Problems experienced with Deep Island

[philipgr]

Good afternoon

Last night I connected to the Deep Island Shard for the first time sadly my experience was neither pleasurable and enjoyable due to the following issues.
1) The Deep Island servers kept disconnecting me. I continually received an Uru popup with this message: ‘There seems to be a problem with the online connection. Please quit and try again. #03 (TERMINATED: Server LogOff.

This continuously happened from around 22:00 last night until around 07:00 when I gave up and went to bed. It happed all over the place and so many times that I lost count. I have been disconnected in MOULa, TOC and Gehn a few times but not to the extent that I experienced last night and this morning.

These are a few examples of when and where it happened:
a) While connecting to my Relto. A few times I did not get to my Relto.
b) When linking out of an age or Ae’gura.
c) When clicking on my book case.
d) When clicking on a linking book
e) My avatar would freeze just after linking into an age or while running/walking in an age. This happened a lot in Teledahn.
f) After I had connected to Sphere 4 in Ahnnonay I was climbing down one of the two ladders to get to the journey chair I was disconnected so I was not able to click the journey cloth. After I reconnected when I used the journey cloth in the
Ahnonnay linking book I wound up in Space Ahnonnay (Sphere 3). When I used the linking picture in the book I wound up in Statue Ahnnonay (Sphere 4). I tried this a few times with the same result. I then went through the whole process of
accessing Sphere 4. This time I was able to get to the viewing room.
g) After I had done the routine of clicking the journey cloths in Crystal and Space Ahnnonay, and pulling the lever in the tower in Water Ahnnony. I then jumped into the water to find that the current was on. I linked to my Relto only to get stuck in
mid air. Uru had frozen. I could move the mouse cursor which was all I could do.

2) In Teledahn I was able to get into the big rusty bucket and make it into the big mushroom. However after I had arrived in the control room the rusty bucket did not drop me so I was stuck inside it. The only way I could get out of it was to link back
to Relto. I tried this six times with the same result each time. An odd thing was that every time I redid it there was a bucket in the right place but I had to move the lever near it a few times to get the counter to start.

Things stabilized from around 03:40 until just after 06:00. I was able to get to K’Veer and complete Er’cana to the point where I am waiting for my pellets to be made. I then started on Ahnnonay which is when the issues in 1(f) and (g) started. At around 06:40 I was disconnected again. I tried for around ten minutes to reconnect without success. At this point I admitted defeat and went to bed.

My PC specifications are as follows:
OS installed:
Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit
Ubuntu 12.04LTS 64 bit
Zorin OS 6 64 bit
Linux Mint 16 64 bit

Gigabyte GA-B57M-D3H Ivy Bridge 64 bit UEFI compliant motherboard
Intel CI5 3330 3.0Ghz 6MB LGA cpu
2x 2TB SATA hatd drives. Windows 7 is installed on one of them.
1x 1TB SATA hard drive. Ubuntu, Zorin and Mint are installed on it.
GeForce GT630 2GB 128 bit graphics card
Soundblaster Titanium Extreme 64 bit soundcard
32GB memory DDR3 1333
2x SATA DVD rewriters
Huawei E220 3G modem
I also have an external 1TB HP portable hard drive.

I will greatly appreciate any help and suggestions that would help me sort this out. I am not looking forward to a constant repeat of all this.

An odd thing happened when I was in K'Veer I could view the Myst book. When I clicked the linking image I received an error message afterwhich I could no longer view it. I was wondering why it is there if you cannot use it.

Regards
Philip

[Sirius]

Disconnection is very common in Uru. The game engine isn't one of the bests, and usually loses connection to the server. However, it shouldn't disconnect you that often...
It might be related to you being in South Africa. Since the server is located in Germany, the connection with your computer might be a bit slow - which is enough to crash the game if it's in a bad mood
You might try to use the "ping" button somewhere on the login window - if it's more than 2-3 seconds, it might be the issue.

