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Threads posted:
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Off-topic Plug: How do machines learn?
I just saw this video on YouTube about AI, what it is what it isn't and where it's going, and as a comp sci geek who work on decision making systems for the Australian resource industry I think it deserves to be plugged and seen by everyone! Enjoy and perhaps discuss? - :
webDip phpBB3 forum
Could someone do me a favor and see if /contrib/phpBB3/ is working for them? (i.e. are you logged in and able to post messages?) - :
Trialing the upcoming new forum system
The new forum system is up and running, and we're ready to let users onto it to test it as we transition to it from this forum.
Probably best if you respond there rather than here, but I guess it doesn't matter: - :
Instability / locking issues
Hi all, see within for details about recent downtime - :
Abortion ethics
A tragic case in the news at the moment, I'm interested what people think about it:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-28619390 - :
Team changeover
FYI to help things tick along better we're changing up the team structure a bit, details within - :
Reliability ratings
A post on a vDiplomacy feature we're porting back to webDiplomacy; reliability ratings - :
Forum mod issues
Hi all, just writing about some changes to the mod team structure and welcoming back some extra help: - :
webDip game message confidentiality
Hi all, want to know how people feel about a request I got from a grad student researching international conflict.. - :
3/4/2013 downtime explanation thread
Apologies for the downtime, an explanation & details are in this thread. - :
Server upgrade
Thanks for everyone's patience during the server upgrade, for some reason it took them three hours, so it took much longer than I expected. I've added time to all games, if anyone spots anything out of place let me know.
On the bright side once this has settled down the server should have more capacity.. - :
webDiplomacy 1.3
Hi all, released webDip 1.3, which actually doesn't contain any new features but makes the code easier to translate for developers. I'm deploying it here so it gets a good bug test before I release it, so please let me know if you spot anything odd or experience any errors.
(The next release will contain new features) - :
Processing time reset
Hi guys,
I've reset the processing time, and added 24 hours to all games. Apologies for the inconvenience. I'll add this issue to my automated warning system so that I'll be able to respond more quickly next time.
Regards,
Kestas - :
Downtime
Apologies for the downtime. The web server's logs were taking up a huge amount of space, so the database had nowhere to write to.
24 hours have been added to all games, except short-phase games which will have been paused. - :
Disk space issues
Details on the disk space issues, which caused a freeze on game processing, within. - :
Male / female pay equality
I just read an article on the BBC, basically someone got sacked for saying women in New Zealand get paid 12% less, but it's because they need more leave (in particular he hinted at women's menstrual cycle as causing regular sick leave in some women).. - :
webDip 1.03 feature additions
A couple of new features for the forum; thread muting, and post likes - :
Cache errors
It looks like people have been getting errors, we're still trying to figure out why and get things going again, apologies for the downtime if you were one of those affected - :
Donator icons
Hi guys, I added the donor icons but there were 30 or so people who donated with a different e-mail address than they're using here. If you should have a donor icon but don't e-mail me at [email protected] telling me which e-mail address you donated with.
Thanks again to all who donated, we've just got the 2 year lease for the dedicated host, and everything seems to be going well :-) - :
Downtime info
The database was down for ~1 hour 30 minutes. I've added 3 hours to games to compensate.
The downtime was due to an automatic mysql update script but no script to restart the mysql service, which I've now added in. Apologies for the inconvenience - :
webDip 1.01, user muting
Details on the new feature and version 1.01 inside - :
Tetraplegic man's life support 'turned off by mistake'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-11595485
Just saw this.. very, very disturbing.. He was concerned enough about it to set up a camera in his room and write to the NHS about it, he was aware what was happening as it got turned off, and he got severely brain damaged.. - :
China's medical ship reaches Kenya
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-11560193
What do you think? - :
Stuxnet worm hits Iran nuclear plant staff computers
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-11414483
Whether or not you approve this is pretty awesome. It must have been a *huge* undertaking to develop this, I say this as a computer security enthusiast of many years - :
webDip development
What should be the main things to work on, hoping that in 2-3 weeks I'll have some free time to do so? - :
Code update
Details on a code update, brought to you mostly from Sleepcap, inside. Post any bugs you notice in here! - :
Putting the recent time extension debate to the test
After the recent debate on how much time should be extended by I'm eager to put it to (a brief) poll; how much time should I add to games? Right now it has been about 1.5 hours since the server went down, how much time should be added? - :
First new US nuclear plant in 30 years
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/02/16/nuclear-energy-and-a-clean-energy-future
Long overdue or an unwanted return to a dangerous power source? I'm interested in polling people here about the (perhaps inevitable) return to nuclear power, there has been passionate opposition in the past but it does seem to be decreasing - :
World Map variant issues
I'm hoping this will be an empty thread that'll just sink, but I'd like people to let me know about any issues they've come into with the new World Map variant. I've updated it with fixes once and am wondering if anything has been found since. - :
Help me choose the default variants
A poll is running on forum.webdiplomacy.net to select the default 3 variants which will run here and be included by default with webdip:
http://forum.webdiplomacy.net/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=463
Voting does require a forum.webdiplomacy.net account, but the poll runs for 14 days and at the end of it if enough votes have been gathered the top 3 will be added as default variants to webDip. - :
Obama unscripted
I had to share this, a Q&A session where Obama takes unscripted questions from his political opponents. It really feels like a window into the reality of American politics that cuts through a lot of the nonsense, definitely worth watching:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=oBuG2TdgMn0 - :
Guantanamo Bay
So an inquiry found that there are ~50 people there which cannot be released, but cannot be trialed. What now? - :
0.98 update
This update fixes up some World variant links, and makes some minor changes to the map that make things more efficient and look slightly better (no more wonky order-fail-red-cross)
But as always there may be bugs, though this is a fairly minor bug-fix release so hopefully not, but let me know here if you spot anything - :
Game #18437, a distinctive number for a distinctive game
Join gameID=18437 to help me test out the first variant running via the official variant code
There may well be bugs, but we'll iron those out as we go - :
0.97 code update <- Bug reports here
Variant *support* added to the code (variants are not yet enabled though). More details and info on posting bug info inside - :
Best decade ever?
