Mara
Knight
Guide To Understanding Razor Object Delays
This guide is to help the razor user understand how object delays work and how to best optimize them for gameplay.
An object delay is the minimum time that the game will allow between sequential double-click actions on objects as well as on object movements. When things are not working optimally, you will receive the ‘You must wait to perform another action.’ response from the game which tells you that you and razor tried to perform an action too quickly. In order to makes things easier, razor incorporates an object delay queuing feature with an object delay setting that is adjustable by the user on the following razor tab.
The theoretical object delay for most servers is a setting of 500ms. The razor user guide recommends an initial setting of 500+ping, and then adjusting the setting as necessary from there. In order to best determine your ping, go to the command prompt in Windows(Start->Run->cmd): Then at the command prompt type: ping –n 100 login.uogamers.com. This will ping the server for 100 iterations and will also show you the minimum and maximum pings that you are likely to see, an indication of jitter when information is taking slightly longer paths to get to the server. This jitter means that there is going to be a range of different acceptable object delay settings depending upon how reliable you want your object delay setting to be vs. optimized performance. The shorter you make the setting, the faster your object movements will occur until you start receiving the “You must wait to perform another action messages.” The longer you make the setting, the more reliable your object movements will be, but making them longer also slows down their performance and execution, a key consideration for PVP.
The ‘Auto-Queue Object Delay Actions’ setting refers to double-clicking type object actions, but both these and object movement actions are affected by the object delay time setting regardless under certain circumstances. If you turn this setting off, you will notice that if you double-click too fast on different containers, or items like sewing kits, you will receive the object delay error message. Mages can get away with utilizing razor without any object delay queuing, by keeping this setting off, and the object delay setting set to 0ms, although they will have to account for this in macros they create with the use of manual pauses. Dexers generally benefit a lot from utilizing object queuing.
The best way that I have found to determine your ideal object delay setting is to purchase two backpacks and 100 pouches. Then, using a razor organizer agent, add pouches to the list of organized items and then select one of the backpacks as your hotbag. Hit the ‘Organize Now’ button and all the pouches will be moved to the backpack that you set as your hotbag. Click the ‘Organize Now’ again as necessary until the bag contains all the pouches, and then single click the backpack again to make sure there are exactly 100 pouches in it. Now, set the second backpack as your hotbag, and hit ‘Organize Now’ with an object delay setting that you wish to start with, 500+ping is fine.
You will see that razor should successfully move most of the objects from one backpack to the next, but it will likely leave some in the first bag because of an object delay error from trying to move them too quickly due to ping fluctuations or an improper object delay setting. Hit ‘Organize Now’ as necessary to move the remaining pouches to the second backpack, and run the test a couple times back and forth to get a decent average if desired. Adjust your object delay setting up or down in increments of 25-50ms or so to get in the ballpark of the ideal setting, and then fine tune it to increments of 10ms if you desire. For my own purposes, I find that a reasonable number or errors is 2% (2 missed objects) for my dexer templates, and about 3% (3 missed objects) for my mages, but the degree of jitter that you experience may lead to different results for you. With a current average ping of 30ms, and a maximum ping in the 60ms range due to fluctuations, I use an object delay of 555ms for my mages, and 625ms for my dexers. A setting of 675ms yields results with no errors for me, but I prefer a little better performance over complete reliability. Dexers rely more heavily on object delays because of the necessity of weapon switching and drinking potions while using two-handed weapons, whereas mages a little less so.
So why is this stuff important anyway? Here’s why. If you have your setting set too low, when you go to perform a related action in PVP and it fails, amidst all the confusion failing to drink a cure potion, have your weapon equip, or your wand activate can get you killed. Having the setting too high means that you will be performing these actions too slowly and maybe that can get you killed too. Sallos incorporates some of these things automatically which is nice, but there are certain things that razor does better as well, especially for dexer and tank mage templates.
