Server Help [Petition] Please fix Server Stability

because every 5 minutes the community wants something else
it's not like everyone agrees on what should be next on their wishlist

 

Yeah i run iLoveBacons servers and i'm also incredible frustrated in how much they had broken Multiplayer on this update.
Multiplayer has reached a breaking point, and they have no other choice than fix it at once, even not wanting to as they mentioned several times recently.

 

Ok seriously...the number 1 ranking server is having these same issues. Atleast we all don't have to feel alone anymore....this thread has become group therapy for me.

 

I'm glad that I've not encountered any server issues as of late. I've kept my server running for friends hours on end and have received relatively little crashes until I've actually tried playing the game on the same machine the server was hosted on. Those stopped when i switched to another machine.

I can see why they wouldn't want to put too much effort in the server software until the game is released. Server software is a pain and they're changing things often. That being said and devil's advocate aside, I can imagine how much of a pain it must be to not be able to play a multiplayer game without.. multiple.. players..

 

Well, all the servers really are, even small 8player servers (specially linux) are facing this instability. It's a question of wait now to see if they are really going to fix, there are much wrong things with MP, like one last tier upgraded ship empty has to upload 2MB when the player enters the server, customized is more than 5MB! That is a networking meltdown the server struggles to handle and certainly causes of why some people can't join servers at times. That's one example of several severe issues that are being one challenge to multiplayer communities to deal with.

I really really hope they at least make it stop crashing and timeout that is base stability things. Now when it comes to griefers / hacks, it's a more complex issue that also affects server stability, but a starting point of make the server have limits, like, packets flood from a client (mass destruction, projectile spam, etc...) will be a easier as right now there are no limits.

@Bucketlamp yeah it's a tricky issue, but it comes to that point comparing since the launch of this game, the server software has breaking more and more with every update, and it's reaching like it said, a breaking point. It's painful to keep it on a game being developed, but thing comes to starbound is a game where people want to play multiplayer, want to play in a universe where they're not actually alone on, and this demand is what causes people even facing all the MP issues, keep playing on MP (and then the complaints/requests to devs attention into his issues increase) or just at least far i notice, leave the game till the next update in hopes MP is finally stable.

 

@Bacon I think they may have never really tweaked the server software that much, if anything I've noticed really nice options vanishing, like the inability to create a multiplayer world leading to some rather interesting errors when you try to run single player.

I can say that I really wish there was better server support, but realistically I know the likelihood of that happening quickly is low. I think like others have said in this thread, the tone of those who want better should change as well, rather than sound like whining (Sorry) we should be reporting and documenting what ails us. Without that t's like clients from hell that tell you to make something better without telling you what "better" is. Either way, here's hoping.

 

Yes indeed, features have been banished, the server accounting system, the default world options....

Yes complain doesn't help but let me tell you something. I am since the patch day poking the developers about issues, i was able to figure out enough info make kyren fix one of main crashes and world corruption problems that is the server trying to load the same world twice, corrupting it and also crashing the server. Now to the other issues i got frustrated and so does the developers that is, the servers are crashing in random way with networking problems with NO Error Logs.

Let me explain what happened: I try to report something, they ask me for more info and logs, there is no logs, they say they don't know what's up then.
Then i got frustrated, if whatever is going on with the software is making crashes with no error logs, they can't expect us to provide error logs!

Thing is, i actually asked for a debug version of the server so we can actually make a group to test and reproduce issues, something on their side only returned silence.
It did end up on they only have posted they are working on fix multiplayer issues on twitter, after hundreds of complaints about it. =/

@Bucketlamp

 

Yes, make the servers more stable, shut up and take my money!

 

Bacon, thanks for replying into this thread and it's reassuring to know that you are also frustrated with this stuff. I run StarTopia and the only solution I've found so far is to have the server reboot on the hour to combat the freezes. It is incredibly bad that their is no logs to show even what is happening when the box freezes : (

I guess at this point we can only wait and hope they release a hotfix soon!

 

Srsly... Week news about project = new t-shirts...
http://playstarbound.com/whats-that-on-your-shirt/

 

Yes @Stadl0r the issues are affecting everyone really, with a special impact on linux and bigger communities. It's frustrating to a server owner that on Enraged Koala could achieve hours of uptime, now, ends up on minutes.
I am on stand by for the next patch that is certainly for server fixes. I really hope they fix it and not just put "bandages" on this broken software so the next update we end up facing this kind of issues again.

