Thread

more on the PS bug (Sdk)

more on the PS bug // Sdk

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roland vilett

Oct 14, 1998, 9:20pm
Hi folks,

earlier I posted a message that stated there was a small bug in the 2.0
world servers that caused bots that logged in under an account with PS to
receive AW_EVENT_CHAT events even if they hadn't called aw_state_change()
first.

Since then I've discovered that there is more to this bug. In fact it
appears that 2.0 world servers send *all chat messages in the entire world*
to any user or bot with PS privileges, regardless of how far apart they are,
and regardless of whether they have called aw_state_change() or not. The
problem with this is that the chat messages will be sent even if the
speaker's avatar is out of range, so the bot can wind up receiving
AW_EVENT_CHAT events from users for whom it never received an AW_AVATAR_ADD.
This means that for those CHAT events for received from users who are out of
range, the AW_AVATAR_NAME attribute will not be correct.

This has been going on for a while, but no one ever noticed until now
because the AW browser ignores any chat messages that it receives for any
user for whom it hasn't first received an AVATAR_ADD.

I've fixed this problem in the 2.1 world servers so that it now operates as
I believe it was originally intended: PS users receive all chat messages
from everyone in the world who is within a fixed range of 200 meters in any
direction. This means that there is still a possibility that a PS bot can
receive an AW_EVENT_CHAT event for a user without getting an
AW_EVENT_AVATAR_ADD first if there are more than 50 people packed into a
single 200 x 200 meter area, but this is still very unusual. I will
probably change the SDK to simply ignore the CHAT event in this rare
instance.

-Roland

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