disoriented
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Hi all,

I apologize in advance if this post seems ill-tempered or bad-mannered. I certainly applaud all the hard work of the kind folks monitoring these forums and those involved in the development of DROD. I know firsthand that working on software and dealing with demanding users can often be a thankless task.

I am starting to feel exasperated about the high score situation. I feel that if I have paid for a CaravelNet subscription, one of the main reasons for owning the subscription should function correctly. Instead, high scores for all holds (visible upon pressing F6) continue to exhibit the following problems after many months of waiting for a fix:

- The room claims that "There are no high scores for this room" even though later reloads often show the high scores.
- Demos show as grayed out (this seems to be less the case recently)
- The game complains that a downloaded demo is corrupted, although subsequent attempts at downloading the same demo work successfully
- Demos have the wrong move count
- Demos show up from the wrong room
- Clicking on one person's demo downloads a different demo

I am using the released version (3.1.0 OS X), and not a beta. So it seems that these problems should have been worked out by now. I know that everyone's time is limited with day jobs, school, trying to get the next great game out on time, etc. And I'm sure it really is more fun to develop the next cool feature rather than fix bugs in the old code. But this is something that is really starting to detract from this wonderful game, and I wanted to bring it to the forefront.

Thanks for listening.

____________________________
34th Skywatcher

Best to PM me, since I might miss your message on CaravelNet chat.

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[Last edited by disoriented at 04-11-2008 09:24 AM]

Schik
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disoriented wrote:
- The room claims that "There are no high scores for this room" even though later reloads often show the high scores.
- The game complains that a downloaded demo is corrupted, although subsequent attempts at downloading the same demo work successfully

I've never seen this issue myself... Mike?

- Demos show as grayed out (this seems to be less the case recently)

This should be 100% fixed as of a week or so ago.

- Demos have the wrong move count
- Demos show up from the wrong room
- Clicking on one person's demo downloads a different demo

These are all related. The source of the problem is fixed, and the symptoms are near fixed as well - I'm trying to match up the last of the incorrectly attributed scores, then in one pass I'll fix all of them that I possibly can.

____________________________
The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way it treats its animals.
--Mahatma Gandhi

Syntax
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Schik wrote:

disoriented wrote:
- The room claims that "There are no high scores for this room" even though later reloads often show the high scores.
- The game complains that a downloaded demo is corrupted, although subsequent attempts at downloading the same demo work successfully

I've never seen this issue myself... Mike?

I'm not going to fuel the highscore debate further, but would like to add that I get the same issue as described. Chances of F6 actually displaying the right demos and allowing me to download them are about 1 in 3.

Same happens with the chat window (for example first time a partial list, 2nd time - "No players present" and 3rd time lucky).

Schik
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Syntax wrote:
I'm not going to fuel the highscore debate further, but would like to add that I get the same issue as described. Chances of F6 actually displaying the right demos and allowing me to download them are about 1 in 3.

Same happens with the chat window (for example first time a partial list, 2nd time - "No players present" and 3rd time lucky).

I'm not trying to debate anything, I believe that it happens, I just don't see it and can't reproduce it. Thus it's hard to diagnose and fix.

____________________________
The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way it treats its animals.
--Mahatma Gandhi

Syntax
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I was just saying that I get the same issue. If there's any info I can provide that would help, let me know...

This bug is definitely not:
a) ISP
b) OS
c) DROD version (since TCB)

CuriousShyRabbit
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To corroborate what disoriented and Syntax have said here, I've also noticed (since TCB came out last year) that F6 sometimes gets confused. I also posted about it before. It's quite likely that Schik hasn't noticed the random F6 problems because he has healthier habits than Syntax. The longer you play at one sitting and the more F6 queries you make, the more confused F6 gets.

Just now, I clicked through F6 on 5 different published holds (beta holds on CNet have this problem too though) for about 30 different rooms before I got a list of demos off CNet that I knew was wrong. Clicking F6 again brought up the correct list. I think the problem is random, but if necessary, I can post an example list of F6 queries that produced an erroneous list.

