Plod's kampf (against the bugs)

[Plod]

http://www.planetmule.com/hi-score-players/user?user_id=14158

Over the last couple of weeks of play I have experienced quite a lot of game drop-outs and client crashes on my end. The consequences being my high game abandonment stat (booya!) and bots fagging up the games of gentlemen.

The most recent drop-outs occurring are;
http://www.planetmule.com/hi-score-game/game?game_id=22343
[EDIT: and]
http://www.planetmule.com/hi-score-game/game?game_id=22329
http://www.planetmule.com/hi-score-game/game?game_id=22317

Typically occurs during the development phase.
Don't have much to add other than by golly it sure is annoying!

[Chuckie Chuck]

Peter has posted a reason for the development round issue on another post.  Seems they need to make a minor change in the number of frames sent by the clients to the host server during that phase and if you have any connection hiccups at all, there is currently a higher chance of game failure at that point in time than there should be.  I noticed while playing with you, that your connection definitely has some issues that create frame drops and lag, so your that much more prone to have problems.  Also another bug that maybe an issue is in the sound in the game.  Try hitting the sound off option in the game menu, run the game with the sound off.  Apparently some computers are bogging on a problem with the sound plug-in that plays the ogg and wav files for the game.  They are researching this and hope to fix it by next release.

First we all thought it was M.U.L.E. but when your system missed the cue, and I had to kick you to keep the game going, his connection was awesome after that, game was super smooth.

My thought is that you and him had the longest response times to each other and while you were both in the same game, it was manifesting itself as a lot of lag from him, but proved not to be the case.

Bug will be fixed in next release, but I am wondering if there is anything you can do on your end to improve performance

(make sure you have at least 300 kpbs of bandwidth available both directions while playing, really you don't need that much, but it's a good safe zone, if you have an anti-virus that is very cpu heavy like McAfee is, try tuning the real time settings to be a little less severe, especially if you have a somewhat slower CPU, McAfee slows down my dual core 1.6 with 2 gigs of RAM, so if you're on a Pentium 4 Celeron 1.6 with 1 gig of RAM, I can see major issues there.)

I had uTorrent running once, forgot about it, my ping was like 2000.  I have turned on a bandwidth limiter to keep it from gobbling up all the bandwidth now, I let it have about 50% when I'm playing Mule.  Doesn't seem to effect the game at that level on my 1.5Mbit connection.  It's difficult to control apps like browsers if you download a large file via browser during a game, you're likely to have some issues.

Ping times you should be looking for should be better than 300, the best I ever see is 150, my average is 250.  That seems high, but I run a wireless connection, I suppose it would be better than 100 if I actually plugged into my router.

[Plod]

Thanks for your comprehensive response, it is very helpful.

I'm on a shared network so I might be running into times when a housemate has active torrents, which isn't often.
I will disable in-game sounds and see if that contributes to a solution.

[EDIT] Some time later...
I disabled the sounds and had a flawless game;
http://www.planetmule.com/hi-score-game/game?game_id=22422
However the next game I participated in shortly after, the game crashed early ins;
http://www.planetmule.com/hi-score-game/game?game_id=22429

[Chuckie Chuck]

The sound bug just effects game speed, won't prevent crashes, but will prevent long pauses as long as it doesn't crash.  Reports were that it causes FPS drop which should stay a steady 58-62 FPS regardless of ping and server issues.

[Peter]

However the next game I participated in shortly after, the game crashed early ins;
http://www.planetmule.com/hi-score-game/game?game_id=22429

When you say crash, do you mean that the game gives you a message box that says you have lost the connection to the host (or similar)? The game does not close, but you return to the lobby.

The only help I can give in that case is that you should try not to run any other programs while playing. Especially those which use much network bandwidth like big file downloads. I understand that on a shared network you may not have control over what programs others are running, but it's the only advice I have. There can be several other reasons why you're connection is unstable as well.

[Plod]

When you say crash, do you mean that the game gives you a message box that says you have lost the connection to the host (or similar)? The game does not close, but you return to the lobby.

By crash I mean the client terminates itself completely without warning.

[Chuckie Chuck]

I've had that happen once or twice, but out of 50 games, it's rare.  Number of connection drops is a bit higher.

[Plod]

I've had that happen once or twice, but out of 50 games, it's rare.  Number of connection drops is a bit higher.

Funny you should say that; my drop-out rates have improved quite a lot. However client crashes have become more frequent. Three crashes in the last 24 hours.

Really working that abandon count.

[Peter]

By crash I mean the client terminates itself completely without warning.

It would be helpful to us if you could attach your log file, taken immediately after such a crash. It is located in the data directory and called log.txt.