Hey everyone, I could only find one post about this out there already... have any mappers found their banks being reset for the odd player? I'm starting to think it's a Blizzard problem now. I could be wrong though... note that people switching computers has not been the cause. Reasons:
1. Death Haven is now on page 1 and thus has thousands of players. Of these thousands of players, I get 3-4 emails a day about their bank (or 'save') being reset to 0 kills. Such a small percentage, but why? Here are some quotes from their emails:
my kills were reset after a power outage this morning, i was sitting at 3100 or so
Ok i have been playing ur game "Death Haven" for some time now and got up to around 6k kills and was getting rdy for the next rank when my power wen out.
oh man my stats were reseted. i had 3000 kills... in the middle of a game my computer restarted for some reason. thats the reason...
I was playing Death Haven and froze midgame. I lost a little over 2200 kills. This isn't the first time it has happened too.
Notice a pattern? The weird thing is I do have about 10-15% of emails that are unexplainable (no power failure or computer switching). But I'd like to think my triggers/obfuscation can't be blamed since it loads fine for 99% of people.
2. This post http://forums.sc2mapster.com/development/triggers/19171-bank-rarely-reseted/ is the one I mentioned that I found. However, as similar as his problem is, I don't use bank verification or signatures. My bank does have some of my own integer to string obfuscation going on, but like I mentioned it's a small chance that it could be my own problem.
Well, just putting this out there. Hope someone reads it. It's an annoying problem. I may try and perform a reset while playing myself later tonight.
EDIT: Another email I just receieved from a player: No i have only 1 computer.
this stats reset happned to me in other mod too when my computer dropped the same for some reason. really annoying.
thanks for the quick replay.
i believe that if the save file is in use(playing the mod) and the computer is droppoing i suppose the file would not be saved or be removed.
as far as i know SC2BW doesn't have this problem. i havn't had anyone complain about it
how often are you saving?
i only save twice. once at the beginning of the game and one at the end.
I'm saving on every kill from every player. I have to incase someone DCs. And for the most part this has no problems... I mean I could switch it to save for each player every 5 seconds or something... Do you think it's too swarmed at the moment? I mean it's working 99% of the time...
Okay so having switched it... Still getting 5 emails a day about resets, with the common theme being power outage or computer shutdown.
Am I doing something wrong? Preloaded and sync at start, open banks & store/save as necessary... Yet this happens. I asked Vexal and he said he only had errors with people switching computers... I'll try and ask ekcolnovkol or other people...
Update: I simulated it myself. I powered off my computer mid-game and voila... bank resets to a blank file. Doing a force-shutdown doesn't cause it... only if your computer goes flat out will the bank file get emptied.
well.
people can always backup their bank files
or you can make a trigger which copies current values from bank file. into a 2nd bank file as a backup. save/close it immediately.
then you'd need a clever set of if's to work out if the normal bank file is empty or missing you can revert to loading the backup?
I already use a 2nd bank to trick people into editing/hacking the wrong bank (secret revealed!). Both get reset. What you forget is that there's no 'bank close' function. I wish... I just open the bank for a player, save it, and repeat every second. Works fine for 99% of cases except computer shutdown.
So, I doubt there is any immediate solution to this?. I cant think of anything that would help.
You could generate a unique code that is somehow based on the total kills or/and whatever other saved data is there, and display it at map start. Then players can copy it down in the event their pc crashes, losing the data. They would input the code in such a case if their banks are Empty , and it would re-write their data.
Lets say someone`s Kills are 200, Rank is "ABC" and, whatever else is Z or etc etc(Haven`t played your map yet)
Then you`ll get a code like maybe
CAA1123110
C= 2
A = 0
A = 0
First 1 is the break point
Next 123 = ABC
Last 1 is a break point
10 = Z
So players only with empty banks(you can easily do a check on that) can maybe input their code(using a harder and less transparent formula than mine obviously) in and the data will be re-written and map restarted(or dynamically updated in game). You can add a bool "Code Used" after successful input to ensure a code can only be used once when a bank is empty.
UPDATE: I changed my trigger to only open the bank for each player ONCE at around game start... and then store it in a variable to reference/save-to later. It appears to have fixed the problem. Before i would open the bank each time I was saving and then just save to the last opened bank. This worked 99% of the time but failed in the cases i mentioned.
I just switched death haven to use the variable idea with only opening the bank once... and a quick test of a power failure didn't reset my bank. Ugh lol. Well this thread exists now for anyone out there in the future.
People are surprisingly honest and don't do that. I even get their char codes in emails etc... FYI opening banks or not opening banks all the time... error still happened. So it's irrelevant.
Instead of saving to a 2nd bank every 10secs, why not make the 2nd bank do something like what maverck did? (save once at beginning and once at end) Since he says that his method doesn't seem to have such problems. This way, they'd still have the same number of kills before the mysterious power outage happened.
Well that's the problem, they wouldn't. If they started a game at 100 kills, then played 30 minutes (but didnt end/win) and were at 450 kills, and a power outage happens... they'd be back at 100. That's a huge loss. I'm hoping the 10s is enough of a break that it wont be writing to file during the outage. Maybe we need a 'close bank' function (we don't have one atm).
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EDIT: POSSIBLE SOLUTION ON PAGE 2!
Hey everyone, I could only find one post about this out there already... have any mappers found their banks being reset for the odd player? I'm starting to think it's a Blizzard problem now. I could be wrong though... note that people switching computers has not been the cause. Reasons:
1. Death Haven is now on page 1 and thus has thousands of players. Of these thousands of players, I get 3-4 emails a day about their bank (or 'save') being reset to 0 kills. Such a small percentage, but why? Here are some quotes from their emails:
my kills were reset after a power outage this morning, i was sitting at 3100 or so
Ok i have been playing ur game "Death Haven" for some time now and got up to around 6k kills and was getting rdy for the next rank when my power wen out.
oh man my stats were reseted. i had 3000 kills... in the middle of a game my computer restarted for some reason. thats the reason...
