hi all

I've identified and fixed a potential cause of the recent problem with stalled games. The external site used to send the instant messages was timing out and in turn causing the game engine to time out.

Hopefully this will be a permanent fix, if not please bear with us and apologies for any disruption.

Tom

Thanks Tom!

Three cheers for an involved admin!

A slightly different stall than the previous ones I experienced (where it was "my turn" but "wasn't my turn"):

http://www.wargear.net/games/join/136990

The game has my color choice showing up in the player list, has the turn timer going on first player, the game shows up in "my" game list, but no person is identified as having it be their turn, nor does my name show up in the player list, and the game is currently listed as "open".

That game has been deleted.

Just an update on this. The root cause of the problems with stalled games, players not being eliminated, games not finishing etc has been the site's dependency on an  external service for instant notifications.

When a turn starts / ends, a player is eliminated or a game starts / finishes an external service is used to notify the browser of logged on players via the instant notification system. This external service has been timing out at certain times which leads to WarGear appearing to be unresponsive and failing to process certain game events. The WarGear server itself has not been under any significant / abnormal load conditions that it can't handle.

I've taken a number of steps to address the above and if it does not resolve the problems found I'll look to migrate to a different service provider. I've already identified a replacement service which will actually allow some additional cool features to be implemented so it may be that we go that way eventually anyway.

Great you figured it out -

tom wrote:

I've already identified a replacement service which will actually allow some additional cool features to be implemented so it may be that we go that way eventually anyway.

I love cool features!

tom wrote:

the site's dependency on an  external service for instant notifications.

Personal Opinion - I like the instant notifications, but if it's screwing up the success of the website, I'd be a proponent of turning off the option until they can work through their issues, or until you can test and try a different option.  At least to give you some freedom to finish up the new player, which will get rid of about 50 other "regular failures" that are nuisance issues for you on a daily basis.

Translation: Instant notifications/growls/changing color icon/chat are all great features, but if it's hindering performance of real games, I'd say scrap any/all for the time being so you can get back to the stuff that is important (the next major release).

Fair comment and I pretty much agree. However I think the problem is mostly resolved for now.

Never mind...I just spaced on that one.