Syntax
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 1218
Registered: 05-12-2005
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Ok... To be fair, I'm getting pretty annoyed now.

There are various elements to DROD which is what makes it so fun for so many. Some enjoy a good story, others great graphics... some love themed levels, other love great voice acting.

I love racking my brain, trying to find the optimal solution to each and every room. DROD allows that type of gameplay, and that is why I play it.

Unfortunately, for the past 2 odd years, there have been issues with high scores not getting properly recorded. I have always tried to help debug any issues. I've always felt guilty bringing up these issues as I know everyone's busy, but I really think these issues need to be resolved now.

If I spend 5 hours optimising a room, I hate to see it undone some time later with no trace. Optimising is only fun once...

I apologise if I seem unfair but I do spend a lot of time playing DROD and would just like to know I can trust the score system. The trigger to this post was Throshian Tower which shows I conquered it months ago (having plenty of number 1s). Now, I no longer have any score for any room (apart from 2).

Please can this just get fixed. If I can help achieve this *anyhow*, please let me know.

[EDIT]

Looking through that hold quickly I see I should have 9 #1s, 5 other #1s which now are ties as they've been equalled since, and at least another 15 others in the top 3.

Apologies again if I sound unfairly annoyed but seeing that upsets me.

And yes, I know demos were invalidated due to logic changes. I didn't count those.

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[Last edited by Syntax at 11-28-2007 02:27 AM]

Remlin
Level: Master Delver
Rank Points: 181
Registered: 04-28-2005
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Thanks for posting, Syntax. I've wanted to do the same, but I guess I was afraid of looking like a complainer. But we've had key features of drod offline for over a month, and no update for weeks. What the hell, if complaining is what's needed, I'm down for it. This is really frustrating.

Jatopian
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 1842
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I can sympathize with this. I don't care about high scores, but seeing the problems I see others experience makes me thankful for my apathy.

____________________________
DROD has some really great music.
Make your pressure plates 3.0 style!
DROD architecture idea generator

Syntax
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 1218
Registered: 05-12-2005
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Looking through all my holds, I seem to have lost all progress/scores (including nearly a 100 #1s) in the following holds (at least):

The Forbidden Fortress (conquered I think and lots of #1s)
School of the Slayery (conquered and lots of #1s)
KDD (conquered)
At A Distance (partway through)
Rassa Palace (partway through)
Return to Dugan's Dungeon (conquered I think - played a lot at least)
The Tomb of Nomb (Special DVD Edition) (mastered and lots of #1s)
The Hunt for The Grinfidel (partway through)
Troshian Tower (mastered and lots of #1s)
The Spiral (mastered and lots of #1s)
The Secret of the Slayer (mastered and lots of #1s)
The Fool's Errand (mastered)
The Choice (conquered)
Monkey's Tutorial of TCB (mastered and some #1s)

Could there please be an official announcement about this? I'd like to know if I've just wasted hundreds of hours of my time, or if this is fixable... Is it worth me playing on before this gets resolved?

Rabscuttle
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 2497
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Yeah, I believe it's been more than a month since anything was said about the problem by anyone in the know. We are paying for CaravelNet and I don't think it's unreasonable to not expect no indication of what is happening.

No?

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[Last edited by Rabscuttle at 12-14-2007 01:14 AM]

Syntax
Level: Smitemaster
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Well...

Would it possible to at least know this (as an example - I have *lots* of these):

Troshian Tower: First Level: 2N1W

I have a #1 52 move demo which doesn't appear in the "Best Demos on CaravelNet". The current highest is Tahnan's 53 from August. If I was now to replay that room, I would get the #1. However, would it be timestamped as now, or would my original demo eventually get checked and would that be my #1 with the original timestamp?

There are many cases where my original #1s have since been matched and I am worried that if I replay now, I'll never get linked to the #1 despite getting it first.

However, if the spider has lost these, I'll play them back through now and get a tie at least. If the spider will later associate the original #1 to me, I won't bother. There are lots of points queued up and if I eventually need to play through again I may as well start now and get them (or now ties) back.

Playing back through now would also get me lots of my #1s back (like from the Spiral hold) which I may lose if the spider doesn't check with hindsight so maybe I should do that.

I just want my points to reflect my hard work

captainzakku
Level: Delver
Rank Points: 77
Registered: 07-15-2006
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Just to add my own 2 cents...

Another problem right now is the used to be #1 page. I've lost a bunch of #1s on Lunchbox special, but short of going through the 360ish rooms manually, its tough to figure out which rooms I've lost. What I was curious about is whether they will even show up there once the spider does verify all the demos. I thought I had seen a case where I lost a #1 without it showing up on that page, and when I went to look I saw that my solution had not been verified, and neither had the one that beat me. I can't remember exactly when that was, so it could have been after this whole issue started.

