The Daily Bits

I figured I’d post my thoughts here rather than trying to get them in on the official forums. The official forums are so crowded now. I was not able to find any decent rants to take our minds off this update for this weeks show. I won’t be going into a detailed analysis but I’ll go through them and post my thoughts. I invite you to read the development diary article first.

Read the rest of this entry »

Somtimes it not as easy as one would think. For the better part of the afternoon I’ve been playing around with my raw footage from two weeks ago. Ideally I’d like something that serves as a reminder of what it took to get 99 farming, not something that will bore everyone to sleep. So far I’ve come up with “Raw Copy” which is unedited without transitions or music.

Since this one is purely raw, I won’t be making a high-res version available. I’ve seen many videos in my time, some good, some very bad. I want to be somewhere in the middle or near the good side I have an idea but I don’t want to elaborate any further.

The main problem I have is finding suitable music. I have a good selection of music accumulated over the past 10 years or so. Most of the music is slightly Star Trek related I also have a good selection which would be fine for a battle or for an aggressive skill. I’ve yet to find something suitable for Farming.

My search continues…

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Today at the ‘99 Madness Party’ I finally got 99 Farming. I videoed pretty much everything that was important. You can expect that to be up later in the week. Today was the best day for me on Runescape ever since I created my account. Here are the two pictures:

For anyone wondering about my method: 4 palm, 5 magic, and 1 calquat every day. In the end I protected the magics. This should come out to about 1.1M per day. So it’s sorta expensive

Anyways that’s that. Movie will be out later this week. Now to find a dragon woodcutting axe.

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I’m on a wee bit of a break right now so I’ll try and be as concise as possible. As I’m sure some of you know you are able to retrieve stats of players from Runescape by use of the “lite hiscores.” When the lite hiscores were first released I considered it as one of the best things that Jagex ever did. Now I’m not so sure…

First off on the weekend we noticed a problem in which they changed the format of the output. It used to output -1,1,0 for rank, level, and xp respectively. Now today I find out that they are no longer giving us the level and xp of stats that are above 30 and not ranked. It would have been very nice to be informed about both of these changes via news update.

Anyways the moral of the story is… inform your users of critical changes to formatting of date.

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Well as some of you may know it’s that time of year… back to school. Yes unfortunately that comes for me tomorrow. So I figured I’d do a bit of a summary of what was accomplished in that time on Runescape and RSBandB.

I started off in May with 88 Farming, it is now level 97. I moved from 88 to 90 in May. I am roughly two weeks away from getting to 99. I also achieved 81 Herblore. Some other accomplishments of May were 80 cooking, 70 firemaking, getting my lederhosen back, and obtaining that oh so coveted lumberjack costume.

June was a quiet month on Runescape. In June I got 91 Farming. Not much else happened besides my 90 Hitpoints and Trekkie’s 99 attack. However in June we released the updated goal signatures and stat signatures on RSBandB. That was a major step for RSBandB as it made signature creation and management a whole lot easier.

July was opened up with 82 Herblore. Shortly after was 75 Firemaking. July brought 92 and 93 Farming. I also received my first Dragon drop which was Dragon platelegs from the metal dragons.

August was a very very busy month. I am very proud with my progress on Farming in August. I went from level 92 to level 97. I also tied up a loose end that was annoying me, I got 70 Thieving. I also got 91 Hitpoints and 92 Attack which brought me to 112 combat. I was also fortunate to receive an excellent clue scroll reward which helped to fund the last part of Project Green. August was a great month on RSBandB. RuneWire was released on August 25 into a private beta. Personally I’d expect the beta to expand sometime next week

I invite you to see all of my Runescape achievements since June 14th on the RSBandB highscores.

I will have details in the coming weeks on a new Runescape project that should be maintainable over the next few months.

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PS: I still have to fix this silly theme… Works fine in Firefox but messes up in IE.

