Logged in to find myself in Hell :o

[JohnnyFrog]

To put the 'spawned on a monster' suggestion to bed...

In addition to Entris comment, I logged out sitting on one of the chairs at the tables, I've seen the trolls standing on these during a fight, but when they are wandering they walk around them (as far as I have seen anyway - please correct me if I am in error)

 

I suppose my bad poetry could be responsible - Offended the Godess of Beauty.

[ttlanhil]

What if it spawned and he logged in at the same time in the same spot?

there's no such thing as 'the same time' in computing. not really(1). things will be done in order. it may only be a millisecond or less apart, but it's in order.

both logging in when space is occupied, and monster spawns, have an area. if the location is in use by the first, then the second will just move a bit (unless there's something weird in the server, which is possible, but I doubt it for this case)

 

 

footnote: yes, technical people, I know about SMP, HT, clustering, effects of non-atomic operations in threads without proper mutex/locking... (and anyone who doesn't understand this, you're not supposed to. just ignore it. or if you must know more, google it.)

[Entropy]

Do you have the hellspawn perk?

Other possible explanations: Neutron hitting the server memory, flipping a bit on or off.

P.S. No one from a different IP than yours logged in with your character, nor were you PKed during that interval.

[Requiem]

Umm..entropy?

 

i thought you dont lose things if you go to hell becouse of hellspawn? and according to him, he lost quite a few things when he died, and managed to find his DB again.

 

correct me if im wrong. but im pretty sure im not

 

1st

[Entropy]

Umm..entropy?

 

i thought you dont lose things if you go to hell becouse of hellspawn? and according to him, he lost quite a few things when he died, and managed to find his DB again.

 

correct me if im wrong. but im pretty sure im not

 

1st

Right, forgot about that.

Wait a sec.. Wasn't it the radiation day a few days ago? Could that be it?

[JohnnyFrog]

No on the hellspawn perk question, I'm a good little dwarf who is nice to his mother...

 

It looks like unless this starts happening to other prople and some case similarities are matched up then it might just float.

 

I hope you guys aren't wasting a lot of time on this... I know that you are all a touch busy with the update etc. and have better things to do.

 

I'll go back to where I was and try and repeat what happened and will post back if anything interesting happens.

 

Thank you all again for your help and suggestions.

[Entropy]

Well, I guess the only posibility is the neutron or maybe even a neutrino flipping the server RAM

[LabRat]

Well, I guess the only posibility is the neutron or maybe even a neutrino flipping the server RAM

Of course! <Sherlock Holmes>whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth</sherlock holmes>

How could I have not considered quantum fluctuation and cosmic bombardment?

 

As an aside, you know when you watch an untuned TV and see static? one out of every four of those dots is caused by cosmic rays.. makes you think, doesn't it?

[ttlanhil]

Well, I guess the only posibility is the neutron or maybe even a neutrino flipping the server RAM

or maybe a centrino? (well, they do use wireless...)

[Infamous]

scotty used the wrong beam and accidently zapped you with a faser xD

[ville-v]

Or bored mod wrote #kill JohnnyFrog

[Kalach]

Or bored mod wrote #kill JohnnyFrog

 

I'm going to post my own most likely wrong explanation, since I don't know the server code:

 

Assumption: there is a pool of PCs each with a unique ID. As players are disconn'd, they leave the pool and their ID is freed up. As players connect, they are added to the pool and they get the first available ID.

 

Here's the scenario, it's a race condition situation that is probably very rare (processes marked with #pid):

 

#910 Player A is in combat.

#910 Player A receives mortal wound.

#910 Player A loses all connectivity, and releases ID #3214

#2000 Player B logs in.

#2000 Player B recieves ID #3214

#910 Death from mortal wound is assigned to ID #3214 and Player B is sent to underworld.

 

Main Objection to this idea:

 

#1, I'm pretty sure if you drop connection during combat, combat completes in your absence.

 

 

I have a few other objections in my head, but they dependent on whether each actor has a single thread on the server, and the threads pass messages, or if there are multilple threads constantly updating a single dataspace, and a main thread that performs status checks.

[Entropy]

What you describe is somewhat true, with the exception that when a player is disconnected during a fight, his ID is reserved, for the event he returns before the fight is over. So his ID will not be allocated to any other player.

[Zaer]

good idea tho kalach

[Kalach]

What you describe is somewhat true, with the exception that when a player is disconnected during a fight, his ID is reserved, for the event he returns before the fight is over. So his ID will not be allocated to any other player.

 

This makes me curious, could anything other than combat (poison, MN, etc...) enter into this scenario?)

 

My mind is having trouble wrapping around the general MMORPG architecture as far as what duties are assigned to a connection-handler thread (process?) and what duties are in some other process, not to mention how non-connected entities are handled (each spawn has a forked process?) Things that are handled by the connection-handler would be safe for this kind of the scenario. Things that aren't handled by the connection-handler have the potential for race-conditions.

 

Edit:

 

Thanks, Zaer

Edited June 28, 2006 by Kalach

[Entropy]

We don't use threads on the server, so there are no race conditions.

There is nothing I can think of that would cause such a bug, except for quantum mechanics.

[vwpro]

Did he found his DB ? if he did that means he died once he logged in.

[Placid]

Did he found his DB ? if he did that means he died once he logged in.

Yes, he did:

 

I logged off (that is logged off...not went afk or fell asleep or anything... I alt-x'd game and switched off 'puter) last night sitting in Idaloran mines at the troll spawn. I logged in 8 hours later to find myself sitting in hell with health in the red and stuff missing from inv... I scurried back to where I had been sitting when I logged off to find my bag sitting there.

[vwpro]

ah, missunderstood that

 

so hacked,died by monster,pked could be left behind

[Torg]

so hacked,died by monster,pked could be left behind

You didn't scroll up and read Ent's post, did you.

[Entropy]

I didn't say he wasn't hacked.

What I said was that no one from an IP other than his logged in with his char.

[JohnnyFrog]

For the sake of argument...

 

Imagine that my char was hacked...which is possible, I run a wireless network which could have been hacked... so someone could have logged into EL through my network, so the EL server would see my usual IP address.

 

Then this person went to all the trouble of gaining access...logged in as JohnnyFrog, typed #suicide, then logged off at the same time as I logged on (I saw the death message)... To my mind, not very likely... but possible I suppose...

 

Anyway...all of you go work on the damn update and stop worrying about this.