PBEM++ Time Out Problem

[Michael T]

Tried my first PBEM++. Set up the challenge no problem. My opponent did his first turn. No problem. I opened my turn, did my move
and hit end turn. Almost immediately I got a message 'timed out', then the game closed down. I logged back in to the server and its still my turn.

I remember these issues in the early days of my WITE server games. Hint to the devs, get some tips from the guys who set up the WITE/WITW PBEM++ systems.

Anyway how can this get resolved? It would be good for a start if a time out occurs that the game state stays on screen so you can try again, rather than lose your move.

I will try again later today but I am not very confident its going to work reliably if at all.

Any ideas?

[Michael T]

Ok wasted another hour. The only reason I bought this game was to play via PBEM++. It dos not work. I can play WITE PBEM++ no problem.

Right now unless someone can fix this I am thinking refund.

[AlessandroD]

Michael T I know how you feel because I just want to play by PBEM too, I have my game (and AAR) in hold, but give more time to these guys.
In two weeks we already have a 1.03 version and the problem seems generated by ongoing upgrade, maybe it is not your case but the support is very good so far.

The good news is that this game is not broken, the devs have already implemented some players suggestion, the only big issue so far is the PBEM but is not for everyone (I think several people are playing regurarly).

When will be resolved I'd like to play you how we said in another post [:)]

[Michael T]

Well I am at a loss as to why no regular PBEM (via file exchange) is available. At least that way we don't have to rely on this clunky server thing.

Right now I have had very little play of the game as I just don't play the AI, its PBEM or nothing. So I am getting a little impatient now.

[KenchiSulla]

After updating an ongoing PBEM game to 1.03 I'm in trouble...

- Save game folder cannot be found. I can play the turn but it will not save the result..

[Michael T]

I noticed in the PBEM folder there is a saved game file that when I open is my PBEM turn as I ended it. Why can't or how can I try to upload it?

[Erik Rutins]

Hi guys,

We'll investigate these reports as a priority on Monday.

I played through several PBEM games before release without a problem, just FYI. So either there's an issue specific to your systems, the PBEM server just developed an issue or we broke something in the recent versions.

Regards,

- Erik

[Yogi the Great]

I just got my first pbem issue, turn six we actually started game quite a while ago pace a bit slow. I have not changed versions but don't know if my opponent has.

Anyway played my turn, hit end turn and message came up Brother Against Brother not working looking for solution, no luck.

I decided to try again, because I knew what moves I wanted to make so this time it didn't take me as much time to make them. I hit end turn and it was accepted and so game is still ok. So perhaps we have some sort of "time out" issue going on?

[ericbabe]

The time-out message means that the server didn't respond to a message from the game, or that for some reason the client couldn't finish sending the message. There are many reasons of circumstance why this might happen. I will see whether I can reproduce it. Is anyone else seeing a time-out in this situation?

[Michael T]

I recall with WITE that some people would have Time Out problems (like me) and others not. WITE I imagine had a lot more players playing the game than BAB. So there may not be a lot of people with the issue out there, maybe even only me. But the fact is that I can now play WITE without hardly any Time Out problems, and if they do occur, I can try again later (without redoing my move, and the loss of time)and it will go thru ok. So two things here, one the WITE devs did something that resolved the situation 95% of the time, and for the other 5% when I still got a Time Out problem the game stayed open and I could just try ending the turn again later.

I don't know if it matters or not but I am in Australia, so perhaps there some convoluted path of servers between my PC and the Matrix server that means the responces between machines takes longer than normal.

Either way if I can't play PBEM then the game is a waste of money for me.

[Michael T]

I have set up a small test scenario with my PBEM opponent to try and do some tests on this issue w/o wasting a lot of time doing a move in a big scenario.

One other point, why if there is a problem with my PC, why would I be able to communicate perfectly well with the server to set up a challenge and then download a turn when its my move? Surely my PC is communicating with the server at this point ok. So why is there a problem when I am trying to upload the turn? I can upload data to issue a challenge. Makes no sense to me.

[ericbabe]

ORIGINAL: Michael T
I have set up a small test scenario with my PBEM opponent to try and do some tests on this issue w/o wasting a lot of time doing a move in a big scenario.