It has to be, and by a larger margin than usual too. Life expectancy, economic development, technological and scientific advance, it's all looking up. If you look past unfortunate events and special cases to the big picture it's hard to be anything but optimistic
Anyone want to rain on my parade? Anyone else feeling optimistic? Happy new year either way - :
Code update
Details on a couple of code changes inside. Please report bugs in here rather than making a new thread - :
NMR auto-pause rules
A thread for people interested in discussing the rules under which large numbers of detected NMRs should stop a game processing, to stop accidents happening - :
Multi-accounting report e-mails
Just a note to those of you who have reported multi-accounters but not heard back yet; the mod team currently has a backlog of multi-account e-mails, but all info is logged so bans can be made in future and the multi-account detector code is going to be made much more automatic, so the pressure can be taken off the mod team. - :
@Australians: What do you think of Abbot?
With the ETS and the environment practically being Turnbull's expertise I was surprised it was on this he got swapped out. Abbot has admitted he hasn't even finished a global-warming skeptic book, let alone the IPCC reports, yet amazingly Liberals are up in the polls!
Is this jump just global-warming skeptics switching (most likely a dead end, unlikely to get a majority), or does anyone here really recognize Abbot as a better leader than Turnbull? - :
A favor from a US citizen?
If you're a US citizen who feels like doing a favor for a few bucks check inside please! - :
Code update
Updated some code to make things better suited to live games. Now when a game needs to be processed or votes applied it should happen immediately, and should also be able to retry a few times before crashing in the (increasingly common) event of a crash due to server overloading.
But updates mean bugs, so report problems you encounter here. - :
Rename "Unit-placing" "Builds"
Yay or nay? - :
EU raises objections to Oracle Sun takeover
Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I'm positive that whatever Oracle may say their intention is to stifle MySQL development, as with InnoDB and BDB. But Sun is failing (perhaps helped along with Oracle looming over it like the grim reaper), so if Oracle don't buy it who will?
(FYI MySQL and InnoDB are the database tech that this site runs on) - :
Order JS running again
Details on the third revision of the orders JS/auto orders code - :
JS orders code update
Info and bug reports on the next JS orders code update - :
Anyone speak Swedish?
Browsing Wikipedia I read that one of the founders of The Pirate Bay was implicated in a robbery of a primary school, and his blood was found at the scene of the crime. The source is in Swedish though, thought I'd try my luck and see if anyone could translate the relevant parts?
http://www.realtid.se/ArticlePages/200901/20/20090120115505_Realtid725/20090120115505_Realtid725.dbp.asp?sAction=lk - :
New order entry code
The new order entry code thread; what it is and what to do if you notice a bug. - :
Live game tweaks
webDip wasn't designed for live games, but now that we have them how can webDip host them better? - :
Microsoft Security Essentials
In a nutshell its a free anti-virus from Microsoft, just moved out of beta. A slimmed down version of OneCare, and its getting good reviews. Hopefully now Symantec will finally die
http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/ - :
Update
Some new features added from a patch jayp sent in, hopefully variant support too in a while, details and post bugs inside - :
Small code update
I've been getting 0.9x ready for release now that the bug count is starting to decrease, with comments and optimizations, see inside for details and to post bugs. - :
The inserting orders problem
After an update optimizing order caching and getting 0.9 ready for public release there was a bug in the footer code. When any bug gets detected all changes are rolled back in case the bug caused any data corruption, which in this case rolled back valid changes to orders, which meant orders didn't save any submitted changes.
