Topic: bridgewater-brunel.me.uk - Simutrans-Experimental - Pak128.Britain-Ex 0.9.1

[jamespetts]

Crash now fixed, and restarted with version 11.27; I have also modified the saved game so as to increase the maximum distance between stops for routing to make it easier for those using ships; TurfIt advises that this should be possible as a result of the new jump-point search.

[VOLVO]

Thanks.

I also have a few more observations :

Some players such as me have an incredibly short waiting time before the game stop pausing. (usually a few seconds, sometimes immediately)
But some other players has an incredibly long waiting time. (the pausing time can extend up to 2 minutes)

What's the factor behind this?

[Sarlock]

Download speed - probably related to distance to server, local and server down/upload speeds, etc.  The server game is over 45MB, so it is primarily based on how long it takes to download that file from the server.  Are you located near (or in) the UK where the server is?  I'm half a planet away.  Takes between 60 and 120 seconds for me to download generally.

[VOLVO]

Download speed - probably related to distance to server, local and server down/upload speeds, etc.  The server game is over 45MB, so it is primarily based on how long it takes to download that file from the server.  Are you located near (or in) the UK where the server is?  I'm half a planet away.  Takes between 60 and 120 seconds for me to download generally.

I'm in the UK right now,
but I'll be in Hong Kong next month,
So let's see whether distance matters.

[ӔO]

I am only getting 400kb/s here, so that 45mb file can take a while to transfer.

[Sarlock]

I'm getting about the same.  Increases a bit at night to around 600-800 kb/s, sometimes peaking over 1MB/sec at good times.  We'd be passing through the same hubs likely.

[VOLVO]

Has the server crashed again? Or is it just slow players connecting?

[Sarlock]

Dunno, I've been trying to connect for a bit but having difficulties.  Just finally connecting now, not sure what's up.


Island Hopper:

I spent some time looking at your two bone china lines.  You've got two circle routes running in opposite directions, but you still have the same issue with passengers jumping on your ships to get to a station that was just behind them on the route.  What puzzles me the most is that the passengers seem okay with taking a 100 hour journey around the map even though they just want to go to a place an hour away on the schedule the opposite direction    And yet you aren't being hit by giant refunds.


If you split your service up in to two different lines (note second picture - one yellow and one orange line), one capturing the northern section and one the southern, you won't have this problem.  Have the ships go back and forth on a single line rather than connecting in a circle.  Rather than using 2000 ships, you can probably accomplish the same amount of goods moved with 500 or less - half of your goods are taking the long way around.

[speedbus]

I spent some time looking at your two bone china lines.  You've got two circle routes running in opposite directions, but you still have the same issue with passengers jumping on your ships to get to a station that was just behind them on the route.

[...]

If you split your service up in to two different lines (note second picture - one yellow and one orange line), one capturing the northern section and one the southern, you won't have this problem.

Thank you very much for your analysis. You are absolutely right.

Splitting the lines is exactly what I tried to achieve three weeks ago. The result was a big mess, as you might recall. Several hundred ships with no route, and the server became unresponsive. So I'd prefer not to touch the routing for the time beeing.

[jamespetts]

The code has been updated since you tried that to make the problems that you had then much less likely. It would be useful if you could try it again and see whether you find it any easier.

[TurfIt]

James, I'd suggest you look at tile 3766,1119,-13 for absolute lunacy. Seems someone has found a way other than ships with cargo holds to break the tile limit and corrupt things nicely. Even worse since there's wolke involved. I'm still not sure if exceeding the tile limit can cause desyncs, but it's still bad. Someone needs to be hauled out back and shot...

[jamespetts]

Are you sure about that co-ordinate? That gives me an empty ocean tile in the middle of the sea.

[TurfIt]

errr 6766,1119,-13

[Sarlock]

Ah yes, that's me.  I started a new line and put 50 trains in to motion all at once, queuing up to enter service as the track opened up.

Why?

Because with the desynchs it would be impossible to do it any other way unless I wanted to babysit it for a few hours and continually reconnect... or start several trains in several locations which is also an exercise in frustration and desynchs... all trains will enter service fairly quickly and the queue will disappear.

PS: I find it my duty as a play tester to try and break things deliberately

[jamespetts]

Hmm - that is a workshop building in Forstone, next to Forstone Castle Keep Railway Station. I am not sure quite what I am supposed to be looking at there.