One other quick question: If a verified demo gets beaten today, will that show up on the lost #1 page? The top of my lost #1 list is from October 4, compliments of fratopea. I'm not sure if either a) no one has beaten one of my verified demos recently, or b) they are also dropping like flies without any record. Again, short of going hold by hold and trying to remember how many #1s I used to have it seems very difficult to tell where you are getting beat.

____________________________
"A problem worthy of attack, proves its worth by fighting back." Paul Erdös

Syntax
Level: Smitemaster
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I believe the "Lost #1s" page will be fixed once the spider catches up. In the meantime, you can export your scores to csv (on the "My Scores" tab) and do a diff between 2 exports.

Obviously this won't help you find those you've lost since the first export, but going forwards, it can help.

On an aside, I'm now replaying holds like Troshian Tower to get my #1s back. Apologies if some of you see a big drop of #1s. I know it can be quite upsetting lol

Syntax
Level: Smitemaster
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The Sunken Pyramid. Lost all progress (cannot restore anywhere) and local demos have disappeared. High scores are seemingly all still intact.

I wonder if this could be linked to the fact Random started playing through it recently locally.

Using .54

captainzakku
Level: Delver
Rank Points: 77
Registered: 07-15-2006
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More apparent goofiness with the spider. For some reason the spider is counting 2 or 3 demos for each room in a couple holds. Also I seem to be losing 1s on Witherwood castle to unruly001, and bomber50 but those demos can't be downloaded in game, and I get the message "One or more of the demos being imported belong to a hold, level, or room you don't have and were ignored." In some of the rooms the move counts are also clearly impossible. All of these demos appear to have been uploaded, and checked by the spider on October 20, but those were not there even earlier today. I'm also seeing quite a few 0 move demos, so I'm not really sure what is going on. Anyone know? Do I have to go through Witherwood and manually ask the spider to recheck all of those rooms?

____________________________
"A problem worthy of attack, proves its worth by fighting back." Paul Erdös

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[Last edited by captainzakku at 01-18-2008 02:18 AM]

Rabscuttle
Level: Smitemaster

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Since he spider appears to be chugging along again, I'll just point out that there are demos on the Misc pages for the original King Dugan's Dungeon. (they appeared before and I'm guessing the rechecking all scores is the reason why they're back)

captainzakku
Level: Delver
Rank Points: 77
Registered: 07-15-2006
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Rabscuttle wrote:
Since he spider appears to be chugging along again, I'll just point out that there are demos on the Misc pages for the original King Dugan's Dungeon. (they appeared before and I'm guessing the rechecking all scores is the reason why they're back)

Hmmm... most of the double counting for me has been fixed now. However I appear to be down about 40 #1 scores in about 12 hours, and probably some of them are real, but I think alot of them are phantom losses to confused demos. I guess I won't worry for now, but its still a bit frustrating.

Edit: Now down 100 #1 scores, and playing through Below Witherwood is equally frustrating because most rooms have demos that are spider verified, but are not really possible. It almost looks like the spider is checking late October demos, but either confusing where the demo is from, or just calling any demo a conquer solution.

____________________________
"A problem worthy of attack, proves its worth by fighting back." Paul Erdös

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[Last edited by captainzakku at 01-18-2008 02:07 PM]

JoMax
Level: Delver

Rank Points: 65
Registered: 12-28-2005
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Hi

I'd just like to say thanks to the contributors to my (now) 100+ 1st places - I'm sure I will have to give them back soon, but thanks for lending them to me

The spider seems to mixing rooms up - for me it's in Beethro's Mission : Spiders - rooms I've just passed thru have demos of several hundred moves, while others (my newly discovered 1st places) are about 50% of the 2nd place - beat that for optimization <VBG>

[Edit] 120+ and rising now....

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[Last edited by JoMax at 01-19-2008 03:52 AM]

CuriousShyRabbit
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 3170
Registered: 10-14-2006
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Whoa! This is happening with my 2.0.16 scores as well. The movecounts for my new spider-verified "number one" demos are ridiculously impossible for the rooms listed.

I am not seeing this with any of my 3.0.0 or 3.1.0.54 scores.

fratropea
Level: Delver
Rank Points: 87
Registered: 11-05-2005
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Every moment that passes, the score and the #1 decrease.
I miss about 150 #.
What is happening?
This way, the desire to play is finished...
Is it a resolvable problem or no?