The bug has now been fixed, and next phase times have been extended to ensure no-one misses their orders because of it. Thanks for reporting the problem - :
2 bugs fixed
A points allocation bug, affecting people who go over 18 SCs, and a bug where votes (including unpause votes) would be ignored if the game was paused - :
Procter&Gamble sells drugs division
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8219340.stm
They're selling their drugs division because of competition from generic drug-making companies, could this spell a huge scaling back in drugs R&D, and what are the ethical implications? - :
Health care reform
I'd like to hear some US opinions on your health care reform (more inside) - :
Request thread
Are there any bugs that are still around that I've missed? I think IE is still having problems with the chatbox but other than that the bug reports are slowing down.
And what are the small tweaks you'd like made? I'm hoping to start on 0.91 in a few weeks and I'd like to know in advance what needs changing. Things have settled down enough that I think people can give a reasonable list of things that are genuine annoyances and not just knee-jerk anger at change. - :
Bugs
After collecting a good haul of error-logs over the last few days I've been able to fix a few problems that have been occurring: - :
0.9 released
0.9 is out now, it addresses a fair few of the common gripes and requests that have registered over the last few months, adds some new interface elements, and makes a couple of small rule changes - :
"Depth charging"
@El_Perro_Alto: Please don't do this. Cleaning it up just takes a copy&paste of a query, but until it's cleared up it wastes the time of people reading the forums, because they can't see what posts are actually updated.
The next version has code to prevent "depth charging", but I'd rather not spend time writing anti-dumbass code so use some common sense - :
Home page help
I'm trying to figure out what info to put on the home page for the new version, and it has had me a bit stumped for a while. It needs to display things like game notices which you now receive, PMs, plus a brief summary of the games you've joined and links to your recent/unread forum posts, plus some stats perhaps
If you could design a phpDip page that tried to summarize all the parts and tell you what was happening on the server, what would it look like? - :
Watch the launch
Anyone else watching the launch? Looks like it's gonna go ahead
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html - :
The Ashes
Anyone else watching? Any predictions?
England definitely recovered well from their terrible start, but if they're leading now it's not by much. A solid partnership here would be a big problem, and we're not bowling well at all at the moment :-( - :
Google Wave
Google Wave: http://wave.google.com/
Future of online communications, or another Jabber/XMPP? - :
Windows 7
Anyone else get the Windows 7 RC today? I'm impressed so far, some useful changes, and a free year of ultimate edition is nice:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/default.aspx - :
Sun/Oracle merger
My mind is blown; this totally came out of nowhere for me. Now Oracle owns all MySQL and InnoDB (the database system phpDip, and most sites across the world) run on, as well as Java, plus Oracle owns BDB too, some very smart (and scary) acquisitions.
The two companies couldn't be more differently run, and now I have no idea what direction they'll go in
Any tech followers got an opinion on this pretty big news? - :
Bernanke on 60 Minutes
It was a good interview, a breath of fresh air from the masses of people crying socialism and calling for the gold standard. A lot less of a puff piece than the Greenspan interview
http://www.mininova.org/tor/2385000 for those outside the US - :
Happy Australia day
Happy Australia day to all the Aussies out there :-) Hope you're all enjoying a beer & BBQ - :
Update on the recent bugginess
What is causing it, which games were affected and how, and what was done to fix it are inside
Bottom line is I think the problem is now sorted, and the affected games should now be back to normal - :
Unitless map bug details
Details on what happened with the unitless map bug are inside - :
9999999 points problem
Details on the 9999999 points thing - :
Opinion on different map colors
I'm interested to know what people think of these colors, which apparently more commonly used on real boards these days:
http://pd.7kill.com/board.php?gameID=3 - :
Energy
(Summary) Where should the world get its energy from? - :
Downtime
I think we went down for a while, so I added 2 hours onto all the games. I'll post the response to the support ticket when I get it :-(
In a future version it'll detect when there has been downtime and delay processing, so no-one will miss out on turns. For now hope no-one missed out, apologies if you did - :
To Linux users:
They're giving out free copies of Crossover Office today, fyi
http://lameduck.codeweavers.com/ - :
Monetization via distributed processing ?
After the trial a week ago distributed processing seems to be a potentially effective way to monetize the site without irritating ads or premium accounts. It's not as lucrative, but it is better and more consistent than donations, and it would still provide an incentive for me to work on the more mundane coding which I'm otherwise not interested in
I think most people would gladly trade some (otherwise unused) CPU usage while playing to see further development on the site (and perhaps leave their browsers open as an alternative to direct donation).
But I'd like to hear from those who experienced crashes a week ago, it was the only negative aspect of the trial and it seemed to only be a small subset of Firefox 3.0.1 users, so hopefully it can be resolved and I can go ahead with it - :
Playing in games with friends
What should the rules be? From the moderators perspective it's difficult to distinguish between friends playing in games together and multi-accounting, but there aren't any actual rules on friends playing in games together and this is a valid complaint from people who get banned for playing with friends.