Beef Row
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CuriousShyRabbit wrote:
I think the problem is random, but if necessary, I can post an example list of F6 queries that produced an erroneous list.

I get the "There are no high scores for this room" message from time to time. 90% of the time I'm awaiting a high score message that has failed to arrive. My procedure for refreshing these is to reenter the room, hit F6, and even if the scores fail to load, close the demo window again. What place I've recieved generally arrives shortly thereafter, and once it has, F6 tends to function correctly.

In my case at least this problem is much more severe if I have a lot of my bandwidth tied up, but sometimes will happen even when I have plenty free. Its also tied to the lag between rooms that can be associated with CNet at times.

So I don't know if other people are having problems for other reasons, but at least some of this seems to be a communication issue with the server, and if people are getting it even with a solid connection, some of that may be on the Caravel end. This holds true for the JTRH version as well as the TCB version.

Personally, the error where the wrong demos get listed I've only experienced since the spider went buggy.

____________________________
"Now I will repeatedly apply the happy-face rule"

Syntax
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It's not a bandwidth issue... and to save you time, returning to the game and hitting F6 should give you another chance - no need to leave the room.

Schik
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So it sounds like there are two F6 issues:

- It shows the "no scores" message
- It shows highscores from a different room.

The "no scores" thing is probably a timeout - either the DROD server is overwhelmed and returning your query too slowly, or your connection is overwhelmed or spotty. I know there are occasional load issues on the server.

The "wrong room" issue that CSR mentioned... That's very odd, if it's ever consistently reproducible, it'd be great to know how.

____________________________
The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way it treats its animals.
--Mahatma Gandhi

Beef Row
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Syntax wrote:
It's not a bandwidth issue... and to save you time, returning to the game and hitting F6 should give you another chance - no need to leave the room.

Well, I'm usually using it immediately after finishing a room to see where I placed, hence the reentry, to look at my new score.

____________________________
"Now I will repeatedly apply the happy-face rule"

pigletto
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I've seen this as well, but I got the impression that it wasn't random at all, I think that it shows the demos for the previous room you had a demo selected for on the demo list (though I could be wrong).

With this idea, the time it shows 'no highscores for this room' is when you only just came onto the demo list, so there was no 'previous room' to show highscores for.

disoriented
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Schik wrote:
So it sounds like there are two F6 issues:

- It shows the "no scores" message
- It shows highscores from a different room.

The "no scores" thing is probably a timeout - either the DROD server is overwhelmed and returning your query too slowly, or your connection is overwhelmed or spotty. I know there are occasional load issues on the server.

The "wrong room" issue that CSR mentioned... That's very odd, if it's ever consistently reproducible, it'd be great to know how.

I was trying this at 2am last night (darn insomnia) and would get the "no high scores" about 95% of the time I pressed F6. I wouldn't guess that the servers would be overloaded that time of night.

____________________________
34th Skywatcher

Best to PM me, since I might miss your message on CaravelNet chat.

zex20913
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Of course, people do play overseas (wherever you are) as well.

____________________________

disoriented
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zex20913 wrote:
Of course, people do play overseas (wherever you are) as well.

Valid point. I'm in Arizona for what it's worth.

I should note that after pressing F6, the game would display "Downloading Data..." before giving up and claiming there were no high scores. So it could potentially be some sort of a timeout issue.

____________________________
34th Skywatcher

Best to PM me, since I might miss your message on CaravelNet chat.

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[Last edited by disoriented at 04-12-2008 04:38 PM]

CuriousShyRabbit
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disoriented wrote:
I was trying this at 2am last night (darn insomnia) and would get the "no high scores" about 95% of the time I pressed F6. I wouldn't guess that the servers would be overloaded that time of night.

