A Land Far Away

Time-outs are very common when playing.

Often if there is a time-out and players are logging in again then there is another time-out.

Is there something that can be done about the time-outs?

No you must complete the full time out like your parents instructed.

Unless....

Theres a tech solution.

The_Righteous wrote:Is there something that can be done about the time-outs?

Yes..quit being naughty

Is the time the server waits for your signal to return fixed? Raising it slightly would increase the chance you log back on and find yourself dead, and make "jerkyness"due to lag spikes more severe. But it should decrease the number of connection drops.

If the problem is too common, some experimentation might be in order.

The_Righteous wrote:Time-outs are very common when playing.

Often if there is a time-out and players are logging in again then there is another time-out.

Is there something that can be done about the time-outs?

This sounds to me like players trying to log on while a server is being reset following a crash. If all wait for the Ping to stabilize at a normal level, much of this may be avoided.

Curmudgeon wrote: This sounds to me like players trying to log on while a server is being reset following a crash. If all wait for the Ping to stabilize at a normal level, much of this may be avoided.

Yes that can perhaps explain the 2nd time-out, but not the first.

The server doesn't seem to crash. It just lags real bad every now and then. It's back up a moment later and it seems fine logging straight back in. It seems to be a fair delay before the second (or third or forth) time out. Jmecha described it as the server hic-upping, which I think seems to sum it up well.

The_Righteous wrote:

Curmudgeon wrote: This sounds to me like players trying to log on while a server is being reset following a crash. If all wait for the Ping to stabilize at a normal level, much of this may be avoided.

Yes that can perhaps explain the 2nd time-out, but not the first.

We have had a recent spate of players with corrupted character files causing server lockups or crashes when trying to log on. Please check your PC before trying to log on a server.

Curmudgeon wrote:We have had a recent spate of players with corrupted character files causing server lockups or crashes when trying to log on. Please check your PC before trying to log on a server.

How?

deleted by author

hollyfant wrote:

Curmudgeon wrote:We have had a recent spate of players with corrupted character files causing server lockups or crashes when trying to log on. Please check your PC before trying to log on a server.

How?

When your character shows up in the character selection screen, actually take a moment to look at the statistics/info there before hitting "join game"; if the stats are all 0's or 8's, don't log in! This won't happen every time a .bic is corrupted, but if you see corrupted character data there, you certainly shouldn't try to log in.

Note: The rapid-fire clickthrough into the server isn't as easy when using the ADL / 1.23 setup, so hopefully the above class of corruption login won't be as common.

Also, the old setup for BG was having regular and frequent transient network failures, which were more than likely causing many of the .bic corruptions and the timeouts. The new, faster hosting setup Zic has secured seems to have sorted those failures completely. So, I'm optimistic that the worst of such troubles are behind us.