Quabs (split from Minkata Shard Updates)

[Treehugger]

I hadn't noticed any fearless quabs before the fix, but I've just experienced some invisible ones. I was playing with two avvies on two different laptops. One avvie was helping the other with Ahnonay and was chasing off the quabs for him. But although the display indicator showed there were lots to chase, there were none to be seen. However, as the avvie approached each invisible quab and triggered it to run away, the quab would became visible for the period of the chase. Is this a new bug?

[D'Lanor]

I hadn't noticed any fearless quabs before the fix, but I've just experienced some invisible ones. I was playing with two avvies on two different laptops. One avvie was helping the other with Ahnonay and was chasing off the quabs for him. But although the display indicator showed there were lots to chase, there were none to be seen. However, as the avvie approached each invisible quab and triggered it to run away, the quab would became visible for the period of the chase. Is this a new bug?

Not entirely new. The invisible quabs issue did exist but it was rare. It is possible that the fix made it somewhat less rare but I doubt it.

Were the quabs invisible to one of your avatars or to both?

Edit: I was able to verify that the quabs are bugged in multiplayer mode. My observations were different though.
- Player 1 linked to Ahnonay, player 2 joined him. At that point all was fine and both could see the quabs and chase them.
- Next player 1 linked out and the trouble started: the quabs became fearless for player 2!
- Then player 1 returned and he did not see any quabs! Neither player could make the quabs move.

This was the error player 1 received upon returning.

Code: Select all

(04/14 19:09:18) cPyQuabs - Exception TypeError: "object of type 'NoneType' has no len()" in <bound method ahnyQuabs.__del__ of <QuabBoxcPyQuabs.ahnyQuabs instance at 0x2D7C9B98>> ignored
(04/14 19:09:18) Traceback (most recent call last):
(04/14 19:09:18)   File ".\python\ahnyQuabs.py", line 414, in OnGameCliMsg
(04/14 19:09:18)     self.ISpawnQuabsIfNeeded()
(04/14 19:09:18)   File ".\python\ahnyQuabs.py", line 183, in ISpawnQuabsIfNeeded
(04/14 19:09:18)     for quab in quabs:
(04/14 19:09:18) TypeError: 'NoneType' object is not iterable

What we should keep in mind is that the first player who links into an age becomes the game master. This game master controls the quabs for all players who link in afterwards. If the game master leaves the age the server should assign a new game master. This apparently does not happen in MOSS, at least not for the quabs game.

Oddly enough when I tried to test this on Cyan's shard I did not get very far either: Each time I linked out with the game master my other avatar crashed. I tried various combinations, switching the game master role between my 2 computers, but the result was always a crash. Could it be that this has always been bugged and that people have just taken the crash (which conceals the actual problem) for granted?

[Treehugger]

thanks, D'Lanor, I'll go back and check it out but I think I only had the one avvie on the site when I had the invisibility problem. The other one was in the control centre waiting for the spheres to change.

[Treehugger]

Quote from D'Lanor: I was able to verify that the quabs are bugged in multiplayer mode. My observations were different though.
- Player 1 linked to Ahnonay, player 2 joined him. At that point all was fine and both could see the quabs and chase them.
- Next player 1 linked out and the trouble started: the quabs became fearless for player 2!
- Then player 1 returned and he did not see any quabs! Neither player could make the quabs move."


comment - I can confirm this, I've just had the same experience except that the quabs didn't become fearless for player 2 until he linked out and back too. I've ended up in the same place as D'Lanor with fearless Quabs for both players, and invisible quabs for one player.

edit - next both avvies went to player 1's relto and back again (player 1 came back first). We seemed to have more quabs than before, given we'd chased some of them away. Player 1 now has normal quabs, but player 2 has invisible fearless quabs.

edit 2 - some even more weird effects - by reltoing out and back again another time, I got a double lot of quabs, some literally double. One avvie could see them all but they were fearless, the other could only see some of them and they reacted normally.

[Mac_Fife]

Moderator's note: I splint this into it's own thread because this looks to be an issue that's not directly related to the Shard update, and I'd like this discussion to be easier to find in the future.

[Treehugger]

thanks, Mac, for giving this its own thread.

in case it's useful, here's the log extract for when I got the double quabs. Maybe there's something earlier in the log that will explain why: should I post up the whole thing - or indeed the two logs from the two avvies?