I’m proud to say that I am now back to almost normal operating capacities. I’ve been doing a bit too much counter strike… anyways back to work tommorow on more pressing matters such as some rsbandb work I’m left with a plugged ear and a lingering cough… So I hope I’ll be ready for the recording this week. I also passed 9 million farming xp today…

There’s your daily bits

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A little update today…

I did a recalculation. As of now:

Magic: 87/220
Palm: 89/176

I’m only between 3M and 4M short of having enough cash to fund the rest of this little adventure. However I have been having a bad luck spree with my trees. So I may have to work something out for protecting the trees.

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Well for anyone wondering I’m back now. I took a nice little 8 day trip. This explains the lack of activity on the forums and lack of posting here. Flashy Friday will be back this week as usual. Not much really else to say on this topic.

Project Green is going well. Despite certain rumours I didn’t hire any slaves to farm while I was gone. Be sure to take a look at the project green page and forum topic.

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It was brought to my attention last night that a person who has a very high skill total has their overall level not ranked. If you look up the Runescape username “Divine God” you’ll see that there is no overall level ranked. This is very strange seeing that there is only one skill that is not level 99. I just figured I’d post this here.

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It occurred to me yesterday as I was going to bed that I am extremely drawn towards the expensive skills on Runescape. I havn’t run cost calculations for other skills but I most definitely think that Herblore and Farming are in the top 3. Now as to why this is the case? I don’t know… It could be that they’re both “green” and green is my favourite colour. Or something else entirely… I remember when I was a noob on Runescape I had wanted 99 Fletching and 99 Magic. What’s wrong with this? Nothing. They both still require an impressive amount of time and concentration. I’m not quite sure what happened to this one…

Anyways for those of you wondering I havn’t stopped the Herblore and Farming goal AKA project green, I’ve merely just slowed down as I want some of my money intact.

I felt I had to post this here. I’m currently working on Magic at pest control

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Today was the first day I was actually able to get some serious Runescaping done as the goalsig project is finally done, not that they were a burden or anything. You may recall a few weeks back I stated that I will need some secondary goals.

After numerous reports and suggestions from many people it was quite obvious…

Don’t do defence because it clearly doesn’t help. Earlier today Kelsey on rsbandb told some tales of her little pk’ing adventure. She basically went up against this guy who had 99 defence and hit through his oh so favoured defence cape. So there, defence is out.

Sure magic would be nice to have and all but I don’t really have the need for a powerful ice spell and teleports up to the northern most regions of Runescape. The only appeal for this one is the cape. Oh and the ability to use the “Concussive Charge” spell. Concussive Charge is a spell that I invented. Basically what happens is that when cast it uses the stun effect (dragon spear special) combined with an entangle (20 seconds, to compete with Ice Barrage), and it also delivers an impressive amount of damage. This would probably be around level 95-97.

So here we are left with Hitpoints. Hitpoints is good… very good. You get a cape that you can wear around on valentines day and be relatively proud. This also goes good with a Santa hat However in the big scheme of things I’m really not sure how much 9 more hitpoints (currently 90) will help me. The emote for this one also looks good.

Problem solved right?

NO.

It’s been running through my mind, is there anything better I can do? I always find myself coming back to project green. Farming and Herblore are by far my most favourite skills. One day I want 99 in both of those. I’m sure I could be doing better things than running back and forth on an island getting an extra 9 HP, a cape that I can wear with my Santa, and a cool emote. So in short I’m most likely back to square one With this said I’m taking a trip to the nechrayels.

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PS: I’m also looking to sell about 24k maples, a Zamorak plate body, and about 400 super attack potions (also have anti fires).

So we all know I’m working towards 99 farming slowly but surely. Sure this is a good goal however farming runs take at most 90 minutes a day. I don’t know about what you guys think but I don’t plan on spending the rest of my summer coding for rsbandb I do have a few projects lined up, but I plan to manage time better on those.

So the question is… What should my subgoals be? I have just under 3 months time. Right now I’m leaning towards working on a combat based goal. The three possibilities are 99 HP, 99 Defence, or 99 Magic. I still have a few days to think, but anyways post what you think.