I was playing Death Haven and froze midgame. I lost a little over 2200 kills. This isn't the first time it has happened too.
Notice a pattern? The weird thing is I do have about 10-15% of emails that are unexplainable (no power failure or computer switching). But I'd like to think my triggers/obfuscation can't be blamed since it loads fine for 99% of people.
2. This post http://forums.sc2mapster.com/development/triggers/19171-bank-rarely-reseted/ is the one I mentioned that I found. However, as similar as his problem is, I don't use bank verification or signatures. My bank does have some of my own integer to string obfuscation going on, but like I mentioned it's a small chance that it could be my own problem.
Well, just putting this out there. Hope someone reads it. It's an annoying problem. I may try and perform a reset while playing myself later tonight.
EDIT: Another email I just receieved from a player:
No i have only 1 computer.
this stats reset happned to me in other mod too when my computer dropped the same for some reason. really annoying.
thanks for the quick replay.
i believe that if the save file is in use(playing the mod) and the computer is droppoing i suppose the file would not be saved or be removed.
as far as i know SC2BW doesn't have this problem. i havn't had anyone complain about it
how often are you saving?
i only save twice. once at the beginning of the game and one at the end.
@maverck: Go
I'm saving on every kill from every player. I have to incase someone DCs. And for the most part this has no problems... I mean I could switch it to save for each player every 5 seconds or something... Do you think it's too swarmed at the moment? I mean it's working 99% of the time...
it's probably fine but i could see their bank files being corrupted because it dc'd in the middle of saving? or something?
@maverck: Go
That would suck, they should just keep the old file by writing to a temp one first and then overwriting...
As a test I've converted my bank system to save for each player every second (rather than per kills). Now let's see what happens.
Okay so having switched it... Still getting 5 emails a day about resets, with the common theme being power outage or computer shutdown.
Am I doing something wrong? Preloaded and sync at start, open banks & store/save as necessary... Yet this happens. I asked Vexal and he said he only had errors with people switching computers... I'll try and ask ekcolnovkol or other people...
Update: I simulated it myself. I powered off my computer mid-game and voila... bank resets to a blank file. Doing a force-shutdown doesn't cause it... only if your computer goes flat out will the bank file get emptied.
well.
people can always backup their bank files
or you can make a trigger which copies current values from bank file. into a 2nd bank file as a backup. save/close it immediately.
then you'd need a clever set of if's to work out if the normal bank file is empty or missing you can revert to loading the backup?
@maverck: Go
I already use a 2nd bank to trick people into editing/hacking the wrong bank (secret revealed!). Both get reset. What you forget is that there's no 'bank close' function. I wish... I just open the bank for a player, save it, and repeat every second. Works fine for 99% of cases except computer shutdown.
i see :<
@OneTwoSC: Go
So, I doubt there is any immediate solution to this?. I cant think of anything that would help.
You could generate a unique code that is somehow based on the total kills or/and whatever other saved data is there, and display it at map start. Then players can copy it down in the event their pc crashes, losing the data. They would input the code in such a case if their banks are Empty , and it would re-write their data.
Lets say someone`s Kills are 200, Rank is "ABC" and, whatever else is Z or etc etc(Haven`t played your map yet)
Then you`ll get a code like maybe
CAA1123110
C= 2
A = 0
A = 0
First 1 is the break point
Next 123 = ABC
Last 1 is a break point
10 = Z
So players only with empty banks(you can easily do a check on that) can maybe input their code(using a harder and less transparent formula than mine obviously) in and the data will be re-written and map restarted(or dynamically updated in game). You can add a bool "Code Used" after successful input to ensure a code can only be used once when a bank is empty.
@EternalWraith: Go
Hmm not a bad idea. It's sort of a last option if nothing else works ><
UPDATE: I changed my trigger to only open the bank for each player ONCE at around game start... and then store it in a variable to reference/save-to later. It appears to have fixed the problem. Before i would open the bank each time I was saving and then just save to the last opened bank. This worked 99% of the time but failed in the cases i mentioned.
I just switched death haven to use the variable idea with only opening the bank once... and a quick test of a power failure didn't reset my bank. Ugh lol. Well this thread exists now for anyone out there in the future.
@OneTwoSC: Go
Ugh I still got an email today. Maybe it didn't fix yet... will confirm later.
really one two you great tut maker and you didnt know that opening banks all the time can cause problems
PS:people could be stupid know nothing about banks and send you an email expecting you can reset their kills
@aczchef: Go
People are surprisingly honest and don't do that. I even get their char codes in emails etc... FYI opening banks or not opening banks all the time... error still happened. So it's irrelevant.
i got dsynce on my game and my record was lost.
My new plan is to try and save to a 2nd bank every 10s as a backup. Let's see how this goes.
Instead of saving to a 2nd bank every 10secs, why not make the 2nd bank do something like what maverck did? (save once at beginning and once at end) Since he says that his method doesn't seem to have such problems. This way, they'd still have the same number of kills before the mysterious power outage happened.
@Shad0wsEdge: Go
Well that's the problem, they wouldn't. If they started a game at 100 kills, then played 30 minutes (but didnt end/win) and were at 450 kills, and a power outage happens... they'd be back at 100. That's a huge loss. I'm hoping the 10s is enough of a break that it wont be writing to file during the outage. Maybe we need a 'close bank' function (we don't have one atm).