Briareos
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 3516
Registered: 08-07-2005
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Now, I don't know exactly what's going on highscore-wise, but I wouldn't start freaking out before the spider has finished checking all demos - according to the bottom of the highscores page, there's still 63117 highscores to be checked as I post this...

As far as I think I understand, it's re-checking all demos in chronological order, and so the highscores are currently a moving target since it'll re-instates all highscores only after having them checked, i.e. we're currently fast-forwarding through several years worth of highscores in a matter of days and watch them being taken and re-taken.

(Disclaimer: At least that's what I make of it...)

np: Tortoise - TNT (Nobukazu Takemura Remix) (A Lazarus Taxon (Disc 2))

____________________________
"I'm not anti-anything, I'm anti-everything, it fits better." - Sole
R.I.P. Robert Feldhoff (1962-2009)

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[Last edited by Briareos at 01-19-2008 10:27 PM]

CuriousShyRabbit
Level: Smitemaster
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I suspect JoMax's explanation is the correct one, and I think it is a related to a longstanding problem that needs to be fixed.

I'm sure everyone is familiar with the F6 screen glitches. This has been going on since April. Back then, we first noticed it in H&S. Someone would export and post their demo for a hard TCB room. The person who watches the demo posts back saying thanks but it's for a different room.

It's much worse for me now than it was before. I press F6 and look at my demos for a level after a long playing session. I click on the different demos in the list on the left. When I click on my demo for one room, the list of CaravelNet demos displayed in the lower left is sometimes for a different room on that level or a room in a different hold. (You can tell this from the move counts and player names, as it doesn't show the room names.) I was trying to find a pattern to the apparent randomness. I noticed that when F6 displayed a wrong list in the lower left, the wrong list seemed to be always one that I had recently viewed (in the past couple of days). But sometimes I saw an incorrect message saying that the room must be conquered first, suggesting that then it tried to get a list for a room I hadn't looked at before.

JoMax's idea that the spider is having this problem too is the only way I can think of explaining my current spider-verified 3-move "#1 score" for a room that took me 1100+ moves to solve. It also explains VIPCOOL's observations.

Jatopian
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 1842
Registered: 07-31-2005
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Wait, in-game demo functionality is messed up? I had no idea, but that is something I care about. Add me to the list of those who want this fixed quickly and finally.

____________________________
DROD has some really great music.
Make your pressure plates 3.0 style!
DROD architecture idea generator

Syntax
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 1218
Registered: 05-12-2005
IP: Logged

Personally, I have lost approx 250 #1s and my average points has dropped by 1. However, the spider seems to have checked all outstanding demos.

A quick look reveals I have lost all progress and demos (including local) for "Mysteries of the Deep", "Val Unrich", "KPVDIIID 3 : The Final Floors" and "Korvak's Keep" (and no doubt others). In fact, this seems to be very common issues with holds (and I have tried to Restore). This means I can't restore or view my own demos.

Flipside of the coin is that Random now has 25 #1s as opposed to 5, so she's quite happy

Hope we get an explanation soon

[EDIT]

I see the queue now has 63K demos to verify so guess Schik has kicked something off again

[EDIT]

Well, maybe nothing was kicked off. Seems Schik is on holiday so maybe I just missed the queue the first time I looked yet it seems stalled. Hopefully my 912 outstanding include my #1s from the last few weeks.

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[Last edited by Syntax at 01-20-2008 09:18 AM]

captainzakku
Level: Delver
Rank Points: 77
Registered: 07-15-2006
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Syntax wrote:
Personally, I have lost approx 250 #1s and my average points has dropped by 1. However, the spider seems to have checked all outstanding demos.

I'm now down 240... Hmmm, to stave off frustration instead of competing for #1s we could compete for most #1s lost to a confused spider. So Syntax you are ahead for now, but I'm closing fast.

____________________________
"A problem worthy of attack, proves its worth by fighting back." Paul Erdös

JoMax
Level: Delver

Rank Points: 65
Registered: 12-28-2005
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captainzakku wrote:

I'm now down 240... Hmmm, to stave off frustration instead of competing for #1s we could compete for most #1s lost to a confused spider. So Syntax you are ahead for now, but I'm closing fast.

For the lucky few - we can try the opposite competition - I'm now up by about 110 #1s

Edit : I notice the number of unverified demos is slowly rising again, so hope fully will sort itself out soon..........

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[Last edited by JoMax at 01-21-2008 02:17 PM]

captainzakku
Level: Delver
Rank Points: 77
Registered: 07-15-2006
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JoMax wrote:
Edit : I notice the number of unverified demos is slowly rising again, so hope fully will sort itself out soon..........

