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

[Cherize]

Wouldn't it seem logical to not implement any more changes until the lag problem is fixed? Adding in more variables cannot be making the problem any easier to solve.

*whispers to Seko* It's the animals.

[SekoETC]

I would propose turning off non-essential functions and seeing if that has any effect on things, kinda like testing for allergies. I don't know if it's possible but first we might have a day when only talking is possible, then restoring all the basic functions one by one, moving on to more complex things.

But there are things that are joined, for example eating and hunger, if eating was disabled then also gaining hunger should be disabled. And if resource collecting/hunting/cooking was disabled, people couldn't produce more food and on some regions they might run out, so hunger could only be restored after projects and hunting. Also moving from place to place and hitting people should be restored at the same time, since otherwise people could either run away and be unstoppable or people not being able to get away when an attack has happened.

[Cherize]

So young, but yet so wise.

But we all know it's the animals.

[N-Aldwitch]

It's just the sheer amount of people connecting to a web server. It's not the right server for the type of game it is.
To further this point, today we stress-tested our school's online education system. Everyone logged on- sure, it was fine, just a tad slow. However, the dramas happened when we started accessing the database (ie logging into courses, making posts, etc). In fact the database crashed.

Hope that information helps..

[tiddy ogg]

It's going to be the death of Cantr unless it's fixed. You can arrange most of your chars' tasks to avoid the regular foul-up times, but these lags now seem to happen at various times, and it's killing RP. Too often has one of my chars made a long speech, only to find the thing has crashed... so they'll stop talking.

[BarbaricAvatar]

I don't care all the new features that have been added over the past year are removed, do so if it will make things better. The core of the game is character interaction and that is completely impossible with the lag.

This time last year i was having great fun with my chars and every day i was having to be careful that i didn't use up all my minutes. Now my chars say just one or two sentences a day because i'm not going to waste 10mins of my life waiting for 1 page to load.
I'm still here keeping my chars alive in the hope that the problems will end soon and this is just a phase, but perhaps i'm clinging on vainly to the personalities i've created. I can't tell if i want to play or not anymore because the game won't let me.

I've given up passing word on the game to others, because what's a new player going to do? They're going to sign up, say something with their chars, not get a reply, hit lag, get annoyed, quit the game and never come back. At least if the game is working properly the impatient new player will have a chance of getting a response before stealing everything he sees. And yes they may quit but if the game works then there's a chance of them giving it another go in the future.

[SekoETC]

Actually Cantr seems to have been working better for the last few days.

[BarbaricAvatar]

Actually Cantr seems to have been working better for the last few days.

Shhhhh.... don't jinx it. Give it a week before saying such things.

[Sicofonte]

Lag kills me.


ProgD efforts are focused in the lag issue.

New implementations regarding the ProgD in the game are minor changes and not affecting the lag.
RD implementations (resources, items, etc) don't affect lag either.


We need programers, with good PHP and database performance knowledges, with time and the will to get involved in the Cantr source code...

[N-Aldwitch]

The main problem in regards to recruitment of programmers is that the Cantr staff only accept in-house programmers.. that's why they basically ignore my staff offers, on several occasions I've offered a few of my PHP programmers. It's NP, for me of course. But for the others..
The other problem is that I was making my own game some time ago, and they're worried I'm going to take the source code.
Oh and history showed that I'm not the most uncheating player.
But that's history.

[Jur Schagen]

Your suspicions are right, this _is_ about the animals. The sheer volume takes processing them into the hours, and that four times a day. As player requests (using the game interface) come on in concurrently, there's a turnaround point where all processes jam up into eachother and all processing bogs down into snail speed, waiting for scripts to unlock tables that don't get finished, and turning to "Cantr is down" pages.

Since animals are an integral part of the game, we can't just turn them off. We have decided to reduce their cycles from four to two times per day for now though - this should result in less lag in the 21:30-23:30 CET interval, which is he most problematic, because both European and American players are online then. Some lag will probably still occur after 03:30 and 15:30 though.

This measure affects the entire animal system (reproduction, travel, attacking, etc), if you see significant problems in-game because of this (in particular, animals getting extinct unexpectedly), please report them here. We are looking to get back to normal animal processing in a few weeks.

This is a temporary measure - we intend to take the animal processing to a secondary database so the regular player processing don't get affected. This requires some substantial programming though, which Chris will take up after his holiday. In the meantime, I will look over the relevant scripts as well to see if I can find any way to optimize them (though don't get too over-excited about the latter - I'm not that good really). Thirdly, we're looking to cap the total animal count (which has risen to about 2 million, while it used to be around 1 million before the lag) in conjunction with RD.

We are very sorry for the problems, but must ask you to bear with us for just a little longer. There will still be lag moments over the coming period, but they should be reduced significantly. Please be patient, we are aware of the problems and looking fo solutions.

PS - oh and hi to you too, hf.

[Valsum]

Thanks, Jur

[Yo_Yo]

Well, not really complaining about it... But it did help me make a character of mine turn in a completely different direction. I guess I want to thank the lag? Wouldn't of thought of that on my own :p

[Doug R.]

I was locked out for about a half hour today. I guess the temporary animal fix didn't work?

[CantrFreak]

I wait like an hour if there is a lag before I log back on. HOLY MOLY! I just realized... the Nationalist Movement! >_> Oh shoot.

I want this thing fixed- pronto. X_X

---DONE WITH SPAM---

Anyways, if it was animals, do Seko's idea in the first few posts. Test it... chech that.

Glad to see this thing is like- I hope, first priority..