Herkey jerkey games today/schedule issues over the last month

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Admin
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Herkey jerkey games today/schedule issues over the last month

Post by Admin »

We had a few leagues with schedule issues today, more than usual.

As most of you know, we've had issues with quarters not playing on time (really, not all games completing for a week) for the last few weeks. When it happens in the 1st quarter it's even worse because games come to a halt until I can fix them.

Last night I caught one of these in the logs that made me suspicious that the game was trying to over-allocate memory on the server. Basically, it reserves the largest possible database packet to send as much play by play to the server in one packet as possible. If you've been around since the beginning, you may remember that games took about 20-30 minutes to run for each league, where now they run in seconds.

I believe an update to the server software increased the maximum packet size so the game is now overallocating memory. So I put a fix in to reduce the amount of data that can be stored in the buffer before getting sent to the database

In doing so, I triggered a bug that has existed for 8 years but never actually been hit before: Games halt if the play by play stretches over two packets.

It was a dumb bug but as it was in a section of code that had never actually run it went undetected for ages. I fixed the bug but it took a couple of tries this afternoon, and some games were delayed up to a half hour and at least one league ran a quarter early.

I am very hopeful that now that this issue is fixed, games will start running smoothly again. I've also put some changes in place to autodetect certain problems and recover from them. On the Beta side I am rebuilding database access from the ground up and refactoring the mammoth playWeek function, which of course takes time but will be worth the effort in a game that is more reliable for you and easier to work on and add features to for me.

I try hard to present a game that is reliable and fun to play. On this occasion I've missed the mark by a fairly wide margin. I believe the issues are solved and I apologize that your game experience in the last few weeks has not been up to par.

Chris
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Ironmen
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Re: Herkey jerkey games today/schedule issues over the last month

Post by Ironmen »

Yeah...

In my next-to-last regular season game against New England in the Lambeau League, I was losing 21-8 after the 1st quarter, when it went
"Herkey-Jerkey" and froze.
I had scored a TD and made the 2-point conversion.

When the schedule restarted, I was now losing 21-3, with the TD long gone and replaced with a 20 yard FG.

Now, in the first round of the playoffs, the 3rd quarter is supposed to start at 4:30 EST, according to Lambeau League rules.
The 3rd quarter has already run, so, who knows if anything at all is working the way it should.

All Premium League owners take note.

Fabulous...
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Re: Herkey jerkey games today/schedule issues over the last month

Post by Admin »

Yes, the fixes I put in did not solve the problem.

Unfortunately, if a quarter doesn't complete properly, the game has to back it out and run it again, because if it ends prematurely everything in memory related to the state of the quarter is lost.

What may be required is moving the site to a different host. I doing everything I can to get things back to normal. Once we are, I'll figure out the amount of disruption we've had and make sure everyone is credited for the inconvenience.

Chris
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Ironmen
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Re: Herkey jerkey games today/schedule issues over the last month

Post by Ironmen »

That's curious, the game having to back out and run again.

In my game against New England, they lost nothing- everything stayed identical, same 21 points, scored the same way.
Only my team's scoring changed- from having a TD and 2-point conversion to now only having a FG.

It would seem something caused only my team to get singled out for the score change in the game.

Astounding...
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Re: Herkey jerkey games today/schedule issues over the last month

Post by Admin »

Each game involves elements of random chance. Some will play out the same way, some won't.

But it's not the first time a customer has accused me of rigging the game against them, nor will it be the last.

Chris
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