Fulfillment of Entry procedure and arrangement of delegations
Judge Course – Examination for judges

DEADLINE FOR REGISTRATION TO COMPETITION AT 5PM SLT 28 Dec 2007

http://groups.google.com/group/tokugawa-kumite

Dec 30 - 12PM SLT
Ranking spars for competitors not sponsored by clan.

Jan 5 - 12PM SLT
Official Opening Ceremony
Eliminations and semi finals for Novice, Intermediate, Master and Ancient Levels
Finals for Novice and Intermediate Levels

Jan 6 - 12PM SLT
Finals for master and ancient levels
Medal presentation
Official Closing Ceremony
Party following in the sports complex!! Harukko Deadlight is DJing

The original invitation, as I received it, is here:

INVITATION
Tokugawa Shogunate Kumite

**The tournament date has been changed to the first week in January**

Dear friends,

We are most pleased to inform You that the Tokugawa Shogunate Kumite will be organized in Tokugawa sim on 8-9 December 2007. The Tokugawa Shogunate is only a little eagle which flies in the wide sky of C:SI, and will be very glad to meet with other clans of C:SI in order to reassert what the goal of C:SI is for everyone:

"Courage - Honesty - Loyalty"

We also request that each clan provide Arishia Nishi, committee member, with a list of potential judges by November 20th, 2007.

Hoping to see you in Tokugawa in December,
Yours sincerely.

Domokun Giotto
Shogun
Tokugawa Shogunate

Official information
of
Tokugawa Shogunate Kumite
8 - 9 December 2007

Hosted by: Tokugawa Shogunate
Organized by: Tokugawa Kumite Group
Date: 8 - 9 December 2007
Place: Tokugawa Sport Complex, Tokugawa

Schedule & Programs
Dec 1 - 12PM SLT Saturday - Arrival Fulfillment of Entry procedure and arrangement of delegations
Judge Course – Examination for judges

DEADLINE FOR REGISTRATION TO COMPETITION AT 5PM SLT 1 Dec 2007~~~    http://groups.google.com/group/tokugawa-kumite

Dec 2 - 12PM SLT
Ranking spars for competitors not sponsored by clan.

Dec 8 - 12PM SLT
Official Opening Ceremony
Eliminations and semi finals for Novice, Intermediate, Master and Ancient Levels
Finals for Novice and Intermediate Levels

Dec 9 - 12PM SLT
Finals for master and ancient levels
Medal presentation and Closing Ceremony
PARTY!!!  Harukko is putting on a party for everyone at the sports complex right after the awards.

A more detailed program will be given to each team representative at the arrival. 

Tournament Rules
I. General Rules

§ 1. Purpose These tournament rules have the purpose to ensure smooth and correct progress of Tokugawa tournaments.

§ 2. Tournaments subject to these Tournament rules
    1. Within this paper, a tournament is generally considered to be promoted by the following organizations.
        (1) Tokugawa Estate Championship
        (2) Tokugawa Clan tournament
    2. All tournaments are subject to the tournament rules.

§ 3. Participants’ Attitude
Participants at a tournament have to act according to the spirit of Bushido, respect the opponent, do their best in competition and act fair.

§ 4. Others
If a problem arises that is not sufficiently regulated by these tournament rules, the head judge has to decide the matter.

II. Tournament Management

§ 5. Tournament Organization
    1. To hold a tournament, all participants have to be notified about time, place and type of the tournament and the tournament has to be held accordingly.
    2. To hold a tournament, the following members are necessary.        
        (1) Time Keeper
        (2) Score Keeper
        (3) Organizer
    3. Following officials have to be present at a tournament.
        (1) Supervisor
        (2) Chief Judge
        (3) Judges

§ 6. Supervisor
    1. For a Kumite (free sparring) tournament one supervisor is necessary.
    2. The supervisor has to inspect the following matters.
        (1) proper qualification and fairness of the judges
        (2) proper qualification of the competitors
        (3) observance of the tournament rules
        (4) The supervisor may ask the judges or parties concerned for an explanation any time.
        (5) The supervisor is appointed by the Organizing Committee. He has to have the proper qualifications.       
   3. The supervisor has to instruct the judges, timekeepers, and scorekeepers in following cases.
        (1) Violation of rules or actions that lack fairness.
   4. The supervisor may ask the judges or parties concerned for an explanation any time.

