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Board » Technical Support » Keeping the client in synch

Posted by
outlaw


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2012-06-01 13:37:55
2014-01-09 10:12:37 - Keeping the client in synch
This is quite urgent with the upcoming Sprint Cup races.

I'm also not sure if you guys have the ability to change the client on short notice...

Anyway, boat position on the server is updated every 10s. The client queries boat.xml every 15.2s. This leaves us in the dark on the real position of our boats, critical for sharp roundings like Orno 1.

My suggestion is to add a "time to next update" field to the boat.xml, and change the client query timing accordingly.
Posted by
kroppyer


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2010-02-05 15:25:55
2014-01-09 15:36:50 - Re: Keeping the client in synch
You can have two clients open at the same time, if you time it right, they'll poll the server every 7 or 8 seconds so you'll never skip a jump.

I don't know the server or client code, but from what I've heard it's probably harder than it seems to sync them. It's almost always harder than it seems with software development ;)
Posted by
hmm


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2011-11-03 13:35:22
2014-01-09 22:34:01 - Re: Keeping the client in synch
How often the server updates the boats depends on the server load, so when the position is updated it is not known when the next update happens.

With the new server the load has been fortunately mostly low, so the updates happen mostly every 10 seconds but there is no guarantee on that.

I don't think this issue is really worth of updating the client. When we are starting to sync requests by the second also the possible network lag should be taken into account so doing this "properly" would not really be that easy.

The current client is same for all and it is something everyone is familiar by now. However, this can be taken into account when planning client updates or new clients in the future. Especially ability to also tell the client to update less frequently during bigger server load could be useful.
Posted by
outlaw


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2012-06-01 13:37:55
2014-01-10 08:47:29 - Re: Keeping the client in synch
A dedicated racer can work around the issue, casual and new users are a different matter. For example I could imagine a NNYC member signing up for Lake Winnebago and being frustrated by the client.

While exact position doesn't matter in open water SOL has entirely too many coastal and round the buoys races to call it irrelevant.

Regarding prediction, last interval + 2s should be reliable enough, unless load spikes are really extreme. You would also get some savings from less active boats (30s update interval).

Lastly you should consider incentives, having players run two clients seems undesirable etc. (And reloading to force the new wx, on what is probably the maximum load period to begin with...)
Posted by
hmm


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2014-01-11 18:15:37 - Re: Keeping the client in synch
If anyone volunteers to change the client code, we might consider how to handle this issue.
Posted by
outlaw


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2014-01-23 15:20:08 - Re: Keeping the client in synch
bump.

I unfortunately have zero experience with flash, that said I could give it a spin if no one else will.
Posted by
Svein


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2014-01-30 20:39:48 - Re: Keeping the client in synch
This is relevant, if not imminent, issue.
My understanding is that "next" client version is not likely to be in flash environment, but maybe HTML5 or something else - not my field really:)

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