(04/14 20:45:08) OnInit, will now disable current
(04/14 20:45:08) ahnyQuabs.ISpawnQuabsIfNeeded(): Quab brain #0 was created. Initializing brain.
(04/14 20:45:08) ahnyQuabs.ISpawnQuabsIfNeeded(): Quab brain #1 was created. Initializing brain.
(04/14 20:45:08) ahnyQuabs.ISpawnQuabsIfNeeded(): Quab brain #2 was created. Initializing brain.
(04/14 20:45:08) ahnyQuabs.ISpawnQuabsIfNeeded(): Quab brain #3 was created. Initializing brain.
(04/14 20:45:08) ahnyQuabs.ISpawnQuabsIfNeeded(): Quab brain #4 was created. Initializing brain.
(04/14 20:45:08) ahnyQuabs.ISpawnQuabsIfNeeded(): Quab brain #5 was created. Initializing brain.
(04/14 20:45:08) ahnyQuabs.ISpawnQuabsIfNeeded(): Quab brain #6 was created. Initializing brain.
(04/14 20:45:08) ahnyQuabs.ISpawnQuabsIfNeeded(): Quab brain #7 was created. Initializing brain.
(04/14 20:45:08) ahnyQuabs.ISpawnQuabsIfNeeded(): Quab brain #8 was created. Initializing brain.
(04/14 20:45:08) ahnyQuabs.ISpawnQuabsIfNeeded(): Quab brain #9 was created. Initializing brain.
(04/14 20:45:08) ahnyQuabs.ISpawnQuabsIfNeeded(): Quab brain #10 was created. Initializing brain.
(04/14 20:45:08) ahnyQuabs.ISpawnQuabsIfNeeded(): Quab brain #11 was created. Initializing brain.
(04/14 20:45:08) ahnyQuabs.ISpawnQuabsIfNeeded(): Quab brain #12 was created. Initializing brain.
(04/14 20:45:08) ahnyQuabs.ISpawnQuabsIfNeeded(): Quab brain #13 was created. Initializing brain.
(04/14 20:45:08) ahnyQuabs.ISpawnQuabsIfNeeded(): Quab brain #14 was created. Initializing brain.
(04/14 20:45:08) ahnyQuabs.ISpawnQuabsIfNeeded(): Quab brain #15 was created. Initializing brain.
(04/14 20:45:08) ahnyQuabs.ISpawnQuabsIfNeeded(): Quab brain #16 was created. Initializing brain.
(04/14 20:45:08) ahnyQuabs.ISpawnQuabsIfNeeded(): Quab brain #17 was created. Initializing brain.
(04/14 20:45:08) ahnyQuabs.ISpawnQuabsIfNeeded(): Quab brain #18 was created. Initializing brain.
(04/14 20:45:08) ahnyQuabs.ISpawnQuabsIfNeeded(): Quab brain #19 was created. Initializing brain.
(04/14 20:45:08) ahnyQuabs.ISpawnQuabsIfNeeded(): Quab brain #0 was created. Initializing brain.
(04/14 20:45:08) ahnyQuabs.ISpawnQuabsIfNeeded(): Quab brain #1 was created. Initializing brain.
(04/14 20:45:08) ahnyQuabs.ISpawnQuabsIfNeeded(): Quab brain #2 was created. Initializing brain.
(04/14 20:45:08) ahnyQuabs.ISpawnQuabsIfNeeded(): Quab brain #3 was created. Initializing brain.
(04/14 20:45:08) ahnyQuabs.ISpawnQuabsIfNeeded(): Quab brain #4 was created. Initializing brain.
(04/14 20:45:08) ahnyQuabs.ISpawnQuabsIfNeeded(): Quab brain #5 was created. Initializing brain.
(04/14 20:45:08) ahnyQuabs.ISpawnQuabsIfNeeded(): Quab brain #6 was created. Initializing brain.
(04/14 20:45:08) ahnyQuabs.ISpawnQuabsIfNeeded(): Quab brain #7 was created. Initializing brain.
(04/14 20:45:08) ahnyQuabs.ISpawnQuabsIfNeeded(): Quab brain #8 was created. Initializing brain.
(04/14 20:45:08) ahnyQuabs.ISpawnQuabsIfNeeded(): Quab brain #9 was created. Initializing brain.
(04/14 20:45:08) ahnyQuabs.ISpawnQuabsIfNeeded(): Quab brain #10 was created. Initializing brain.
(04/14 20:45:08) ahnyQuabs.OnGameCliMsg(): Got join reply from the var sync game, we are now an observer for game id 325
(04/14 20:45:08) ahnyQuabs.OnGameCliMsg(): Got owner change msg, ownerID = 65500, clientId = 35388
(04/14 20:45:43) ahnyQuabs.OnNotify: quabNum now = 10

[Christian Walther]

There are some relevant notes on http://wiki.openuru.org/index.php?title=MOSS/Notes (search for “quab”).

[D'Lanor]

Thanks Christian. That is exactly what happens.

Quab game Python is not really complete. The first person to link to the age becomes the "owner" of the quab game. The Python sort of attempts to handle the situation where the game owner leaves the age while there are still quabs around, but it does not actually handle it. If the server attempts to pass ownership to someone else, that client will break. And the current MOULagain client even crashes. So MOSS works around the problem by intentionally breaking the whole game when the owner leaves the age and quabs are still present. All the quabs will remain frozen in place until the age has been cleared of all players. The age does not have to restart to revive the game, just be empty.

Now we'll just have to figure out how it can be fixed. Too bad MOSS works around it. How are we supposed to debug this now?

[Hoikas]

Gah, what the heck.

Thanks for the notes. I was going to rewrite the quab puzzle for Gehn anyway (we're not going to be using the game manager--just the traditional notifications).

[JWPlatt]

Good due diligence in finding the existing documentation, Christian

Now we'll just have to figure out how it can be fixed. Too bad MOSS works around it. How are we supposed to debug this now?

Isn't that in your ballpark? I would think if the Python is fixed, removal of the MOSS workaround when it won't break the client would be forthcoming. Admittedly, it would be nice to test under the normal conditions that cause the problem, but if the Python is understood, it shouldn't be essential.