Cantr Is Dying. What Then Shall We Do?

[tiddy ogg]

Well, in the last couple of days I've been thinking what once would have been unthinkable - of quitting the game. I don't know what planet Money is on, but for most of us the lag's been absolutely impossible.

[DELGRAD]

Well, in the last couple of days I've been thinking what once would have been unthinkable - of quitting the game. I don't know what planet Money is on, but for most of us the lag's been absolutely impossible.

Yea, really.
4 page loads. 3.6 min, 4.6 min, 6.4 min, 6.2 min totaling nearly 21 min. Just 4 pages. I am seriosly considering quiting as well. It just isn't worth the hastle.

[Theon Stark]

Its really frustrating, this is the most "into" Cantr i've been, enjoying a number of charries and managing to get things done, but i'm starting to fear for their safety and health as its just too hard to do anything with them in the limited time i have online because its so bad now. The dreaded "Cantr II is not available" screen haunts me constantly!

[CantrFreak]

No need to check everyday. Just check, if it works, play. If not, try again in a few hours or the next few days.

[SekoETC]

Lag depends on the time of the day. Like now there is no lag. My guess is the game will crash about 6 hours from now. Oh, we could start taking bets on what time the game will crash next, in the chatroom since people need to be able to check that it was really down when mentioned, then who ever voted nearest gets a point.

Advertizing Cantr as a roleplaying game might be misleading now that people cannot be arsed to roleplay because you can't know when it's going to crash.

[Xanalsir]

Cut back on the number of characters if you must, but don't quit the game entirely. Number of players is vital to Cantr's continued health, and it doesn't take that much to keep track of one character.

[T-shirt]

If it takes nearly 21 minutes to open just 4 pages it does.

[Xanalsir]

Open a different window and work on something else while you wait. That's what I do, and thus it doesn't make much difference whether it takes ten seconds or ten minutes for a page to load.

[Leo Luncid]

I second that opinion.

[tiddy ogg]

It's the active chars that make the game. If I were to cut down to one or two chars from the 6 I currently have, it would be the most active ones... and 10 minutes each to... stop work, enter a building, enter a back room, drop 3 items, pick up 2 items, exit room, exit building, give items to people, speak to them, restart your project...
Must be getting on for 2 hours worth.

If you just set your chars to digging spuds on a 40 day project, then maybe you can do it, but how much use is that to the game?

It was ironic that having clicked "submit" on my previous message, I gave up waiting for it to appear and logged off.)

[psymann]

Open a different window and work on something else while you wait. That's what I do, and thus it doesn't make much difference whether it takes ten seconds or ten minutes for a page to load.

Makes it difficult to have a conversation with someone when both of you are doing that...

Also, say my character wants to do something simple like pop inside and see whether his flowers have grown yet, and each page takes 5 mins to load:

0 mins: click on buildings page
5 mins: remember you can't enter a building until you've left your activity, so click to end activity
10 mins: click back on buildings page again
15 mins: click on my building
20 mins: click on the buildings page
25 mins: click to enter my conservatory
30 mins: click the objects page, but see no flowers
35 mins: click on the activities page
40 mins: click on the flower-growing project, and see what percentage is complete
45 mins: click on the locations page
50 mins: click to leave the conservatory
55 mins: click on the locations page again
60 mins: click to leave the building
65 mins: click on the activities page
70 mins: click to rejoin your project


The number of clicks combined with the length of each page load means that in this example, it takes over an hour to pop into a building and see how much some flowers have grown. That's silly - and it's not always the case that I have over an hour to play Cantr while doing other things. Then I have the choice of getting halfway through that procedure and ending up in a building and not on a project, and fail to do any work on the project until next time I log in and can complete the procedure, or alternatively, I just don't bother. And neither are very good for me or for the game.

If you got the lag down to page loads that took 1 second, and then add a couple of seconds for you to locate and click on the link on each page, then you'd have this:

0 seconds: click on buildings page
3 seconds: remember you can't enter a building until you've left your activity, so click to end activity
6 seconds: click back on buildings page again
9 seconds: click on my building
12 seconds: click on the buildings page
15 seconds: click to enter my conservatory
18 seconds: click the objects page, but see no flowers
21 seconds: click on the activities page
24 seconds: click on the flower-growing project, and see what percentage is complete
27 seconds: click on the locations page
30 seconds: click to leave the conservatory
33 seconds: click on the locations page again
36 seconds: click to leave the building
39 seconds: click on the activities page
42 seconds: click to rejoin your project


And if you added in some interface improvements, such as:
- not needing to leave a project before you leave a room
- automatically rejoining your previous project when you reenter a room
- having an option on the locations page to "leave building completely" when deep inside a building
- combining the Exits section of the location tab with the Enter options on the Buildings page and have them all on one page, and have that page as the one you get when you enter a building instead of it going to the events page
- putting the last eight lines of events on every screen so that there's no requirement to keep checking the events page for the odd event here and there

Then you could cut it down further, halving the time required:

0 seconds: click on buildings/exits page
3 seconds: click on my building, which I enter and am left with the buildings/exits page again
6 seconds: click to enter my conservatory
9 seconds: click the objects page, but see no flowers
12 seconds: click on the activities page
15 seconds: click on the flower-growing project, and see what percentage is complete
18 seconds: click on the buildings/exits page
21 seconds: click to leave the building completely, and am moved outside, and rejoined to my project automatically

And without improving the lag issues, just the interface improvements would save me a lot of time. Saving half of the 70 minutes above would be handy...

psymann

[Chris]

I would really like to see pull-down menus for inventory, objects, locations, buildings, vehicles, etc., and for commands. That way, you could do almost anything from any page. More information would have to be transmitted with each page, but there would be a lot fewer page requests.

[playerslayer666]

so you say cantr is dying.....THEN STOP KILLING IT!

as a video game perfectionist i too am guilty of causing harm to the game by simply having too many good characters. no one wants to play a game that has absolutely no violence ( which is something i never really thought of untill half way into my second account ). here is a solution....when you spawn an evil character DON'T have him ( or her ) kill people. i know that ruins the point of having a bad character but then again if you had a seventy year old succesful town leader with a girlfriend ( or boyfriend ) wouldn't you be pissed if someone kidnapped and killed them for no reason? also wouldn't it create a lot of excitement if you kidnapped a town leader? depending on which town you attack you could have up to 10 or maybe even 20 people after you.

so basically do all the evil things you want WITHOUT ending another characters role and if you get caught surender. they won't kill you if all you want to do is raid and steal stuff especially if you cooperate when you are caught....or maybe they will.

and don't do this for the sake of having a successful role. do it simply for the sake of excitement. if your guy dies so what. you made him ( or her ) simply for the purpose of causing trouble. i did the same thing with a guy called Clepto and he ended up staying alive for a while.....and WOW did his role suck but it was not in me to starve him. he was mainly a wiseass in the end and not much of an evil character.

[frenchfisher]

i did the same thing with a guy called Clepto and he ended up staying alive for a while.....and WOW did his role suck but it was not in me to starve him. he was mainly a wiseass in the end and not much of an evil character.

As town leader, I am pleased you complied with your death sentence.

[Xanalsir]

Or, make a more insidiously evil character. Give him a goal beyond "I want to kill things!" Make him a ruthless conquistador or a vengeful assassin. If you kill someone, but there's closure to it (i.e. killed in epic battle of freedom against tyranny, murdered by an old rival you thought had left town forever, etc.), they won't mind as much.