Some examples of how things work:
Dexer wielding two-hander drinks a cure potion: As long as the ‘Auto Un/Re-equip hands for potions’ setting on the More Options tab is selected, razor will automatically un-equip your two-handed weapon, drink a cure potion, and then re-equip the same weapon to your hand. This might seem too good to be true, but there are object delay considerations that cause a significant penalty to drinking potions while wielding a two-hander. The time it takes to perform the action follows like this: Two-hander is instantly dropped to pack – 1 object delay passes (say 600ms) – cure potion is consumed – 1 object delay passes – Two-hander is returned to hand. Thus, if your object delay setting is 600ms, you have your weapon down for 1.2 seconds leaving you vulnerable since you have no wrestling skill, and your new swing timer starts once the weapon is back in your hand. Thus you are going to have to wait an additional 1.5-5.0 seconds or so to hit again depending on the weapon and your dexterity. All these things are beyond what most people can see is happening when they PVP, but the better players are able to perceive and take advantage of this purposefully built-in game mechanic.
Mage equipping a wand: Mages unlike dexers usually have their hands empty so they are able to immediately equip a wand when they want to. In contrast, a dexer with a weapon equipped has to spend one object delay just dropping his weapon to the pack and then equipping the wand. After the wand is equipped, you have to wait one object delay before you can activate it, and then you have the wand’s spell casting time(which is shorter than the spell normally takes) to wait through. For the mage it looks something like this. Mage equips wand to hand immediately – one object delay passes (say 600ms) – wand is activated by Use Item in Hand or double-clicking it – wand spell time passes 400-650ms(depending on level) – spell cursor comes up. You will notice that the wand spell times are short compared to the time that it normally takes to cast the spell, and this makes it such that starting from hands empty, using a greater heal or lightning wand for a mage closely approximates the time needed to naturally cast the spell, about 1250ms. If you already have the wand in your hand when you activate it, you will notice how quickly the spell cursor comes up, and you will realize that a good portion of the time spent using a wand is tied up in your object delay. Again, keep in mind that a dexer is at a disadvantage to the mage when using wands if they start the process with a weapon in hand, since it will cost him 1 additional object delay.
Special tip: If you cast a spell with an item or weapon in hand, the initial action of dropping your item/weapon to your pack is ‘not’ the start of an object delay chain. The next object related action, like drinking a potion, is.
I hope this guide helps a few that are having trouble with these issues. I found them very confusing the first couple years of playing UO, and only after a long while have come to fully understand them and why they are an essential part of the game’s mechanics.
This guide is to help the razor user understand how object delays work and how to best optimize them for gameplay.
An object delay is the minimum time that the game will allow between sequential double-click actions on objects as well as on object movements. When things are not working optimally, you will receive the ‘You must wait to perform another action.’ response from the game which tells you that you and razor tried to perform an action too quickly. In order to makes things easier, razor incorporates an object delay queuing feature with an object delay setting that is adjustable by the user on the following razor tab.
The theoretical object delay for most servers is a setting of 500ms. The razor user guide recommends an initial setting of 500+ping, and then adjusting the setting as necessary from there. In order to best determine your ping, go to the command prompt in Windows(Start->Run->cmd): Then at the command prompt type: ping –n 100 login.uogamers.com. This will ping the server for 100 iterations and will also show you the minimum and maximum pings that you are likely to see, an indication of jitter when information is taking slightly longer paths to get to the server. This jitter means that there is going to be a range of different acceptable object delay settings depending upon how reliable you want your object delay setting to be vs. optimized performance. The shorter you make the setting, the faster your object movements will occur until you start receiving the “You must wait to perform another action messages.” The longer you make the setting, the more reliable your object movements will be, but making them longer also slows down their performance and execution, a key consideration for PVP.
The ‘Auto-Queue Object Delay Actions’ setting refers to double-clicking type object actions, but both these and object movement actions are affected by the object delay time setting regardless under certain circumstances. If you turn this setting off, you will notice that if you double-click too fast on different containers, or items like sewing kits, you will receive the object delay error message. Mages can get away with utilizing razor without any object delay queuing, by keeping this setting off, and the object delay setting set to 0ms, although they will have to account for this in macros they create with the use of manual pauses. Dexers generally benefit a lot from utilizing object queuing.
The best way that I have found to determine your ideal object delay setting is to purchase two backpacks and 100 pouches. Then, using a razor organizer agent, add pouches to the list of organized items and then select one of the backpacks as your hotbag. Hit the ‘Organize Now’ button and all the pouches will be moved to the backpack that you set as your hotbag. Click the ‘Organize Now’ again as necessary until the bag contains all the pouches, and then single click the backpack again to make sure there are exactly 100 pouches in it. Now, set the second backpack as your hotbag, and hit ‘Organize Now’ with an object delay setting that you wish to start with, 500+ping is fine.