Actually this is when I always experience the server to be the slowest, between ~2am and ~5am Pacific Time. Try it at 2pm your time.

disoriented
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CuriousShyRabbit wrote:

disoriented wrote:
I was trying this at 2am last night (darn insomnia) and would get the "no high scores" about 95% of the time I pressed F6. I wouldn't guess that the servers would be overloaded that time of night.

Actually this is when I always experience the server to be the slowest, between ~2am and ~5am Pacific Time. Try it at 2pm your time.

It also seems somewhat linked to the room in question. For instance: I'm playing Simon's Dungeon right now. Fifth Level 3N and 3N1E never load their high scores. But 3N2E loads fine.

I know that dungeon designers can set certain rooms not to track high scores, but I don't think that's what's going on here.

____________________________
34th Skywatcher

Best to PM me, since I might miss your message on CaravelNet chat.

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[Last edited by disoriented at 04-12-2008 10:33 PM]

CuriousShyRabbit
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disoriented wrote:
It also seems somewhat linked to the room in question. For instance: I'm playing Simon's Dungeon right now. Fifth Level 3N and 3N1E never load their high scores. But 3N2E loads fine.

I know that dungeon designers can set certain rooms not to track high scores, but I don't think that's what's going on here.

I'm sorry, but that's incorrect. Fifth Level 3N and 3N1E are indeed non-highscorable.

You can check this by clicking on the trophy icon under one of your posts to see your own highscores. For Simon's Dungeon it shows that you have completed 109/112 highscorable rooms. If you click on the 109/112 link there, you can see which highscorable rooms you really are missing.

disoriented
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CuriousShyRabbit wrote:

disoriented wrote:
It also seems somewhat linked to the room in question. For instance: I'm playing Simon's Dungeon right now. Fifth Level 3N and 3N1E never load their high scores. But 3N2E loads fine.

I know that dungeon designers can set certain rooms not to track high scores, but I don't think that's what's going on here.

I'm sorry, but that's incorrect. Fifth Level 3N and 3N1E are indeed non-highscorable.

You can check this by clicking on the trophy icon under one of your posts to see your own highscores. For Simon's Dungeon it shows that you have completed 109/112 highscorable rooms. If you click on the 109/112 link there, you can see which highscorable rooms you really are missing.

Hmm interesting... I don't see why those rooms would be singled out as non-highscorable.
In any case, to avoid confusing us lowly Delvers, perhaps the next version of DROD could indicate that "This room is not highscorable" on the F6 screen?

____________________________
34th Skywatcher

Best to PM me, since I might miss your message on CaravelNet chat.

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[Last edited by disoriented at 04-12-2008 10:53 PM]

Beef Row
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wallu wrote:
There are many rooms in released holds which should have high-score but they don't because there were problems with high-score verification and scores were assigned to wrong rooms. Therefore, 1-move demo of a other room has removed high-scores of some rooms. I suspect that that is the reason here.

When the spider is rechecking demos, is it able to reinstate rooms this has happened to? Or is that something for a later repair phase?

____________________________
"Now I will repeatedly apply the happy-face rule"

Schik
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Beef Row wrote:
When the spider is rechecking demos, is it able to reinstate rooms this has happened to? Or is that something for a later repair phase?

No, it's not. Demos that are removed because a room has a 1-move solution are immediately discarded. It's tempting to change that so that things like this could be fixed in the future, but we already have some issues with the number of demos we save.

I can always re-enable high scores for specific rooms that this has happened to (if someone can list rooms that should be scoreable, but aren't), but people would have to start over on the highscores.

____________________________
The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way it treats its animals.
--Mahatma Gandhi

Beef Row
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Schik wrote:
I can always re-enable high scores for specific rooms that this has happened to (if someone can list rooms that should be scoreable, but aren't), but people would have to start over on the highscores.

Once they are fixed, reuploading a demo should work fine, right? So it wouldn't be strictly down to replaying only, though it would tend to purge inactive players from the score list. And it seems like most of the powerplayers on scoring keep at least their best demo for almost everything, so this might not be that terrible overall.