Making a rule against pre-determined alliances is impossible to enforce, so how should this be handled? - :
Password reset screwup
I was resetting someone's password when I screwed up a query, resetting everyone's password to the same thing. As luck would have it my local web server has screwed up thanks to an update which means I can't load the passwords from backup yet.
If you registered in the last few days unfortunately I don't have your password backed up, so you'll have to e-mail me at [email protected] so I can e-mail you a new password
Sorry for the inconvenience - :
Power choices
napthali has developed a feature which has been requested for a long time back, which could let people get their favorite powers more often. Aside from checking the code and merging it in all that remains is testing, but before merging it in I'd like to hear everyone's take on it, so there are no nasty shocks when the code is merged in.
If you could register test games and test accounts etc at http://cynicalpanda.com/dip/ , and let us know how you find it, I'd be interested to hear feedback.
Remember it's a test installation, so you're not committing to games created and you can create multiple accounts. - :
How did you find us?
I can't get the ball rolling :-( but were you searching? (for what?) friend? link? forum? usenet? sourceforge?
I've posted links myself on rec.games.diplomacy, and there's a sourceforge/freshmeat project page, but I get the impression most have come from other places - :
Dreamhost slow
Dreamhost are having some file server issues, so the site is a bit slow at the moment. Hopefully it'll sort itself out soon - :
Multi-accounter
Kangaroo, canute, TinTin, Careless, mapleleafrulz, russianwinter, fucka, newton, aliencity
Feels good undoing all those points gathered and accounts created over 6 months in less than 10 minutes :-) It's like kicking down an asshole's sand castle - :
Downtime
The server had some downtime and was rebooted, it should be back to normal now - :
New code from Facebook -> 0.81
We've completed the code merge with Facebook phpDip since they updated to 0.8, so now everyone gets the best features from both, I have less work to do when bugs happen, and more than twice the number of people enjoy the same code
We got a couple of nice features out of it too which Chris added to his ex-fork;
- Pagination for games listings, so you're not restricted to a limited number of games on the page
- Flexible phase lengths, so you can choose to play with 1 phase every hour, or 1 phase every 3 days. (This has been called for for a long time, not my favorite idea in the past but it seems every phpDip fork adds it so there must be something in it. Hell has froze over, I've eaten my hat, etc)
Kudos to Chris at Facebook - :
Dealing with the MySQL 5.0.45 bug
The bug we dealt with a few days ago is causing problems for people who are stuck on 5.0.45 (Facebook Diplomacy), and we may be updating back to 5.0.45 ourselves in the future.
So I'm going to be adding some code which I hope will work around the bug, but there may be problems with it so let me know if you notice anything wrong. I've tested it at home on reprocessing many games and running the DATC tests and it seems to work, but there may be issues which weren't encountered.
I've taken a backup but the sooner I hear about any problems the better. - :
The bug
Hi guys, clearly there's a major problem.
I've paused the gamemaster while I figure it out. It looks like all the problems being posted relate to the TerrStatus table not updating correctly, which affects builds, and orders which depend on the territory you occupied.
Sorry about this, but this may require moving the database back a few hours because this has messed up a lot of games. - :
Errors / slowness
I've contacted Dreamhost support about the internal server errors and slowness, hopefully this won't be a repeat of the recurring problems we had a year ago :-( - :
Changes
The largest change in this release is the developer documentation and extra comments, which I haven't fully uploaded yet, but there are also a couple of bugfixes:
- Italy/Germany civil disorder was mixed up ("Italy civil disorder" got Germany)
- Points on draws weren't split evenly, now they should be
- The DATC tests were broken, they're now fixed
- The intro and start view was using the old map colors, now they're up to date
- There's now a static front page, which I was told would help the search engines
- The incomplete order error finalization bug when joining a game should be fixed now
- Games with passwords should be joinable using the form
Keep your eyes open for any bugs I may have introduced. I'll give it a while to see if any new bugs crop up before releasing to sourceforge and freshmeat.
Hopefully the new documentation which I'll be releasing the rest of soon, and the new forum for developers to coordinate on, will help others maintain and possibly improve the site.
