Release Not Pacman

[Asmo]

I just had a quick game in order to upload my most recent scores, since c4a was down recently - and when I reached a highscore (while online) the game froze before the score table/name entry came up, so I was left with a static display of the maze as the last dot was eaten. Couldn't esc out of it, or kill it with the pandora key.

So I tried again, offline - got a new highscore and entered my initials no problem. Went online, restarted Not Pacman and played again - same freezing at the end of the game again, even with a 'normal' score!

Considered deleting the appdata folder, but it only seems to hold the scores, is it something on c4a end?

 

[ptitSeb]

I just had a quick game in order to upload my most recent scores, since c4a was down recently - and when I reached a highscore (while online) the game froze before the score table/name entry came up, so I was left with a static display of the maze as the last dot was eaten. Couldn't esc out of it, or kill it with the pandora key.


So I tried again, offline - got a new highscore and entered my initials no problem. Went online, restarted Not Pacman and played again - same freezing at the end of the game again, even with a 'normal' score!


Considered deleting the appdata folder, but it only seems to hold the scores, is it something on c4a end?

Weird. Can you try to upload the score with Sparrow C4A Manager ?

 

[Asmo]

Weird. Can you try to upload the score with Sparrow C4A Manager ?

I haven't tried Sparrow before, but I should add that when the freeze occurs, it does still seem to upload all the other recent cached scores played offline - but NOT the one for the game played before the freeze, probably since I don't get to register it on the scoretable, it's gone for good because I have to reset to get out.

 

[Asmo]

Just tested again, played a couple of games offline (-60 now!), then went online and played a game to the end and it froze as before.

Waited a second or two, reset, went online again and checked the c4a scoretable.

It's uploading my scores alright, but it now seems it's also re-submitting some of my previous scores, I'm fairly sure I didn't play that many games today (!) but those actual scores are in my scoretable alright.

 

[ptitSeb]

Just tested again, played a couple of games offline (-60 now!), then went online and played a game to the end and it froze as before.


Waited a second or two, reset, went online again and checked the c4a scoretable.


It's uploading my scores alright, but it now seems it's also re-submitting some of my previous scores, I'm fairly sure I didn't play that many games today (!) but those actual scores are in my scoretable alright.

Hmmm, fuzilli client doesn't like that the score table is too full?

@Ziz, any advices?

 

[Ziz]

Hm, could you have a look in your c4a-mame appdata folder and tell me, how big the c4a-cache file is? Please in byte!

Did you try Sparrow-C4A-Manager now? What does it tell about the amount of data in the cache?

 

[Asmo]

c4a-cache is presently 45.2 kB (46320 Bytes)

I haven't tried Sparrow yet, as I can upload scores but need to avoid playing Not PacMan while online.

 

[Ziz]

I can see the size is valid and 60 entries are saved.

Did you play 60 games since your last successful commit?

Does other games (with the fusilli client like Metal Slug) work?

Is Sparrow C4A Manager able to submit your scores?

Does it show 0 entries afterwards?

Does NotPacman work afterwards?

I can't test it on my own atm, because my Pandora is broken. :\

 

[Asmo]

I can see the size is valid and 60 entries are saved.

Did you play 60 games since your last successful commit?

No! It's re-submitting loads of my previous scores with the current date. It just did it again after I tested Metal Slug Project, it flooded c4a with almost all my previous Not Pacman scores, with today's date (21/10)

Anyone in charge feel free to delete all my duplicate scores and any submitted this morning.

Does other games (with the fusilli client like Metal Slug) work?

I just tried Metal Slug while online, got a score of ~17k and the game never reached the highscore screen, just like Not Pacman. It froze with a black display. I reset, and went back online - No Metal Slug score had been registered, but (see above) all my previous Not PacMan scores had been resubmitted...

Is Sparrow C4A Manager able to submit your scores?

Does it show 0 entries afterwards?

Does NotPacman work afterwards?

I can't test it on my own atm, because my Pandora is broken. :\

I don't have Sparrow installed, I can try it later - but would it's use mean playing Not Pacman (or Metal Slug) while online would not still have this freezing issue - do the games default to sparrow rather than submitting scores directly?

 

[Ziz]

I don't have Sparrow installed, I can try it later - but would it's use mean playing Not Pacman (or Metal Slug) while online would not still have this freezing issue - do the games default to sparrow rather than submitting scores directly?