   5. The supervisor is appointed by the Chief Judge of the tournament. He has to have the proper qualifications.

§ 7. Chief Judge
   1. The chief judge has to control the tournament and make sure it progresses smoothly and fairly.

    2. The chief judge must instruct or decide the following matters.
        (1) Violation of the rules or actions lacking fairness.
        (2) When a judge asks for advice.
        (3) When a problem arises that is not sufficiently settled by the Tournament Rules.

    3. If it is deemed necessary for the progress of the tournament, the chief judge may,after consulting with the judges, take the following actions against persons within the tournament environment.
        (1) Instruct
        (2) Order to leave
        (3) Disqualify
   4. The chief judge decides about the length of time and extent of disqualification, after consulting with the judges.

    5. The chief judge is selected by the Tournament Organizing Committee. If necessary he can appoint Vice Chief Judges.

§ 8. Judges
    1. The judges have to run the tournament and decide the matches.
    2. The judges have the authority to control the tournament and the surrounding area.

   3. Only judges can make decisions, others may not protest or complain directly. However, decisions of the judges are subject to the authority of the supervisor.

   4. The center judge controls the match and decides the winner.
    5. During a match the corner judges help the center judge and show their judgment to the center judge.

    6. The Tournament Organizing Committee asks persons with the proper qualifications (according to the Qualifications Rules) to judge at the tournament.

§ 9. Competitors
    1. The Organizing Committee can not refuse an individual or group who has the proper qualifications from competing, unless there is a special reason. The Organizing Committee can not force anybody to compete.

   2. Usually, competitors have to be members of the CSI clan or Tokugawa Clan or an approved organization. A  runner will go to every clan leader with invite to their clan to participate in the Tokugawa Kumite.

   3. If Clan accepts invite. They will present clan members to participate in ranked levels: Novice, Intermediate, Master and Ancient

    4. Individuals (Ronin) will be ranked by the Chief Judge no later than one week prior to the tourney. The following are the levels for the Kumite:
            (1) Novice
            (2) Intermediate
            (3) Master
            (4) Ancient

§ 10. Score Keepers
    Scorekeepers must record the results. If necessary, they have to inform the center judge.

§ 11. Organizers The organizers must call the competitors and officials, inform them of their positions and ensure the smooth progress of the tournament.

III. Kumite (Sparring) Tournaments

§ 12. Organization
    1. In a Kumite match 2 opponents enter the court and fight to the death. Matches are the best of three spars.

§ 13. “Hansoku” (Violation of Rules)
    1. The following actions are prohibited:
        (1) Excessive Bump blocking
        (2) Jump-Dash exploit
        (3) Spacing
        (4) Flying
        (5) Wasting time by not attacking and evading unnecessarily
        (6) Using foul language
        (7) Attacking after “Yame” (Stop) or “Jogai” (Out of Bounds) was called
        ( Recharging, Detatching and reattatching sword
        (9) Drinking potions during match
        (10) Movement enhancers, jumps and the like
        (11) Macro keys
        (12) Lagging opponents with  particle emitters, bling, excessive amounts of prims or , big wings

    2. In above given cases, following decisions may be given.
        (1)In cases of an obvious violation of the rules, “Hansoku Chui” (Warning) is given. If acompetitor receives “Hansoku Chui” twice in the same match, he/she is given “HansokuMake” (Defeat by Violation of Rules) and the opponent is declared the winner.
        (2) If there is only a slight violation of the rules and the opponent not injured, “Keikoku”(Caution) is given. Keikoku does not seriously affect the judges decision, but a second Keikoku in the same match will be “Hansoku Chui” or “Hansoku”.

     3. Competitors that have received “Hansoku” twice during the same tournament maynot continue to compete in that tournament.

§ 14. “Jogai” (Out of Bounds)
If a competitor touches the ground outside the borderlines of the court with any part of his/her body, “Jogai” (Out of Bounds) is given. If that happens in the same match to the same competitor twice, “Jogai Chui” (Out of Bonds Warning) is given, if it happens three times, “Jogai Hansoku” (Out of Bonds Defeat) is given and the opponent is declared the winner.

§ 15. “Shikkaku” (Disqualification)
    1. “Shikkaku” (Disqualification) punishes the following actions and the opponent wins.
        (1) No compliance to the center judge’s commands.
        (2) Use of language that does not fit the spirit of Bushido.
        (3) Display of bad or disgraceful attitude. 
   2. Participants that have received “Shikkaku” (Disqualification) may not continue to compete in the same tournament.

