Topic

Staff Topic

Test Notes- July 27-29, 2011

What's going on?

This test will not have a lot of new features this time around- our developers are working on infrastructure optimizations to ensure smooth operations. We expect some more surprises for you in the tests beyond this, naturally.

Rolling restarts
Remember the rolling restarts from last test? (In a nutshell, it’s where we hand player sessions over between game servers.) We’ll be testing that more this time. You may see reconnection notices when it happens as you get handed off to another game server, we expect this to be smooth, but let us know if you see any problems. (Worst case, you would be logged out if there was a problem, but we don’t anticipate that.)

Projects clarification
Have you been wondering about the rewards for projects building Savannah type streets? The different projects have different rewards and have no standard template- we are mixing it up. If you were expecting energy or street creator trophy pieces, those haven’t been in the rewards, which is why you haven’t seen them.

Subway!
Remember the subways with stuck window animations? Well, we’re pretty sure we fixed that one, but if it doesn’t animate, give us a shout.

Update- subway windows are still a problem!

Lag Issues
While we fixed the lag issue loading West and East Spice for last test, there were some other reports loading again. If there are problems loading (like, you get to a certain percentage before it stops), we may attempt open a session with a different version of the game client.

Known Issues

We are compiling main known issues over in this sticky Bug Forum post.

Posted 17 months ago by kevbob Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

  • Thanks kevbob :)
    Posted 17 months ago by welshcorgi Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Yay kevbob!  Looking forward to helping you out!
    Posted 17 months ago by Brekkana Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Thanks kevbob - now I don't feel so bad that I'm still on the train! :D
    Posted 17 months ago by katlazam Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Thanks, kev! Hope we're opening soon since you've posted this:)
    Posted 17 months ago by RM Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Dude they have *been* open... ;)
    Posted 17 months ago by katlazam Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Firing up the bug reporting fingers...which are also more the OMG YAY IT'S OPEN AGAIN fingers than anything, really...
    Posted 17 months ago by Gloopy Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Thanks kevbob... Ready, Set, TEST!!! I'm almost crying I'm so happy :)
    Posted 17 months ago by Dr007 Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Thanks!!
    Posted 17 months ago by Muncey Mango Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Oh, did we forget to tell you about Plexus? We did! :)
    Posted 17 months ago by kevbob Subscriber! | Permalink
  • naughty naughty devs! I was expecting not to play much this time around but you sucked me in.
    Posted 17 months ago by FrankenPaula Subscriber! | Permalink
  • thanks kevbob - so glad to be helping with the test - superfun
    Posted 17 months ago by Snorple Tehnnis Subscriber! | Permalink
  • It seems to take much longer to load each location than last test.  This burns a fair amount of nostalgia time.

    It always kinda feels like there's a memory leak, where things get slower and slower until at some point the lag is so annoying I have to reboot (reloading the browser doesn't cut it), but this phenomenon seems worse during this test so far.

    It seems particularly bad when entering a new region and it has to load all the new images.
    Posted 17 months ago by Biff Beefbat Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I also experienced more flash crashes than usual yesterday--3 exclamation points from flash when in recent tests I have had none.

    Plexus is awesome, by the way!
    Posted 17 months ago by Shepherdmoon Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Dang! Missed Plexus! And now stuck at work with no access. :(
    Posted 17 months ago by Pirate Apples Subscriber! | Permalink
  • slightly off topic: i noticed we can invite up to 3 friends via facebook, do these friends need to have previously applied to be in beta testing, or can we invite anyone from facebook?
    Posted 17 months ago by kid4today Subscriber! | Permalink
  • What time can we expect the game to shut down on the 29th? Just so we can plan our life and our Glitchin'.
    Posted 17 months ago by Sean of the Moor Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I can't speak for the devs, Sean, but it's usually 5 PM Pacific.
    Posted 17 months ago by Shepherdmoon Subscriber! | Permalink
  • The story of my day (sigh).  I also had to refresh a few times when my Glitch took off running.  Apparently GOD scared her.  Despite these distractions, I got a lot done.
    www.flickr.com/photos/bribl...
    Posted 17 months ago by Brib Annie Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Is part of this test making learn times longer?
    Posted 17 months ago by jumpuphigh Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Jump, as you learn each new skill, the learning times for the remaining skills increases by a bit.
    Posted 17 months ago by Sean of the Moor Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I was not able to sign in through Face Book - but managed fine through Glitch Website - on the subject of closing today - 5pm pc time does that mean about 1am uk time please never quites sure of that being a relative newbie thanks
    Posted 17 months ago by camfi Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @ Camfi - You are right!
    Posted 17 months ago by Brib Annie Subscriber! | Permalink
  • You should add the Prisencolinensinainciusol issue!!!!
    Posted 17 months ago by Dr007 Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Thanks, Sean. I've seen my two highest time skills each jump by a day at a time over the last week. Is that normal?
    Posted 17 months ago by jumpuphigh Subscriber! | Permalink
  • www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcU...

