[ancardia.ath.cx] "Kill all user processes" option to be removed due to misuse

[sorear]

Hello. It has come to my attention that certain people are accidentally pausing connections, thinking they need the kill processes and delete saves command, and then complaining that the server eats their games. To prevent this from happening in the future, I am going to remove the kill processes option from the menu. I cannot stress enough how much it frustrates me, as a programmer, that people attempt to work around issues and hide them from us instead of telling us so that we can fix them. jaakkos also says that certain people are creating secondary accounts because their main accounts are stalled; this is even worse because, in addition to making proper server maintaince impossible, it adds additional load to the system. Would people please talk to us and tell us what's wrong instead of hiding things from us?

I have opened this thread for all server issues, but primarily ones that people used to be using "kill all processes" for. That option is going to go away soon.

Thank you, the management.

P.S. If I seem a bit unhappy right now... don't take it personally.

EDIT: jaakkos has combined the PR function with the old kill function, we'll see how this works. Sometime later I'll look into making backups work; now that we have logs that's a lot less abusable.

[Soirana]

personally i used that option twice. Both times game crashed and was freezed on crash note than starting up ADOM no matter what i did.

Clear sign of good programming Overall most humans do not fancy getting into debate about code and so on when they have easy option to solve this.

[sorear]

personally i used that option twice. Both times game crashed and was freezed on crash note than starting up ADOM no matter what i did.

Clear sign of good programming Overall most humans do not fancy getting into debate about code and so on when they have easy option to solve this.

Exactly, which is why I want to get rid of the easy option. It helps nobody; not the player who loses their game, not the admins who lose a bug report. In my 400+ games on ancardia I have yet to see a single actual ADOM freeze; everything else has been one of a couple server issues:

- SAGE gets very confused when levelups and skillups are not perfectly matched, ie after maxing all skills or at level 50+, and sometimes starts eating keys. Workaround: SPACE (this is in the readme)

- The XOFF scroll-lock function, which as of today is disabled for player terminals.

- Crashed spectators; this always goes away in a few minutes, and won't be an issue once the spectator system is replaced.

If you would describe your problem in more detail I might be able to fix it. I don't need to debate code with you, or anyone except maybe jaakkos.

[gut]

> I have yet to see a single actual ADOM freeze;

One time when I was spectating you, didn't you mention that your
game crashed?

Anyway, long ago I registered the name 'gut', but due to lag issues,
couldn't use it. Please feel free to delete it. Also, in my optimism,
I recently tried again, this time with the user name 'gutt', because I
forgot/lost my original password when I changed computers. I still
have the same lag problems though, so please delete that one as
well. Would be wonderful though, if I could somehow reserve the
username 'gut', without eating any system resources.

???

: )

[sorear]

> I have yet to see a single actual ADOM freeze;

One time when I was spectating you, didn't you mention that your
game crashed?

It got better in a couple minutes.

Anyway, long ago I registered the name 'gut', but due to lag issues,
couldn't use it. Please feel free to delete it. Also, in my optimism,
I recently tried again, this time with the user name 'gutt', because I
forgot/lost my original password when I changed computers. I still
have the same lag problems though, so please delete that one as
well. Would be wonderful though, if I could somehow reserve the
username 'gut', without eating any system resources.

An account, not logged in, consumes almost no system resources. The people I'm complaining about leave an ADOM game running indefinitely because they can't figure out how to resume it and are too lazy to ask for help.

P.S. We have a very simple password recovery process. It's called PMing an admin.

[gut]

> We have a very simple password recovery process

Actually, it's even simpler than that! Jakkos was once on
IRC at a time when I mentioned my password problem to
someone. He offered to fix it, but it wouldn't have done
me any good though, because of the lag...

Still I think it is so awesome that a server exist for ADOM.
Even though I can't play on it, I can still enjoy spectating,
especially durring our challenge game. It has added so
much to the game. I want to say thanks.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

I have used that option like three times, always because the game crashed, but to tell the truth I don't remember the details. Probably I just got a blank screen or an unresponsive screen if I tried to restore the session.

[jaakkos]

Edit: note: outdated information

I believe there may well be situations where you actually need a little force to fix things out.

Anyway, the kill user processes option was now removed and replaced with the following option:
5 - Having trouble? Message the admins (delivered instantly!)

This will deliver me an sorear a message on IRC. It is unfortunately non-interactive. Since we lurk on IRC so actively, this might actually work pretty well, I guess?

We're probably going to have a more sophisticated/interactive system in the (near) future.

[Soirana]

Exactly, which is why I want to get rid of the easy option. It helps nobody; not the player who loses their game, not the admins who lose a bug report. In my 400+ games on ancardia I have yet to see a single actual ADOM freeze; everything else has been one of a couple server issues:

i believe all times i got stuck were crashes due to massive drops on altar.

I actually loved "easy" option. Why i should bother for something else... [no i won't buy your perfectionism as reason.]

[CheatMan]

Adom freezes for me when i play faster than the server. i'm used to playing it in DOS mode, so i go real fast on my keystrokes. Eventually, if i go too fast on my commands, the server freezes.

When it jams, i attempt to hit space a few times nothing happens, i leave it be for a few minutes nothing happens, then i kill the process.

So now, if i'm playing and it freezes, i have to make the server send an IRC notification to server mainteners and pray they're online? If they aren't, that means I can't play for a few hours? And if they are, I have to wait 5+ minutes so they can look into it before they kill the process for me?

I'm sorry, but this isn't convenient at all. I don't want to have to wait several minutes to play. the kill process should still be an available option, just remake it so that it leaves you those bug reports in another location.