   3. If the judges give “Shikkaku” (Disqualification) to a participant, they have to discuss the amount of disqualification and report their decision to the scorekeeper. The scorekeeper will fill in the appropriate form and submit it to the chief judge.

    4. If in a team event a team is found responsible for serious violations of the rules, the whole team is given “Shikkaku” (Disqualification) and their opponents declared the winner.

§ 16. “Kiken” (Withdrawal)
   1. If a competitor withdraws, the opponent is declared the winner.
    2. If a competitor withdraws on purpose, he may not compete in any following matches.

§ 17. Judges and Supervisors For a Kumite tournament the following officials have to be present.
    (1) 1 supervisor
    (2) 1 center judge
    (3) 4 Judges

§ 18. Tournament Operations
   1. The opponents have to stand on their designated starting positions. When the center judge says “Hajime” (Start) or whistles, they will start to fight.
   2. At the command “Yame” (Stop) or “Jogai” (Out of Bounds) the opponents have to stop fighting immediately, return to their starting positions and wait for the nextcommand.
    3. In the following cases the center judge has to call “Yame” (Stop) or “Jogai” (Out of Bounds) and interrupt or stop the match.

   4. At the command “Tsuzukete Hajime” (Continue), the match starts again.

    5. The center judge announces the result of the decisions by the corner judges plus his/her own to the competitors.

Entry Procedure
Each participant must be member of Tokugawa clan, C:SI clan or group recognized SL Group.
http://groups.google.com/group/tokugawa-kumite
Participation Fees (Novice) 50L
Participation Fees (Intermediate, Master, Ancient) 100L

IMPORTANT Entry Fee – payment must be completed by each clan representative at the arrival. 
Entry Registration Deadline 1 December 2007 at 5PM SLT

Thanking in advance for your attention and looking forward to welcoming in Tokugawa Shogunate  at the Tokugawa Kumite Championship
Your sincerely President of Organizing Committee: Moondance Warrigal

Please direct questions to Arishia Nishi, Kumite Committee Member

Some quick notes

The post is cross-posted from http://www.daikonforge.com/webtab/2007/11/27/some-quick-notes/

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Just gonna keep this post short and maybe a little stream-of-conscious-like…

I finally met up with JulieAnne, who has been reporting problems performing a combo using the Wave, and now I see the problem pretty clearly.  For one thing, I hadn’t tested it in lag quite as much as apparently I should, because we were getting Time Dilation from 0.75 to 0.95 with frequent fluctuations.  Secondly, apparently the problem is very clear when attempting to combo from out of block. 

People keep asking if all of the C:SI devs use the same codebase, and of course the answer is Yes.  Sort of.  We all get the same core code from Archanox, the primary developer, and from there we customize the code to fit each individual sword.  I’ve never seen the code for any of the Musashi or Ashes swords, so I cannot comment on why any of those might be different except to say that there are factors that Second Life introduces that can introduces some subtle differences in response to jumpslash for one well known example.  But the big point is that even with customization, over 95% of the code is the same.  None of us, that I am aware of, make any customizations to the core functionality.

In my case (and the case of the Wave Katana), it’s also quite possible that as an RL software developer I get cocky and go a little overboard on the "customization" part of that and actually introduce subtle changes without realizing it, and that’s going to be my focus tonight as I seek to discover the cause of and a solution for the combo problems JulieAnne and a few others are reporting.

Brenna Beck was talking with my wife tonight about (among other things) the fact that I had recently reported working on a new weapon which I had hoped to release in the not-too-distant future.  That work has been significantly delayed due to Second Life instability and building and inventory issues.  It is tremendously frustrating and fundamentally unsatisfying to attempt to create a product in Second Life when you are getting logged off every 5 minutes, or your changes are constantly reverting, or any of the 100 other problems that I’ve encountered lately.  Second Life used to be so much more stable for me, and I expect that it will be again someday.  That is when I will resume development on new weapons with full enthusiasm.  I’m simply not motivated to "fight the system" in that way.  Second Life is supposed to be fun, and when it’s not I simply don’t choose to participate.  I know it will get better eventually.

Okay, that’s a much longer post than I had anticipated, and I did promise JulieAnne that I would look into this issue tonight, so….

