As many of you know, when the beta expanded to include Ice9 last weekend, it didn't fair very well. Ice9 crashed multiple times over the weekend. But I was finally able to isolate the cause of that crash (I hope) last night and it is fixed. I have sent a link to the update to V'Ger and hopefully he'll get that up tonight and things will be stable again. I apologize to any Ice9 players who have been and will be inconvenienced by this (and especially to V'Ger), but the reality is there are some bugs that just won't show up until this game is subjected to real play.

For those interested in the technical details, the crash was caused by an apparently undocumented bug in windows sockets with threaded applications. Creating a socket on one thread and then configuring it on another caused the server to crash (error address in NTDLL.DLL). Moving the configuration call to the same thread that created the socket resolved the issue. These kinds of bugs are my worst nightmare! Of the 7 systems and various OSs I test on, the crash only happened on 3, and very rarely on one of the three (the 21-6.com beta site). The two where it was common were SG's classictw.com server and Ice9, the two that really matter. Murphy's law I guess.

With any luck, this is the last bug that can crash the server, and we can focus on finding and fixing bugs in the game itself, which will be much less disruptive to players.

The new version of TWGS is up.

From my view this one seems much better. So Far So Good!!

Down again

Were you lagging this evening ? I know right before it went down it was chugging hard then just stopped..... But I was lagging though out the evening just wondering seemed all of our corp was just wondering if it is a connection issue or a software glitch?

Guess I'll have to wait to go hunting you and your figs ...... WAKE UP V'GER!

Yeah, it was a little laggie, but that's Ice-9. It just locked on me, this is what I got:


INACTIVITY WARNING:

Your session will be terminated in Sixty seconds.

INACTIVITY WARNING:

You now have Thirty seconds until termination.

INACTIVITY WARNING:

Only TEN seconds remain. Session termination is imminent.





Disconnecting from server...



Command [TL=05:17:51]:[XXXXX] (?=Help)? :

Connection lost.



You must have an uncorrupted database selected to connect to a server


You must have an uncorrupted database selected to connect to a server

You corrupted YOUR database?

Seems I've finally gotten the "beta testers" I wanted and we're finally giving the game the stress it needs to work out the last few "issues".

No, you didn’t. V’ger and Ice9 did. As a real sysop who has a LOT of integrality and a much more personable approach to things. Looks more like it has been taken out of your hands and passed to someone a LOT more capable and qualified.


LOL, you do realize a LOT of these issues are NEW and seeming creating new ones with every “fix” don’t you.

I think I've been around this game and it's "fixes" a lot longer than you have. Every time there's an update it creates new issues, always has. Whether it was Gary's 1.x, HVS's 2.x or TWGS 3.x

And that's always been the juicy fun part for players to find the new bug they can exploit.

I'm not a programer, just a fan of the game and I've been through these beta tests long enough to know we've got to really beat on the game if we want to get it stablized. The TW community here wasn't interested in coming to the beta server, so V'Ger agreed to bring the beta to the players. Brilliant move! I'm very pleased.

Thank you V'Ger!

Now, I'm wondering if we need to do a reset. JP suspected the crash last weekend may have caused some data corruption.

That would give V'Ger the opportunity to get the layout of the I game corrected. T0yman is constantly complaining about the layout and the zero port in FPS.

You do realize that twgs.classictw.com is going to be hosting HHT
on the beta, right? That's 30 of the most active players in the
community right now getting ready to beta test it.

Sounds like one of your usual assumptions that means nothing other then you have had it wrong long then I have.

Yeah and it's finally getting the test it needed. My only regret is starting this game like the builders truce game it was last reset. Had I known game I was going to be played this aggressively I would of had a much different game plan.

It's not being played agressively other then the alians.