Regards,
Kestas - :
The end of my role in phpDip development
I'm planning to move on from phpDip for a couple of reasons (mostly, in short, realizing my code had been plagiarized made me realize phpDip has achieved what I wanted it to)
Please read this notice: http://phpdiplomacy.net/roadmap.php
Thanks,
Kestas - :
Deleted 3 new topics on the US
Why not find something else to talk about? Are these anti-american threads supposed to make me hate America, or hate loud-mouthed, obsessive anti-americans? - :
Downtime
There was a lot of downtime today; Dreamhost moved one of their clusters and lots of their main servers to a new datacenter, and a router problem went with it, causing ~10 hours of downtime. But games were still processing, because the servers were only inaccessible from the outside, and phpDip runs the process scripts by itself. This means games may have processed before people had a chance to post orders
So this leaves me with 2 choices;
- back up to 7 hours ago (from the time of this post). This will probably mean most games won't have been processed, but people may have a chance to see the results of orders that were entered, and change their orders accordingly
- Carry on; this would be better if there weren't many people who couldn't make orders, as it would result in the fewest problems with people seeing orders etc
Sorry about this, on Dreamhost's behalf, they have been making a lot of mistakes recently but they are the most stable hosting I can afford. In a future update I'll add a feature that'll allow the game processing script to recognize when the server has been down, and stop processing games - :
The outdated map problem
I think I finally got to the root of the problem: The code was saving pre-determined map folders, so that it wouldn't need to check that the game's map-cache folder exists over and over. It used a static variable to do this, and I thought a static variable's scope would be limited to a single object's initialization. Turned out the same map-cache-folder variable was being used by other games too, and static variable scope is global
So game ID 1234 would wipe its maps successfully, but gameID 1235 would be processed right after that, and would try to wipe its maps from 1234's map-cache folder
Now that has been resolved I think maps should always be up to date from now on. - :
Games getting stuck
The games getting stuck was occurring due to something that was left from my debugging at home: phpDip games are automatically recognized as crashed when processing fails, but during debugging this just means you need to unset the "Crashed" marker constantly. I left this on, so the same game was getting reprocessed and crashing over and over.
I've fixed this, so games that aren't crashing should begin processing again.
Other bugs also seem to be occurring. Yesterday I noticed a bug to do with character collations with returned ENUM values, which were messing up coast/non-coast conversions. The fix I applied for this may be to blame, I'm currently downloading the database so that I can debug locally, where I can set breakpoints to see exactly what's going wrong.
Again, remember this is beta software; the bugs in the new release will clear up quickly. Thanks again for helping with the beta testing and putting up with the problems, I'd never be able to debug phpDip so thoroughly without your help. - :
The map
As many have been pointing out the map is pretty ugly, this is because I wanted to get the code up and didn't spend long tweaking things.
But now that it's up and people can look at it and think about it; how would you draw the map?
There are three problems:
- Contrast; the orders need to contrast well with *all* of the country colors. A failed order needs to be easy to tell from a succeeded order
- Space- when many orders apply to the same place, or when two units are attacking each other, it should still be clear what's going on, and all orders should be distinguishable. You need to know what the move is, where it came from and what it applied to, and whether or not it succeeded
- Code performance; The most obvious first thing to change is to make those blocky, pilexated orders nice and smooth, but doing that means that the map would use more than 256 colors, but that would make the map use far more memory than it can use. - :
The GameMaster tab
Some people are asking for it back, or asking why it was removed:
- First off removing it means there is less text to be translated, and making translation easy is something that I want to do wherever possible
- The gamemaster output was directly from the old adjudicator, which was completely rewritten. The old gamemaster performed simply operations like "Make all the convoys being attacked unable to convoy", and so it could send the user messages about what it's doing. Now the gamemaster script performs operations like "Does the convoy have path status?->Is the convoy being dislodged?->Are there any attackers?->Do any have an attack strength greater ....", and this recursive algorithm can't really give clear messages about what it's doing.
The map should now have all moves drawn to it, you should be able to tell exactly what has happened during a turn by looking at the large map. (The small map doesn't contain all unsuccessful orders though) - :
Missing unit placing orders
The bug was in the update code, which didn't create new unit placing orders.
All the games where were in a Spring, Diplomacy phase, but had players with more supply centers than units, have been moved back by a turn and had the unit placing orders created
If your game moved on to a new phase after Spring, Diplomacy, but you were still affected by the bug, let me know and Ill try and manually insert your new units - :
phpDip 0.8
Finally got 0.8 out. The largest change is to the adjudicator, which has been rewritten and is compliant with the proper rules. Retreating from coasts, supporting convoys, self-dislodgement, etc, are all resolved now.
The orders code has also been changed, it'll fill in your choices when you only have one option, and it uses less server resources.
The map has also been re-done, and now all types of moves are displayed to the map.
There are winner-takes-all games now, but I get the feeling people are getting used to the normal system anyway :-) I haven't heard any winner-takes-all complaints for a while now, but it's there anyway.
There are two things that I wanted to do, but didn't have time for: the moderator CP, and game listings efficiency improvements, but I'll be able to add those in soon.
