A Sync Bug - Files

[witpqs]

Running the latest Beta we just had a sync bug. Combat replay shows various air strikes that did not take place, and then a land battle at Kumamoto resulted in a 36 to 1 capture of the base in the replay, but was only 2 to 1 non-capture in the battle as reported in the turn file's combat report.

Attached here is the combat replay.

[witpqs]

And here is the turn file as I sent it to the Japanese player (Andav), which he used to run turn resolution.

[witpqs]

Here is the 'bad' combat report written by the combat replay. I managed to save it before it was over-written by the official one from the turn file.

[witpqs]

Here is the official combat report, written by the turn file when I opened the turn. You will notice it is a little more than half as big as the 'bad' version, as many air strikes did not fly in this fork of the multiverse.

[Rising-Sun]

Would like to know how to get around this issues, my opponent is experience this and not sure if that will be a problem or is that what he been going through. I didn't see anything odd and not sure if -Deepcolor will help. I do remember seeing something glitch or skipping part of the battle.

Around four years ago I did experience something like this, but -Deepcolor fixed my problems. My opponent and I are using latest patch after the install, not the beta. But realize that he couldn't get the beta install but I did. Just wondering playing 1.7.11.24Dec2014 patch and had beta (1.8.11.26b-Sep172016) too. But just execute the original file, not the beta one.

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: RisingSun

Would like to know how to get around this issues, my opponent is experience this and not sure if that will be a problem or is that what he been going through. I didn't see anything odd and not sure if -Deepcolor will help. I do remember seeing something glitch or skipping part of the battle.

Around four years ago I did experience something like this, but -Deepcolor fixed my problems. My opponent and I are using latest patch after the install, not the beta. But realize that he couldn't get the beta install but I did. Just wondering playing 1.7.11.24Dec2014 patch and had beta (1.8.11.26b-Sep172016) too. But just execute the original file, not the beta one.

As recommended, I use the z key to speed up animations, and only use the ESC key to dismiss the combat summaries. After finding the sync bug, I re-ran the combat replay without using the z key at all - just let the animations run full length - and nothing changed. So, I really do not know how to avoid it. We have not upgraded since shortly after the most recent Beta was introduced.

If it makes you feel any better, the sync bug is a one-turn phenomena. It does NOT carry over from one turn to another. You *can* have sync bugs two turns in a row, but they are separate and distinct from each other - sync bugs do not propagate across turns. That is because the replay file is not used as input to the following turn; you always go back to the turn file to enter orders.

If you want to verify whether or not you have had a sync bug, do this as the Allied player (the Japanese player will never see the sync bug on his/her end. Run the combat replay. Before opening the turn, rename the combatreport.txt to something like combatreport-replay.txt. Why? Because when you open the turn it will write out a copy of the "official" combatreport.txt file that the turn file stores internally. So now, after you do open the turn, you will have 1) combatreport-replay.txt and 2) combatreport.txt. If they are identical, then you have not had a sync bug. A shortcut is to just open both of them in a text editor and look at the character counts. If they have the same number of characters, then it is very unlikely that you had a sync bug. If they have a different number of characters, then you definitely did have a sync bug.

[BillBrown]

I was playing three separate PBEM games. One of them had sync errors all most every turn. I have never noticed any in the other two games.
All three of the games I am playing Allies. I swear it has something to do with the Japanese players computer, I just do not know what.

[Rising-Sun]

ORIGINAL: witpqs

ORIGINAL: RisingSun

Would like to know how to get around this issues, my opponent is experience this and not sure if that will be a problem or is that what he been going through. I didn't see anything odd and not sure if -Deepcolor will help. I do remember seeing something glitch or skipping part of the battle.

Around four years ago I did experience something like this, but -Deepcolor fixed my problems. My opponent and I are using latest patch after the install, not the beta. But realize that he couldn't get the beta install but I did. Just wondering playing 1.7.11.24Dec2014 patch and had beta (1.8.11.26b-Sep172016) too. But just execute the original file, not the beta one.

As recommended, I use the z key to speed up animations, and only use the ESC key to dismiss the combat summaries. After finding the sync bug, I re-ran the combat replay without using the z key at all - just let the animations run full length - and nothing changed. So, I really do not know how to avoid it. We have not upgraded since shortly after the most recent Beta was introduced.

If it makes you feel any better, the sync bug is a one-turn phenomena. It does NOT carry over from one turn to another. You *can* have sync bugs two turns in a row, but they are separate and distinct from each other - sync bugs do not propagate across turns. That is because the replay file is not used as input to the following turn; you always go back to the turn file to enter orders.

If you want to verify whether or not you have had a sync bug, do this as the Allied player (the Japanese player will never see the sync bug on his/her end. Run the combat replay. Before opening the turn, rename the combatreport.txt to something like combatreport-replay.txt. Why? Because when you open the turn it will write out a copy of the "official" combatreport.txt file that the turn file stores internally. So now, after you do open the turn, you will have 1) combatreport-replay.txt and 2) combatreport.txt. If they are identical, then you have not had a sync bug. A shortcut is to just open both of them in a text editor and look at the character counts. If they have the same number of characters, then it is very unlikely that you had a sync bug. If they have a different number of characters, then you definitely did have a sync bug.

Hmm I remember experience this around four years ago, but this was against the AIs and didn't use any command switch. So after I did that switch -Deepcolor -py900 -px1400, my problems were solved. It gotta be something to do with Direct Draw in DirectX.

Also noticed depending on the video card you have as well, what resolution you can have and what bit rate.

[Andav]

Being the Japanese player in this game I will add that I pretty much exclusively use the ESC key to skip animations. I can start only using the z key if you think it might help.

Wa

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: Andav


Being the Japanese player in this game I will add that I pretty much exclusively use the ESC key to skip animations. I can start only using the z key if you think it might help.

Wa

Michael thought that at one point using the ESC key to speed up animations might be (one of the things) doing it, maybe that's why he implemented the z key. I use z to speed up the animations but I do use the ESC instead of clicking on 'done' to exit from the combat summaries, although there is no animation underway at that point. Probably a good idea to use z instead of ESC where it's relevant. I doubt that caused this, but I'm just guessing. We've had very few sync bugs, at least noticed, in the 1,282 combat resolutions so far. Michael writing out the official combat report from the turn file helps. The other 3 reports would be nice but not as important.

[MrKane]

Base on my experience Syn issue is related not to deep color option but to switch -dd_sw. It is 100% guarantied when one side is calculating turn with this switch on and other with switch off. Current beta game version has problems with current old versions of directX support with newest graphics drivers, especially ATI drivers are very unfriendly towards game.

[witpqs]

Our PBM has been going on for more than 5 years with very few sync bugs. We pretty much all the time use the same machines with the same settings, but it is something to look at.

I know that Michael and Bill and other developers said that "the" sync bug is really many bugs/issues. They have eliminated most of them, and certainly the most frequent ones, but they haven' tracked down or eliminated all of them. It might be that the driver issues you mentioned affect the data they use for randomness, which they want to be the same during turn resolution and any time the replay is run.