Server maintenance information

[Kazenawa]

Hi to everyone,

I haven't the knowledge to do it, but i wondered if it would be possible to make something like a general announcement when some maintenance will soon be executed on the server ?

I think that something like this would avoid people to try to reconnect everytime while maintenance operations are executed.
It would also inform players that it's not really useful to try to play during it.

[Frost]

What sort of announcement do you suggest? I always announce in the game at least 10 minutes before a restart.

[2012-07-19 15:08:03] 009-1.gat(51,38) Frost's Homunculus(2212851) : @broadcast Server restart in 10 minutes.
[2012-07-19 15:08:54] 009-1.gat(51,38) Frost's Homunculus(2212851) : @broadcast This is to fix a quest bug. You'll also see new updates for some smileys and such.
[2012-07-19 15:13:46] 009-1.gat(50,38) Frost's Homunculus(2212851) : @broadcast Server restart in 5 minutes. No data loss, or your money back!
[2012-07-19 15:18:30] 009-1.gat(50,38) Frost's Homunculus(2212851) : @broadcast Finish that Fallen and Sever that Scorpion. The restart is upon us.

[Kazenawa]

It was because i've never seen such announcement (i certainly wasn't here when you made it), and i recently felt some big lags, in amplitude and in duration.
First, i thought it was my connection, but i asked some people and actually it seemed to be for everyone.

Sorry for disagreement, now i know that you announce it.

Thanks

[Frost]

It was because i've never seen such announcement (i certainly wasn't here when you made it), and i recently felt some big lags, in amplitude and in duration.

I've seen some big lags too, but those are not created by someone doing work. In fact, I almost never find a cause for the lag on the server itself. (I look at CPU usage, memory usage, disk space, and I/O rate.)

I suspect the main cause of lags is over the Internet, though sometimes lots of animations (spells and monsters) on the screen can cause the game client to overload my computer's processor.

[Kazenawa]

I've seen some big lags too, but those are not created by someone doing work. In fact, I almost never find a cause for the lag on the server itself. (I look at CPU usage, memory usage, disk space, and I/O rate.)

By the way, what kind of computer do you use to host the server of a game like that ?
I installed a local server on my netbook (as it's explained on the wiki page Set Up Own Server) to see a little more how the game works.
It runs pretty well even considering my computer's performance, but that's probably because i'm alone on it.
I doubt that a netbook can host the main server for example, no ?

I suspect the main cause of lags is over the Internet, though sometimes lots of animations (spells and monsters) on the screen can cause the game client to overload my computer's processor.

Maybe it can be due to inconstance of internet connection ?
Real, the game is laggy especially in Candor (almost unplayable for me), where there are a lot of animations.
But i can't really know if it's because of the weak performances of my computer or of lags on the server.
Perhaps a mix of those two reasons. Next time i'll have a look at system-monitor to know.

[Kazenawa]

I have found out that it helps to close all windows in Candor. I close chat, minimap, party and shortcut window. Without them the client has less calculations to do and can recover much faster from internet lag.

Hum interesting, thanks a lot for the tip, i'll try it

[o11c]

I've seen some big lags too, but those are not created by someone doing work. In fact, I almost never find a cause for the lag on the server itself. (I look at CPU usage, memory usage, disk space, and I/O rate.)

By the way, what kind of computer do you use to host the server of a game like that ?
<...>
I doubt that a netbook can host the main server for example, no ?

tmwa is surprisingly lightweight, though parts of it are quite inefficient. As long as the total number of characters in the database is smallish (I'd guess it starts taking effect somewhere between 1000 .. 10000), and the total number of online players is less than 100 or so, and there aren't too many players/monsters on a single map, then the primary limitation is going to be latency (not bandwidth, except perhaps indirectly).

However the client is often inefficient, especially if you have graphics settings set to high on a low-end computer.
Also, I don't know exactly which client it was, but I remember a freeze of about a second if it has to load a different music file, so it may also help to disable sound. (I have often said that audio processing is the only scenario in which I would use threads. Unfortunately, launching even a single thread makes the process less efficient because libc doesn't know whether it might have to synchronize, so it might be worth using a separate process, even though in general processes are more expensive than threads).

One of these days I'll mess around with the client, but I have uncountably much work to do on the server first.

Real, the game is laggy especially in Candor (almost unplayable for me), where there are a lot of animations.

I have found out that it helps to close all windows in Candor. I close chat, minimap, party and shortcut window. Without them the client has less calculations to do and can recover much faster from internet lag.

It might also help if you just disable transparency.

[Kazenawa]

Ok, thanks a lot for all these advices