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[Closed] New Simutrans-Experimental server (bridgewater-brunel.me.uk)

Started by jamespetts, January 14, 2012, 09:03:19 PM

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jamespetts

Please note that this thread relates to the original game played on this server, now closed. A new game on this server will be posted shortly. In the meantime, the final state of the saved game can be downloaded here.





Server status

See the listing server page.

Program version

10.11

Pakset version

Pak128.Britain-Ex 0.8.3

***

I have rented some rackspace and set up a Simutrans-Experimental server (using Simutrans-Experimental 10.5 and Pak128.Britain-Ex 0.8.3). It is a large map, starting in 1825: The server has fairly high specifications, including a dedicated 3Gb of RAM, so should be able to cope with the map size, especially since it will only be running one game at a time.

This server, at bridgewater-brunel.me.uk, is now listed on the Experimental announce server (thanks to Timothy for producing one for Experimental).

The server is set to pause when no clients are connected. Below is a screenshot of the map, at a 3:1 zoom ratio.



This is the first public Simutrans-Experimental server, so I should be very grateful for any feedback, especially as to how this works in comparison to Simutrans-Standard in a multi-player setting. There might also be unexpected issues, and it may be necessary to restart the map at short notice as a result, until such issues as might arise are resolved.

I shall not presently specify any rules, as such, other than a general request for players to be respectful and polite to others. Both co-operative and competitive play is permitted. Multiple players may share a single transport company if they wish. I shall play as the public service player in this initial game, and shall, in so far as my time permits, try to act as a government might, with the aim of maximising overall population growth within the constraints of the public service player. I might also play separeately as an individual transport company if I get the time.

All slots are free apart from observer and public service player, so do get stuck in!
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prissi

I would strongly suggest a smaller map without trees. Your map is about 3 MB to download, and the server need already a lot of time to save it. Every time a player connects, it will take 1-2 min to continue to play.

And a lower fps than 25, maybe 10. My computer is an Athlon2 X64 6000+ (still very fast concerning single core perfomance) and runs at 80% on one core on this map. With any trains or routing, it will almost desync immeadiately.

rsdworker

sounds great i will join to play so its online now?

jamespetts

Prissi,

thank you for the tips. I shall set the fps to 15 for future games. I shall leave this as it is for the time being unless instability and desyncing is reported. May I ask those who have played it so far - has it been stable or have there been frequent desyncs?

As to the map size and trees, I really did want to be able to have be able to have a large map server, as it really makes a difference to gameplay having a larger map because of the scale. There is a tradeoff between having a small, fast loading map and a larger but slower loading map. My tests showed that I can connect to this map in just under 45 seconds.

rsdworker - it is indeed online now - do feel free to join!
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rsdworker

Quote from: jamespetts on January 14, 2012, 10:47:38 PM
Prissi,

thank you for the tips. I shall set the fps to 15 for future games. I shall leave this as it is for the time being unless instability and desyncing is reported. May I ask those who have played it so far - has it been stable or have there been frequent desyncs?

As to the map size and trees, I really did want to be able to have be able to have a large map server, as it really makes a difference to gameplay having a larger map because of the scale. There is a tradeoff between having a small, fast loading map and a larger but slower loading map. My tests showed that I can connect to this map in just under 45 seconds.

rsdworker - it is indeed online now - do feel free to join!
yeah i did join but i crashed because its was lost syc

jamespetts

May I ask - what were you doing when you lost synchronisation?
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rsdworker

Quote from: jamespetts on January 14, 2012, 11:07:41 PM
May I ask - what were you doing when you lost synchronisation?

i was exploring and setting up company - now i have track setup now - my company name is City tramway

jamespetts

Download Simutrans-Extended.