____________________________
"Now I will repeatedly apply the happy-face rule"

Syntax
Level: Smitemaster
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Schik wrote:
It's tempting to change that so that things like this could be fixed in the future, but we already have some issues with the number of demos we save.

Please provide a "donate" option or give me a way to help financially. Sounds like more hardware would be beneficial.

I think the DROD phenomenon, with regards to the online community, has grown beyond what anyone could imagine and thus needs a fresh injection of funds.

Seriously...

Banjooie
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Buy another copy of TCB and give it to somebody?

Syntax
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Banjooie wrote:
Buy another copy of TCB and give it to somebody?

Done... twice.

[EDIT]

And 4 Caravelnet subscriptions.

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[Last edited by Syntax at 04-18-2008 12:33 PM]

Blondbeard
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Syntax wrote:

Schik wrote:
It's tempting to change that so that things like this could be fixed in the future, but we already have some issues with the number of demos we save.

Please provide a "donate" option or give me a way to help financially. Sounds like more hardware would be beneficial.

I think the DROD phenomenon, with regards to the online community, has grown beyond what anyone could imagine and thus needs a fresh injection of funds.

Seriously...

I agree.

Ezlo
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That would be appreciated as well.

____________________________
Call me Citrus.

Beef Row
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Mmmm, I don't think presenting a donate option puts out the right image for a paying software project, especially one that is working on building affiliations with more serious developers and entering into a more professional level. It'd be a nice option but advertising it would probably be a bad idea.

<b>Potential New Customer</b> Wrote: Well, this game looks cool and all, but wait a minute.. they want me to pay for it and STILL expect donations? This looks like sort of a pushy company, and probably financially disorganized. I think I'll pass.

I guess if it was just a little post tucked away somewhere on the forum (like this one) it'd probably be alright, but I wouldn't want to see this up on the DROD webpage.

Merchandise on the other hand, would be cool without risking a bad image (though it would bring in less money, unless had a basement slave make T-Shirts at home or something.)

____________________________
"Now I will repeatedly apply the happy-face rule"

Briareos
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Schik wrote:

disoriented wrote:
- Demos have the wrong move count

These are all related. The source of the problem is fixed, and the symptoms are near fixed as well - I'm trying to match up the last of the incorrectly attributed scores, then in one pass I'll fix all of them that I possibly can.

I wonder - is this supposed to be fixed? Because the #1 demo for 4 West here is definitely wrong - it's listed as 16 moves, but in-game it really is 109 moves...

The same goes for my #1 score for 2 East here, which is much longer than the reported 54 moves. (I've tried having the spider re-check it, so it might be gone soon...)

np: Justus Köhncke - $26 (Safe And Sound)

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

CuriousShyRabbit
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Briareos wrote:
Because the #1 demo for 4 West here is definitely wrong - it's listed as 16 moves, but in-game it really is 109 moves...

The same goes for my #1 score for 2 East here, which is much longer than the reported 54 moves. (I've tried having the spider re-check it, so it might be gone soon...)

I've noticed there were certain days in January where all submitted demos have the wrong movecount. I these days include early January through January 15th. Both demos in Briareos' post were from that time period. Indeed, having the spider re-check them corrects the movecount. (I have already done this with most of my demos from that time in January.)

EDIT: This problem has been fixed. Schik had the spider reverify all demos submitted in January. Thanks Schik!

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[Last edited by CuriousShyRabbit at 04-25-2008 06:56 AM]

NiroZ
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Odd. I *should* have a number 1 highscore for Mysteries of the Deep:Fifteenth level:2N, I mean, my demo clearly states that I've done 56 moves compared to the current 61. But as far as caravelnet knows, I haven't submitted a score in that room.

Hmm, I've reuploaded the score again, but I can't see why this should be happening in the first place.

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[Last edited by NiroZ at 05-07-2008 08:10 AM]