As the message above says this is new code, for the first time in years, and lots of it, and there will certainly be bugs. Please post any bugs you find into this thread, or a single thread for them, so that they don't fill the whole forum (I am expecting a lot)
Thanks for beta testing phpDip, especially to those who were around testing the previous releases and know that we're in for a bumpy ride while the code stabilizes again :-) - :
Downtime
phpDip had about 2 hours of downtime today, because Dreamhost made a typo in their core router config. The games have been set to have 2 hours more time - :
Forum troubles
I'll be brief because I've written this before:
- A user was spamming obscene posts after being warned
- While deleting the second post I accidentally deleted all the replies to existing topics
- Dreamhost's automatic backup system didn't work, so I needed to mail them to ask them to do the backup manually
- Meanwhile I banned the spammer, and his 4 alternate accounts
- When the backup finally appeared the existing forum table was deleted for some unknown reason, and instead of merging the rows which I deleted into the current table I needed to move the old backup table into place.
- What this means is: Some posts and replies have been removed, sorry about that, but one multi-accounter and spammer is out of the way. - :
Rules on swearing etc
Do not make posts which aim to offend people, or constantly use swear words. All it does is annoy people, and force me to spend my time cleaning the forum.
Please use some common sense, I shouldn't have to enforce the rules when they're just basic courtesy. - :
Offline period
phpDip was offline for a while, I'm not sure how long. Just as I was posting a support ticket it came back online though.
I'm going to delay next process times by 10 hours, in case anyone missed their orders.
In case anyone was wondering if the update was being applied; when the update is applied there'll be a days warning, and a message posted to the site letting you know that the site is being updated. - :
News on the update
A couple of weeks ago I said I wanted to have the update out by now, and its still not here.
Basically I decided that if I was going to update the adjudicator it would be pointless to spend time fixing problems in an adjudicator that would need a rewrite to work properly, so instead I decided to rewrite it now instead of waiting until the next version
The new adjudicator passes every DATC test, which means phpDiplomacy has a real adjudicator for the first time, but it still needs more testing and profiling to make sure that there won't be problems when I add it in.
Loads of stuff has been changed and improved, but there are some places where things are incomplete or untested. I did leave myself 1 week of extra time to finish things off though
So the good news is that the update features changes that I wasn't planning on including until 1.0, the bad news is I can't update the live code today - :
Status report on 0.8
It's Australia day, a nice occasion to recap on how 0.8 is going. But I'm going to include it inside of a thread so it doesn't take up too much room. - :
Opinions needed on private games
Should they be completely closed to the public, or should they be viewable?
At the moment you can't see any info other than the game's summary, but sometimes people want to view a game being run by others but which is private, eg in tournaments.
Would anyone be against letting everyone see the map in private games, even when they're not a member?
If you have another suggestion it can't include extra game configuration options, I don't want a checkbox saying "Make this private game viewable? [Yes/No]", and it can't include things like having an extra password to view the game. - :
Opinions needed on draws
First off; how is the pot split in a draw? Do players each get an equal slice, or do players get a slice depending on how many SCs they have?
If they get an equal slice that would encourage players with more SCs to try and get rid of the smaller players before drawing the game, and make draws more likely to only occur in the event of real stalemates. If they get a slice depending on their SCs that might be considered more fair.
If there was some kind of automated way of voting to draw a game would approval from all players be needed, or would it only need votes from players representing, say, 60% of the supply centers on the board? If it required everyone's vote the larger player might veto the draw vote to try and wait for the other players to get bored with the game and let them win.
If you have other ideas please make sure they're simple and don't require each game to be configured with their own drawing rules - :
Future changes
Lots of complaints and so on that are repeating themselves, and some things that I should probably clarify so everyone knows which complaints I've taken on board
In the next release of phpDip there will be adjudicator improvements, and also these to address the more common complaints:
- The ability to choose whether a game is "winner takes all" or "points per unit", or "no points"
- Abandon game button (it would encourage game dropping without the points system, but with the points system it makes sense)
- More compatible chat-box CSS
- Moderator status, mods can ban users and see possible multi-account signs, and draw games
- Some kind of forum change to make it more organized and clear
I'll addd this to the FAQ when I get a chance - :
Code changes
Two small code changes: Draws have been made possible, but they do need to be done manually
Also corrupt orders should now be recognized and wiped automatically, without causing problems beyond displaying a message saying an order was corrupted and wiped.
Both of these code changes are small hacks, draws need to be implemented more coherently and without requiring someone to draw a game by hand, and orders shouldn't be corrupted in the first place, but hopefully they'll do as a stopgap solution until I can fix them properly - :
Code change: points system
Finally got around to adding the points system.
There's a section on how it works in the help section, let me know if parts of it aren't clear enough. [ http://phpdiplomacy.net/points.php ]There's also a ranking of the top 100 users with the most points. [ http://phpdiplomacy.net/halloffame.php ]
The numbers that are next to our names are the number of points we have.
The way the starting points was worked out was by assuming that the amount bet on each game is the amount of the person with the least points in the game, divided by three. This isn't totally fair, because if a single inexperienced player joins a game the game's pot is worth a lot less, but I had to decide on something.
The edges are a little unpolished, because I couldn't spend long on it (it's study week and I had a couple of days spare), but it should be a step in the right direction.
