Matrix Games Forums

ORIGINAL: hartwig.modrow

On the other hand, however, it's not just the results that change but entirely different battles can occur. So you gain additional intel on local force distribution which the IJ player never knows you have gained. Also, especially for land combat it can be very instructive to see the bandwidth of results of two executions of the same ground battle for making calls how to continue that battle.

So Allied player loses naval and a2a info, but gains intel on asset allocation/distribution and info on ground combat.

Yep, this too.

A sync bug might cause an air strike to occur on a TF that had low DL or perhaps no DL at all in the actual sequence of events, and then the Allied player knows that Yamato and Musashi are 2 hexes away from their CV fleet on their first major amphibious operation of the war despite not actually having them spotted in the for-real turn.

ORIGINAL: HansBolter

So you are saying the Allies don't get as much of the short end of the stick in this deal as I have portrayed?

I can accept that.

In case you haven't been around long enough or regularly enough to notice, I often take extreme positions for the sake of stimulating debate.

I actually appreciate that approach to stimulating debate, but work in a field where you have to be able to argue both sides of an issue, so there's always a chance that a pointed statement triggers one of the rare events of my leaving the lurker position and posting.

At first, when being hit by the synch bug, my sentiments were quite similar to yours - but sentiment tend to distort the picture. At that point of time I had not yet realized that you get a correct combat report with the game file, which means Allied player can retrace what happened. I still prefer if no sync bug occurs, but believe that also the IJ player is better off in some aspects if it does not happen.

So all is well - especially as many triggers of the sync bug have been successfully removed [&o] - and you can start a PBEM. It's great fun !

Hartwig

ORIGINAL: Rusty1961

Very frustrating. I watched the replay of the turn- a rather slow, uneventful turn-then while taking my turn I notice damage to ship that shouldn'thave any so I looked at the combat report. Nothing like the combat report I watched.

Nothing.

So I don't know what is the truth here. Did the Japanese player see the actual report as it was in totality and I see nothing near what happened? Is my combat report I read when I open my turn the truth, or is there fog of war?

All I know was my replay didn't have 10% of what appeared to have happened during the combat phase.

Any chance this bug gets fixed?

Listen to the Police!

To combat the Replay Bug you can have the IJ Player send his written Combat Summary along with the Replay and Turn. Before you run the replay file just read over the Combat Summary file to see if what you afterwards see matches what you read. If not then at least you know the Replay Bug bit you.

The "sync bug" is actually a slew of bugs that all behave the same way. Michael fixed a ton of them, but I don't think he's actively working on the code at the moment. That said, if someone has a sync bug that is reproducible and you can send a save to Michael, he can fix it when he gets back to the code. Fixing bugs that are consistently reproducible is not that difficult. It's the intermittent ones that make programmers pull their hair out, drink, or whatever they do under stress.

Bill

ORIGINAL: wdolson

The "sync bug" is actually a slew of bugs that all behave the same way. Michael fixed a ton of them, but I don't think he's actively working on the code at the moment. That said, if someone has a sync bug that is reproducible and you can send a save to Michael, he can fix it when he gets back to the code. Fixing bugs that are consistently reproducible is not that difficult. It's the intermittent ones that make programmers pull their hair out, drink, or whatever they do under stress.

Bill

Throw things.

Make up new swear words.

Constantly mutter to self and/or at the computer screen, holding a conversation with it.

I'm pretty sure the ones that pretty ran into which he could not find did not reproduce on his machine. I know he spent a ton of time looking for possible causes anyway. [&o]

ORIGINAL: HansBolter

Thanks for the succinct explanation of how the Allied player got screwed from the very beginning.

I want to watch the turn execution.

That's why I won't play PBEM as Allies.

Furthermore, if the game is executing two different turns for two different players why shouldn't the Allied player have just as much right to demand that the turn he witnessed be the one the game moves forward with?

Why do the Japanese players get preferential treatment?

Hans, you can't "watch the turn resolution." If you could, you would see EXACTLY what the Japan player sees, including the location of all of his forces. As part of the "reconstruction of the replay" the game uses and the posters here have described, the code edits out the visual and text message parts that are opsec to each player.

I agree with witpqs. Synch bugs, if both players are exactly patched in congruence, are exceedingly rare now. In at least a third of the cases I've thought there was one it turned out there was a collision in the combat events file that I had missed. IF synch bugs are the reason you don't play PBEM, play PBEM.

Edit: yet another case where I should have read the whole thread first.

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna

ORIGINAL: wdolson

The "sync bug" is actually a slew of bugs that all behave the same way. Michael fixed a ton of them, but I don't think he's actively working on the code at the moment. That said, if someone has a sync bug that is reproducible and you can send a save to Michael, he can fix it when he gets back to the code. Fixing bugs that are consistently reproducible is not that difficult. It's the intermittent ones that make programmers pull their hair out, drink, or whatever they do under stress.

