Major Breakthrough for Debugging

Ueda

By Ueda
in Development Logs

 Share

Recommended Posts

Ueda God King

Ueda

Posted
Posted

http://i.imgur.com/v52VMFA.png

Dear Ninja,

Today we fixed one of the biggest server crashes plaguing the games development, and with it comes a lot of lessons for the future of the game's development. We now know some things to look out for and avoid when coding the game, and we now have the means to debug crashes like this in the future.

The reason this particular crash was so unsolvable was that it wasn't actually crashing the server. It was creating an infinite loop in calling server game logic. Which didn't crash the server and provide any debug information, and our current server was not able to give any debug information when attempting to debug through the latest version of Visual Studio.

It turns out that our dated technology required the use of dated copies of Windows and a dated copy of Visual Studio to give us the debug information we needed, and I would not have been able to discover this without @Seth. It also took @Robin's knowledge in debugging methods to figure out what was causing it.

I've spent the last couple of weeks blindly testing the server to see what would cause crashes, it took me and Seth stress testing parts of the game blindly, as we collected useful data and information from players about what they felt was causing the crashes. While I cannot disclose the exact cause as of yet for the game's server security, I would like to say that some of the information given did in fact make sense once the bug was found. The discovery took the efforts of Seth, Robin and myself convening over a long period of time analyzing the course of action to solve the bug.

I also would like to thank Pokemon Planet's creator, Brody, for also providing assistance, and advising possible courses of action as well @Abhi for agreeing to put aside time from his busy exam schedule to look into it when I called him.

Lastly I'd like to thank all the players who have been patient and sending me reports on possible causes for the crashes over the last week.
Thank you to Nintendave @Bolan Vongola @Dayum Mirana @Riley @Sukki Ohiya @Jellal Kuraen @Oriax @Itachi Himitsu @Lumy @Shissei @MrChubb The Hozuki @Origami Heart User_name @Lain and whoever else gave useful feedback and encouragement, you're all top notch beta testers.

This may not be the last problem causing crashes, but we now have the means to debug any similar problems (which there might be). Hopefully this means a much more stable Nin Online server immediately, or in the weeks to come.

However, I would like to apologize in advance that the goals of 2018 (Adv. Masteries / Mist) may come a bit later than end of the year. I was initially going to rush out a lot of content by the end of 2018, but I've decided that in the spirit of Christmas, I'll be working on making the server stable and doing a Christmas event again, because we haven't had holiday events this year.

Regards,
Rory

Edit (26/10/2021): For historical purposes, this crash was due to body flicker technique warping players randomly to a spot around the target. But if the target was at a corner of the map, it was looking for a spot outside the bounds of the index, and because this was a while loop, it was creating an infinite loop of finding a potential spot. It's such a simple issue in hindsight, but impossible to find with the kind of reports we were receiving and the lack of any debug information. There were all kinds of checks in place, but a while loop was still not a good option for this. 

 

 

  • Like 26
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Itachi Uchiha Rookie

Itachi Uchiha

Posted
Posted

When you said that you cried when you found the source of the crashes it really hit me as to just how much effort you guys put into fixing it on top of all the entitled players griefing you about everything. Job well done @Ueda @Seth @Robin. This is a shining example of excellent game development work and your own resolve. 

Mist/advanced can wait. We now have a stable server ; ) 

  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Clayman Contributor

Clayman

Posted
Posted

Good to see one of the biggest issues being fixed. I am quite saddened that Advanced/Mist is going to be delayed. I hope we will at least get some sort of balance update before the end of the year since this year's meta has become really stale and I find PvP hard to enjoy with all of these unavoidable and uncounterable combos.

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Gildarts Collaborator

Gildarts

Posted
Posted

Glad the issue is resolved. Glad yall took the time out of your everyday lives to no life in finding the issue. I Jun may have to make a rap about the hard work and dedication. Even though Mist and advanced masteries aren't coming I know some other things that are coming before the year ends; Hopefully summons and a change in pvp things in general. None the less keep up the hardwork. I can gladly say I've been a Nin Onliner and a Nin Rapper for 2 years/ 1 year now :P.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Ueda God King

Ueda

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Thanks everyone!

Doesn't deserve a whole dev log for this, but we've most likely indentified the cause of the Connection Lost error that causes you to not be able to login for a long time. It should be fixed within the next few days.

Also, we know about Flicker and Flicker-type jutsu not teleporting you behind the player instead of the front if the front is blocked. Will be fixed together as well!
We just want to keep the server online to see how long it can go, if it goes beyond a week, we can conclude that it's truly stable!

  • Like 8
Link to comment
Share on other sites
 Share
Go to topic listing

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.