It's also the largest code change in quite a while, so I expect there will be bugs. Let me know if you notice anything odd. - :
Small code change
Added some functionality that'll let me verify these constant claims of people being the same player. It'll now be easier to know for sure whether or not two people really are the same player or whether they're just cooperating closely.
However as with all quick new code there may be bugs, so let me know if you see anything unusual. - :
MAO -> Spain (South coast)
Is this move allowed: MAO -> Spain (South coast)
http://phpdiplomacy.net/mapstore/1222-1-6-smallmap.png - :
Optimization
I've optimized user sessions, it turns out row locking and updating an InnoDB takes way longer than it should. Theyre now memory based, and a few other small changes to make it less database intensive.
This may well bring in some new bugs though, so let me know if you see anything odd, and if you're having troubles logging in tell me at [email protected] - :
sid cookie set to 0 error
A problem that has been turning up in the logs a lot recently was a logon bug that has been fixed. You may have been logged out momentarily when I applied the fix, but that should be over now.
If anyone can't log in let me know at [email protected] - :
Test
Testing some optimized code that seems to have caused some errors for people posting. - :
Test
Testing some optimized forum code that looked like it caused a few errors - :
Optimization
Made an optimization to some forum SQL, the first of a few optimizations that will limit the extra load on our MySQL server. - :
Downtime
Sorry about the downtime. I haven't e-mailed everyone to tell them it's up because we're not fully up yet. I'm *still* waiting for a reply from support, and it doesn't seem like the speed problem has improved, but by having the site online at least I can keep an eye on the speed.
At the moment it looks like I'll have to move hosts *again*, which is getting very annoying. - :
Downtime
There was some downtime as I tried to speed things up by removing some clutter from some tables. Not only did it not speed anything up, I also screwed some data up in the process. There was a brief window where you may have entered orders or messages and they have been erased since they weren't in the backup.
Apologies, if things continue to be slow I'll send another ticket, and see if anything gets done :-( - :
*Danger* New locking scheme
I think recent errors can be traced back to problems with MyISAM REPEATABLE READ transaction mode and the way it takes a snapshot and confusingly reads SELECT statements from the snapshot but reads SELECT ... LOCK IN SHARE MODE from the latest version and not the snapshot.
It's changed to READ COMMITTED, which will hopefully mean that SELECT statements always get the latest thing and not a snapshot.
This may make things more stable and root out that elusive recurring bug, but more likely knowing my experience with locking it'll wreck the whole database. I've taken a backup, let me know if you see anything strange. - :
phpDiplomacy & swearing
People are allowed to swear, but not for the sake of swearing or offending.
If you have a complaint about a user e-mail me at [email protected] , posting it in the forum isn't constructive. - :
History is back
History has been re-implemented, so now you should be able to look back through your games. Older members will remember the old version of history, I think this way is much less cludgy.
Let me know if there are problems with different browsers, there are bound to be some. (If you know JavaScript and can submit a patch that'd be great, I don't have Safari, Opera, <IE7 or <FF2) - :
Database server offloaded services
Dreamhost got back to me and told me they had offloaded some services from the database server phpDiplomacy uses. This should hopefully mean things will go back to being quick again, finally. - :
Changes:
figlesquidge made a couple of neat changes which have taken me way too long to merge in:
- You can now select whether to build fleets in the north or south of coastal territories
- The game now ends when you have 18 supply centers, not 18 units
Good stuff :) - :
Slowness
Dreamhost is having some tech problems at the moment, and the site is very slow as a result, hopefully they'll sort it out soon - :
AJAX disabled
I got a complaint about the AJAX, which I have to admit I saw coming. So it's disabled until it has been optimized - :
FYI: Downtime 8am GMT+0
Server will be down for 4 hours or less starting 8am GMT+0 tomorrow, game process times will be moved forward before it goes down. - :
Moving.. again
I'm wasting more money fixing problem after problem than it costs to put phpdiplomacy.net into the hands of professionals, so I decided to splurge on some relatively expensive hosting at dreamhost.com, which is well known for stability and generally being a premium host.
Sorry about this, I really hope this is the last move phpdiplomacy.net has to make.. - :
Code changes
I've fixed an issue with game joins that was pointed out earlier, and Alex (not sure what his alias here is) submitted a cool patch which updates the game notification box and chatbox tabs, so when a user comes online or when a game changes you won't have to refresh before it becomes apparent.
There were some other updates here and there, which I can't remember exactly what they changed, so let me know if anything is out of place. - :
Moving again
Hi, unfortunately phpDiplomacy.net is moving again, but this time it's controlled and should be much smoother, and the person running the place we're moving to actually knows what he's doing, and who was generous enough to host phpdiplomacy.net for free.
