Discuss the massively-multiplayer home defense game.
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We handled this by email.
Thank you, Setz!
Yeah... I don't know! The game runs on one monolithic MySQL database, and there are loads of transaction issues there (only one person can have a house checked out at a given time, etc.
So, if I had two concurrent servers running, everything would fall out of sync.
ANYWAY, v31 offers a major improvement in this department... it supports notification mid-game that the server is trying to shutdown, so pretty much everyone will clear out, and I won't have to wait for hours.
It also supports custom shutdown messages (like, "Hey, it will be back online in 5 minutes...")
This one squeaked across the line right before the big Steam launch. Boy do I need sleep!
So... I need to make ONE simple little change on the server.... but for anyone making edits, it will break their edits (and potentially kill them if they are in the middle of a self-test.
I've been waiting for TWO hours now after shutting down the server for people to clear out, and there are still two active players left.
I've emailed them... still waiting.
Sorry, everyone.
No, only vault contents (resale value of tools in vault) and money value.
Which reminds me, the total that I posted before was the total of ROUNDED house values (as shown in the house list), but not the ACTUAL house values:
$3,163,271
Which means that $1054 game dollars is worth $1 USD in prize money.
With true values computed, you can see just how close it was:
.
+------------+--------------------------+-----------+--------------+
| true_value | character_name | USD_prize | gallery |
+------------+--------------------------+-----------+--------------+
| 333952 | Jeffrey_William_Mccoy | 316.8425 | 2133 |
| 254150 | Andrew_Curtis_Thomas | 241.1290 | 2094#2098 |
| 200813 | David_Travis_Lopez | 190.5247 | 2043#2040... |
| 135160 | Hector_Vance_Bradley | 128.2353 | 2011 |
| 119720 | Charles_Carl_Perez | 113.5863 | 2123 |
| 119698 | John_Robert_Carpenter | 113.5655 | 2145 |
| 87225 | Steven_Shaun_Black | 82.7562 | 2154#2033... |
| 87853 | James_Mark_Worley | 83.3520 | ... |
| 82269 | Andrew_Richard_Whitfield | 78.0541 | 2142 |
+------------+--------------------------+-----------+--------------+Yes, Perez beat Carpenter by only $22.
Sorry... see the other "outage" thread about restoring houses. I just cannot handle that right now.
A new version of the client will come out post-launch that will give you a RETRY button that you can press in these situations.
But in this case, with Apache crashing and staying down for 10 minutes at a stretch (nightmare), a retry button would not have helped you (because you would have been timed out of your house by the time apache started back up).
Sorry folks... Apache (the web server) got into a crashing mode for some reason.
It last had this happen something like 6 months ago.
And now... just like that, it stopped crashing. I've got my hosting company looking at it... but it's late at night now, so they're kind of slow.
Anyway, it's sort of the ultimate nightmare.
Somehow, it waited to happen until AFTER the contest was over for about two hours.
Somehow, it didn't happen on January 29 during my Steam launch.... well, here's hoping.
No, sorry, I can't restore houses. I've been at this since 6am this morning and it's now 11pm at night... and I STILL have more stuff to do before I sleep.
Okay, so that everyone can sleep tonight, here are the preliminary results for the top 8:
.
+----------------+-----------------------+-----------+--------------+
| value_estimate | character_name | USD_prize | gallery |
+----------------+-----------------------+-----------+--------------+
| 330000 | Jeffrey_William_Mccoy | 320.3883 | 2133 |
| 250000 | Andrew_Curtis_Thomas | 242.7184 | 2094#2098 |
| 200000 | David_Travis_Lopez | 194.1748 | 2043#2040... |
| 130000 | Hector_Vance_Bradley | 126.2136 | 2011 |
| 110000 | Charles_Carl_Perez | 106.7961 | 2123 |
| 110000 | John_Robert_Carpenter | 106.7961 | 2145 |
| 87000 | Steven_Shaun_Black | 84.4660 | 2154#2033... |
| 87000 | James_Mark_Worley | 84.4660 | # |
+----------------+-----------------------+-----------+--------------+Notice that poor Worley doesn't have a painting. That means that #9 gets a painting instead:
.
