Wed Mar 05, 2003 12:52 am
Possible reason behind server crashes...
Hi everyone,
After extensively testing FL I can definately say (as you probably already know), that the cause behind the server crashes is not because of the number of players or anything like that, but because of one or more character files getting corrupted.
The reason why the character files get corrupted is not clear to me yet, but it seems to happen sometimes when you upgrade your ship, so it could be directly linked to a certain weapon or a random bug when you buy weapons.
Now a few tips.
If you're playing FL in your LAN, with a couple of friends, back-up your character files as often as you can, preferably after everyone lands on a planet and BEFORE buying anything (landing on a planet will trigger the save event which updates the player files and buying weapons could trigger the bug, so if you back up after buying the weapons you could be backing up a bugged character file).
Also if you're in a LAN you can find out which character file is bugged by connecting, one by one, each one of the characters while the other players use a newly created character. Ie. I use the character that I want to check, and my friends all load a new character, then someone else tests his character and I load a new char, and so on.
The only solution I can see to fixing this problem is for someone to "hack" the saved character file format and make a program to fix it. It shouldn't be hard, although it is quite time consuming. I don't think I have the skills to achieve that unfortunately = (
Hehe, anyway, hope this helps,
Kybos
After extensively testing FL I can definately say (as you probably already know), that the cause behind the server crashes is not because of the number of players or anything like that, but because of one or more character files getting corrupted.
The reason why the character files get corrupted is not clear to me yet, but it seems to happen sometimes when you upgrade your ship, so it could be directly linked to a certain weapon or a random bug when you buy weapons.
Now a few tips.
If you're playing FL in your LAN, with a couple of friends, back-up your character files as often as you can, preferably after everyone lands on a planet and BEFORE buying anything (landing on a planet will trigger the save event which updates the player files and buying weapons could trigger the bug, so if you back up after buying the weapons you could be backing up a bugged character file).
Also if you're in a LAN you can find out which character file is bugged by connecting, one by one, each one of the characters while the other players use a newly created character. Ie. I use the character that I want to check, and my friends all load a new character, then someone else tests his character and I load a new char, and so on.
The only solution I can see to fixing this problem is for someone to "hack" the saved character file format and make a program to fix it. It shouldn't be hard, although it is quite time consuming. I don't think I have the skills to achieve that unfortunately = (
Hehe, anyway, hope this helps,
Kybos