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Squishing the beast

Or, Fun with Sync Bugs

By on March 9, 2010 7:10:51 PM from Sins of a Solar Empire Forums Sins of a Solar Empire Forums

psugar

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Join Date 03/2007
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Hi all,

We've known that there's a sync bug out in the wild for quite some time now - we had occasional reports of it after Entrenchment was released, but there was never a full-on sighting, nothing that gave us a method of reproducing or good logs to suggest what the problem might be.  The minidumps that result from sync bugs are usually completely useless, because crashes come from anywhere in the code when you're out of sync with your fellow players.  But things seemed to ramp up after Trinity was released; the majority of the minidumps looked suspiciously like they were caused by desyncing.  We released a special build of Entrenchment to try and help track it down, but it didn't produce enough logs for us to really do much.  

But as usual, a few of the more dedicated Sins players came through for us with error logs and suggestions of what might be causing the problem, and today we managed to isolate and stomp that little mother.  This isn't to say that all sync bugs are gone; there's still a chance that other bugs exist which we haven't yet found, but this was a fairly major one, which could potentially cause desyncs anytime you played a game with a host who had played previously and not shut down.  We'll get the patch out as soon as possible, likely early next week.

A big thanks to anybody who sent us in minidumps and error logs, but especially:

  • Warren Tabada
  • Jordan Rideout
  • Kyle Leppert
  • Landon DePasquale
  • Frank Galati
  • Ben Horsley
  • Quarantine
  • Tristan Halverson

You guys rock.

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March 9, 2010 9:40:01 PM from Sins of a Solar Empire Forums Sins of a Solar Empire Forums

HOLY MOTHER OF....

 

I LOVE YOU IRONCLAD!

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March 9, 2010 10:06:57 PM from Sins of a Solar Empire Forums Sins of a Solar Empire Forums

Awesome 

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March 10, 2010 12:10:27 AM from Sins of a Solar Empire Forums Sins of a Solar Empire Forums

Great!

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March 10, 2010 12:11:05 AM from Sins of a Solar Empire Forums Sins of a Solar Empire Forums

Great!

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March 10, 2010 12:16:50 AM from Sins of a Solar Empire Forums Sins of a Solar Empire Forums

Good job on getting those reports in guys--and go devs!  I love when a plan comes together.

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March 10, 2010 12:24:43 AM from Sins of a Solar Empire Forums Sins of a Solar Empire Forums

The curious, technical guy in me just wants to ask... could you provide a description of what the bug actually was?  For instance, a desync in earlier versions was caused by using the wrong random number generator on effects like missle barrage, which could cause different random numbers to be used on each person's pc.

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March 10, 2010 4:24:02 AM from Sins of a Solar Empire Forums Sins of a Solar Empire Forums

Finaly.

Now u should make an advertisemen campanian: WE FIXED MINIDUMPS WE CARE, COME BACK ONLIE

 so we can get 5v5 every 15 min like in good old time.

 

Especialy in euto TZ, its a ghost town 

this is no troll, get some advetisement about sins online.

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March 10, 2010 9:23:18 AM from Sins of a Solar Empire Forums Sins of a Solar Empire Forums

I agree with Quar.  There needs to be a "Stop playing the AI and get online" push. This game was meant to be played against humans.

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March 10, 2010 10:50:56 AM from Sins of a Solar Empire Forums Sins of a Solar Empire Forums

 

Maybe everyone who is on the Impulse mailing list should receive some sort of a special email titled, "Attention Sins of a Solar Empire Players" with mention that a major desync/minidump bug has been squashed.

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March 10, 2010 2:27:14 PM from Sins of a Solar Empire Forums Sins of a Solar Empire Forums

Quoting Agent of Kharma,
The curious, technical guy in me just wants to ask... could you provide a description of what the bug actually was?  For instance, a desync in earlier versions was caused by using the wrong random number generator on effects like missle barrage, which could cause different random numbers to be used on each person's pc.

When a player leaves the game its possible that all the command information from the other players hadn't reached his computer yet (because of internet lag etc). It continues to arrive at his computer while he is sitting in the main menu or the lobby screen for a few seconds. These commands then get executed and modify his internal state. Thus, if he starts up a new game without first exiting the game completely, he will be in a different state then other players joining the game. The fix was to make sure that he can't receive any more command information from other players once he has quit a game. Easy fix for an incredibly difficult to track down cause.

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March 10, 2010 5:49:23 PM from Sins of a Solar Empire Forums Sins of a Solar Empire Forums

 

What about trying to implement something along the lines of what (I think it was John James) suggested--have the game refresh itself or clear out all game-related data before each new game is started or some such.

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March 11, 2010 3:04:17 PM from Stardock Forums Stardock Forums

Quoting DirtySanchezz,
 

Maybe everyone who is on the Impulse mailing list should receive some sort of a special email titled, "Attention Sins of a Solar Empire Players" with mention that a major desync/minidump bug has been squashed.

Better yet, they should do like Conan and title it "People of Earth."

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