Developer Notes #15

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[h=3]Developer Notes #15[/h]



In the latest release of Entropia Universe (15.15.7) a persistent issue related to lag and connectivity that had affected an increasing number of Entropia players was resolved.

The Entropia community reported their experience of lag in support cases and on community forums. These reports helped our developers to pinpoint the causes of the problem within the many layers of IT-technology that constitutes the core of the Entropia Universe platform.

What makes Entropia stand out among other MMOs are, among many other things, the highly secure Real Cash Economy and its borderless server architecture that provides a seamless and immersive virtual universe. Events such as economic transactions should be visible to all affected participants instantaneously, no matter where they are located within Entropia Universe.

For players within visible range of each other even more information needs to be shared. This includes the smallest things such as avatar movement, clothing or armor equipped by avatars or the firing of weapons. Some events such as creature attacks will also include calculations of varying complexity within various systems.

All game events that occur between Entropia Universe clients around the world and the Entropia Universe data centers are securely transmitted over the internet. To achieve a smooth and reliable Entropia Universe experience, all components in the client-internet connection-server chain must themselves perform smoothly and reliably.

When an unexpected and intermittent behavior such as lag begins to occur, developers need to examine when and where it started and then work to isolate the possible causes of the problem. In a complex environment such as Entropia Universe there are many layers of software that can be involved. Further, a number of services provided by 3rd parties such as Internet Service Providers can also be part of the experienced problem.

As both our datacenter engineers and developers worked through the layers of the infrastructure and software that could be contributing to the lag problem of the past few months, a number of issues were addressed in patches during the final months of 2017. We also measured the effect of those patches and received valuable feedback from community polls and support channels.

After weeks of hard work the developers found that changes to certain underlying parts of the server software dramatically decreased the incidence and severity of lag experiences. Extensive testing of the new software was performed over Christmas and New Years, and on January 5, 2018 a patch was ready for release.

The developers want to express their gratitude to all players who reported valuable information about their experience of the lag situation. While all at MindArk are dedicated to continually improving the Entropia Universe experience in the years to come the feedback from the people behind the avatars that essentially are the Entropia community are simply priceless.

If you still encounter lag-related issues please review the System Requirements and make sure that your computer and internet equipment have the latest updates. A router restart can also sometimes help with problems on your local network.

The Entropia Universe support team are always available at https://account.entropiauniverse.com/support-faq/contact/ if you need any further assistance or want to report an issue.


Originally Posted Here
 
Nice read.. :D
 
This Dev Note is.

Edit: Nevermind I'm just being a grinch. Nothing to see here move along.
 
Guess now people can't say ahh the lag... anymore :yay:

good job MA! :yup:
 
This could be anything, but one item MA may want to look into is the database server(s) running. I did a test last night to find that there is lag as hell. 20 seconds to load AH not counting the lag I've always had the last few months simply opening up Inventory. I'm guessing people will see the most lag with items that have the most attachments since every time you use such items, the server bogs down slowly retrieving the data for each and every item attached from the database server causing the lag.

What MA needs to do NOW is get the people who work on this off the other database projects and work on the main project now. But for now, call one of them and ask them how to access the server's error logs and I'm guessing you may see large files waiting to be read.

And I sure hope that the base database farm for EU isn't supporting Compets and DeepToken.

Edit As well:

If by chance you have given ND team access to the farm or even delegated it to them while working on your other projects, please look into this due to the simply fact his team most times likes to work on the cheap and most likely is using a second hand service for the needed core.

Edit 2: I can easily see his team using a Cloud service. That could be the red flag right there.

Just a week after my post :)

But anyway, GREAT job MA Thank you! all seems to be working great.

(fyi I know.)
 
Did you really need the design department to create visual to inform the world you fixed a bug that was a big embarrassment for the company? :D
 
Did you really need the design department to create visual to inform the world you fixed a bug that was a big embarrassment for the company? :D

It shows professionalism and attracts readers. So yes, good strategy on their part.
Majority of readers don't read everything in that wall of text, so it also explains why they chose those two important words in the picture.
 
It shows professionalism and attracts readers. So yes, good strategy on their part.
Majority of readers don't read everything in that wall of text, so it also explains why they chose those two important words in the picture.

Well, it also hopefully sends a signal that they intend to comm. more.
 
Yes, thank you for fixing the lag issue that had persisted for months. Hopefully this won't be considered as THE accomplishment of 2018. With the lag out of the way I'm hoping progress can continue on the rest of the todo list.
 