Also we’re recording R! Update tomorrow, it’s the two year anniversary.

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No… in case you were wondering I’m not a pure Those are the names of two pures who decided to come in and insult me for no reason at the feldip hills hunter area. So here’s how it went… I was hunting minding my own business then these two freaks log in and start insulting me right away. The first one was “step aside loser.” I’m sorry but I didn’t get pics as I was so wound up in the action… I know I should have Anyways they didn’t stop for about 20 minutes… so I figured why not give their names the treatment a Runescape name gets on this blog. That’s right…

So basically what I’m asking everyone who reads this to do is to add these two wackos and spam them out of existence. Heck I’ll even give a reward for whoever can get the most outrageous screenshot of their reaction (post the screenshot in the comments for this post). So please spam them out of existence

Once again their Runescape names are…

1ma pur3 AND Got Nerve

So please… post what results you get

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According to Runescape.com there is only 1 [person] playing. Looks like they gotta go to best buy and get more servers Personally this tells me that the login servers and friend servers must be upgraded. Before the worlds empty out, the friends server crashes. Although I wouldn’t mind another Canada west server maybe in Alberta…

Anyways got these pictures. It’s rare that this happens…

Lets hope this gets fixed soon…

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Magic seeds – 170k ea
Palm seeds – 70k ea

Ranarr seeds – 26k ea

Limp seeds – 500 ea

Post in the comments with what you have and then i’ll add you on Runescape.

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I spent the better part of the day yesterday temple trekking from Paterdomus to Burgh de Rott and back in attempt to get the Lumberjack outfit. I spent a good 7 hours working on the game. I got 9 boots, 2 hats, 1 set of legs, and 0 tops. I’ve heard from other people named Southrend that people have got 40 of each before getting the top

I really hope this is not true my case. I’m not sure if I’ll be going back for the other half…

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While looking to upgrade my POH I decided that a fountain will be put into one of the formal gardens. I investigated the differences between the large and small fountain. One would naturally think that the small one would be nicer… this is not the case. Down below you can see differences in three fountains.

The POH small fountain.
Thanks to Agent Waffles for the picture.

The POH big fountain (glitched model).

Finally the real big fountain.

As you can see the player owned house big fountain doesn’t have any texture in the water. It looks as though the water has just been painted. Please note that I always play on high detail, this can be seen by the fact that the grass is present in the second picture.

This has really put me off of getting a big fountain until they can make it look normal. I’ll be going with a small fountain now. I have also filed a bug report with Jagex as this does not seem right…

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PS: Got 70 construction today!

This weeks Flashy Friday is a game that involves keyboard precision. The general idea is that you use the arrow keys to move around a computer keyboard. As the levels progress it adds in some obstacles such as falling keys, spring board keys, etc. Timing and the right amount of force is crucial. Play it here.

I also spent this afternoon designing my Runescape house. It is loosely based on some previous designs I did in November. The main thing that I wanted in this design was efficiency and expandability. I also wanted a courtyard in the middle. This design has room for a future dungeon when I obtain enough money to build it.

The only thing I forgot to do was include the front garden for a portal When it comes time to build a bigger dungeon I’m not sure what I’ll do seeing as the corridors and junctions count as an actual room for some stupid reason… Oh well there’s room for an Oubliette.

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PS: A regular posting schedule will now resume

After Visio decided to crash a few times and not make relations for this database project I decided it was time to play some RS. First I started off by my usual farming runs (currently devising a plan to get 99) and then I decided it’s time to relax and do some HUNTER. Last night the red salamanders were fine, however today was a different story…

Apparently this level 88 feels that anyone who has a quest point cape needs a life. Although I think it was because I was stealing his hunting spot Is this what Runescape has come to? Annoying 12 year olds who think that anyone who has some semblance of a good account doesn’t have a life? Flame him if you wish

All in all got 63 hunter, gonna do some more later.

Oh and the skill of the month competition is alive and well. Mike currently has the lead by about 350k experience. You can read the graphs on the skill of the month page: www.rsbandb.com/skotm.

