SQL Server Trouble

[squeegee]

Sorry: I meant 1/11 through 1/13. Apologies for the confusion.

The question remains: will the FC folk please acknowledge that the site was down for these days, and say they will try to do better? Is this too much to ask? Can they please acknowledge the shortcomings the site has had?

[jofjltn4]

Contraptions hanging at "save design" screen *WAY* too often. Actually, *once* is *WAY* too often. Everything in a design is local. Why is it so difficult to have an actual "cancel" that takes you out of the "save design" screen to where you were before you tried to save??? And yes, while sometimes clicking "save" again works later, I have had designs that did not save, staying stuck on the "save design" screen for days with no way of recovering, while other designs successfully saved normally once things were apparently working again.

Surely this is one of the top issues...because I know that it could single-issuedly cause me to walk away...because I just don't believe that it is not somewhat easily fixable.

J

[freythman]

Sorry: I meant 1/11 through 1/13. Apologies for the confusion.

The question remains: will the FC folk please acknowledge that the site was down for these days, and say they will try to do better? Is this too much to ask? Can they please acknowledge the shortcomings the site has had?

I think they've more than admitted the shortcomings...

Contraptions hanging at "save design" screen *WAY* too often. Actually, *once* is *WAY* too often. Everything in a design is local. Why is it so difficult to have an actual "cancel" that takes you out of the "save design" screen to where you were before you tried to save??? And yes, while sometimes clicking "save" again works later, I have had designs that did not save, staying stuck on the "save design" screen for days with no way of recovering, while other designs successfully saved normally once things were apparently working again.

Surely this is one of the top issues...because I know that it could single-issuedly cause me to walk away...because I just don't believe that it is not somewhat easily fixable.

J

Are you a coder/programmer?

[drnull]

Contraptions hanging at "save design" screen *WAY* too often. Actually, *once* is *WAY* too often. Everything in a design is local. Why is it so difficult to have an actual "cancel" that takes you out of the "save design" screen to where you were before you tried to save??? And yes, while sometimes clicking "save" again works later, I have had designs that did not save, staying stuck on the "save design" screen for days with no way of recovering, while other designs successfully saved normally once things were apparently working again.

Surely this is one of the top issues...because I know that it could single-issuedly cause me to walk away...because I just don't believe that it is not somewhat easily fixable.

+1

Are you a coder/programmer?

Yes, and it's *simple* to have a timeout on a socket request. This is not a hard thing to do.

[jofjltn4]

I wondered how long it would take someone to play the "you're not a bonafide certificate-holding computer programmer, so you can't possibly have a valid point" card. Much sooner than I thought. I am required by law to respond with the immediate knee-jerk response:

Are you?

I didn't think so.

So with the disclaimer that I am not a validly licensed, card carrying computer programmer, I believe the key phrase in this whole discussion is,

Everything in a design is local.

This game can be played completely offline. Everything it does is local and does not rely on an open connection. When a save is initiated, that does not change. In fact, when my design is stuck trying unsuccessfully to save, it is still here, locally...just sitting there in a tidy little package all ready to be streamed to that great big database of FC goodness. All I want is for the program to have a basic failed save branch added to it. A nice little interrupt button would be great, but even a timeout would be okay. It could be a ridiculously long ten minutes...but at some point, it needs to say, "hey, I've tried this saving thing too many times/too long...I should now revert back to the design frame...or maybe reload using the very same set of data I was trying to exchange with the database...but I sure can't just sit here abended forever."

Someone would obviously need to translate this internal program dialogue into some fancy-schmancy computer programming language...I should check altavista babelfish to see if they have a "hypothetical internal program dialogue to computer language" translator.

While we're at it, let's get the same functionality for when you accidentally hit the "to menu" button when the victory screen pops up when you were trying to reposition the view.

J

[freythman]

I wondered how long it would take someone to play the "you're not a bonafide certificate-holding computer programmer, so you can't possibly have a valid point" card. Much sooner than I thought. I am required by law to respond with the immediate knee-jerk response:

Haha. Looks like you misunderstand... I didn't say he didn't have a point... You imply that.

Nonetheless, it sounds like they are aware of the problems and will have them fixed.

[weasel]

The SQL Server is still being worked on, it's a complex issue to work out and might end up requiring some code changes. It seems the server looks to be running smoothly, but as soon as we get around 700 concurrent users we start getting memory errors. We are actively looking into it! Please bear with us.

[Afronanny]

We will. =P

[weasel]

Hey everyone,

Mike has been working real hard and we've installed a few performance monitoring apps. We've identified a few problem areas and we are going to fix them TONIGHT, January 20th, between 8:30-10:30PM PST. There will probably be a period of downtime around 9:00-9:30PM PST or so. Please don't lose your work! Save frequently

We are doing a kernel update and installing a solid state hard drive. In a while we will be updating some of the DB queries as well, news on that later!

We should see quite a performance increase from the changes tonight though.

Again, thank you all for your patience - we really do. Know that we are as frustrated as you that the game is not as fast as it once was, or it could be. To think, this all started with a game we thought would be enjoyed by a dozen people, max.

[meteoro]

since i cannot use any of the things i paid for (i can only play the free levels) i guess that 8:30 - 10:30pm pst is right now

[greatpaints]

Oh, good. I am glad the problem is on your end. I thought it was me. I'll cross my fingers that the upgrades work. Darned cloud screen.

Even with the problems, it is the best $10 I have ever spent in terms of entertainment value.

Thanks, guys.

[MC Rove]

I paid for this game to play it. Make an offline version that does not need the server. I am sick of it not working.

[weasel]

We're pushing back the window a few hours to be around 11pm-1am PST, with the outage being around 12-12:30. By outage I mean the game shouldn't load at all. If you're seeing bubbles or having trouble saving, for example, that means you're experiencing the problem we're trying to fix (slow game).

PS: The game works fine without the server connection as long as you don't try to load or save any user-created content (ie: don't save designs, don't load user levels). To give you player-designed-stuff though you HAVE to have a server.

[meteoro]

well i bought the game 2 days ago, and it has had a lot of lag, and the stupid thing that everything that you need to pay for (plus your saved desings) dont load

this never happened to me before i paid for it...

[weasel]

well i bought the game 2 days ago, and it has had a lot of lag, and the stupid thing that everything that you need to pay for (plus your saved desings) dont load

If you're seeing bubbles or having trouble saving, for example, that means you're experiencing the problem we're trying to fix (slow game).

this never happened to me before i paid for it...

Luck

[wd-41]

(am i the only one having major lag?)

[vike me]

I'm sorry I don't mean to complain or anything. There already seems to be quite a few people on here doing that ; ), but I haven't been able to play the game since about noon, and its almost 1 am here right now. Any time window when the problems may be fixed? Its been a reoccurring problem for me for probably about 3 weeks now.

[darkeagle]

Hmm... did anyone here notice that just today, every once in a while, the forums and the game go down for a minute or so? It's not a problem yet, but I just wanted to make sure it doesn't become a problem.

[meteoro]

yeah i've noticed that to

[weasel]

The server updates didn't go as planned last night - our SQL configuration files were lost, so though everything else went OK we are now seeing some connection limit issues and more timeouts. We are getting the config files back in place this morning and everything should be OK soon(tm).