No game does submit the score "directly". Every game uses the spaghetti client, the fusilli client or the libSparrowNet library.The assumption is, that the fusilli client, used by Metal Slug and Not Pacman has a bug.

Sparrow C4A Manager uses the libSparrowNet library. However the fusilli client does this in fact, too...

I just wonder, whether Sparrow C4A Manager works. If it does it will empty the cache after submitting all scores. I wonder, whether Not Pacman and Co does work afterwards.

This is a really strange behavior and needs debugging. :\

 

[Asmo]

Installed Sparrow, it said 60 scores were still cached (this is after playing Metal Slug earlier already flooded c4a with old scores) - I tried to upload cached scores and the counter ticked away for a while before reporting 'could not upload - check internet connection'. My connection is fine, posting this from my Pandora...

 

[Ziz]

Ah, I have an idea, what happens.

I have to think about this.

One last questions: What does happen if you ran Sparrow again? Are there still 60 scores? And I would guess, that not all scores are submitted. :\

My idea: I have a background counter running. After a specific time (15s for Sparrow C4A Manager), the thread is killed, if it doesn't finish then. Does it take around 15 seconds until it tells you, that no connection seems to be available?

 

[Asmo]

One last questions: What does happen if you ran Sparrow again? Are there still 60 scores? And I would guess, that not all scores are submitted. :\

My idea: I have a background counter running. After a specific time (15s for Sparrow C4A Manager), the thread is killed, if it doesn't finish then. Does it take around 15 seconds until it tells you, that no connection seems to be available?

Running Sparrow again, yes 60 scores still apparently cached.

AFAIK all scores have been submitted - certainly all the highest scores have, there's nothing of any value still in the cache.

Yes, approx. 15 seconds sounds right.

 

[Asmo]

What's up with the Not Pacman scoreboard on c4a?

http://c4a.openpandora.org/#/notpacman

Under the default 'Current Month' displayed, it's now only displaying some of the older duplicate scores of mine (dated today, 21/10) and has dumped my highest scores (those exceeding -30) and, apparently, everyone else's scores altogether....!

Everyone's previous scores are visible by clicking 'all time' filtering (even though the majority are still current October entries)

 

[Ziz]

I have no idea about the c4a webpage and skeezix server.

But I know now the error, which occurs for you (at least I think so).

I will fix it tomorrow (hopefully) and tell ptitseb if a fixed version of fc is ready.

 

[Ziz]

Okay, I fixed it, but didn't compile it yet! I will do this in ~2h.

In the past I killed the thread after timeout, but a mutex could have been locked. Furthermore the cache file wasn't updated.

Now I send a message one second before timeout. If the childthread reacts it sends a message back, that it promises to exit as fast as possible. In that case it will never be killed anymore. However if the childthread doesn't react it will be killed at timeout (one second later).

Furthermore the mutex will be locked anyway before killing the thread.

I tested it with puzzletube_survival (you may have noticed MANY low score spam) and a timeout of 10000 ms (which war enough to send 60 scores on my netbook) and 5000 ms. In the last case only ~60% were submitted, the thread finished gracefully and wrote the correct rest cache back. In another run with 5000 ms I could send the rest of the cache.

In any case the fusilli client finished without an error.

Greetings,

Ziz

 

[Ziz]

Fixed version of fc is compiled. Now it is up to ptitseb to implement it.

@Asmo: You can test the fix with the new version of the Sparrow C4A Manager, too! It should submit at least some of your scores in the 15 seconds and afterwards show a smaller amount of cached scores.

 

[Asmo]

That worked, thanks!

It (re)submitted all of the cached scores, emptying the cache this time.

All but 1 of those (61) scores has been submitted two or three (maybe even four) times previously under different dates, so I now have a crazy number of submissions, and the c4a scoreboard is only showing my re-submitted duplicate scores for the current month, bumping everyone elses into 'previous month'. Hopefully Skeezix or someone empowered to do so will delete all my older scores and duplicates to make all visible again

 

[Ziz]

Great to hear, that it worked!

A shame, that YOU found this bug. If a worse player would have found this bug, (s)he wouldn't spam the whole top 200. ^^'

 

[ptitSeb]

Ok, the update version with the fixed client is on the repo.

Build 05

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• Updated Fusilli client from Ziz, with fixed cached upload for large cache