Bridgewater-Brunel game no. 6

[jamespetts]

Please note: please do not post bug reports in this thread: doing so makes it much less likely that the developers will be able to find and fix them. Please only post bug reports (one thread per bug) in the bug reports subforum. Thank you.

The Bridgewater-Brunel server is now running its sixth long-term game, started in May 2024.

Here is a screenshot of the map:



This map is  8448x2944 (larger than the previous map at 7808x2432), and also more towns, albeit some of them are smaller

This map has two large islands: one to the east and one to the west, both of approximately equal size, with some smaller islands in the south. The seas in the west do not link to the seas in the east, but can be connected with some civil engineering.



Details

Dimensions (tiles) 8448 x 2944
Dimensions (km): 1,056 x 368
Starting date: January 1750
Towns: 238
Starting population: 766,709
Starting industries: 2,097

Please see here for rules and guidance for playing on this server. Please see here for guidance on how to choose a realistic, era-appropriate company name. Although doing so is not strictly compulsory, it is strongly encouraged.

Tips and notes for those new to playing Simutrans-Extended online

• To join the game, just select the Bridgewater-Brunel server from the network games dialogue in the game (press the "n" key).
• In case of a problem with the listing server, join the game either by typing bridgewater-brunel.me.uk into the network game dialogue, or type net:bridgewater-brunel.me.uk into the load game dialogue.
• Remember to set a password: do this by going to the "players" dialogue and clicking the box underneath the padlock icon next to the player name/colour. If you do not do this, other players will be able to play your company and even lock you out.
• Do not use the same password for this as you use for anything else. The password encryption is not strong.
• The game will be paused when no players are connected.
• Bridges over public rights of way, including navigable rivers, need to be at least two tiles high.
• The "Board of Trade" (later "Ministry of Transport" and later still "Department for Transport") player is the in-game government. It is run by the server administrator.
• The "observer" player is locked. On joining the server, players will be assigned to be this player, but cannot build anything. This is to allow people to look around without playing.
• Most towns will be connected by bridleways at the start of the game. These cannot be passed by wheeled vehicles. Roads can be upgraded at a lower cost than building a new road.
• It is not possible to delete public rights of way, but it is possible to divert them slightly. To do this, build the diversion before deleting the old way. The diverted route will become a public right of way itself even if you paid to build it.
• Anyone whose company is unused after 10 years will have their password automatically reset.
• Anyone whose company has never built anything will have their password automatically reset after 2 years.
• Anyone who wishes to leave the game or would like to abandon her/his transport company and start again can set one's company to allow being taken over. Once the company has been taken over, it will be permissible to start a new company even if you have had one before the takeover (but having multiple companies at once is not permitted).
• Please report any bugs with the game or pakset or balance issues on the appropriate boards (one thread per bug, please), not in this thread.
• As the game develops, it will become more demanding on computational resources. Slower computers might not be able to keep up. The symptom of a client computer not being able to keep up is a large and increasing time lag between doing something (e.g. deleting a tree) and this action occurring in-world. Disabling water animations can reduce the computational load, as does viewing the map at a higher zoom level (i.e. more zoomed in).
• Stagecoaches require two pairs of horses to travel at a sensible speed. For hilly terrain, three pairs of horses may be better.
• Players will not be able to rename towns and industries, as this is not appropriate for a multi-player game.
• Industries are partly restricted by region (some industries can only be built in some regions), so some much longer industry chains will be needed in the early game where resources that cannot be produced in the region in question are required
• Canals and rivers are important in the early game: see here for a video tutorial on the subject:

Have fun and happy transporting!

[neroden]

Server appears to have gone down and not come back up this morning.

[jamespetts]

Server appears to have gone down and not come back up this morning.

Thank you for that - that appears to be the very hard to reproduce in a debug environment thread deadlock bug. I have restarted this now.

[neroden]

Server's down again.  I know you diagnosed one cause of this with Thread Sanitizer -- do you have a deadlock-removal patch ready for that yet?

P.S. The high prevalance of untraceable crashes, deadlocks, desyncs, and bugs in general is due, in the big picture, to what people now call "technical debt" -- the result of implementing new features, sometimes in a quick-and-dirty fashion, and never going back to carefully debug, test, and clean the code up properly.  I have several major cleanup projects which I put in my queue in 2013 (before I got sick) but before I start on any of those, getting the merge-from-standard cleaned up (a new piece of technical debt which has developed since 2013) should be done first.  At least I have some time to work on this lately; hopefully that will last.

[jamespetts]

Server's down again.  I know you diagnosed one cause of this with Thread Sanitizer -- do you have a deadlock-removal patch ready for that yet?

P.S. The high prevalance of untraceable crashes, deadlocks, desyncs, and bugs in general is due, in the big picture, to what people now call "technical debt" -- the result of implementing new features, sometimes in a quick-and-dirty fashion, and never going back to carefully debug, test, and clean the code up properly.  I have several major cleanup projects which I put in my queue in 2013 (before I got sick) but before I start on any of those, getting the merge-from-standard cleaned up (a new piece of technical debt which has developed since 2013) should be done first.  At least I have some time to work on this lately; hopefully that will last.

The server is now back online. I have not had time to look at debugging the deadlocks yet - I have just returned from holiday, and am likely to be extremely busy in work for the next 2-3 weeks.

