Recover House after Web Request Failed?

Blip · 2014-01-25 11:22:48

While I was playing, one of my cats unplugged the power for my router and I has to re-start it. Afterwards, I got the error "Web Request Failed" and lost my whole house, with $12,000, a very advanced trap, and two of my favorite paintings. Is there any way to recover this, or have I lost everything arbitrarily? If this is a permanent house removal, I have to ask why. I understand permadeath, but punishing a player by taking away hours of work they put in to a house for an Internet hiccup? That really is just a ridiculous mechanic. I literally took about 10 steps into a house, left, then was arbitrarily killed.

If this can't be fixed in a regular manner, I would like to request a house restore from Jason. I know that might be a bit of a stretch, but I don't want to have to lose 10 hours of work to something so stupid as this. Especially considering that I could have had a chance at doing well in the contest with that house.

Last edited by Blip (2014-01-25 11:29:06)

jere · 2014-01-25 11:36:03

That's painful. I would imagine the main problem is it's impossible to distinguish that from someone intentionally disconnecting after getting into a bad situation. I mean... if you got back within 5 minutes (the timeout), I think you should have an option to resume, but getting back in the game after an internet/power hiccup might take longer.

By the way, I'm wondering if you came into my house. I had someone with a huge bounty walk in and apparently commit suicide on the first tile. Or does a disconnect behave differently?

Also, your cat unplugged your router... in the The Castle Doctrine? That's pretty hilarious all considered.

iceman · 2014-01-25 12:12:35

The exact same thing happened to me, but my house was worth over 20k, and I had 7k in the safe. One idea to be able to recover from this is, if the game loses connection to the server, it starts recording the moves. After you reconnect, it checks the moves to see if you successfully left the house, and kills you if you didn't succeed. I'm sure someone could exploit this to disconnect and then make a completely fake "move set", but if you know enough to do that you could probably make something like the "no shroud" cheat and not get stuck in the first place.

Jere, did you house have a few sets of "Guess the correct door or die!" rows? If so, it was probably me...

jere · 2014-01-25 12:38:13

Kind of iceman. I guess it probably was you.

Well, I'm in the same boat as you now Blip except I didn't appear to have a disconnect. I went from no house yesterday to front page. Damn, I didn't really cared about the money, but I wanted to win a painting. I'm tempted to just buy one myself.

I should have just turned off the client and waited until Monday.

Last edited by jere (2014-01-25 12:39:51)

DethBringa · 2014-01-25 13:05:03

I had a disconnect due to the lines being upgraded to fibre and it happens on and off. Cant remember how much I lost but I just rebuilt and moved on. Its easy to make another 20k or so.

nathan · 2014-01-25 13:44:11

The moral of the story: Cats are evil.

colorfusion · 2014-01-25 17:09:11

My internet drops arbitrarily so I've had this happen to me once or twice before. Before you exit a house check your internet is connected. If not, you've still got 5 minutes of not pinging the server to sort it out before you exit your house.

I think it would be nice if, when unable to contact the server upon exiting, it would still give you the full 5 minutes.

I doubt your house will be returned. Jason doesn't know if you actually died in the house or not if the moves weren't sent, and didn't hasn't returned money/houses in the past.

Last edited by colorfusion (2014-01-26 03:47:44)

jasonrohrer · 2014-01-25 19:48:30

Hey, I'm trying my best here... I have a very full inbox these days! It takes me something like an hour to restore a house, so it's really not possible with all the commotion.

Regarding internet outages, I feel like maybe the client should handle this more gracefully, giving you a RETRY button on the checkin screens. Still, it wouldn't help with a failed ping in the middle of a robbery, because at that point, the client has to pull you out of the robbery to tell you about the problem.

There's also the possibility of temporary outages on the server (like a connection overload that will pass in 30 seconds). That happened today, resulting in unexpected server responses. A retry button would be good there, too.

It could also auto-retry forever even in the case of a serious error like this, but I'd at least want the user to be aware of the problem... because it's a more serious one than a simple lag.

DethBringa · 2014-01-25 20:47:12

We know you are doing your best and this contest is pushing you to the limits in trying to keep everything ticking over.
Just wanted to say that even tho this particular issue is not a major for me I still appreciate the fact you are doing so much work for all of us playing the game.

jasonrohrer · 2014-01-25 21:03:55

Thank you! That means a lot.

It's Saturday, and I've been doing email and forums literally ALL DAY. My family misses me!

ventuswings · 2014-01-27 21:59:26

Yeah, this just happened to me too and I don't think my internet even disconnected

Hope you manage to introduce the fail-safe option for such scenario somehow, if I can't even trust this not to occur on stable connection not sure I'll be brave enough to invest too much hour into this. Fortunately I was done with the house and waiting for someone to break it but still...

jasonrohrer · 2014-01-28 00:00:52

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).

The Castle Doctrine Forums

#1 2014-01-25 11:22:48

Recover House after Web Request Failed?

#2 2014-01-25 11:36:03

Re: Recover House after Web Request Failed?

#3 2014-01-25 12:12:35

Re: Recover House after Web Request Failed?

#4 2014-01-25 12:38:13

Re: Recover House after Web Request Failed?

#5 2014-01-25 13:05:03

Re: Recover House after Web Request Failed?

#6 2014-01-25 13:44:11

Re: Recover House after Web Request Failed?

#7 2014-01-25 17:09:11

Re: Recover House after Web Request Failed?

#8 2014-01-25 19:48:30

Re: Recover House after Web Request Failed?

#9 2014-01-25 20:47:12

Re: Recover House after Web Request Failed?

#10 2014-01-25 21:03:55

Re: Recover House after Web Request Failed?

#11 2014-01-27 21:59:26

Re: Recover House after Web Request Failed?

#12 2014-01-28 00:00:52

Re: Recover House after Web Request Failed?

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