bridgewater-brunel.me.uk - Simutrans-Experimental - Pak128.Britain-Ex 0.9.0

[asaphxiix]

do you have some sort of bandwidth monitor æo?


still working normal for me. Could be a cross-atlantic issue, possibly rush hour.

[ӔO]

yeah, I have an Asus mobo, and it came loaded with Network iControl.
Pretty nifty tool to look at network usage per program on the computer.

[asaphxiix]

AP please could you remove waiting time from Beechton? Thanks

[asaphxiix]

I think a clarification is in need - unless I am quite mistaken, roads (as well as road stops) built by a player in a city can be used by any player, regardless of access rights. I haven't had any adverse indication, and I checked it just now in another game.

There are limitations - you cannot build stops or set way points on another player's roads, even in the city (roads, not stops - you can stop on any city owned road, even if another player's station). But you can drive them.

Summary:
can drive and stop on any city owned road, incl. other player stop.
can drive on any road in a city
can't stop on other player road in a city (stop or no stop)

I for one think that these behaviors are quite in place, but care is required, according to etiquette.
There was a nice document written about moderation of games by moblet a while back (http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=7764). Much of it is irrelevant to the current game and state, but I think it's a very good basis for working tight maps together.

[asaphxiix]

looks like the server crashed, when I was removing a stream with the waterway removal tool. I lost sync and can not connect.

[jamespetts]

Hmm - odd. I can't reproduce a crash involving removing a stream with the waterway remove tool. I just get "ways not connected".

[asaphxiix]

I just reproduced it - first double click to remove a through-piece, then double click to remove edges individually.

[AP]

Is server down again - announce is overdue and I don't seem able to connect.

[jamespetts]

I just reproduced it - first double click to remove a through-piece, then double click to remove edges individually.

Hmm - I still can't reproduce this, I'm afraid. Can you be any more specific about what you mean by through piece and edges? I am imagining:

-----

--X--

-XX--

-XXX-

where - is the stream and X is the deleted stream. Is this what you meant?

[asaphxiix]

yep that's pretty much it.

R is for removal



so, deleting middle point of the stream with the waterway removal tool (connected to stream on both sides) - check; deleting adjacent points to it - crash. Only the server crashes - game still runs on client - but out of sync. No effect in single player.

[jamespetts]

Hmm - very odd. Not sure why this should crash only the server. Thank you for isolating that, though.

Edit: Having trouble reproducing this.

[AP]

Just in case people hadn't realised, all these railways that are proliferating - the LMR rocket steam locomotive will be heavily speed limited (27km/h max) on the available track until 1835.

[asaphxiix]

someone joined and then server froze but never came back. seems to be down now.

edit: seems to be back up.

[ACM]

I'm just posting to state the latency I'm getting at the current stage of the game is unbearable- doing menial things like assembling a horse and cart or opening up a convoy's schedule list can take up to around ten minutes. I don't think I can participate in this game anymore.

Right now I'm contemplating opening my company up for someone else to grab, if anyone is interested.

[jamespetts]

ACM,

I know that we have discussed this in-game. It is a great shame that you are having difficulties with this. I suspect that this is caused by your computer not being able to keep up with the game and slowly falling behind. The problem is, in part, that the game is too demanding on the CPU and could be made more efficient. The multithreading in the release candidate builds will help a little (but, I am afraid, only a little as it only puts graphics and loading/saving into a different thread). Bernd Gabriel also plans at some point some significant optimisations of physics calculations, which should help considerably, as, at present, a great many CPU-intensive physics calculations are taken for every vehicle's every step, when many of the values could be calculated much more infrequently and stored.

Indirectly, having lower passenger numbers will also help, as there will be far fewer convoys in the game. I am currently working on the passenger generation code to calibrate this more accurately.

If you are able to upgrade your hardware (moving to 64-bit will not cause you any problems with 32-bit software, especially if you are using Windows), this should enable you to continue with the existing game.

I am very sorry that you cannot play the game any longer on the server as it is currently set up, especially as your transport company was doing so well, which is particularly impressive for a new player. I do hope that you stay around and join us for another game when these issues are addressed and/or when you have a faster computer.

[rsdworker]

I'm just posting to state the latency I'm getting at the current stage of the game is unbearable- doing menial things like assembling a horse and cart or opening up a convoy's schedule list can take up to around ten minutes. I don't think I can participate in this game anymore.

Right now I'm contemplating opening my company up for someone else to grab, if anyone is interested.

i could take over because i was thinking having running exisiting company

[ACM]

I'll send you a password.