Bill

Throw things.

Make up new swear words.

Constantly mutter to self and/or at the computer screen, holding a conversation with it.

The language most programmers know best is CURSING [:D]

ORIGINAL: wdolson

The "sync bug" is actually a slew of bugs that all behave the same way. Michael fixed a ton of them, but I don't think he's actively working on the code at the moment. That said, if someone has a sync bug that is reproducible and you can send a save to Michael, he can fix it when he gets back to the code. Fixing bugs that are consistently reproducible is not that difficult. It's the intermittent ones that make programmers pull their hair out, drink, or whatever they do under stress.

Bill

This is true not only for programmers, but techs as well. The worst intermittent problem I remember from my career took a year and a half before someone finally resolved it. The man hours had to run in the hundreds if not a thousand or more.

ORIGINAL: rustysi

This is true not only for programmers, but techs as well. The worst intermittent problem I remember from my career took a year and a half before someone finally resolved it. The man hours had to run in the hundreds if not a thousand or more.

I had one on my current project that took about three years of looking at it off and on before I put it to rest. It was bug #0001 in the bug tracking system we set up.

Bill

Having my PBEM game just hit by a Sync Bug, I want to confirm what I think I understand from this and these excellent threads.

tm.asp?m=4295554

tm.asp?m=4207479

From what I understand, sync bugs affect the Allied combatreport.txt and the Allied replay, only.

Do they effect the in-game play mechanics? IE, do they affect the in-game turns themselves?

TIA.

ORIGINAL: el lobo

Having my PBEM game just hit by a Sync Bug, I want to confirm what I think I understand from this and these excellent threads.

tm.asp?m=4295554

tm.asp?m=4207479

From what I understand, sync bugs affect the Allied combatreport.txt and the Allied replay, only.

Do they effect the in-game play mechanics? IE, do they affect the in-game turns themselves?

TIA.

You're asking if they "change" the outcome of a turn when they occur?

No. The "correct" turn resolution is in the Japanese replay and combat report.

The sync bug simply offers the Allies another version of what happened i their replay.

Posting something I posted in El Lobo's AAR, because Japan's resolution is not necessarily correct:

ORIGINAL: Alfred

Read this thread:

http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=4355560&mpage=1&key=synch�

There are several other threads on the sync bug issue.

The short end is:

1.  What Japan sees is always 100% correct.

2.  The combatreport.txt which the Japanese player should send to his opponent is always 100% correct.

3.  The incorrect info is seen only by the Allied player when he sees the combat resolution phase movie and the subsequent combatreport.txt file which is generated from the movie.

4.  The "bug" does not carry over to the next turn. It is the info generated by the Japanese combat resolution phase movie which is carried over to the next turn.

5.  The most common condition which will result in a sync bug is if both players are not using the exact same game version or there is some other discrepancy between the two installations.

6.  It is possible (but extremely rare) for consecutive turns to exhibit sync bugs but the cause of the succeeding synch bug appearance will be different from the cause of the preceding sync bug.


Bottom line is that the sync bug can be a cause of frustration for the Allied player (although sometimes he can get some valuable intel which otherwise would not have been available) but is never in itself a ground for surrender.  If an Allied player loses a carrier battle it is not due to the sync bug but to a combination of both his and his opponent's actions.  The lost carrier battle would have resulted even if there had been no sync bug.

Alfred

I'm with Alfred on most of the above, there is a big 'however' though..........

I know of multiple ways, playing as Japan, to force the game to produce different outcomes of a turn. Bottom line is: the Japanese player (if he was a low down cheating rat and so chooses) has the control to effectively run and rerun the file sent by the Allied player until he is happy with the outcome.

In addition to this intentional desync manufacturing, very rarely the bug happens with no apparent cause and throws out (at Japans end) an anomalous result.

Given both of the above, Alfred's point 1 list doesn't really cover the situation. It would be better put as: what Japan sees is what is represented in the game file that he uses as the basis for the next turn.

The anomalous results, however they occurred, become the basis for the next turn (because whatever Japan sees is reflected in the subsequent game file), but neither the accidental nor intentional sync bug turn files should be considered 'correct'.

The solution: I run two installs of the game on separate machines which I patch to what ever version I am playing. If as the allies I see a replay that results in a different combatreport.txt than the one sent to me by Japan, then I rerun it on my other machine.

If the two turns on my machines produce different movies and report files (and particularly if the replay I run on my second machine matches the Japanese combat report) then the anomaly was at my end and can basically be ignored.

If they are the same, then it is an statistical certainty that the results that Japan has seen and that have been used as the starting point for issuing Japan's orders for the next turn, are the anomalous ones. I just ask him to rerun the turn. It has happened once in my current game (Now in Sept 1942) and a rerun by Japan brought it back in line with what I had seen.