Bugs

Please provide the most complete information possible when describing your bug.

* (Time) Some of the times on my home page show only days and some show days and hours, in both cases there are some number of hours left (eg 23, 12, 1). (gigaclon)

• (Missing games) A few games appear to have disappeared from my list without getting a notification that they've ended or showing up in my history, BTT 1077 among them.
  • Sorry for the delayed response. We had one crash a while back that was particularly bad and for the first time corrupted the games database. This resulted in (I believe) two games being truncated. This was likely one of them. Now that the hardware has been upgraded, the server appears to be stable (3 weeks and counting) so this should not be an issue again. We take pains to ensure this sort of thing doesn't happen, but when a HDD crashes, it crashes. Let me know if this ever happens again please. — Aaron 24 Nov 2005 19:21

• (Pikemen) I haven't gotten any email alerting me of my turn for Pikemen game #744. (I'm ts52.) I have been getting email for my Homewolds game though (#742).
  • (Aaron) Has this continued? Or have you resumed receiving Pikemen notifications? I double checked my logs and my ISP did indeed have some problems with your emails a few days ago (the 9th) but no errors since then. — Aaron 14 Oct 2005 17:38
  • (Tim) Unfortunately, the game ended shortly after I posted this. I did get the notice of the game ending though. I'll try to start up another game, and let you know how it goes.
  • (Tim) Nope, still something wrong. I got email about the starting of game 1017, but no notice that it was my turn.
  • (Aaron) If this is indeed Istari-Tim, then according to my database, you have elected to not receive email notifications. You can change this from the Edit Profile page.
  • (Tim/ts52) Apparently my machine at work ate my last edit. This is ts52-Tim, not Istari. And I'm getting email notification fine for Homeworlds games, just not for Pikemen games, which it what seems so odd.
  • (Aaron) I found the problem, Tim, and it was entirely my own. As it turns out, nobody has been receiving email notifications for Pikemen because I neglected to add the necessary 2 lines of code. It should be fixed now. Let me know if it is still not working. — Aaron 22 Oct 2005 23:39

• (Generatorb) One play option is g8-g8=2. Is this actually a valid move or a bug?
  • (Aaron) This indeed a valid move. You are taking your g8 piece, jumping it out over another piece in your generator, and then jumping it back onto the piece auto-generated by leaving the square. This technique only works if you still have orbs in your stash. It's not necessarily faster than g8-g6 followed by g8-g6=2 either, as it still takes 2 moves to get your spheroid into play. It is helpful if you need to quickly protect your generator though.

• (Praetorian) When the 7 civilian moves, it has a tiny white mark on it. See screenshot: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v201/MatrixFrog/praetor.jpg (bug posted by MatrixFrog)
  • (Aaron) I have confirmed that this bug is fixed. Thanks! — Aaron Dalton 2005/10/09 14:22
    • (Cerulean) Not quite. I'm having the same problem. I'll email you the screen capture.

• (Lambda) I'm not sure if this is a bug, but the ratings all seem to be above 1500. Since I'm assuming this is supposed to be Elo ratings, and seeded at 1500, I would expect to see ratings both above and below 1500.
  • (Aaron) Initial ELO ratings are seeded at 1600. There is no particular reason for this. It was an arbitrary choice. Hope that clarifies things for you!
    • (Lambda) Ah, thanks for the clarification.

• (Gobleteer) Wiki Problems: Im getting an error(file not writable) trying to register so I can edit the AI section.
  • (Aaron) Sorry about that! Fixed! — Aaron Dalton 2005/10/13 06:25

• (Lexicon) Blam! moves and page reloads are not completed as transactions on the database. I experienced this as a minor bug, but it might come up as a problem later. What I specifically saw: 1) I reloaded a current game (game 173). The MOVE box on the left said it was waiting for Aaron to move. The board failed to load. The comments section said “SYSTEM: Aaron has placed a R2 piece at cell E5. 2005-05-28 19:04:48”. I interpret this as Aaron having made a move while I was reloading the page. As I said, no big deal in this instance, but it might be worth implimenting transactions.
• (Aaron) The database aspect is atomic. The board, however, is generated in a separate process. This error can occur if one refreshes at just the right moment while the board generator is finishing up. The window is very small; less than a second even on crowded boards. You have very good timing