Cantr II is not currently available. How bad is it?

[Chris]

I suppose if someone ponies up a few thousand dollars for a new server and offers to pay the difference on the monthly service charges, then the game'll be set!

What are the current server specs? If it is an old machine, someone might donate a used computer that is more up-to-date.

Isn't it true that in the past, more people were playing, yet there was less lag? So game changes since then are the difference, right?

[sanchez]

Doug, be honest here about your own contributions, and be careful you don't work at peak hours, making the game unplayable for everyone else. It's been horrid lately.

[Doug R.]

Sanchez, my contributions are minimal and transient. I work when I have the time to work, and I wouldn't expect any other staff member to stay up until midnight just so they don't slow down the server by accessing the tools. There are too few staff members as it is, and expecting staff to work around such a bizarre schedule is ridiculous.

The 99.5% of my animal work revolves around excel spreadsheets compiled from the RD animal emailings, which has nothing to do with the server what-so-ever. To blame me for the problems is absurd.

Yes, I spent a part of the weekend seeding Treefeather. Yes, it took me multiple hours because the GUI I was given to do it easily broke. Did I slow down the game for anyone else? Possibly, but I don't know. Why did I do it then? Because that's the only time I had to do it. How many users, on average, were online while I was working? 25-30, about as slow as the game gets. How often have I done this? About once every three-four months.

The fact is the game has outgrown the server. Period. I know you like to blame me for everything, but this is moronic. You should know what you're talking about before calling out people publicly.

[sanchez]

I find it offensive that you've posted in this thread without admitting it before.

[Doug R.]

From now on, I promise to check in with you and get your permission every time I want to do my job. That goes for all the rest of the staff too, make sure you check in with Sanchez first!

Get over yourself.

[sanchez]

It's not me, it's every player who wants to log in and can't because you make them wait. I know you don't cause all of it, but you should be honest about what you are doing.

[Doug R.]

While we're being honest, I'll also point out that once I month I cull a significant number of animals in an attempt to at least temporarily improve game performance. But this isn't really about what I do and don't do, is it? You'll never believe anything I say, so arguing with you is pointless. Go back to your fantasy world.

Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving.

[SCUBA]

I would like the system of animals back as it was before individiualisation. All it has created is more RD work and more lag. Cantr should not have any NPC´s, but now it has millions. Hunting before individualisation was as all other things very quick. Now it at the best, takes 15-20 secs. As I understand it, the individualisation was made mostly to make it possible to tame and domisticate animals. That would be as easy possible without a enormous animal life simulator. They moved before, hunting on roads was easy and the problem with more than one animal of one kind wasn´t there until idividualisation. If animals is not the major problem of lag, it is at least a part of the problem. So please! Put it away. It is much more important to reduce the lag as much as possible to attract more players, and keep the players that are still around. Cantr needs more players not NPC animals.

[Antichrist_Online]

Going back to the old system would be a good idea. Also it would be polite if lag is going to be caused to atleast send a message with approximate times to the players so we know in advance or at least why.

[Doug R.]

Anti,

I have no idea if the animal tools cause any lag. I frequently log into my account while I'm doing animal work to reference game maps, etc, and I've never had any problems doing so. The only animal tool where there is any delay on my end is the animal seeding tool, and the only reason I had to use that tool is because the tool Marol provided me with broke. Marol's tool is highly efficient and takes seconds to make changes, and I have never detected any lag while using it. I also have no intention of seeding any more animals until Marol's tool gets fixed.

Since I don't have the ability to send in game messages, and since I don't plan on when I do Cantr things (I do them when I find I have the time), there is no way for me to send in-game messages that I will be doing things that -might- cause some lag. The PD has tools that access the database more I do, and the worst lag I have ever experienced always happens when I'm not doing any RD work at all.

The point I'm trying to make is that all departments have access to tools that interface with the database, and these tools are being accessed all the time. Any call to the database will take up server resources. In fact, I think the most lag-inducing thing on the server is this forum, and no one seems to be proposing a forum boycott. Do you know how long it takes for me to make a single post here? I don't appreciate being singled out in the manner I have been as the primary culprit, simply because someone who detests me found it to be a good opportunity to take a swing at my nose.

SCUBA:

There are currently around 500 thousand animals, not millions, and there haven't been millions for some time. I have been privy to ProgD discussions regarding going back to the old animal system, and, in a nutshell, it's simply not possible given the staff compliment and will never happen. The surgery required to extract the code and revert is too extensive.