Why Google is my favorite tech company

The post is cross-posted from http://www.daikonforge.com/webtab/2007/11/27/why-google-is-my-favorite-tech-company/

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There are actually several very powerful reasons why Google is my favorite technology company of all time, but I felt compelled and excited to point out one in particular today:

This morning’s review of RSS feeds and news turned up the fact that Google has issued a press release announcing a new initiative to research and develop Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal, and they expect to invest "tens of millions" of USD in 2008 on research and development

It makes sense to me that they would want to develop such a technology for their own use, since they are major power consumers on their own; the worlds largest data centers surely consume quite a bit of power.

The part that gets me really excited, though, is the fact that Google is a major powerhouse player within it’s industry, and is willing to invest it’s credibility and resources in proving that "green energy" will be cost effective and financially advantageous within "years, not decades."

I do strongly believe, as does Sergey Brin apparently, that such research has tremendous potential to benefit the entire world, not just the major industrial nations:

"Cheap renewable energy is not only critical for the environment but also vital for economic development in many places where there is limited affordable energy of any kind," added Sergey Brin, Google Co-founder and President of Technology.

Ugh… My blog is as broken as Second Life

The post is cross-posted from http://www.daikonforge.com/webtab/2007/11/21/ugh-my-blog-is-as-broken-as-second-life/

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Damnit, damnit, damnit.

I had originally intended to post this long rant in response to comments on my post "Is Second Life even worse now?" about how Second Life has had problems nearly every day for the last week or more (yes, each word there is a seperate link).  There are, of course, many more examples I could link to, but I’m sure you get the picture.

Then I discovered that I cannot link to the previous post, because at some point in the recent past my blog has become very very broken.   Fortunately for me, I keep regular backups of the blog data and can restore the site manually if need be, and have nobody to tell me that a rollback will destroy their wedding or break their products

Sigh.  I guess after work I’ll be tearing the site down again, hopefully to replace it with something that works.

[EDIT] Well, I was able to fix some of the symptoms by switching back to the default permalink style, but that’s not a great solution because the default permalink style for wordpress sucks cheese.

When will LL learn?

The post is cross-posted from http://www.daikonforge.com/webtab/2007/11/12/when-will-ll-learn/

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If you haven’t already seen this announcement on the Official Second Life Blog, you might be interested to know that this latest round of server-side updates suffers from a curious bug: If you take multiple vendors into your inventory at once, each with a different price, and then drag them out of inventory in a new location - you might do this to simplify setting up a new store, for instance - all of your vendors will be set to the same price. There is no word on how the price is chosen among those that were set when the inventory was gathered, so we can assume that for all intents and purposes the selection of price is arbitrary.

Seriously, wtf…. You’d think that LL would have learned by now to either leave the freaking permissions/sale price/attributes alone, or test the hell out of any changes made to this mission-critical subsystem.

This is the kind of laughable mistake that first-year developers make, not developers normally hired by 5 billion dollar (check the comments) companies. I would naturally assume that any company with such a high valuation would have a much more solid quality assurance process.

Is Second Life even worse now?

The post is cross-posted from http://www.daikonforge.com/webtab/2007/11/10/is-second-life-even-worse-now/

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I know there have been a few rolling restarts recently, so clearly the grid stability index is not improving, but every time I’ve tried to log in this morning I crash to desktop immediately upon sign-in and before I even get a chance for anything in-world to render.

Is it just me, or is this happening to others as well?

Although I do have to admit that I’m writing this post out of frustration, I’m absolutely serious when I say that Second Life is without question the most unstable platform I’ve ever tried to work with.

C:SI V1.5.2 Block Bugs

The post is cross-posted from http://www.daikonforge.com/webtab/2007/11/08/csi-v152-block-bugs/

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Harukko, MoxieWolfox, Colin, Megumi, and a few others have all reported that they are still seeing issues with blocking in the new version of C:SI, which is something that we’ve worked very hard to resolve. It will not ever be possible to fix everything 100%, Second Life is simply not reliable enough for that, but I should have expected to see a great deal of improvement in this version, and our testing seemed to indicate that was the case.

I haven’t yet seen this happen in person, but I know the people reporting the problem well enough to believe that there’s something going on, so I’m asking everyone: If you can come up with a set of steps that can reproduce this problem reliably, I would very much like to know about it.

