Fight the Lag! - with metrics

[janeshephard]

Nice. Looks like Arma is shutdown. Good call, until this gets sorted out

[greasygemo]

Woah, D/C and when trying to R/C Socket Error... and now it's saying Security error??

[janeshephard]

Woah, D/C and when trying to R/C Socket Error... and now it's saying Security error??

The mud is off-line. Sounds like you're using a Java client.

This is better than it being on-line and people dying while linkdead.

EDIT: Looks like it's back up.

[Evoru]

It just disconnected and won't reconnect.

[Riya OniSenshi]

So... What's going on with all the reboots?

[Old Kank]

It just disconnected and won't reconnect.

You can usually check to see if it's lag or a crash by going to www.armageddon.org

Toward the bottom of the page, it will say something like, "Armageddon is not running" or "Armageddon just booted 10 seconds ago" if it was a crash.  If it was last booted 15 days ago, it's lag.

[janeshephard]

Anyone logged back in and found themselves back where they were?

[Jeshin]

Okay, I've figured this out.

Pyramid scheming the lag away!

Bear with me. The current theory is that the virtual server does not have enough RAM which could be causing the lag. Now as mentioned we already have more RAM than we're paying for. Clearly we should pay for more, so everyone send to Briarfox for character art and as per her arrangement you should donate any money you would have spent on character art to the Armageddon website for upkeep.

Thus everyone gets awesome character art -and- we have the potential of getting the server upgraded. Obviously this plan is contingent on reliable cashflow, so make sure to continue getting character art done at about 1 new portrait every month or so.

Thank you.

[Morgenes]

http://www.zalanthas.org/gdb/index.php/topic,43679.msg688918.html#new

[Karieith]

Thank you for looking into this Morgenes, I hope you had a pleasant father's day.

[Creslin]

(WARNING: Wilds Guesses and Speculation Ahead!)
I doubt RAM is the issue. I've ran a few MUDs and I've never seen a process run (DikuMUD or CircleMUD) with more than 5MB to 20MB tops of RAM usage. (With all areas loaded into memory, character data, etc).
I have a feeling it has to do with the "heartbeat" code, all the updates and functions that need to run on the game heartbeat which could run as often as every second. (NPC movement, regen, NPC tracking, respawns, weather changes, time changes, shop updates, triggers like timed speech scripts, updating hunger/thirst, updating poisons, updating Psionic / Magical affects, and many many more things...)
It seems like the heartbeats run much slower, proof of this is that time doesn't pass at the rate it should be passing and all because the code that needs to run on each heartbeat is taking too long.   
This is just a wild guess based on past experiences and I have no real evidence as to whether or not this is ARMs problem to back up what I'm saying, but it's a possibility. 
(/END of Wild Guesses and Speculation)

Looks like they are trying to figure out the issue right now...

Armageddon last booted 16 minutes and 31 seconds ago.

Connected to host armageddon.org
Armageddon is full.  There is currently a limit of 1 players.

I hope it gets resolved and the game is opened again soon... I am horribly and irredeemably addicted to ARM. 

Oh so addicted to ARM... 

EDIT:
Game is back up, wonder if the made any headway in getting this resolved... 

[UnderSeven]

Something I've noticed about the lag is it doesn't seem to be traditional lag, where your connection slows to a crawl but the game world moves on right as rain.  It appears (to my view anyway) that the game world is slowing to a crawl and connectivity is fine.  I've noticed that ticks of things that take time in the game seem virtually unaffected by the 'lag' leading my to believe that the entire game, not just players, are experiencing the same effect.

[A Large Bag]

Yes, I was noticing the ic hours ticking off as normal (at least it appeared to me) but everything else going on was taking longer than normal.

[Ender]

Yes, I was noticing the ic hours ticking off as normal (at least it appeared to me) but everything else going on was taking longer than normal.

That's because in game time is normalized to real world time, which isn't affected by lag.

[Dresan]

In this day and age with cheap ram and processing power I doubt its either. The lag is not so random, though its been a bit sporadic lately it was pretty consistent the other couple of days. It always lasts the same amount of time as well.

My computer can run three or so high graphical games at once before it begins slowing down, again high ram and processes (graphics card but that not applicable). You know what slows it noticeably though, running anti virus scan, and spybot scan at the same time, got forbid i defrag or scan the hard-drive. That is why i think it might not so much processing power but forcing the harddrive to begin doing multiple things at once, it can only do it so fast.  Its really my harddrive that bottlenecks my computer. There could be a  intensive scan or backup going on at certain times (lasting about an hour or two long) that are causing the slow down on a machine.  That is my theory anyways, and it is just for the fun of theory-crafting. I'm sure it will be found and fixed soon enough, again the game is still running smoothly most of the time at least.

[Barsook]

I say it's the new code or the fixes that are causing the problems.

[titansfan]

It's happened around the same times during the morning hours and at night. Starts right around 9 EDT PM and then lasts like 2-3 hours. Then in the mornings it starts right around the sames times which would be 9 EDT AM. At least that has been when I've experienced it at its worst.

[Namino]

Something I've noticed about the lag is it doesn't seem to be traditional lag fire.

It's not traditional fire.

[Morgenes]

You are correct, it seems to be something binding up in the game loop.  Time is tied to the real clock, not to the number of game loops run, so that is staying ok.

We are adding logging to try and narrow down where the problem is.

[Maso]

You are correct, it seems to be something binding up in the game loop.  Time is tied to the real clock, not to the number of game loops run, so that is staying ok.

We are adding logging to try and narrow down where the problem is.

You guys are superstars.

[redkank]

I've noticed the lag occurs after the game has been active for a while.  As pure speculation, this would lead me to
believe it may be tied into the recent changes to hunt code. The problems began occuring about the same time
as this feature was modified. Again purely observation: As the game is up for a while then people seem
to reach rooms and perhaps trigger the code to become active.

[Cind]

Never thought I'd be happy to be kicked off the game, but here we are.

My money's on the quit-safe rooms outside city gates. I'm not trying to bash the updates; I'm just trying to guess which one it might be if its from the recent updates.

[Nyr]

My money's on the quit-safe rooms outside city gates.

This wasn't a code change, but a building change.  Sorta like modifying the description of a room.  It changes nothing about the code of the rest of the game itself.

[brytta.leofa]

You are correct, it seems to be something binding up in the game loop.

Every raptor in the game is now permahunting herself.

[BadSkeelz]

More likely it's just me incessantly checking my Skills.

Edit: Fun Fact: I saw the April Fools Joke a full thirty seconds before the announcement because of my habit.