I'm hoping this will be the last move necessary before things finally settle down
I'm just arranging the DNS stuff, and once phpdiplomacy.net resolves to the new place I'll copy the database over from here. It should hopefully be pretty seamless, hopefully you'll only notice the change because of a sudden lack of database issues :)
May take 0-2 days - :
Hectic 24hours
Long story short:
- I went to fix a bug and upload the files, but found a file I hadn't put there that turned out to be malicious
- I reported the malicious file, but for some reason there was a mix up and they thought I had put it there
- I had a discussion with an administrator and we eventually got it all resolved
Sorry about that, it should all be sorted out now *fingers crossed*
All process times have been increased 24 hours - :
Tricky decision
I've finished working on 0.75, I'm just going to be testing it a bit today and tomorrow.
The problem is that I'm going away for a week tomorrow, so I won't be able to tackle bugs as they crop up.
0.75 has lots of new code so is likely to have bugs, but because of better structuring 0.75 is less prone to problems because they're more effectively isolated, if there is a problem it'll be isolated to that game, or user, etc.
But 0.72 has been around longer and so is much less likely to have bugs crop up, but if a bug does crop up it makes the whole site inaccessible.
Just giving everyone some advanced warning so they know what happened if the site is inaccessible for a week starting the day after tomorrow - :
Bug
It looks like for the past 3-4 hours there has been a bug in the pregame code, which resolved itself as I went to fix it somehow.
In 0.75 the gamemaster is separate from the main script, and bugs in games are isolated and allow other games to be processed, so hopefully bugs which bring the whole thing down will be a thing of the past
Sorry for the inconvenience - :
0.75 Todo list
Okay, holidays are here and I've got around to phpDiplomacy on the todo list. Here's the todo list in order of priority:
- Get rid of the annoying refresh on game pages
- Improved communication, too many people are playing without discussing strategies, which I think is due to the poor messaging system. I'm going to try and improve this so more emphasis is placed on communication
- Game listings, these aren't ideal, games which didn't start because there weren't enough players clutter things up, and games which you were defeated in are still listed in "Your active games"
- Unit creation locations, you can currently create a unit anywhere that you have a supply center, you should only be able to create them in your starting supply centers.
- Retreats, you can currently only retreat to places that you "occupy" (in the sense that you were the last player to occupy that territory), but in the game the restrictions are that the province must not have had a standoff, and the province must not be where the attacker game from. You cannot retreat to these places at the moment, but you also cannot retreat to places you should be able to retreat to.
- Standoffs, at the moment standoffs make the standoff territory unoccupied, and if the territory is a supply center it will belong to no-one. Who occupies the territory shouldn't change after a standoff
- Self dislodgement, you can currently dislodge your own units, but you shouldn't be able to
These are the biggest problems with phpDiplomacy atm as I see it, hopefully I'll be able to sort them out for 0.75
If anyone has any other requests which are fairly small or that you think are important, let me know here.
Regards, - :
SQL locking bug
The bug in the post below, and the bug which was posted about today, I am pretty sure was to do with the locking code.
This is the code which I'm using at the moment:
list($success) = $DATABASE->sql_row("SELECT GET_LOCK('".zeroseventwo_."_gamemaster', 5)");
if ($success == 1) {
$DATABASE->sql_put("BEGIN");
require('gamemaster.php'); // Process any games which require processing.
$DATABASE->sql_put("COMMIT");
$DATABASE->sql_put("SELECT RELEASE_LOCK('".zeroseventwo_."_gamemaster')");
}
I think it should guarentee that only one thread can process a game at a given time, but it wouldn't be the first time I've been wrong about locking so I'd appreciate any input if anyone has experience with this.
The database is in the state it was in around 27 hours ago when the first bug cropped up, MGAM3 has been removed and any moves made after 27 hours ago have been undone.
Sorry about this, hopefully this will sort it out, thanks for your patience,
Kestas - :
Unit created for a unit which doesn't exist
There was an error message being recieved for a while there. Unfortunately once I started debugging it, only making changes which help me pinpoint the bug, the bug stopped happening.
The bug has something to do with the order management code or unit placement code, as lots of the recent ones have been, and I'll definately be giving all that code a thorough look through before the next version. Thanks, - :
Downtime
Had some downtime earlier today. My host updated a piece of software which replaced a configuration file which made MySQL try to access the wrong database.
I'm looking at moving to better hosting, the people I'm with (siteground.com) are terrible. If anyone has any suggestions I'm all ears. - :
Bug
Fixed a bug today at 1:19am GMT+0, someone placed a series of unit placement phase orders which destroy the same unit. In the query which detects this I used $ORDER->id, when I should have used $ORDER->orderid
Should be fine now, that was probably the longest phpDiplomacy has gone without a bug :) - :
For those that say that terrkey id = 0 error:
I saw it too, it's an order validation problem and I'm trying to find the bug - :
Welcome!
Welcome to the maintenance release 0.72.