Good work :yay::yay::yay::yay:, now you need fix missing loot on Rocktropia and Cyrene
 
I'm speechless, you guys really need to look at what get's sync between players & how..
I don't give a damn if a gun 160 meter away from me is synced..
I do however like my gun sound to be sync'd with my shooting.
Also complex calculations about mob hits.. I might understand but the AI is like 20 years old & the pathfinding still sucks bigtime..(mobs stuck in trees, mobs behind eachother that can't pass)

PS : this week I got a camo marine cdf.. you should look at the left hand & how it is holding the rifle.. If I can move my fingers like that IRL, I would be 100% handicapped.

PSS : my arcspark still does 50% animation as in 1 animation every 2 hits
Maybe you should offer me a job ;)
 
Ive heard this before lol, we shall se how it turns out.. :p

What about reinbursing the losses that the lag caused like Mining misses?, deaths in hunting and so on?

But i guess one should join the herd and just shout YEYYYY ;)
 
wow, very nice and insightful dev note. Good job MA with the communication and great job with the lag! :D
 
MA must be very proud to got that lag fixed:lolup:
It's a shame that it took so long!!!
Maybe some high payed staff should go back to school to learn something.
We pay such employees, and therefor we expect that such employees are good in what they are there for.

To run such game free of lag is a requirement and not something to be proud about, this MA Post is just a proof how noob they are.:lolup:
 
MA must be very proud to got that lag fixed:lolup:
It's a shame that it took so long!!!
Maybe some high payed staff should go back to school to learn something.
We pay such employees, and therefor we expect that such employees are good in what they are there for.

To run such game free of lag is a requirement and not something to be proud about, this MA Post is just a proof how noob they are.:lolup:

I call them Mega (uber) Amateurs.
On the bright side its good to have them fix stuff and apologize on forum for how poor the game was working for most people.
Mindark staff is a example you can do well and get hired in such company without performing in your field of activity at all which is a good thing for a person like me without superior degree to believe miracles can happen.
Mindark I'm your guy.Oh wait I still have passion to the game, I've changed my mind I am not.
 
I was hunting with a friend last night, when we started attacking spiders I turned invisible, my friend could not see me for like 2 min, although we could speak with each other and still attack same mob, and my pet could be spawned and he could see only my pet.

This never happened to me in the past, so I wonder if this has something to do with the fixes ya made, it was pretty funny though, but I am a bit afraid if it's exploited on pvp. Invisibility cloak bug or smth.:eyecrazy:

 
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IRL i am mounting windows....
Now imagine after 14 years i would make a article in our local newspaper...
"Hey i am proud to say i've mounted a window with succsess, it can be opened, closed and no rain drops in":lolup:

I would make myself ridiculous, if i announce such post.:eyecrazy:
 
Ive heard this before lol, we shall se how it turns out.. :p

What about reinbursing the losses that the lag caused like Mining misses?, deaths in hunting and so on?

But i guess one should join the herd and just shout YEYYYY ;)

This... and:
I did read the whole thing... Its a possibilty that i missed It, but I was expecting an apology in that. Not that they didnt say sorry before (in support tickets etc.), but It should be included in this publication as well.

Cheers,
Robo
 
Did this fix the "avatar at edge of radar lag"? This has been around for way longer than a few months.
 
IRL i am mounting windows....
Now imagine after 14 years i would make a article in our local newspaper...
"Hey i am proud to say i've mounted a window with succsess, it can be opened, closed and no rain drops in":lolup:

I would make myself ridiculous, if i announce such post.:eyecrazy:

Make sure you also pay a designer or a design team to make you a banner for it. It attracts readers some say :laugh:
 
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After weeks of hard work the developers found that changes to certain underlying parts of the server software dramatically decreased the incidence and severity of lag experiences. Extensive testing of the new software was performed over Christmas and New Years, and on January 5, 2018 a patch was ready for release.

Software dev is done in a certain way for a reason. When you make a change to your product, even a little one, YOU DOCUMENT IT.

It doesn't take big system for this... a non-shared, normal excel file with [date, description, file, line(if applicable)] is plenty, just enough to jog your memory later. The date of the first occurrence of lag was available by reading this forum for 2 minutes. Find your notes for that date and go through each change. This is not a 3 month process.

Ask yourself, "Is it more work maintaining this excel file or chasing down ghosts for 3 months."
 
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[h=3]Developer Notes #15[/h]
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Originally Posted Here

Would the same fix apply to the today's issue of the servers? ;)
 
The latency problem wasent even listed as known issues last statement :-/ If it was the mobs that lagged and coudent attack the problem would be hotfixed within minutes.
 
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