I'm not sure what's causing the bug in Teledahn, but it might be related to connection bugs as well. You could just be stuck indefinitely in the bucket until you receive a reply from the server - normally it's just a matter of seconds, though.

As for the error message when clicking the book - that's normal. This book links to an Age which comes from Myst V, which means you must first install the Myst V Ages on your DI installation. Instructions here.

Anyway, happy exploring, and let's hope you can manage playing without being disconnected too often in the future

[diafero]

I'm very sorry that the experience on DI has been so bad for you. Unfortunately, I can only guess what's happening here, and Sirius has already expressed my best guess: Your connection to the server seems to be pretty bad. It's not just the engine, the problem is that the Uru protocol is just horrible, and it's pretty hard to sustain a stable connection when facing lots of packet drops. This is combined with an architecture that needs server interaction for pretty much everything.
Except for the linking book error (and Sirius already explained that), all the problems you describe fit that pattern. I assume that the failures were usually not reproducible, i.e., when you tried the same thing again, it would eventually work?

Also, Ahnonay is known to make problems, that age has not been built (by Cyan) to be multiplayer-compatible. It's already weird to play even with a stable connection.

Of what kind is your internet connection? Is it a DSL/cable connection, or going through the mobile network?

Also, do you have any "Personal Security"/Firewall product installed on your machine? We've had trouble in the past with such software interfering badly with Uru. Personally, I'd suggest to get rid of them and go for a "pure" virus scanner - the Windows built-in Firewall is usually good enough, and most importantly it does not break applications.

[philipgr]

Hi Sirrus and diafero

Sirrus thanks for yr explanation about the Myst book, it makes sense. On one occasion I sat in the bucket for around ten minutes waiting to see if something would happen. I eventually linked out.

diafero I am using a 3G mobile connection to connect with the internet. The 3G modem's indicator has been alternating between bright blue and dark blue the wyhole weekend. I went on again at 14:15 and for awhile it was alright then around 16:00 the fun and games started again. You are quite right about Ahnonay being buggy which makes me wonder why Cyan decided that you needed more than one explorer to complete it. I noticed that I did not have a shell symbol in the Ahnonay control symbol and I had not clicked two of the journey cloths. So I went through all of them again. I eventually managed to get back to sphere 4 and select the first journey cloth. This is were the fun started. The first time in the chair I made it to the end and the minute the chair stopped I fell through the floor. On all subsequent attempts I fell through the floor at the first stop. Sometimes I would get swung around to get a side on view of the track and the eye bubble before gravity took over. One time I got stuck in the ceiling. This also happened to me in MOULa. I also had it Uru CC a few times. As you said it is buggy and rather unpredictable.

Regards
Philip

[philipgr]

Hi diafero

I forgot to mention that I am using F-Secure Internet Security 2011 anti-virus. It does bring up a popup asking you 'if you want to allow the connection' when you first run the exe file. It has a tick box you can select that always allows the connection. I always tick this box by default. Windows 7 also has its' own irritating popups.

Regards
Philip

[philipgr]

Hi Sirrus and diafero

I think you are both right about the internet connection. A friend of mine just phoned me and mentioned that he has been battling getting anywhere on the net. He mentioned that he received an sms from our connection provider that to celebrate Mothers Day they were giving all their subscribers a free 1GB download for the whole of 11 May. I guess the whole country is on the net trying to download stuff. Explains a lot and does not help matters much. I did not see the sms which is not surprising. It will eventually arrive.

I woder if kadish fitted xboxs' to his buckets? At least then my avie would have something to do pass the time.

Regards
Philip

[diafero]

diafero I am using a 3G mobile connection to connect with the internet. The 3G modem's indicator has been alternating between bright blue and dark blue the wyhole weekend.

