pbem hosting hell!

Mordante · #1 June 14th, 2001, 02:55 AM

Hmmmm, epic pbem game conclusion, large fleet battles, thousands of fighters ...

Just how long could it take the hosting program to produce a set of turn files from a complex endgame battle across many systems with thousands of involved ships?

I ask because I have just returned from setting SEIV to do the hosting (taking 2 hours to watch a DVD) and still returning to find the progress bar on 72%!

The program appeared to be working still - the mouse moved, the hd light kept flickering but the progress bar did not appear to have moved from where I left it.

Could this take days?

Personally, I suspect the fighter defence stack bug which could create multiple redundant pointless combats with fighter Groups unable to hit each other.

Any hints on how to speed up hosting?

Any word on the patch (to resolve the fighter issues)?

Ah well, leaving my laptop to labour on overnight to hope the hosting will be done in the morning....

Gimboid · #2 June 14th, 2001, 03:06 AM

Perhaps u should try Play-by-Web?

it makes the turn processing so much easier, particularly with a larger number of players spread out over many timezones.

At the moment it only works with Version 1.30, so that doesnt help u. But later Versions should work with the system, and the fighter problem should be resolved by then.
http://seiv.pbw.cc

Aussie Gamer · #3 June 14th, 2001, 04:44 AM

We did one final battle, we had decided that one player had won already. We got 5 fleets of different empires together and let them fight it out.
There was 50+ in three empires.

It took along time to do the roll over, not as long as you though.

The bad news is that I could not watch the reply as it would say that it had an addressing problem.

Jubala · #4 June 14th, 2001, 09:20 AM

The replay aint worth much anyway since you don't see damage taken by the ships. It would also be much better if you could step from ship to ship in every turn and see exactly what it does and not as it now with ship after ship going at it with no control by you until the turn ends. And a better combat report in the log wouldn't hurt either. A table with ships killed, captured and damaged sortable by size and design would be good.

Mordante · #5 June 14th, 2001, 12:10 PM

.... well, the host program is still running ... 8 hours and counting - the computer still responds, the mouse moves, the hard-drive whirrs, but the message still shows 72% complete!

Mordante · #6 June 14th, 2001, 02:42 PM

The task list in windows me does indeed show the program as not responding - but then, it shows that even when processing a turn which does later work. In this case I have tried selectively ignoring player turns and with a couple removed the hosting process does end after around 40mins (in the interim the symtoms are as for whole hosting process). Running the turn on an NT server with tonnes of memory shows the SEIV task at 100% usage at 72% of the process.

If the host program can't be run at this point then what? Abandoning a pbem game after 102 turns because of the processing overload is a bit of a bitter pill to swallow.

I suspect that fighters are the cause .... hundreds of mini-stacks fighting other mini stacks with 1% hit rates and multiple redundant combats ... would explain the length of time it is taking.

Does anyone have a reason to suppose the host program is unstable and wouldn't be able to continue working after 8+ hours btw?

Regards

Suicide Junkie · #7 June 14th, 2001, 02:43 PM

quote:
If you check the task list it will probably tell you Se4 is not responding

WARNING: a "not responding" tag can very easily be a false positive.

"Not responding" will show up if your application does not draw to the screen for 60 seconds or so. If you time it right, you can see NR tags when SE4 is between turns (easier to find when using a slow machine).

Mordante · #8 June 14th, 2001, 02:53 PM

like i said, the "not responding" thing is pretty common whil e processing my current game. At some stage in the process the completed percentage always waits a few minutes (presumably while combat or something is resolved) - I am assuming that in this case the (now) 11 hour freeze on 72% is actually doing something ... there is certainly hd access still ... question is, how long could this take theoretically?

Something I guess only Aaron could really take a stab at?

Nitram Draw · #9 June 14th, 2001, 03:12 PM

Wow thats a long time. It would be a shame if it wouldn't process, sort of like reading a good book and finding the Last chapter is missing.

dogscoff · #10 June 14th, 2001, 03:42 PM

Prhaps you could upload the file and let someone els (not me!!!) with a faster (or at least different) machine have a stab at it - unlss there are scurity issues, it a vs human game.

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