Someone has also just started gathering XP and plans on taking the competition.

Good luck all.

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PS: Skotm graphs update at 12:00AM RSBANDB Time (GMT-7)

This weeks Flashy Friday is an addictive game. The point behind this one is to use your mouse or keyboard in order to control a blob of matter. The faster you move the mouse the faster your blob moves, however when you move it faster the trail becomes longer. I had a hard time getting past the first level. I’m sure you will too.

Play it here.

I’ve also changed my mind on my post from last Friday. I am going to go with the baseline Mac Book Pro!

Finally Skill of The Month… As you may know this month the skill was Farming. I successfully won this one. A thank you goes out to a few people:

• Brad – I gave him the money and he bought the Magic seeds for me.
• Bib User – You loaned me a few coconuts and also allowed me to buy some seeds.
• Alex 43 – You also loaned me a few coconuts.
• Trekkie – Let me use his cactus spines for the sole purpose of protecting Yew trees.

This was my last SKOTM competition because I’m designing a script to automate it starting in April. This would make it hard for me to compete without arousing suspicion of me rigging it to my favour.

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Nothing in here is for sale except the potions I have listed in this post.

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This weeks flashy friday is a rather annoying little game. The objective of this one is to keep both balls above their respective paddle. If one goes below it’s paddle, game over! So it is quite tough.

Play it here.

Now for the potion sale…

If you read below I won skill of the month for December. So this basically means that I have collected a vast amount of potions. I’ve already sold some but I still have quite a few to sell. Here’s the list:

• 47 Zamorak brews – 5k each
• 130 Magic potions – 4k each
• 305 Range potions – 3k each
• 550 Prayer potions – 7k each
• 470 Super sets – 9k each*
• 330 Super attack potions (left over after super sets sold) – 1.2k each
• 130 Super strengh potions (left over after super sets sold) – 4k each
• 60 Supere Restore potions – 8k each
• 1000 Super energy potions – 2k each
• 190 Anti Fire potions – 3k each

To buy please post in the comments or PM me on the rsbandb forums! After that we’ll work out a meeting spot.

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I present you with:

We have updated Rule 7 and Rule 9 to clarify some long standing grey areas, and to cover some recent threats. Please take the time to re-read both rules and make sure you fully understand them.

Two sentences that have sparked an outrage on Runescape. Rule 7 now states that people may no longer use “Third party programs/websites that embed a pane displaying the RuneScape game within themselves or which bypass the normal navigation of our website (other than general purpose web-browsers without RuneScape specific features, or official affiliate websites) e.g a worldswitcher tool.”

The result:

This brings up the question, does protesting online actually accomplish anything?

There is no way for casual users to know whether or not a software product is safe to use. Even people like me who are technically literate there is still a level of uncertainty for such a critical program. If these world switchers were open source then it would be different. A third party could verify that these programs are doing no harm whatsoever.

Update January 3:

We believe the latest revision of our rules is still just as good at protecting our users, which is very important to us, but is also less restrictive (which is also important to us!).

Well there you have it, Jagex caved to the masses of people who use their beloved world switchers. Frankly I don’t trust these and don’t plan on using them in the future. The only time I would use one would be in one of the following situations:
1. Jagex releases their own worldswitcher/tool kit
2. The major ones are released under an open source license.

Jagex should have stuck with their initial rule modifications.

Note: I am merely speaking generally, I am not talking about any particular world switcher/tool kit.
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This is a belated Happy New year post. I meant to make it yesterday, however a certain person on the forum who’s creepy was doing a bit of procrastinating I decided to spend my last week of break working on Herblore. It paid off I ended up getting level 79 as I posted on December 31. I’m also honoured to have won first place in RSBANDB’s second skill of the month competition.

With all the herblore that I did I’m left with a huge selection of potions to sell. Pretty much everything from prayer all the way up to super sets and Zamorak brew. So if you’re interested in buying any of these post in the comments and I’ll add you on Runescape.