[Sarlock]

-13, look at the depot in the basement, 8000 feet down.

[VOLVO]

James, you got desync(I presume the only reason you left) just when I started building things.

[jamespetts]

I did look underground (the normal rather than sliced underground mode) and did not see anything - did I need to zoom out? And you were able to build a depot underground...?!

Edit: I will prevent that in the next pakset release (although it might be useful to have a special underground depot at a higher price for electric vehicles only in the early 20th century - but I am not sure what the graphics for that would look like).

[Sarlock]

It's there at -13, perhaps you need to see it in sliced mode.  And yes, I can build depots underground. 

Who knew the technology to build a 800km underground railway 8000 feet beneath the ocean's surface was available in 1830?    It's a really, really, really long elevator ride down from the surface to the underground station.

[jamespetts]

These antics will hopefully stop when things are properly balanced! Until then, your passengers can enjoy suffocating in the open wagons being hauled through unventilated tunnels by triple headed coal burning locomotives...

[Sarlock]

Haha, yes, it's fairly humorous to imagine, isn't it: 2000 passengers crammed in open top carriages hurtling through the bedrock at 48 km/h being pulled by 8 smoke spewing steam locomotives.  Imagine the ventilation that would be required!  Comfort level should be about -500.

And then there would be the issue of heat down that far beneath the surface and how the passengers would fare during the 8000 foot descent and ascent from the deep sea tunnel depths.

[jamespetts]

I think that we might have to use a spot of artistic licence apropos the height, and imagine that the scale on the Z axis is different to that on the X/Y axes...

[Sarlock]

What's up @451,632?  Not sure how many ships are there, but it's a lot... more windows than I can open to count (>64).

[VOLVO]

I think people also desync when other people are connecting.

[ӔO]

There's not a strong enough connection between that 8000ft under line at dashdon and furbury.
That 8000ft under line is also lacking a rail-rail link to the western island, so pax will pile up at Hurlstone and Astingham area.

There are various things broken on my lines too, but I won't be able to fix it until my internet is fixed.

[Sarlock]

Yeah, now that it's all set up and running, I'll have to tweak certain areas and double up areas as required.  The time it takes to perform any particular task is massive with the frequent desynchs.  Slowly picking away at it

[Sarlock]

Might I make a suggestion?  Until we come up with a possible fix, could we take the server down and freeze the game?  We're at such a critical time period in the game, 1830, and we are all struggling to connect and stay connected so that we can try and set up our infrastructure.  It might be a service to everyone to freeze it for a short period while we work on a few possible solutions.

[VOLVO]

Might I make a suggestion?  Until we come up with a possible fix, could we take the server down and freeze the game?  We're at such a critical time period in the game, 1830, and we are all struggling to connect and stay connected so that we can try and set up our infrastructure.  It might be a service to everyone to freeze it for a short period while we work on a few possible solutions.

This will not be possible in my view as the game is not for long either (with new experiemental version with double sloop coming up0

[Sarlock]

I suspect that we're still a few months away from that being implemented, there is a lot of stuff yet to do (especially with these server issues eating up valuable programming time).

[jamespetts]

Firstly, I am afraid that, since it has not been possible to reproduce the desyncs except on the server (for reasons that remain unclear), the only way of attempting to diagnose the problem is to continue to run the server, try painstakingly to observe patterns, make small changes to the code and run it again to see whether there is any difference.

Secondly, there are a number of significant projects that have yet to be started, let alone completed, in advance of the next major version, so that is likely to be some time away (and could be delayed very greatly if the desync issues take a long time to resolve).

[jamespetts]

Server restarted and now running version 11.28, which should hopefully contain more debugging information to help to track down the reported loss of connexion issues.

[Sarlock]

Perhaps I am doing something wrong, but I downloaded the new executable and it still says version 11.27 and I cannot see the server.  Tried several times.  Anyone else have luck?

[jamespetts]

Version 11.28 does not work, so I have reverted the server to 11.27 for the time being. Apologies for the difficulties.

[jamespetts]

Server now restarted with version 11.29, which is now available. The logging of desyncs has been updated for this version, so I should be grateful if people could post their logs when they are disconnected if at all possible. Thank you very much for all your feedback so far - it is appreciated.

[ӔO]

Where can I find the log or what suffix am I supposed to add to the shortcut to enable it?