+----------------+--------------------------+-----------+---------+
| value_estimate | character_name | USD_prize | gallery |
+----------------+--------------------------+-----------+---------+
| 82000 | Andrew_Richard_Whitfield | 79.6117 | 2142 |
+----------------+--------------------------+-----------+---------+I hope to have the full results written up tomorrow.
Well, I just thought it would be weird if all the top 8 players were camping at the very end, and then, SURPRISE! Here are the winners, and you haven't seen them all day!
Before I implemented this, the top player (#1) Gurrola literally had not been robbed at all for 24 hours. No robber had set foot in that house. I figured that wasn't right.
Regarding this being a flaw in the game design, normally, most people aren't motivated to camp like this. Normal behavior was distorted by the specific deadline of the contest.
The max total house value ever seen during the contest was: $3,092,704
The final exchange rate was: $1 USD for every $1030 game dollars. So, essentially, everyone who had at least $1030 will win at least $1 USD.
More soon....
Okay, it's back online!
We can talk about whether the contest chill timer should be revert the chill timer down from the 24-hour number that was set during the contest.
But... we do currently have 300 live houses (a Castle Doctrine record, I think), so there are plenty of houses to rob even if you have a lot of chills.
Okay! The contest has ended, and I took the server offline at the deadline just to calm everyone down and give us all a chance to catch our breath.
The database snapshot is complete, and I've downloaded a copy offline for safe-keeping and created a temporary instance of the server where I can study everything carefully.
I'll be reverting the end-of-contest rule changes and putting the server back online in a minute.
Okay, robbery time is 2 minutes now. Will go down to 1 minute in a bit.
Okay, so I think I'm going to make the cop response time really fast now in the last 10 minutes.
Fixed so that it doesn't affect fresh-start houses... after dying, you can go right back into your house.
If you keep tools out of your house in your backpack, you can hide value there, but they are "force-returned" to the vault if you're out too long.
Yes, these changes are temporary... for contest only!
Yes, camping was a big problem at the end.
Josh: regarding tools, that is a problem. But I'm having trouble distinguishing legit returns home from camping! Also... 13 minutes left and all.
Watch the contest page for details in these last final minutes.
Sorry, Kiran... I just fixed that.
After dying, you can go right back into your house now without waiting 5 min.
Police are faster now (4 minutes).
And you have to wait 5 minutes between visits to your house (it will look like someone is in there if you try to go back before that).
Oh... and I'll make the cops faster to respond too, just to really heat things up.
Okay, so the way it actually works is that owner pings are blocked for houses that have already been edited and gone public.
This means that your client will give you about 4 minutes to do your edit before it sends a ping and that ping fails.
And, because your house is unpingable while you're in it, you will eventually be kicked out of it by the server (between 5 and 7 minutes after you started editing it, depending on when the flush happens). Of course, your client will likely bail because of the failed ping at 4 minutes, unless you are going back and forth to self-test too, which makes your client wait longer until trying to ping.
Also, this DOES NOT affect first edits!
A good number of top houses are "camping" here near the end in an endless editing session.
Obviously, there will be a nasty surprise for many people if those houses appear at the end and win.
So, I'm going to do something DRASTIC.
I'm going to turn the editing time out DOWN from 5 minutes down to 3 minutes. This will mean that the auto-ping the client sends at four minutes will be too late to keep the house checked out. This will obviously only affect PUBLIC houses and not houses that are still having their very first edit.
SO... if you need to do a REAL edit on a public house, make it quick, people!
I'll see what effect that has, and may need to implement another measure later, which I will post here.
Yeah, don't camp in your house during the last hour!
I'm keeping a watch on the list of houses, and so far, no one seems to be doing that.
Oh... wait, the top house hasn't had any robbers in it since yesterday.
I'll be actively kicking people out of their houses who are doing that.
You get kicked out of your house after 5 minutes of doing nothing. If you're not actively buying stuff, you shouldn't camp in either of those screens.
However, your house is still checked out while you're in those screens, so no one else can get to it.
But you do leave the house every time you go out to watch tapes. You have to drive down to the ADT Home Security office to view those tapes.
What about a second account to shoot videos from?
Being a pet owner yourself, you can't bear to club a sleeping animal.