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rsdworker

Quote from: jamespetts on January 14, 2012, 11:23:58 PM
Did you desync again?

nope i left because i was discrated by rl i will be back in soon

Ashley

What's not working about the announce server?
Use Firefox? Interested in IPv6? Try SixOrNot the IPv6 status indicator for Firefox.
Why not try playing Simutrans online? See the Game Servers board for details.

jamespetts

It's not announcing. The list is empty, even though the server has been running for longer than the announce interval (and I have set it to announce manually using nettool), and announce=1 is set in simuconf.tab.
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Guvnor


jamespetts

It's certainly okay - feel free! I'd be very interested in any feedback, both as to stability/performance and to how Experimental gameplay works in comparison to Standard in multiplayer.
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sdog


James, congratulations for your new server!
(i'd connect immediately, if i wasn't afraid of getting completely and utterly addicted -- again.)

Quote from: prissi on January 14, 2012, 10:13:18 PM
I would strongly suggest a smaller map without trees. Your map is about 3 MB to download, and the server need already a lot of time to save it. Every time a player connects, it will take 1-2 min to continue to play.
[...]
(bold by me)

Instead of saving the location of trees, perhaps only the parameters to generate the forrests could be saved and the trees generated on loading the map. The trees are only eyecandy, if they are not persistent and identical for all players in a network game, it shouldn't really matter.

@james, you could also generate maps that are much longer than wide, you get the long distance interaction, without increasing the map area too much.

Player planted trees, could be excepted of course.


Ashley

Quote from: jamespetts on January 15, 2012, 12:41:09 AM
It's not announcing. The list is empty, even though the server has been running for longer than the announce interval (and I have set it to announce manually using nettool), and announce=1 is set in simuconf.tab.

I can't see any announce attempts in the log file. Can you do some further testing of announce settings? If nothing appears in the log it probably means Simutrans isn't sending the announce.
Use Firefox? Interested in IPv6? Try SixOrNot the IPv6 status indicator for Firefox.
Why not try playing Simutrans online? See the Game Servers board for details.

jamespetts

Guvnor - apologies for the server being down. That was my error, as I did not realise that closing the terminal session when I shut down my own computer would terminate the Simutrans session! I have fixed that now by using Timothy's scripts - the server should be back up.

Timothy - hmm, I am not sure why it is not announcing. Can I check that I have the various settings right in simversion.h? They are reproduced below:


/*********************** Settings related to network games ********************/

/* Server to announce status to */
#define ANNOUNCE_SERVER "servers.experimental.simutrans.org:80"

/* Relative URL of the announce function on server */
#define ANNOUNCE_URL "/announce"

/* Relative URL of the list function on server */
#define ANNOUNCE_LIST_URL "/list?format=csv"

/* Name of file to save server listing to temporarily while downloading list */
#define SERVER_LIST_FILE "serverlist.csv"

#endif


Are these correct?

Edit: Also, I am having trouble using a non-root user to run Simutrans - I have set up a "simd" user, but when I run Simutrans with this user, it cannot accept any incoming connexions. Do you have any idea what to do about this?

SDog - actually, the trees don't seem to be causing much difficulty so far. For a high-specification map, a 45 second load time is fairly reasonable, I think. We shall have to see with experience whether it is unserviceable in play or not, but I really do want to test the boundaries of what can be done with high specification maps on a high specification server.
Download Simutrans-Extended.

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ojii

I'm happy to announce that Hatington Transport is now officially serving the greater Hatington area with passgener coach service!


On a more technical note: I get lots and lots of desyncs, which is annoying. I don't have the best internet connection, so that might be the problem... Which has the nice side effect that I now know the IP by heart :D

jamespetts

Hmm - may I ask, what are you doing immediately before the desync? One thing that can cause desyncs is if your client is slow, which will be exacerbated by having a large map. How much RAM do you have?
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ojii

Quote from: jamespetts on January 15, 2012, 01:36:20 PM
Hmm - may I ask, what are you doing immediately before the desync? One thing that can cause desyncs is if your client is slow, which will be exacerbated by having a large map. How much RAM do you have?

I have 16GB of RAM.

There's no clear pattern. It can be that I'm just starting at a part of the map (no moving the viewport or anything) and get a desync...