Animal individualization is a tax on the system, yes, but there are also millions of individual items being tracked separately by the database. Is there really a good reason why every shield, weapon, or tool has to be individualized? Animals are processed 4 times a day. How often is item rot and decay calculated? Animals, rot, land movement, sea movement, project incrementation, database backup, staff report generation, daily eating, forum bandwidth, and just all the database accesses generated by the players themselves by simply playing all interact to cause the lag. There are not enough hours in the day to do all these things separately, so processes overlap.

Jur did an extensive analysis of server lag, and the two things that he conclusively pinned down, the animals and some database errors, were fixed to the best of the ability of the staff to fix them. Now, as I understand it, the lag is not something that can be efficiently addressed with further system optimization (ProgD, feel free to correct me. I'm operating on old information).

The game has grown beyond the server's ability to handle it efficiently (my opinion, not a fact as I said earlier, but I'm willing to bet on it). According to the outdated financials, the server costs $99 a month. A high-end dedicated server now costs over $250 a month. If Jos is still paying $99 a month, Cantr's operating on a bare-bones server. If Jos would be willing to provide up-to-date financials, perhaps the players could help the situation by having a fund-raiser for a better server. I wasn't being flippant when I suggested someone pony up cash.

[Chris]

In fact, I think the most lag-inducing thing on the server is this forum

There are several free forum hosting services. I don't know the pros and cons of using a free forum. Maybe the ad revenue from forum banners would be lost? As a user, I can't tell any difference between the free forums and the self-owned ones.

[sanchez]

Doug, why do you take it so personally? It's true that in PD, even more than RD, we can generate lag, but none of us would do a game-killing text search in notes, for example, unless it was an emergency, and never at peak hours. I just think you should not post in this thread complaining about lag when you only play one char and you make choices to use tools you know cause lag at times other people want to play. I don't care your excuses. You choose to break the game. Maybe you don't see so many people logged in during the times you are working because we Can't, not because we don't want to....

[SekoETC]

This smells like a flame war. There's always lag, if people were supposed to avoid adding new things into the game when there's lag then there would never be a suitable moment. Adding stuff is far less heavy than searches or updates. But true that if more stuff is added then there's also more stuff to process. If 500'000 entries are processed 4 times a day, that sounds a lot. But most likely it's not just the animals, it's a sum of many things.

It could be deterioration. I wouldn't be surprised if there were more deteriorating objects than animals in the game. Even if deterioration is counted only once a day, it could cause a lag. And since the condition of an item is only cosmetic until it crumbles, time-based deterioration should be removed altogether from objects that wouldn't be destroyed in say 100 years irl if left standing around (this would go for everything that doesn't have organic-based parts). That would remove some meaningless calculations.

Who knows if Cantr is even going to survive another 100 years? And what does it matter then if items have deteriorated realistically, if the animals have found some sort of internal balance when there are no more players left to observe these things. Someone ought to check average population per location on Cantr island, it might give a good example of the current status of the English language group. Or other language groups for that matter.

[Wolf]

People will whine about lag no matter what, and everyone apparently knows better than those behind the scenes what causes it, and suggests to undo this-and-that, revert so-and-so to how it used to be back then-and-then.
Yet nobody ever dares to suggest to only make Cantr accessible at certain times of the day to cut back on lag, or to cut back on all those fancy iron shields rotting (I'm imagining I did not read a few key elements in the previous few posts here), or on the ability to even make an iron shield.
Think about it, folks, if we can't set up all those gazillions of fancy projects which need to plug into the database, we'll see a drop in lag caused.

Also, I don't know the database server's situation in the field of qwhat I'm going to say, but my own experience is that as soon as I set up a mysql database server, even in a closed environment, there were outside attempts to access that server from isp's all over the dang world.
So -if- something like that also happens with the database server which is used for Cantr, then chances are that it also adds to the lag.
Can't pin that on anyone working behind the scenes, or anyone involved with Cantr.
Yet you don't see too many posts where people groan about how scriptkiddies and wanna-be hackers are causing lag, it's always "Change this, change that", and some time after the change it's "Change this back, change that back" because of lag.

[ichi]

Until recently, I only noticed the lag during peak times (when 100+ people were online). I could avoid the lag by making my moves during the offpeak. However, now I'm getting bad lags during the offpeak (when 30-40 people are online).

It's not the players causing the lag. It's the animals. Or the decay. Or some other automatic process. Or all of the above.

I bet that if every player quit the game, we would still have lag.

It's ironic. Individualized animals, decay, etc. were introduced to enhance the playing experience and make Cantr more attractive. Instead they are ruining the playing experience and making Cantr less attractive.