    Fantastic...Prisencolonensinainciusol.....
    Posted 17 months ago by Jellybelly Baby Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Nice, we got our chasing the dragon badge and shortly after we heard this. Thought maybe the no no powder hasn't worn yet
    Posted 17 months ago by Space Cowboy Subscriber! | Permalink
  • sadly, this test was much more, uh, glitchy than the last few tests, which had been incrementally getting less laggy and less freezy. i had to refresh numerous times and the dreaded force quit came back. so sad!
    Posted 17 months ago by greenkozi Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I watched the youtube  "Prisencolwhatchacallit!" Loved the music and choreography! oops---I just dated myself---lol But it is soooooo cool! See why I LOVE glitch--I am always learning something new!
    Posted 17 months ago by GreyGoose Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I would also like to add that the rolling restarts created alot of problems, both before-hand and afterwards. Various things would stop working (chat, actions, etc.) for no apparent reason, and then the restart message would come up and I would be like, "Oh, that's why". Afterwards, certain things were sometimes still wonky, especially chat, which would be frozen until I closed and reopened each window manually, or restarted the game myself. Even between restarts flash was crashing alot more than usual--not sure why that is. Also, I had to reload a bunch of times because things would start to slow down after the session was open to long--that happens all the time in every test, but it may have been more frequent this time around.
    Posted 17 months ago by Shepherdmoon Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Earlier in the week I was freezing during zone load about 1/4 tries and would have to refresh to get into the zone, but today it seemed much better. I did a very long trek from across the world to East Spice and didn't have any zone/street loading problems.

    It did seem laggier while running through the streets/zones, though, but that might have been local client issues. It seemed like it would take a second after I hit a direction button for my Glitch to start moving, and the jumps were a second late. I still would receive the reward I was jumping for (usually a quoin), so I think it was just a display issue.

    Overall I'm very impressed with the game and find myself clicking on that next quest, and seeking out whatever I need to complete it continually. I'll miss it over the weekend. Great work Glitchonians!
    Posted 17 months ago by Zego Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I also experienced a lot of freezing/lagginess through the streets/zones. There was quite a delay between my control input (for example, "GO LEFT!") and my actually going left, etc.

    Still, the game is amazing and I'm completely addicted! Not even the lagginess could dampen my tenacity.
    Posted 17 months ago by Alexah Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I prefer to choose we going to update and build the game feature IN " AFTER BETA " . In BETA on other game that I had played, they only stick in technical only. Thus the new start player not going to confused by lots thing to learn

    :D
    Posted 17 months ago by Botak Hijau Subscriber! | Permalink
  • My game seemed to run pretty smooth - of course the exception being when the jujus ran amok and God had to restart us twice.  There was one time that my splines didn't reticulate properly (never thought I'd ever say that sentence  lol) but God took over and changed me to the experimental renderer, so all worked fine after that.  
    And just for the record, I LOVE PLEXUS!!!!   At first my jumping didn't work, but when I went in early for the party,  it worked great!  And I just love the creativity it's brought out in the Glitches.  It was amazing to see the decorations.  You knocked it out of the park with Plexus!!
    Thanks as always for making our game play better and better.  I'm excited too about the new skills, even though they weren't up and going before I had to leave.  Next time though....  :-)
    Posted 17 months ago by kat65 Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Loved Plexus! Thank you very much for that! :)

    Rolling restarts and me are not friends though! Least if that's what was happening when I got a message from God saying he couldn't imagine the area I was going to and reconnected me to the experimental_renderer URL, instead of the regular 'game' one.  
    As soon as I got on the experimental_renderer URL, it was crash after crash after crash.  Flash froze up on me, Chrome froze up on me. Chrome turned into a white screen with a grey ! in the middle. Chrome shut itself down. One time my whole computer shut itself down. Did not like! ...At all at all!    
    Then when I'd eventually get back on the game URL, things were fine and happy again, until the next time I was unceremoniously dumped back on that experimental... URL again.
    Are the swamp areas supposed to be as laggy as Ix used to be? Going from Groddle into the swamps would take a long long time.  Other areas weren't nearly as long, apart from Wintery Place, but that's always been a pain in the butt to load for me. 