ӔO

Quote from: rsdworker on January 15, 2012, 01:40:02 PM
james - how i do chat?
go to your message window
beside 'options' is a field where you can put text in.
My Sketchup open project sources
various projects rolled up: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17111233/Roll_up.rar

Colour safe chart:

Ashley

Quote from: jamespetts on January 15, 2012, 12:14:31 PM
Timothy - hmm, I am not sure why it is not announcing. Can I check that I have the various settings right in simversion.h? They are reproduced below:


/*********************** Settings related to network games ********************/

/* Server to announce status to */
#define ANNOUNCE_SERVER "servers.experimental.simutrans.org:80"

/* Relative URL of the announce function on server */
#define ANNOUNCE_URL "/announce"

/* Relative URL of the list function on server */
#define ANNOUNCE_LIST_URL "/list?format=csv"

/* Name of file to save server listing to temporarily while downloading list */
#define SERVER_LIST_FILE "serverlist.csv"

#endif


Are these correct?

Those settings are correct, yes. If you increase the debug level the game should print some announce-related logging information which may help you work out why it isn't working.

Quote from: jamespetts on January 15, 2012, 12:14:31 PM
Edit: Also, I am having trouble using a non-root user to run Simutrans - I have set up a "simd" user, but when I run Simutrans with this user, it cannot accept any incoming connexions. Do you have any idea what to do about this?

This is on Debian Linux? Or some other platform? If you're trying to listen on a port below 1024 then only the root user can open a listen socket, however the Simutrans default is 13353 so you ought not to have an issue there. Check the output of the netstat -an command, grep for port 13353 and see which IP addresses your server is actually listening on. Remember for the announce server to register your game you need to be announcing the same IP address as the announce request comes from (or announce a DNS name which resolves to the address the announce request comes from).

How exactly are you running Simutrans as the alternative user? What do the logs say? Did you remember to chown the directory the game is running in so that that user can write there? Simutrans writes a number of temporary files during the course of a client connecting (since its serialisation model is file-oriented, it tends to just write a gameinfo/save file to disk and then transfer that file to the client, which is kind of dumb but isn't something I have the time to fix right now). My guess is this is likely to be your problem.
Use Firefox? Interested in IPv6? Try SixOrNot the IPv6 status indicator for Firefox.
Why not try playing Simutrans online? See the Game Servers board for details.

ӔO

My Sketchup open project sources
various projects rolled up: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17111233/Roll_up.rar

Colour safe chart:


jamespetts

Hmm, no, seems to be running. Are you having trouble connecting?
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rsdworker

Quote from: jamespetts on January 15, 2012, 02:23:44 PM
Hmm, no, seems to be running. Are you having trouble connecting?
yeah i am trying to connect

edit: i am connected now and there saving game in proccess

jamespetts

Hmm, odd - I didn't notice any interruption here.
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rsdworker

Quote from: jamespetts on January 15, 2012, 02:27:02 PM
Hmm, odd - I didn't notice any interruption here.
the save is too frequently - its may be cause because its freezes client

after i clicked depot and tried to sell train - didn't vanish instantly - its still there :(

ӔO

yeah, it is a bit sluggish when assembling, copying and starting convoys
My Sketchup open project sources
various projects rolled up: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17111233/Roll_up.rar

Colour safe chart:

rsdworker

Quote from: AEO on January 15, 2012, 02:36:02 PM
yeah, it is a bit sluggish when assembling, copying and starting convoys
plus building tracks or things - its takes while

jamespetts

Oddly, I find it quite responsive, although it does desync from time to time without user interaction. What ping are you each getting to the server?

I think that I shall have to restart the server having adjusted the map to 15fps, down from 30fps.
Download Simutrans-Extended.

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rsdworker

#32
Quote from: jamespetts on January 15, 2012, 03:09:52 PM
Oddly, I find it quite responsive, although it does desync from time to time without user interaction. What ping are you each getting to the server?

I think that I shall have to restart the server having adjusted the map to 15fps, down from 30fps.
good idea

edit - i been disconnected again :(

ӔO

I am getting around 113ms ping time.
My Sketchup open project sources
various projects rolled up: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17111233/Roll_up.rar

Colour safe chart:

ojii

Quote from: jamespetts on January 15, 2012, 03:09:52 PMWhat ping are you each getting to the server?

rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 38.711/53.552/87.265/19.684 ms