4.0 Edit of the Options, and messages comand box suggestion in BYOND Discussion

ID:134008
 
Aug 14 2007, 8:54 am (Edited on Aug 14 2007, 9:53 am)
Before 4.0, when a server crashed, or closed the place that held the map in the interface would turn to a huge white text box, and errors would show up, rather you got booted/banned, the DS had a fatel error, or if the server Crashed/closed.

In this case the server crashed, so normally you would get "Connection Failed" (simple enough right), but with 4.0 the screen goes black, fine, I go check the new Message/options box, and that just says "Loading Skin". Let me ask you, what does Loading skin have to do with a crashed server(it sounds like It's a Byond problem, not a server problem)?

I rather like the new remote commands, but I think it would be better to have the messages in the map section of the interface, like they were. Also please fix the messages, I don't know how it displays other messages as, but aparently atleast some of the messages are wrong(it took me like 5 minutes talking to the Admin of the game, to find out it was just a server crash).
#1 Aug 14 2007, 10:25 am
I concur. I'd like a better way of determining why you were disconnected from a server.

When you disconnect from a server, I think the entire layout should dissappear, default window and all. The O&M window should open and, depending on the clients' preferences, should attempt to reconnect to the server.

Either way, the O&M window would show "Connection killed." or "Connection died." or whatever. Perhaps a distinction can be made between getting kicked out deliberately and the server going down.

To detect this kind of behavior, you could assign "warning levels" of sorts to the server. For each message the server does not reply to in x time, append the warning level. Once it's over a certain number, send a "Sorry server, but you weren't responding so I'm disconnecting" message and perform the behavior above. If the server does respond, reset the warning level.
At least that's how I'd do it when contacting another server through DM. Perhaps this way won't work for BYOND or perhaps a better method is available, but it's just a suggestion. (Suggesting this because I recall Lummox saying about something not being detectable, and I think it's related to this very issue.)

-- Data
#2 Aug 14 2007, 10:51 am
In response to Android Data (#1)
Android Data wrote:
I concur. I'd like a better way of determining why you were disconnected from a server.

When you disconnect from a server, I think the entire layout should dissappear, default window and all. The O&M window should open and, depending on the clients' preferences, should attempt to reconnect to the server.

Either way, the O&M window would show "Connection killed." or "Connection died." or whatever. Perhaps a distinction can be made between getting kicked out deliberately and the server going down.

To detect this kind of behavior, you could assign "warning levels" of sorts to the server. For each message the server does not reply to in x time, append the warning level. Once it's over a certain number, send a "Sorry server, but you weren't responding so I'm disconnecting" message and perform the behavior above. If the server does respond, reset the warning level.
At least that's how I'd do it when contacting another server through DM. Perhaps this way won't work for BYOND or perhaps a better method is available, but it's just a suggestion. (Suggesting this because I recall Lummox saying about something not being detectable, and I think it's related to this very issue.)

-- Data

Well the way it used to work is, if server crashed/closed, the message "connection failed" would've appeared. If Banned you would see a message saying Banned,if server is rebooting, you would see"rebooting...", and if it was a Byond problem, you would see fatel error, for a Byond glitch(these are dangerouse,as they can corrupt save files, host files, or even the entire Byond application cousing you to reinstall), or if It's a problem with the Byond server, you would see "can't connect to Byond central" (something like that).
#3 Aug 14 2007, 12:41 pm (Edited on Aug 14 2007, 12:53 pm)
Zoltor wrote:
Before 4.0, when a server crashed, or closed the place that held the map in the interface would turn to a huge white text box, and errors would show up, rather you got booted/banned, the DS had a fatel error, or if the server Crashed/closed.

In this case the server crashed, so normally you would get "Connection Failed" (simple enough right), but with 4.0 the screen goes black, fine, I go check the new Message/options box, and that just says "Loading Skin". Let me ask you, what does Loading skin have to do with a crashed server(it sounds like It's a Byond problem, not a server problem)?

A bug was recently fixed in which the "Loadking skin" message was never followed up with a completion message. For server disconnects, it does seem that we're lacking some info there so we're looking into that.

I rather like the new remote commands, but I think it would be better to have the messages in the map section of the interface, like they were.

I think you're using the wrong terminology here and it's confusing the crap out of me. In 3.5, the map would be hidden, and you'd see output in the regular text output area, but it was expanded to fill the whole window. I'm not sure it'd be good to try to go back to that because we can't guarantee an output control always exists or that it's in use, but what we probably should do is popup the O&M box when a disconnect notice is received.

Lummox JR
#4 Aug 14 2007, 1:57 pm
In response to Lummox JR (#3)
Lummox JR wrote:
Zoltor wrote:
Before 4.0, when a server crashed, or closed the place that held the map in the interface would turn to a huge white text box, and errors would show up, rather you got booted/banned, the DS had a fatel error, or if the server Crashed/closed.

In this case the server crashed, so normally you would get "Connection Failed" (simple enough right), but with 4.0 the screen goes black, fine, I go check the new Message/options box, and that just says "Loading Skin". Let me ask you, what does Loading skin have to do with a crashed server(it sounds like It's a Byond problem, not a server problem)?

A bug was recently fixed in which the "Loadking skin" message was never followed up with a completion message. For server disconnects, it does seem that we're lacking some info there so we're looking into that.

ok

I rather like the new remote commands, but I think it would be better to have the messages in the map section of the interface, like they were.

I think you're using the wrong terminology here and it's confusing the crap out of me. In 3.5, the map would be hidden, and you'd see output in the regular text output area, but it was expanded to fill the whole window. I'm not sure it'd be good to try to go back to that because we can't guarantee an output control always exists or that it's in use, but what we probably should do is popup the O&M box when a disconnect notice is received.

Lummox JR

Whoops sorry, I should've typed "in place of a map" , not where the map is, and yea that's what I meant, but as long as that box pops up whith correct messages when a error occurs or when the server closes, it would be fine.