[ӔO]

someone joined and then server froze but never came back. seems to be down now.

edit: seems to be back up.

This seems to happen when someone joins, but quits the program part way through the loading.

And loading can take a while, since the save file is nearly 80mb now.

[rsdworker]

ACM company now taken over - will be renaming later

thank you ACM and wish luck for future

[asaphxiix]

sorry, I crashed the server while removing a water lane underneath another player's bridge with the water removal tool. it was a canal of mine north of inglehall. James could you remove it for me please, with the bulldozer?

[asaphxiix]

server is announcing, but I can't connect. I have a recent saved game if needed.

[AP]

I'm having the same issue.

[sdog]

I'm just posting to state the latency I'm getting at the current stage of the game is unbearable- doing menial things like assembling a horse and cart or opening up a convoy's schedule list can take up to around ten minutes. I don't think I can participate in this game anymore.

I experienced this also very heavily when playing about 1.5 years ago. (stoped doing this as my real life really suffered when i start playing simutrans in multiplayer)

[AP]

Tonight, no sooner I join the game, do one edit, it kicks me out again. 

I experienced this also very heavily when playing about 1.5 years ago. (stoped doing this as my real life really suffered when i start playing simutrans in multiplayer)

Yeah, I've recently been wondering about the merits of multiplayer vs the old way we used to do it (a save game being checked in and out over alternate days, one at a time, nobody running the clock on too much). The online multiplayer demands far more attentativeness, and those whose real life doesn't permit this can find their company out-competed and bankrupt without them knowing.

[rsdworker]

this morning when i went in to take over company - i had no lags all was smooth - its seems something needs looked at it

[asaphxiix]

Tonight, no sooner I join the game, do one edit, it kicks me out again. 
Yeah, I've recently been wondering about the merits of multiplayer vs the old way we used to do it (a save game being checked in and out over alternate days, one at a time, nobody running the clock on too much). The online multiplayer demands far more attentativeness, and those whose real life doesn't permit this can find their company out-competed and bankrupt without them knowing.

saving and losing work is also a serious issue. I still think it's best this way, though perhaps it'd be nice to try what you said.

Also AP could you edit your bridge at the west of Appledale, so I can cross beneath? thanks

[asaphxiix]

server kicked me out with fatal error, also kicking out with the same error when rejoining. This happened after save, when someone joined.

[asaphxiix]

i think it'd be best if no one tries to join now until james fixes the server - in hopes that the save before this bad save is not overwritten

[AP]

Acknowledged and agreed.

[asaphxiix]

although I do have a save from 20:38 CET... I'll start uploading it, just in case.

[jamespetts]

Apologies for the problems, everyone. This was caused by a bug in the code that I have now fixed on my 10.x branch. The server should be back up again when I release 10.16, which will hopefully be soon.

As to the more general discussion about the merits of playing online, the degree of attentiveness required has featured in my thoughts about how to balance the game, which is why I use the pause when unattended setting, as well as having a very slow pace. The unrealistic numbers of passengers compromise this to some extent by making things too fussy, but things should be easier when the passenger numbers are more realistic. If anyone has any other thoughts on balancing things that would reduce the attentiveness required, I should be very interested (preferably in a different thread, as this is really for discussing this particular online game). In particular - do people think that having the years pass at an even slower pace would be a good idea so that people can do bursts of work and the leave the game for a long time?

As to the issue of losing work, might there be something to be said for having a script to force-sync the game every hour or so? The disadvantage, of course, is the time that this takes.

Edit: As to performance, the reason that RSDworker might be getting better performance than ACM is that he might have a faster computer - Simutrans-Experimental is very CPU intensive, and, if the client's CPU is slow enough, the client will slowly run behind the server, causing a great lag in the execution of commands. As indicated earlier, the following things are in the pipeline that should help this issue:

(1) multithreading - this will help only a little, since it applies to graphics and saving/loading only, but it might make a noticeable difference in marginal cases;
(2) physics optimisation - Bernd tells me the physics code could be substantially optimised when he has some time, which will make a potentially considerable difference; and
(3) control of the passenger numbers, which should reduce very greatly the number of vehicles necessary, in turn reducing substantially the computational load.

[asaphxiix]

About saving - would it be quite difficult to code a check of the time stamp of the last save file, to decide whether to auto-save?

[jamespetts]

Hmm - I don't know much about Linux shell scripting. Can anyone suggest ideas for how to achieve this...?

[asaphxiix]

yeah shell scripting... it should be easy for those who know it, I think. I can try and ask a guy at work, at least to find out what it's about. can such a script interact with the game and command it to save or not to save?

[asaphxiix]

game is back on