I’m going to try to spend some time in-world watching people who report this when they fight, and see if I can figure it out. One of the really nice things we did with this version from a developer perspective was make it possible for me to use a custom script that can tell while people are fighting whether or not an attack was blocked, so it may be possible to gather data in real time to see when this is happening.

And as usual, if you have any other issues to report, please feel free to send me an IM or mention it on the official Bug Reports forum.

Mute Object By Name

The post is cross-posted from http://www.daikonforge.com/webtab/2007/11/08/mute-object-by-name/

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Yesterday I received the following offline IM:

The object ‘C.B.T final++’ has sent you a message from Second Life:
Avarege of 4 bullets= (Speed=0) (Energy=0) (Damage=0) (BpS=1.21)
= C.B.T final++ is owned by krilon Arida

I tried to contact the object’s owner to find out why her object was sending me instant messages, which I thought was kind of odd  -especially since this particular IM would seem to be a test of a non-C:SI combat system and it occurred in my store, and my message was ignored.

I don’t take kindly to spam, so I decided to mute the object.  I did not wish to mute the owner in case she ever actually decided to respond, but I don’t need pointless IM’s like this coming unsolicited from people/objects I don’t know.  I knew there was a "Mute Object by Name" feature in Second Life that would work perfectly for this kind of situation, so I dug through the user interface to find it. 

It wasn’t exactly obvious where to find it at first, since I expected to be able to access it from chat history, but I ended up finding my Mute List and opening it.  There it was, the button to enable this handy-dandy feature, so I clicked it.  Imagine my surprise when it wanted me to hand-type the object’s name…  Okay, I thought, that’s a little inconvenient so I’ll just copy and paste the object’s name from my chat history.  No dice.  You cannot paste into the object name field, you must enter the object’s name by hand, *EXACTLY* the same.  This means all punctuation must match, and the name is case sensitive.  What a pain in the ass.

Whoever designed this feature had a fantastic idea, but fails utterly in the user-friendliness department.  It’s another typical example of how Second Life has the potential to be a great deal better than it is, and how little thought goes into making the Second Life client a good user experience.

Sheesh.

Is "Grid Crasher Sky" getting help finally?

The post is cross-posted from http://www.daikonforge.com/webtab/2007/11/05/is-grid-crasher-sky-getting-help-finally/

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Before I got so tired of the atrocious signal-to-noise ratio of the official SL forums that I quit reading them altogether, I had been occasionally following the story of the (mis)adventures of Sky Eclipse, who has the unfortunate power to crash sims simply by logging into Second Life.

This is a pretty old story in internet time, and I had simply assumed that it had been resolved weeks ago.  Imagine my surprise then, when I saw the announcement of the Rolling Restart for tomorrow on the official Second Life blog, and one of the specifically listed fixes :

Bug Fixes:

• SVC-94: Build system changes rotations slightly at random (including when “Edit linked parts” is on)
• SVC-247: Failed attempt to rez an object from trash results in content loss
• SVC-583: Five minute wait due to “System Logging You Out” happens frequently with scripted attachments
• SVC-912: Sky Eclipse’s avatar crashes regions EVERYTIME she logs in, regardless of where she logs in
• Fix: Can once again set For Sale on an inventory item via right-click Properties

Besides the dubious honor of seeing a Jira issue named after her, I should think that Sky would be pleased that LL is finally doing something about the issue.  Even if it is rather a bit late in coming.

Wave Katana Updates

The post is cross-posted from http://www.daikonforge.com/webtab/2007/11/04/wave-katana-updates/

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I apologize for the frequency of updates with the Wave Katana.  In addition to the issues shared among other C:SI weapons that caused the first update to be required, I discovered two additional bugs in only my sword that required an update: 1) You could not turn while blocking in third-person view, and 2) There was a script error being thrown when starting a duel due to a missing "dueltaunt" animation.

I do believe that this latest version should be pretty solid and won’t require another immediate update.  If you do spot any problems with this latest version, I would very much appreciate any information you can give, and will do my best to resolve all issues with haste.

And while I’m thinking of issues I would very much like to encourage users to give feedback on blocking issues.  We have done a lot of work and testing with regards to previous reports of block not always working as expected, and we think we have good reason to believe that all of those issues are resolved to the best of Second Life’s ability.  Please let us know if you are still experiencing problems.