As to technical debt, there is an element of complexity, as there is a sense in which the lack of balance critical features are equal in priority to bugs, especially ones whose effects are occasional, as, to a large extent, the balance is the game.

[neroden]

The server is now back online. I have not had time to look at debugging the deadlocks yet - I have just returned from holiday, and am likely to be extremely busy in work for the next 2-3 weeks.

As to technical debt, there is an element of complexity, as there is a sense in which the lack of balance critical features are equal in priority to bugs, especially ones whose effects are occasional, as, to a large extent, the balance is the game.

Some technical debt is closely related to the inability to balance the game.  I've been trying to work on some of that.  Just hit the first major missing piece from Standard in my merge-from-standard work -- Dr. Supergood's city growth changes.  I believe I may have already found a lurking bug in city growth save/restore, which the sort of thing where it's going to be hard to balance the game reliably without fixing it...

[neroden]

Server's down again.

[jamespetts]

Server's down again.

Apologies for not having responded sooner - I have been involved in a very substantial matter at work in the week and went out yesterday, so have been unable to attend to Simutrans this week until now.

I have now restarted the server.

[neroden]

Now alternating between not launching at all, and showing up frozen (with a message about the pause on server option -- it's not coming out of pause).  Check your recent commits, something got badly broken today

[jamespetts]

Now alternating between not launching at all, and showing up frozen (with a message about the pause on server option -- it's not coming out of pause).  Check your recent commits, something got badly broken today

I have just connected successfully, and there have not been any commits for a few days - I can only assume that this was a transient fault. This intermittent fault will be difficult to reproduce and fix, unfortunately.

[neroden]

When it dies there's a message I'm having trouble catching in time to copy-paste it but it contains the phrase "pause=1"

[jamespetts]

When it dies there's a message I'm having trouble catching in time to copy-paste it but it contains the phrase "pause=1"

Interesting. Can you describe the symptoms in more detail (preferably in the thread sanitiser results thread, as this thread is not for debugging)?

[neroden]

Server's down again.  Didn't come back up this morning.

[jamespetts]

Server's down again.  Didn't come back up this morning.

Thank you for the report: now reset.

Have just come back from a short holiday, so haven't had chance to look at much development recently - will have a look when I get a moment.

[neroden]

And it's down again.  I'm not sure what's going on this time.  It seems to happen when multiple players are active, not when one player is active at a time.  Is it possible that there's some sort of deadlock issue with this patch?

https://github.com/jamespetts/simutrans-extended/commit/3b925841cf73e2e783b3e54989cdbb532210ac18

[jamespetts]

And it's down again.  I'm not sure what's going on this time.  It seems to happen when multiple players are active, not when one player is active at a time.  Is it possible that there's some sort of deadlock issue with this patch?

https://github.com/jamespetts/simutrans-extended/commit/3b925841cf73e2e783b3e54989cdbb532210ac18

Odd - the behaviour is not entirely consistent with the usual behaviour on a thread deadlock in that the CPU usage was higher. I waited a while to see whether the server would return to working order again, but it has not, so I have reset it in the usual way. We will have to monitor this. I have not had a chance to check to see whether that patch is likely to cause additional deadlock issues at this stage.

[neroden]

Was up most of the day (with the usual desyncs), but it's down again.  Not sure what is triggering this.

[jamespetts]

Was up most of the day (with the usual desyncs), but it's down again.  Not sure what is triggering this.

Again, the CPU usage was high when I checked it and reset it just now, so this does not look on the face of it like the usual thread deadlocks.

Unfortunately, my time is very limited at present, so it is difficult to investigate.

[neroden]

Game's down and not coming up, again.

Sorry I've been unable to work on programming. Other stuff going on.

[jamespetts]

Game's down and not coming up, again.

Sorry I've been unable to work on programming. Other stuff going on.

Thank you for letting me know - I have restarted the Simutrans-Extended instance running on the server, so the game should be running again soon.

I have been in the same position with respect to coding: I am still waiting for the time to look into some interesting looking patches by Ranran, including work on the fonts.

[zook2]

Hi,

it's down again since this morning.

[jamespetts]

Hi,

it's down again since this morning.

Thank you for letting me know. Now restarted.

[zook2]

Hi, it's down again.

[jamespetts]

Hi, it's down again.

Thank you for letting me know - now restarted.

[TransshipmentEnvoy]

Server down?

[jamespetts]

Server down?

Thank you for letting me know - now restarted.

Apologies, incidentally, to all that I have not had time to work on updating Simutrans-Extended lately. Unfortunately, my building works, which are somewhat dominating my life at present, have had some quite extreme delays and are still ongoing, and it is difficult to focus on an intense project such as Simutrans-Extended with those occurring in the background.

[TransshipmentEnvoy]

Server down?

[jamespetts]

Server down?

Thank you for letting me know - now restarted.

[TransshipmentEnvoy]

Server down?

I have also encountered repeated crashes on my self-hosted simutrans-extended server. Not sure about the reason.

[jamespetts]

Server down?

I have also encountered repeated crashes on my self-hosted simutrans-extended server. Not sure about the reason.

Server now reset.

If you are having crashes, it would be very helpful to have a reproduction case (please post this in a separate thread) so that I can try to find the cause. Thank you.