Is there any official word on this? The problem, as I see it, is that the spider is verifying demos that have become matched to the wrong room, from some other room/level/hold. These demos have been verified, and have been popping up starting last Thursday or Friday, but apparently were first submitted in late October, now moving into early November.

It would seem to me that the problem will only get worse as the spider "checks" more demos, and creates even more incorrectly matched rooms. I tried clicking on several of these demos, to have the spider to recheck them, but if they get added to the end of the queue, it could be another month before the spider re-checks those rooms. I don't see any reason why the second check would fix the problem, but then I'm not really up on the technical side of this.

____________________________
"A problem worthy of attack, proves its worth by fighting back." Paul Erdös

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[Last edited by captainzakku at 01-22-2008 03:13 AM]

Syntax
Level: Smitemaster
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captainzakku wrote:
Is there any official word on this? ..
It would seem to me that the problem will only get worse as the spider "checks" more demos, and creates even more incorrectly matched rooms.

Official announcements in this thread seem to be rather scarce despite the fact it is a central thread for people who do actually care about #1s/score/avg pts room.

I've spent almost a month playing 18 hours a day, exploring new holds but also blindly trying to get my lost #1s back (as these are no longer listed unless the spider cacthes up). Overnight, I lost 264 #1s so now I'm back where I was in November. That night, I made a big announcement in-game chat when I first beat the 1000 barrier. Now I'm back to that night +6.

I believe Schik's off until next Sunday (holiday/vacation), which would explain delays in bug-fixing the spider. As you said, I agree the spider seems to have confused certain rooms/holds with others. Watching me drop from achieving a 2 year dream of ever catching Rabscuttle, then to overtake him, hit 1300ish, and wake the next day with 997...

I know most players enjoy just playing DROD. I don't... I enjoy optimising each room. A 25% drop in achievement, though I'm sure will get fixed, has made me question why I bothered put so much effort into it. Call me cynical, impatient or unfair, I don't mind. Point is I feel like I'm fighting too hard for something which hasn't been measured for months now.

If you fight, you want to know who you're fighting against.

I won't be playing DROD much from now as it feels like I have to replay the last 3 months all over again. I look forward to everything getting fixed, but my style of play doesn't suit random score allocation... I'll obviously always play, but right now no effort seems to be rewarded, so I'll wait.

An official explanation/announcement would be fair.

mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

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Schik has complete control over the spider, and there's nothing we can do to check what's going on without him. I'd assume that everything will be processed correctly as before, but we'll need his feedback on this when he returns to know how this will happen. Sorry I can't be more help.

____________________________
Gandalf? Yes... That's what they used to call me.
Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.

captainzakku
Level: Delver
Rank Points: 77
Registered: 07-15-2006
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mrimer wrote:
Schik has complete control over the spider, and there's nothing we can do to check what's going on without him. I'd assume that everything will be processed correctly as before, but we'll need his feedback on this when he returns to know how this will happen. Sorry I can't be more help.

Thanks for the reply, I guess I just wanted to know that someone knew, and that there was a plan to fix the problem.

____________________________
"A problem worthy of attack, proves its worth by fighting back." Paul Erdös

Syntax
Level: Smitemaster
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mrimer wrote:
Schik has complete control over the spider, and there's nothing we can do to check what's going on without him. I'd assume that everything will be processed correctly as before, but we'll need his feedback on this when he returns to know how this will happen. Sorry I can't be more help.

As captainzakku says... thanks for replying. So far we could only really speculate. Look forward to his return

captainzakku
Level: Delver
Rank Points: 77
Registered: 07-15-2006
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Bump...

I know its been a whole 24 or so hours since Schik came back and all, but I'm just incredibly frustrated. I am not down the most number 1s, but I might be down the highest percentage. Pre-Spider glitch around 400 to 90 now. And falling.

____________________________
"A problem worthy of attack, proves its worth by fighting back." Paul Erdös

Syntax
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 1218
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captainzakku wrote:
I am not down the most number 1s, but I might be down the highest percentage. Pre-Spider glitch around 400 to 90 now. And falling.

Yeah I lost nearly 600 and my avg has halved but the spider is now checking demos so fingers crossed, it will be fixed soon

Dischorran
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 3414
Registered: 09-10-2005
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Looks like the spider finally caught up to me. I'd mourn the loss of a couple of my better recent scores, but it's hard to complain about a net tripling of my #1 count. With the spider's help, I'll take Syntax down in no time!

Now if only I could convince it that conquering 100% of the rooms in Doctor E. Will's Mega Complex counts as a conquered hold...

____________________________

CuriousShyRabbit
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 3170
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I've been watching my growing highscore list with alarm. I can't find EVEN ONE of my recently submitted demos that has been credited to the correct room.