One other point, why if there is a problem with my PC, why would I be able to communicate perfectly well with the server to set up a challenge and then download a turn when its my move? Surely my PC is communicating with the server at this point ok. So why is there a problem when I am trying to upload the turn? I can upload data to issue a challenge. Makes no sense to me.

The packets for communicating with the server are small, like 50 bytes. The packets for sending/receiving the game are large, like 600 KB. A time-out is more likely to happen with a larger packet.

[ericbabe]

ORIGINAL: Cannonfodder
After updating an ongoing PBEM game to 1.03 I'm in trouble...

- Save game folder cannot be found. I can play the turn but it will not save the result..

In your game folder, do you have a folder called "PBEM"? Are you seeing an error message pop up? The only thing I can think of that would have changed with the new version is that somehow your anti-virus program (or Windows security) allowed the V1.0.1 version of the game to write in the PBEM folder, but after the update changed these perhaps some security mechanism is kicking in to prevent the file from being written in this location.

I spent much of the morning testing PBEM with 1.0.3 and I have been unable to reproduce any of the several different sorts of errors described in the tech forum. This makes me think that the system is continuing to work generally, but there are some particular problems that people are experiencing. I will give my best effort to find and fix these issues.

[Michael T]

I have the PBEM folder. And it has a file in it that I can open, it is the saved file of the move I am trying ot upload.

I reiterate, I can upload WITE turns to the server.

I know little of this tech stuff but it seems to me that there needs to be a longer period of time for some PC's/locations to communicate before a Time Out error occurs. Is this time period adjustable?

Why would WITE work and not BAB?

[kennonlightfoot]

It looks like the PBEM folder uses the same save file name for all games being played by PBEM. So I guess that means only the last one is saved. I am not sure what purpose this file serves since there is no apparent way in a PBEM turn to save your situation so you can leave the game and return later. BaB might take note that this will make things difficult as you introduce much larger scenarios like Gettysburg battles.

The other thing I noticed is that the PBEM folder is inside the install folder for the game rather than conforming to Microsoft rules requiring writable files to be placed in the data section. For those under Windows 7 and 8 that foolishly used the default install to "Program Files" this can cause problems since these folders are write protected. If you are running the game in a mode other than Administrator it could stop the saves and maybe hang the program.

[ericbabe]

I have increased the timeout periods for the next updated and we can see whether this helps. I'll arrange for you to get ahold of a test version early if you'd like (I'll email you when it's ready), or you can wait for the next update. I've spent about 20 hours working on this issue this week, and hopefully these changes will help your pbem to work.

I'm not sure whether your question about WITE is merely rhetorical, but I'll treat it as though it is not and answer it: there are different software libraries used to handle HTTP file transfers and different ways of implementing each of these libraries. The library I'm using is one of the standard Microsoft libraries, and I'm using it in the way that is recommended by Microsoft for my sort of application. A timeout is an abnormal error given by the HTTP library when the Internet takes longer to respond than the library routine allows. BAB doesn't do very much right now to handle this timeout error because we never had any situation in testing where we saw a timeout occur, and that yours is the only case of a timeout occurring leads me to continue to believe that this issue is rare. Hopefully the changes I have made will help resolve the timeout issue as you are experiencing it.

I was in contact with the WITE team as you suggested, and unfortunately they are not using the same Microsoft libraries that I am, and in fact their programmer said he didn't know anything about the wider set of Microsoft libraries I'm using at all.

[Michael T]

Thanks for your marathon efforts Eric. I really hope it works. But in saying that, if it doesn't work and considering I am unique in this problem. I would suggest further time spent would be wasted and it simply easier to credit my account for a refund and let it go.

Hopefully it will work though. I am happy to test a new beta patch as soon as you can pass it on.

As for my question I freely admit I am ignorant of programming that allows servers to communicate. I wronglyfully assumed that since WITE worked fine that all Martix Server PBEM++ games would work in a similar fashion. I guess in future I will be more aware and will question the devs in relation to this 'Time Out' limitation I seem to have before buying the game.

Thanks again for your attention to this. Fingers crossed the fix works.

[Michael T]

I have good news

The Time Out problem appears to be fixed under 1.04

I was able to do my move and upload just fine. Hopefully all good from now on.

Thanks so much for fixing this issue for me.

[&o]

[&o][&o]

[Erik Rutins]

Very glad to hear it!