Be sure to check out our two end of year RSBANDBUpdate! episodes, the 2006 clip show and a look back at 2006.
I’m not sure of what’s in store for 2007 but it’s time to toast the future!

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As some of you may know we have the house designer on the main rsbandb website. This was created by Saam007 and he’s let us use it.

Today and a few days ago I put together two potential new house designs. I personally like the second one better. The only thing I don’t like about it is that there is no easy way to get outside from the back of the house. I’d be 100% happy with design 2 if the parlour had the option to have 4 doors.

Oh yea, here are the designs:

Design 1

Design 2

I may work on #2 to get a door to the back, I’m not sure though. I just thought I’d post this here to show the capabilities of the house design applet.

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Last night when I was doing the Slug Menace quest with Mike, he brought up a good point (that I 110% agree with) the point being that in quests we are binded to Jagex’s plan for the series. This meaning that we are forced to “help” the enemy. This has happened before also in Regicide, when you fire the barrel at the elves. Anyways we are forced to work for the wrong side when we may know that this is not the case.

Some people may also want to work for different organizations. This was done with one of the other quests before in which you either help Lucien or do something else. I completely forget the name of that quest now… Someone post it in the comments if you know.

In my view it would make quests a whole lot more interesting if we could go our own way on the story. Sure it may take Jagex longer to develop quests but it’d be worth it. This would add variety and make it a true adventure rather than just connecting the dots as Jagex lays it out.

So what do you all think?

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I was getting my crystal teleport recharged and I come accross these two people having a debate at the magic trees near the elf who recharges teleport crystals. I went on with my business of recharging but stayed around for a while

THIS IS NOT FAKED!
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The debate between doing combat or raising skills has always been something that I have been flipping between. I’ve seen level 117’s with ~1550 skill totals. I’ve seen level 3’s with 1300 skill totals. At this present time I am combat 103, with a 1621 skill total. Every day there’s the feeling I get that combat is not worth it except for the added benefits(having a nice looking name, being able to do the higher level things, hopefully not get pk’ed as much at the abyss). There are some downsides such as, some lower levels coming up and asking for “free st00f.”

Once I got combat 100 I said that I’d be done combat for a LONG time, however something brought me back to it. I don’t remember exactly what but it was probably the idea of raising it to make abyss rune crafting easier. Since I started combat again I have got 75 slayer as well. Anyways, the point I am trying to get accross here is that a person who does nothing but combat will have limitations, a person who does no combat will have limitations. A good balance is a must, I have found this out for myself.

Even though I know there must be a balance there have been several times I was tempted to stop combat and just do skills. The point in this posting is that everyone has to find their own balance. I know I have found mine (although some skills could use some work) but there is always that battle going on inside.

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I respect all classes of players, unless they come and complain to me about not being able to do something on the game. They chose to be the way they are

It’s August which means the last month before school starts again… So it’s time to write down some goals for this month and see what I can do in my remaining time. There are LOTS of things that I’d like but few are practical, so I’ll try and write some down here. Hopefully I’ll update here when I complete one of them.

Here they are:

• Obtain the fire cape – This is very doable. I plan to do it this weekend.
• Get 64 construction
• Continue working on combat and slayer. We’ll see where but maybe 80 slayer? At least continue it, if not get 80.
• Get full guthans
• Keep working on Herblore and Farming. 80 Farming and 76 Herblore
• Maybe do some runecrafting too. Maybe 70?

Yea so these are some of the things that I’d like to do before the end of the month. I know that the top 3 will be easy to do. Not sure about the others. But as with all goals, if they are easy it’s not as fullfilling afterwards. If you have any thoughts or anything please feel free to comment.

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I just came accross this little cartoon from Trekkie on rsbandb.  It basically shows that in games such as our dear beloved Runescape people sell gold and their parents don’t know what the kids are doing.  So that makes the question come up, do your parents know what you are doing?  If you are older and are moved out then I suppose this doesn’t apply

Feel free to post in the comments.

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