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[HELLTRIKKY]

Maybe tad fast.

Thanks for doing the animation.

the frame-rate can be easily changed in game maker, so thats not a big problem.

No problem 

[MedO]

Reason #143 why I hate Game Maker: no multithreading.

The Game Server currently needs to lookup the Lobby Server IP on a regular basis (every 10 minutes at the moment) since the IP changes once a day. That shouldn't be much of a problem, but the lookup is blocking, i.e. the game can only continue when the lookup is complete. The normal solution in a decent language like Java would be to start a new thread for the hostname lookup, but there's no easy way around it for Game Maker.

I'm tempted to just leave it as it is for now, since a DNS lookup shouldn't usually take very long and I don't think this is the cause for the freezing problem still existing. But if you have any idea how to solve this, or have a server with static IP to host the Lobby Server on, please let me know.

[patonki]

Okay, a real quick one now, and I think you can see it.

Also includes: Rawkits and reaload animations!

Raw:


If I'm up to it: Dispenser!

[mildmojo]

The Game Server currently needs to lookup the Lobby Server IP on a regular basis (every 10 minutes at the moment) since the IP changes once a day.

Could you reverse its behavior?

The game servers must connect to and register themselves with the lobby server at startup, right?  Add some sort of unique hash to this process, then have the lobby server periodically connect back to each game server as a special client (using the hash to screen out J. Randoms), updating the stored lobby server IP address.  The game servers might need to connect back to the lobby server to update their own addresses if they're not hosted on static IPs, too.

That should take name lookups right out of the equation, except for the initial game server startup.

[MedO]

The Game Server currently needs to lookup the Lobby Server IP on a regular basis (every 10 minutes at the moment) since the IP changes once a day.

Could you reverse its behavior?

The game servers must connect to and register themselves with the lobby server at startup, right?  Add some sort of unique hash to this process, then have the lobby server periodically connect back to each game server as a special client (using the hash to screen out J. Randoms), updating the stored lobby server IP address. 

That should take name lookups right out of the equation, except for the initial game server startup.

Good solution, I'll probably do it like that, thanks. As for the rest of today's update, I'm getting ahead quite well and have already fixed a severe bug that could have caused the networking to misbehave. My quest to remove all potentially blocking calls from the server code continues...

[IDTL]

Feels good man.
And yes, you can get outside the map.

[MedO]

New Version! The only blocking call still executed regularly in the server code is the hostname resolution for the Lobby Server, and this will soon go as well. The Server doesn't accept more than 100 Bytes per client and frame now, which means flooding the server with data wouldn't freeze it either. It would really be great if this release finally gets rid of all major networking bugs, but the way things have been going the last times around, I'm only carefully optimistic. Please test and report.

Binary: http://www.uni-koblenz.de/~smaxein/gg2b17.zip
Source: http://www.uni-koblenz.de/~smaxein/gg2b17_src.zip

*checkin*

[andykd7]

Since noone is hosting a server is there anything special that I have to do to my firewall to host?

[MedO]

You have to forward a TCP port to your PC. You can choose the port you want to host on in the options menu of the game.

[[SS] Olivil]

We're currently playing with NO problem what so ever with 6 users online, I think you are there MedO (unless its a fake one) Thanks for the update

EDIT1:And I have to say its much more smooth!
EDIT2:After around 15 mins with 10-15 person and no problem, I can say it's much more stable and smooth
EDIT3:Froze a minute after my EDIT2, froze with 11 person online after around 15-20 mins
EDIT4:Froze on server restart, after 4 minutes and 14 person online

[IDTL]

It's WAY better now, I think the only thing that keeps happening now is just the negative FPS thing.
It just starts going into the negatives and never stops.

[patonki]

Is anyone taking medic and sniper balance issues to note? There are some good suqqestions here.

[Vaati]

Mirrored, also I can confirm the freezing issue is occuring again.

Log:
Freeze at 12 people
Freeze at 9 people

[[SS] Olivil]

Mirrored, also I can confirm the freezing issue is occuring again.

But it run smoother And we don't get any Unexpected Data anymore, its just straight freezing and that's a good thing

[MedO]

Yes, that was me . I'm glad it's running well so far. If this keeps up I'll get around to actually improving the protocol, there are still a lot of open issues (for example, when someone takes or caps the Intel, this is not explicitly stated by the server, so clients might currently disagree about where the intel is and even how many points each team has).

The number in the upper right is not an FPS counter, it was a debug display I forgot to take out in one of the earlier versions. It was meant as a lag display, but it's not working well for that purpose. If the number is steady the game will probably play smoothly, if it changes all the time it will feel jittery, but apart from that you can ignore it (especially its absolute value). I'll probably take it out again or replace it with something useful.

[MedO]

Mirrored, also I can confirm the freezing issue is occuring again.

Log:
Freeze at 12 people
Freeze at 9 people

For how long does it freeze? And is there any rhythm to it, like every 10 minutes?

[Vaati]

Right now we're at 13 people and it's going just fine. First freeze was within 5-10 minutes and the second one happened under 5. I'm thinking it's something that a player does that triggers this?

[[SS] Olivil]

Right now we're at 13 people and it's going just fine. First freeze was within 5-10 minutes and the second one happened under 5. I'm thinking it's something that a player does that triggers this?

I agree, it froze 4 times, with playtime varying from 5 mins to 20 mins with 4 to 20 people.

[dmeskis]

medo, could you please start using b14? its a LOT more balanced.

[MedO]

For how long does it freeze?

medo, could you please start using b14? its a LOT more balanced.

I'm quite occupied with fixing the networking at the moment. If you want the balancing of b14, feel free to add it yourself or convince the original "modder" to do his changes again in the current version.