    Other than that, things were pretty awesome as always :D 
    Posted 17 months ago by Ebil Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I got a lot of lag when playing on the 28th. Animals were quite jumpy and there was a pause when I tried to go to another street or move quickly. Yesterday was much better though and there was no lag while playing, although a couple of streets took a little longer to load than others but there didn't seem to be a pattern to it (ie. streets with more animals vs. mines). It was only a matter of an extra couple of seconds so it wasn't an issue during gameplay.

    I'm truly enjoying Glitch, thank you for creating this world!
    Posted 17 months ago by Happy Hannah Subscriber! | Permalink
  • i agree happy hannah.

    the pausing and GOD kept saying to reload. i missed the last few minutes of glitch because of this....
    but i also agree. GREAT game... continue making the best games ever tiny speck!!!
    Posted 17 months ago by GiaTori Subscriber! | Permalink
  • This test saw a lot of crashes for me - which is usually rare.

    Also, like someone else stated above, seemed to have a memory leak and kept getting laggier and laggier until I'd have to reboot my browser (refreshes were of no help) - had to keep checking to make sure I wasn't on firefox (as that's how firefox works in games for me) ...tho I knew I wasn't because firefox won't even load Glitch for me lol

    BUT - other than that, this test was a total blast for me!! So ty :)
    Posted 17 months ago by sgjo Subscriber! | Permalink
  • when is the next test???
    Posted 17 months ago by GiaTori Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I didn't get to play a whole bunch this round, but will second what Ebil said:

    Rolling restarts and me are not friends though! Least if that's what was happening when I got a message from God saying he couldn't imagine the area I was going to and reconnected me to the experimental_renderer URL, instead of the regular 'game' one.  
    As soon as I got on the experimental_renderer URL, it was crash after crash after crash.  Flash froze up on me, Chrome froze up on me. Chrome turned into a white screen with a grey ! in the middle.


    Had much of the same issues in the short time I was on this test.  Also, I tend to keep a small set of diagnostics open for my laptop in my Google sidebar, and noticed that this game CPU and memory loads were maxing out quite frequently and the game would get very laggy then and/or flash would crash.  My laptop isn't that old, so not sure the deal, but suspect it was related to something in game. Didn't have time to investigate it further - hopefully the debug flash was providing some helpful info.

    And I have to say I'm sorry I missed all the Prisencolinensinainciusol hubbub...while I'm sorry it upset some, I find things like this hidden in games/code absolutely brilliant, and love it when they pop up unexpectedly.  And yes, now I've learned a bit of historic pop culture that I never knew...always like that!  I think unpredictable things like this make a game so much more fun...
    Posted 17 months ago by b3achy Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Ditto on everything you said happened to you, Ebil. I had the same issues with lag-then-crash, screen turning white with the gray exclaimation point, etc. ( As an fyi I'm running IE 8 and my computer is a brand-new samsung laptop.)
    Posted 17 months ago by Seylah Subscriber! | Permalink
  • b3achy, you're not alone either (nor are the others mentioning memory leaks).  High cpu and memory use were happening for me a lot and would likewise lead to flash crashing.  I was told it's known and being addressed very soon (but not Soon(tm), thankfully!).  I don't think Glitch normally needs one of my cpu cores to itself, anyway, and I would be a touch concerned if it did.  Even Firefox's infamous leaks usually take more than a week of being left open to get to that point!  Um, not that I would know firsthand or anything.  Oh, look, a shiny thing!
    Posted 17 months ago by Magic Monkey Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I'm sorry you guys had such a hard time with flash crashes and lag. I've been extremely lucky in the flash crash department, but I did want to mention that I've seen more lag the last 2 tests. Could possibly be my playing for hours on end. Nah. couldn't be it. Oooh, Magic Monkey has a shiny thing!
    Posted 17 months ago by bored no more Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @ghost777 thanks for the youtube link to prisencolinensinainciuso.....fantastic!!
    Posted 17 months ago by Saba Moon Subscriber! | Permalink
  • saba moon.....

    you forgot the l at the end lol
    Posted 17 months ago by GiaTori Subscriber! | Permalink