I have no idea what those indicator colors mean . In Europe we usually have 1 to 5 bars to indicate connection strength... so, is blue good?
However, in any case 3G will probably induce a rather large latency (in addition to the latency coming from the pure distance on the globe), and - being a wireless connection - a higher-than-usual amount of packet drops. So it is quite a bad fit for the Uru protocol. I assume you don't have much of a choice over your internet connection, so there's probably not much you can do...
One thing coming to my mind: If you know someone running a server in Europe or North America, it may be worth trying a VPN connection. *If* you can convince that VPN to use TCP, packet loss on your mobile connection would be mitigated. Of course, the latency would only gets worse...

I forgot to mention that I am using F-Secure Internet Security 2011 anti-virus. It does bring up a popup asking you 'if you want to allow the connection' when you first run the exe file. It has a tick box you can select that always allows the connection. I always tick this box by default. Windows 7 also has its' own irritating popups.

You could try disabling the "Internet Monitor/Filtering" part of F-Secure. Maybe that improves the situation.

A friend of mine just phoned me and mentioned that he has been battling getting anywhere on the net. He mentioned that he received an sms from our connection provider that to celebrate Mothers Day they were giving all their subscribers a free 1GB download for the whole of 11 May. I guess the whole country is on the net trying to download stuff. Explains a lot and does not help matters much. I did not see the sms which is not surprising. It will eventually arrive.

Let's hope the game works better when the network usage is back to normal

I woder if kadish fitted xboxs' to his buckets? At least then my avie would have something to do pass the time.

At least, if he manages to leave his bucket, he could try to find Shroomie and play with her

[Sirius]

If you can't get a better Internet connection, I would suggest having two separate Uru installations: one for DI, and one for the original CC game, with the Offline-KI installed.
Use the offline install to explore Cyan's Ages (you should no longer have any crash/bug), and use the DI install to play with the community, and explore Fan-Ages (they might be more stable since they have less complex logic).


If I understood correctly, Ahnonay was first designed as a multiplayer Age, but MOUL closed down before it could be released. Cyan decided to finally include it in the offline Complete Chronicles pack. Since it couldn't be played in multiplayer, they did not bother making sure it was multiplayer-compatible. They just made sure the game engine could handle avatar swimming, and that the quab AI was smart dumb enough to drop them into the water.
It was later, when some other version of MOUL was finally back, that they fixed the game engine so that it could handle the Age better.

Now, since DI is based off the Complete Chronicles version of the game, the Age can be solved using the original "offline" solution, but also has MOUL elements mixed in. However, since the engine used by DI is the one from Complete Chronicles, it's still unstable, especially around the quab IA and swimming.

DI actually has to deal with this kind of situation in a lot of places, in which the engine is too old or stuff from older versions got broken on the way. Oh, and since I like complaining about the engine, here is a small list of broken things...

Show Spoiler

- waving grass
- dynamic reflections
- Jalak Dador column physics (still working, but objects often fall through the columns)
- Blue Spiral Ages (fixed)
- Gahreesen Wall (fixed)
- Myst V's bubbles
- dynamic loading of avatar and objects (noticeable in converted Myst V Ages)
- reverberation effects (still working under Windows 2000)
- Ahyoheek (although it's fixable)
- various KI functions

(I'm sure there are more)
Oh, and all the things that never made it to the game anyway:

Show Spoiler

- a tic tac toe game
- Kahlo riding and races in the Kahlo Age
- KI marker games... There were two more fun modes, which were meant to be played by two teams
Maybe it worked at some point in Until Uru
- pellet game to bring light back to the city (partially working offline)

[philipgr]

Hi diafero

My modem has a LED indicator which has three colours:- bright blue 3G - good, dark blue - 3G not so good and green - 2G. In Windows my dashboard has the bars on it. There are five most of the time ot is on either three or four. It drops to two quite a lot. Nice idea about playing with shoomie.


Regards
Philip

[philipgr]

Hi Sirrus

I tried to unstall Uru CC again for DI but every time I put the CD in it wanted to play the game and did not have the install option. This evening I am going to tyry and run teve install file from explorer and see what happens. Thanks for the spoilers. They are helpful.

Regards
Philip