Markshire Rebooted

[Brindisium]

It was very laggy for me today so it is possible this was all due to lag weirdness … but …

(1) it seemed as though I could not attack anything while shifted (e.g. into an elemental). I tried direct clicking and the radial menu. And I tried with two different characters.

(2) Spawns (and combat in general) were happening in a very chaotic manner. Walking up the pass triggered nothing but then when I turned around and walked back down (without leaving the area) I seemed to spawn a boat load. Two boat loads in fact!

Cheers,
-B

[Thrym]

I reset the server this morning around 11:00 EST.

@Brindisium wrote:

(1) it seemed as though I could not attack
anything while shifted (e.g. into an elemental). I tried direct clicking and the radial menu. And I tried with two different characters.

No idea on this one. Sounds like a glitch with the elemental spawn in. I don’t know what could stop you from targeting.

@Brindisium wrote:

(2) Spawns (and combat in general) were happening in a very chaotic manner. Walking up the pass triggered nothing but then when I turned around and walked back down (without leaving the area) I seemed to spawn a boat load. Two boat loads in fact!

Lag can cause time delays in spawning but not increased spawning. I would guess that the regular spawn occurred and a Random Encounter occurred. In either pass this could occur.

I need specifics … area, who was on, who else was near you, where in the area you were, etc. Then I can attempt to replicate the issue to debug it. I can’t see a spot to attempt to troubleshoot this.

[Brindisium]

Thanks for the reply T.

I agree, before anyone investigates it needs pinning down… but something very weird was happening. What made me post is that I don’t remember it being like this in MS1’s previous life – even at the worst lag times. Of course it could just be my memory.

Lets see if there is any corroboration and from it a pattern. Or not.

[Lt. Tyler]

Brind, you have anything in your override folder?

I’ve seen some mentions that certain things in the player’s override can cause lag (which can even persist on the server after the player leaves – I know, seems strange, but people say they have tested it).

Oh, and even after Brind was gone, I had a number of the Foothold NPCs no spawning. Maybe related to that.

[Brindisium]

Good idea LT but no, nothing in override. I jumped in this pm and had pretty much the same experience. For me the server is pretty near unplayable as it is. Shame.

Ah, it seems that the server has crashed now (9pm GMT) – unless you took it offline T.

[Thrym]

I had to install .NET 1.1 and 2.0, so yes, I had the server down for a bit.

It’s up now.

[BoostNJuice]

@Thrym wrote:

I had to install .NET 1.1 and 2.0, so yes, I had the server down for a bit.

It’s up now.

what, do think you can just play with our emotions like this???

😉

[Brindisium]

I’m still trying to understand what is going on. As I write this Durok is in game stood 5 feet away from a hostile Ogre that refuses to attack.

Any debugging info I can give you? I’ll try with a completely new character and see what happens.

Cheers
-B

[Lt. Tyler]

Strange. Doesn’t seem like Ceorlas is having a similar difficulty.

Are you direct connecting?

[Thrym]

@Thrym wrote:

I need specifics … area, who was on, who else was near you, where in the area you were, etc. Then I can attempt to replicate the issue to debug it. I can’t see a spot to attempt to troubleshoot this.

*bump*

[Brindisium]

I need specifics …

area :: Thrym mountains honey valley (but it is no different anywhere else)
who was on :: no one (but Corgano logged in while I was posting)
who else was near you :: no one
where in the area you were :: to the west of the small lake, near a bee hive
character :: Durok
time :: exactly as per my post

LT/T – I am starting to wonder if this weirdness is only being experienced by me because I have been using “old” characters. It was never my intention to RP with them again after this brief trip down memory lane, so if things are fine with a newly created character lets just chalk it up to bit rot and move on. I’ll try next week.

Basically T, if it isn’t an obvious problem please don’t spend any time chasing the issue.

Cheers
-B

[Thrym]

Thanks for the details.

While it’s possible that a character can become corrupted it’s unlikely that just your characters are problematic at the same time. So please do make a new character to see if the problem persists.

I would also like to know…

• Are you experiencing this on other servers?
• Do you run your computer all the time? If so when was your last shutdown? Perhaps clearing the temporary files and such would help under Internet Options.
• Are you using a non-standard port in your game settings? The normal port as preset by the game is 5121.
• Do you have other haks listed in your hak folder then just Markshire’s? If so, have you tried removing them?
• Have you checked your version number? You may be updated to 1.69 but there was a hotfix immediately after they released 1.69 that might not be installed. This can cause issues.
• Do you game on a network that has other gamers who use NWN on it? You could be Ghosting which is where your local port number might be the same as someone else’s on the network.
• Along the same lines, are you running a server at your location on the network?
• Are you using a downloader program like BitTorrent? Basically are there any background programs using the network that might be causing the lag?
• What’s your upload speed? You can check it at any website under the search “computer speed test.” Iathouz had satellite for a period and they had a 20 second latency. Latency = bad for online video games.

