Known Issues

Think you've found a bug? Here's the place to talk about it. It might actually get fixed.

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Gobberwart
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Known Issues

Unread post by Gobberwart » Mon Jul 14, 2008 2:08 pm

Current Issues

In the interests of not having the same bugs/issues reposted numerous times, there are a few problems that the Dev Team knows about and will fix when time allows. Before you post a new bug you think you've found, please check here first and please don't post about anything you see in this list.

Opening chat in-game AND in a popup window at the same time causes... a lot of weird things to happen, including (in some cases) browser crashing

Um, yeah, it's not designed to be opened in both at the same time. It's on my to-do list to ensure that you can't, but in the short term, please just don't do that. It's not meant to work, and it won't work.

Chat sometimes flickers/stops scrolling properly (and other chat weirdness).

There are a large number of things about the in-game chat system that I want to change, which effectively requires a complete rewrite of the chat system. I'm aware that there are a few annoyances as far as the existing chat goes, but I don't plan on fixing them. Instead I'll just make sure they're addressed in the rewrite. In the meantime, if chat goes "weird" in any way, just restart it. If that doesn't work, refresh your browser. If that doesn't work, restart your browser. If that doesn't work, clear all your temporary files, then restart your browser again. In most cases, simply restarting chat will correct any oddness.

UPDATE: 2008-11-24 - The chat memory leak thing is definitely fixed, but some people are experiencing ongoing issues with chat "flickering" and, particularly if using Avast! antivirus, chat just... stopping. I'm going to start a whole thread about these issues for further discussion/investigation.

"Please select an item" message - Opera only

In Opera, having a default item selected in a drop-down list isn't enough for javascript, so if you're trying to perform an action on the first item in the list (notably in the store management interface) you'll get a message telling you to select an item first.

The "Manage Stuff" interface has some CSS quirks.

There is a definite issue somewhere in the HTML/CSS for the Manage Stuff interface, which manifests itself differently in different browsers. At the time of writing, Safari in particular shows drop-down boxes incorrectly.

There are a bunch of words spelt "incorrectly".

No, there are a bunch of words spelt correctly. At least, if you use British/Australian English, which I do, rather than American English which.. well, probably most of you do.

The following are examples of words that you may think are spelt incorrectly but aren't:

- grey
- colour (and other words ending in "our")
- realise (and other words with a long "s" sound)

Seriously, please don't report these as bugs/typos. You're going to need to get used to it.

Resolved Issues

The following issues have been fixed, but are recorded here for historical purposes.

The database server is a bit flaky
Fixed November, 2008.

1. MySQL is quite good at getting "stuck" for whatever reason and requires a restart. Normally this happens instantly and really quickly, however sometimes the scripts responsible for performing the restart fail and then the whole thing becomes unusable until someone can go and manually restart it. That's no huge deal if I'm around and can access the server, but when I'm at work I can't, and have to log a support ticket and wait until someone at the hosting provider gets on it.

Update: The hosting provider has implemented a different script to sort the problem out. We'll see what happens next time the problem occurs, but theoretically it shouldn't be down for any more than a few minutes. Theoretically.

2. Fixed August 23, 2008. From time to time you may see messages indicating that the MySQL server has "gone away" or no connection could be established, or messages to that effect. We know about it. It's an unfortunate side-effect of the fact that we're not yet able to afford dedicated hosting, and therefore we're sharing our server with multiple other people, some of whom appear to be awesome at writing scripts that cause the MySQL database server to lock up. When this happens, our hosting company's monitoring scripts generally identify the problem and restart the server within 30 minutes. Which is good, but we would like to move to a better hosting setup as soon as we can afford it. Since this game's only source of income is whatever the developers can afford plus any player donations, that could be a while, but is a high priority.

The navigation menus flicker when moving the mouse over them (IE Only)
Fixed September 2, 2008.

This only happens in Internet Explorer, and is something I'd like to fix, but it's not a high priority.

Server slows down around 01:20 GMT
Fixed August 29, 2008.

No, we have NO idea what's causing this. Evidently there's a problem with the virtual host our server is running on, and there's nothing we can do about it except complain repeatedly to our hosting company, which we're doing. It happens at the same time every day, and is totally unacceptable. Hopefully the hosting company will be able to identify and fix whatever is causing the problem asap, or we're going to have to change hosts. Again.

Intermittent "lag"
Fixed November 2008? Our hosting provider has moved us to a different virtual node, and the lag seems to have cleared up. For now. We still need to move to a dedicated host at some point, but for now, it seems OK.

I'm engaged in an ongoing battle with our hosting provider, which basically goes like this:

Me: There's lag AGAIN, fix it
Them: Oh, yes, we fixed that, it shouldn't happen again
Me: Good, let's hope it's REALLY fixed this time
(rinse and repeat ad-infinitum)

This, unfortunately, is a direct result of the game's lack of funds. I have received a few donations (thanks to those who've donated) but so far not even enough to cover half of a single month's hosting on a dedicated server. Until this changes, or I win the lottery, we're stuck with it. I ask for, and appreciate, your patience with this. Trust me, it's every bit as frustrating for me as it is for you, and as soon as I can move the game to a better host, I will.
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Gobberwart
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Joined: Wed Jun 20, 2007 12:41 am
Location: Melbourne, Australia
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Re: Known Issues

Unread post by Gobberwart » Sun Nov 23, 2008 8:01 pm

Updated
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