You will see that razor should successfully move most of the objects from one backpack to the next, but it will likely leave some in the first bag because of an object delay error from trying to move them too quickly due to ping fluctuations or an improper object delay setting. Hit ‘Organize Now’ as necessary to move the remaining pouches to the second backpack, and run the test a couple times back and forth to get a decent average if desired. Adjust your object delay setting up or down in increments of 25-50ms or so to get in the ballpark of the ideal setting, and then fine tune it to increments of 10ms if you desire. For my own purposes, I find that a reasonable number or errors is 2% (2 missed objects) for my dexer templates, and about 3% (3 missed objects) for my mages, but the degree of jitter that you experience may lead to different results for you. With a current average ping of 30ms, and a maximum ping in the 60ms range due to fluctuations, I use an object delay of 555ms for my mages, and 625ms for my dexers. A setting of 675ms yields results with no errors for me, but I prefer a little better performance over complete reliability. Dexers rely more heavily on object delays because of the necessity of weapon switching and drinking potions while using two-handed weapons, whereas mages a little less so.
So why is this stuff important anyway? Here’s why. If you have your setting set too low, when you go to perform a related action in PVP and it fails, amidst all the confusion failing to drink a cure potion, have your weapon equip, or your wand activate can get you killed. Having the setting too high means that you will be performing these actions too slowly and maybe that can get you killed too. Sallos incorporates some of these things automatically which is nice, but there are certain things that razor does better as well, especially for dexer and tank mage templates.
Some examples of how things work:
Dexer wielding two-hander drinks a cure potion: As long as the ‘Auto Un/Re-equip hands for potions’ setting on the More Options tab is selected, razor will automatically un-equip your two-handed weapon, drink a cure potion, and then re-equip the same weapon to your hand. This might seem too good to be true, but there are object delay considerations that cause a significant penalty to drinking potions while wielding a two-hander. The time it takes to perform the action follows like this: Two-hander is instantly dropped to pack – 1 object delay passes (say 600ms) – cure potion is consumed – 1 object delay passes – Two-hander is returned to hand. Thus, if your object delay setting is 600ms, you have your weapon down for 1.2 seconds leaving you vulnerable since you have no wrestling skill, and your new swing timer starts once the weapon is back in your hand. Thus you are going to have to wait an additional 1.5-5.0 seconds or so to hit again depending on the weapon and your dexterity. All these things are beyond what most people can see is happening when they PVP, but the better players are able to perceive and take advantage of this purposefully built-in game mechanic.
Mage equipping a wand: Mages unlike dexers usually have their hands empty so they are able to immediately equip a wand when they want to. In contrast, a dexer with a weapon equipped has to spend one object delay just dropping his weapon to the pack and then equipping the wand. After the wand is equipped, you have to wait one object delay before you can activate it, and then you have the wand’s spell casting time(which is shorter than the spell normally takes) to wait through. For the mage it looks something like this. Mage equips wand to hand immediately – one object delay passes (say 600ms) – wand is activated by Use Item in Hand or double-clicking it – wand spell time passes 400-650ms(depending on level) – spell cursor comes up. You will notice that the wand spell times are short compared to the time that it normally takes to cast the spell, and this makes it such that starting from hands empty, using a greater heal or lightning wand for a mage closely approximates the time needed to naturally cast the spell, about 1250ms. If you already have the wand in your hand when you activate it, you will notice how quickly the spell cursor comes up, and you will realize that a good portion of the time spent using a wand is tied up in your object delay. Again, keep in mind that a dexer is at a disadvantage to the mage when using wands if they start the process with a weapon in hand, since it will cost him 1 additional object delay.
Special tip: If you cast a spell with an item or weapon in hand, the initial action of dropping your item/weapon to your pack is ‘not’ the start of an object delay chain. The next object related action, like drinking a potion, is.
I hope this guide helps a few that are having trouble with these issues. I found them very confusing the first couple years of playing UO, and only after a long while have come to fully understand them and why they are an essential part of the game’s mechanics.