I’m sure I could think of a bunch of other details and places to check but we’ll start with those.

[Brindisium]

Hi T, I thought I’d double check network performance. Here is the first thing I’ve found:

Sending ping request to www.markshire.com [24.213.145.100] with 32 bytes



Answer from 24.213.145.100 : bytes = 32 time = 149 ms	TTL=106

Answer from 24.213.145.100 : bytes = 32 time = 148 ms	TTL=106

Answer from 24.213.145.100 : bytes = 32 time = 148 ms	TTL=106

Answer from 24.213.145.100 : bytes = 32 time = 147 ms	TTL=106

Answer from 24.213.145.100 : bytes = 32 time = 149 ms	TTL=106

Answer from 24.213.145.100 : bytes = 32 time = 148 ms	TTL=106

>> Timeout <<

Answer from 24.213.145.100 : bytes = 32 time = 149 ms	TTL=106



Statistics for 24.213.145.100

Packets : sent = 8, received = 7, lost = 1 (loss 12%)

Approximative elapsed time in milliseconds

Minimum = 147 ms, Maximum = 149 ms, Average = 148 ms

Although I’m getting a reasonable ping time (~150ms) I’m getting repeated high packet loss. Sometimes of the order of 25%. Of the half dozen or so servers I’ve dabbled with over the last year this is unique (for me) to the MS server. I am cursed. I wonder if BT have a routing problem. Let me poke around a bit more.

Cheers,
-B

tracert www.markshire.com



Tracing route to markshire.com [24.213.145.100]

over a maximum of 30 hops:



1     2 ms     1 ms     1 ms  192.168.1.254

2    30 ms    33 ms    31 ms  esr6.manchester5.broadband.bt.net [217.47.67.145]

3    29 ms    31 ms    29 ms  217.47.67.13

4    29 ms    33 ms    29 ms  217.47.108.6

5    29 ms    29 ms    29 ms  217.41.173.25

6    30 ms    28 ms    31 ms  212.140.206.226

7    27 ms    30 ms    29 ms  212.140.206.34

8    31 ms    29 ms    29 ms  217.47.67.34

9    28 ms    29 ms    31 ms  manchester-access1-e0.ukcore.bt.net [194.72.2.50]

10    33 ms    34 ms    33 ms  core1-pos0-1-5-0.ealing.ukcore.bt.net [62.6.204.193]

11    33 ms    35 ms    34 ms  transit2-xe0-1-0.ealing.ukcore.bt.net [62.6.200.118]

12    37 ms    39 ms    39 ms  t2c2-ge8-0-0.uk-eal.eu.bt.net [166.49.168.49]

13   108 ms   109 ms   111 ms  t2c2-p5-0-0.us-ash.eu.bt.net [166.49.164.70]

14   111 ms   112 ms   111 ms  166-49-169-26.eu.bt.net [166.49.169.26]

15   112 ms   238 ms   115 ms  ae-2-0.cr0.dca20.tbone.rr.com [66.109.6.164]

16   117 ms   117 ms   118 ms  ae-3-0.cr0.nyc30.tbone.rr.com [66.109.6.29]

17   122 ms   120 ms   122 ms  66.109.6.75

18   123 ms   125 ms   143 ms  ae1-0.vstlny11-rtr000.nyroc.rr.com [24.24.21.209]

19   128 ms   128 ms   129 ms  gig14-0-0.rochnybtn-rtr01.nyroc.rr.com [24.92.224.117]

20   147 ms   147 ms   147 ms  gig2-3.rochnygts-rtr01.nyroc.rr.com [24.93.4.137]

21   144 ms   147 ms   145 ms  srp7-0.rochnymth-rtr04.nyroc.rr.com [24.93.3.118]

22   146 ms   147 ms   147 ms  gig1-47.rochnymth-swt05.nyroc.rr.com [24.93.4.146]

23   148 ms     *      150 ms  rrcs-24-213-145-100.nys.biz.rr.com [24.213.145.100]



Trace complete.

[Thrym]

Well for one thing …

markshire.com = website

markshire.net = game server

Two completely different computers.

[Brindisium]

@Thrym wrote:

Well for one thing …

markshire.com = website

markshire.net = game server

Two completely different computers.

Are you saying they are on different backbone segments?

Edit: Anyway, no worries – I’m away now pretty much till mid June. I’ll see if things have changed when I get back.

[Thrym]

The webserver hosting Markshire.com is on a different network here at the office.

The game server is outside of the normal blockades that our webservers use.

Easier access … fewer handlers.

[Author]

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