It's a question of wait, and see what can it turns out. One of the issues causer being mods is a tricky thing, they want a fully moddable game, however servers react awfully to modded players because they try to load the mods of a client when it joins, they really need to separate SP = Play with your mods and MP = Play only with mods if the server has them installed.

 

@Bacon Well what I mean is observe what may or may not cause crashes, one such incident I've observed and reported is that these crashes happen when I or any other person changes from any planet to a ship world. It always occurs when it switches from planet to shipworld not in the other direction. Maybe, if possible raise awareness to those that use your server and report what they last did before the server become unresponsive. Likely a shot in the dark, but it might help resolve -something-.

Believe me though, I do feel your pain, and their recent tweets have been very... unhelpful and borderline "blame the end user". One such tweet was to tell us most server issues were caused by different versions. Since I run stable, and everyone on my server ALSO runs stable, telling us to check versions really doesn't help.

 

I have poked on that to see behavior, but it is really random and not reproducible.
What i know is that something goes wrong on the server networking, from sudden, it starts to spams shutdown worlds and shipworlds due inactivity on the logs, as well kicking players due inactivity. That is also the reason of the players crashing when on multiplayer, server is sending "world stop packets" with players still inside of the planet.
It seems to be all linked to something random, something that fails on networking side that causes the socket to be lost, causing the networking issues where the Chat Stopping working is also one of the ways to tell it's happening.

The end result is: A Segfault crash (without log), a crash without any log info at all or a socket lost that timeouts everyone out of the server and lets nobody in.
It's just my guess because i don't develop the game, but the odd networking behavior at least via the logs is the same before all of those issues.

 

Well, I suppose I might just have lucked out with my system build and whatever installed software that may or may not be interacting with the server, since most of my crashes can be accounted for either by myself or someone on the server at that time. I can also only guess because of the scope of your server, you're going to see more errors.

I only hope that they DO expedite their fixes, since this game is far less fun in single player than it is with a whole community. My fear is that if they don't we might lose a large portion one of the better gaming communities, and it's not really easy to build trust back up after it's lost. Good luck bacon, and may you always grace my breakfast platter.

 

Just for records sake...I co-own tartarus realms linux starbound server and before the update we experienced crashes but it would atleast stay up for hours on end but after this last update?....It just takes minutes. I've heard this scenario echoed too much.

Have you guys noticed that every update they make use of the word "stable" in front of it? And did you also notice that in the tweet he says "Thanks for making us aware" as if they didn't know?...are they testing the game on single player only?

 

Yeah those issues are swarming multiplayer servers at this moment. Thing is developers Do Not want to work on multiplayer, that's why its taking so much complaints so they wake up to react about the issues like they did. They still blame it on mods a lot, but far my experience with iLoveBacons this new issues are networking problems of the server itself!

Thing is that they delay fixes because they can't reproduce it, specially issues that can happen with over 20 players online. I mean, if they test multiplayer is just with a small group of people during some time and consider it stable.

 

As co-owner of Bacon's server, I have also witnessed first hand the issues posed by the multiplayer server software. Please Chucklefish, if you fix it then you will see hoards of players flocking back to multiplayer.

 

I really hope that if Chucklefish is working on fixing multiplayer now, they're also looking into fixing this issue. It's been happening since one of the stable Upbeat Giraffe updates & has completely broken the game for my partner & I. We have hosted a server in the past but if we can't even play on a server with two people without my client crashing immediately when beaming down to any planet that isn't the starter planet the game is totally broken.

I worry they're not going to fix this problem, and I'm gonna have to abandon Starbound for a while. Which is a shame, considering Upbeat Giraffe stable was only released somewhat recently.

Anyways, can someone tweet and bug the devs, linking to the thread I linked? It's a very pressing issue which is happening to multiple people, and I'd hate to see it go unfixed.

 

i would like this to be fixed as soon as possible so that way i can get back on the multiplier train

 

Let's hope they actually fix something this time. *sighs*

Yeah. Re-Logic were that way too before 1.1. After that, it didn't really matter because TShock replaced the rather lacking vanilla executable. Let's hope someone can reverse engineer Starbound's protocols enough to make a new, better server executable.