Servers full or down?

[Xcillion]

simple question this morning. are the servers full or down. all are 3 dots but also greyed out.

[Mr. Vee]

down, maintenance

[Ravlain]

Down for maintenance, happens every week at this time.

 

https://forums.homecomingservers.com/status/

 

 

[Ukase]

There's a tab to click on at the top of this page called "Server Status". Click on it, it will tell you. 

[Lamia]

5 minutes ago, Ravlain said:

Down for maintenance, happens every week at this time.

 

https://forums.homecomingservers.com/status/

 

 

How long does it last?

 

[Lines]

Just now, Lamia said:

How long does it last?

 

Usually just half an hour.

[Ravlain]

Usually half an hour to an hour.

 

[Oubliette_Red]

Is it Tuesday?

[Techwright]

11 hours ago, Ravlain said:

Usually half an hour to an hour.

 

That's one of those "Remember When...?" moments right there.  Server maintenance used to take much longer.

[ImpousVileTerror]

Remember when the Legacy servers would sometimes be down for days?

Still blows my mind that volunteers are running a tighter ship for server maintenance and uptime than the old retail daze.

[Sakai]

I don't remember that actually. Was that early on?  I didn't show up till whenever Inventions was. 

[ImpousVileTerror]

Very early, yes.  I started out on the Victory Shard in Issue 0.  It's all so hazy now, but I distinctly remember a period of time where Victory (and a few other Shards) were down, so I made a character on Guardian to kill some time.  I ended up playing that character for far longer than I had hoped, as Victory wasn't back up for at least a 24 hour period.

And I've heard stories of  . . . was it Champion?  Which one was dubbed the "Drunk" Shard for how frequently it remained offline after each maintenance window?

[mechahamham]

On 7/21/2020 at 8:50 PM, ImpousVileTerror said:

Remember when the Legacy servers would sometimes be down for days?

Still blows my mind that volunteers are running a tighter ship for server maintenance and uptime than the old retail daze.

Computers are a couple orders of magnitude more capable than they were in 2004. Since the 2012 shutdown, EVERYTHING has generally done down in price and up in capacity, with the possible exception of single-CPU core power. Even then, we're making the cores themselves smaller and packing far more of them into a single 'CPU'. 2012 data centers have wet dreams about 2020 co-hosting packages. 2004 data centers think it's a sick joke to think that an entire rack of servers can be squeezed into 1U or less.

[ImpousVileTerror]

Indeed.  And who knows how unstable the netcode was back then.  Really, when I stop to think about it, it's not -that- surprising, all things considered . . . but it still gives me a moment of appreciation of where we came from, and where we are now.

[Gulbasaur]

On 7/25/2020 at 2:15 AM, mechahamham said:

Computers are a couple orders of magnitude more capable than they were in 2004.

Which can actually cause problems in and of itself. It used to be pretty standard to use processor speed as a way of timing things in older software which meant that different things ran at different speeds on different computers, which was more or less fine until you got processors that ran hundreds or thousands of times faster than the software was able to cope with.

 

I've known a few older games that had to be patched to stop them running too fast and becoming unplayable.

[ImpousVileTerror]

Ha, yeah.  I can't even install Outpost on modern rigs since the installer needs to test your processor to approve a system before installation begins.  The processor speed tests have returned a "divide by zero" error since at least the early 2000s on any attempt I've made to install the game from CD since.

Mercifully, someone did make a modern-rig hack-job port of the code, so we can once again play Outpost, even in this modern age!

 

 . . . now if only someone could finish the danged game.

[Twisted Toon]

17 hours ago, ImpousVileTerror said:

Ha, yeah.  I can't even install Outpost on modern rigs since the installer needs to test your processor to approve a system before installation begins.  The processor speed tests have returned a "divide by zero" error since at least the early 2000s on any attempt I've made to install the game from CD since.

Mercifully, someone did make a modern-rig hack-job port of the code, so we can once again play Outpost, even in this modern age!

 

 . . . now if only someone could finish the danged game.

I believe that has to do with the difference between how the old Windows Operating system and the NT operating system worked.

The old Windows OS used to allow the programs to directly interact with the core memory and what not.

NT had a buffer between the core systems (and memory) and the programs.

 

Since Windows XP, I think, all Windows OS have used the NT set-up.

Which is why we now have Dos-Box and various methods of playing old Dos games.

 

I loaded up an old game with Dos-Box once, forgetting that it ran based on the clock speed of the computer.

I un-installed it after about 15 minutes (13 of which I was laughing too much to do anything else).

[ImpousVileTerror]

Aye.  Original Dungeon Keeper also ran like that.  I'd boot up a level, and then instantly lose since the game calculated that the heroes spawned in and destroyed my Dungeon Heart all in a matter of milliseconds.

Then came Good Old Games, blessed be!  The version of Dungeon Keeper available there resolved that overclocking silliness. 

 . . . granted, I never did enjoy original Dungeon Keeper as much as Dungeon Keeper II even after getting the chance to actually play 1.

[ForeverLaxx]

20 hours ago, Gulbasaur said:

Which can actually cause problems in and of itself. It used to be pretty standard to use processor speed as a way of timing things in older software which meant that different things ran at different speeds on different computers, which was more or less fine until you got processors that ran hundreds or thousands of times faster than the software was able to cope with.

 

I've known a few older games that had to be patched to stop them running too fast and becoming unplayable.

Many modern games are still falling into the "tied to FPS" code trap, where certain events, character speeds, and other things are tied to the FPS the game runs at. Games that were set to 30 FPS for consoles would get ported to the PC and bumped up to 60 FPS just for the game to break in one way or another.

[DoctorDitko]

Gods bless GOG!

 

Always buy games from them if you can.

 

The fact that all their offering have NO DRM is worth the trouble hunting them down! Plus you get to support their efforts in patching/emulating oldies like these for modern machines.

Edited July 28, 2020 by DoctorDitko

[ImpousVileTerror]

I am very much in the same boat:  If a game is available on Steam/Epic or GOG, I will 100% tell people to buy the GOG version.  Even though CDPR isn't a faultless company, they are a damned significant assload better than either of those two juggernauts.

But when the opportunity presents itself, I recommend supporting Itch.io over GOG.

[Bill Z Bubba]

On 7/21/2020 at 9:29 PM, ImpousVileTerror said:

Which one was dubbed the "Drunk" Shard for how frequently it remained offline after each maintenance window?

Pinnacle was the drunk shard. But I always thought it was because that's where all the drunks played. Why, yes, it was my home server.

[Shadesmith]

On 7/21/2020 at 6:50 PM, ImpousVileTerror said:

Remember when the Legacy servers would sometimes be down for days?

Still blows my mind that volunteers are running a tighter ship for server maintenance and uptime than the old retail daze.

 

Just proof positive of the difference between doing something for a paycheck, and doing something because you enjoy/love it.

 

[mechahamham]

22 hours ago, DoctorDitko said:

 Plus you get to support their efforts in patching/emulating oldies like these for modern machines.

A lot of the 'Classic' games on GoG run via Dosbox, which is an open source DOS emulator with features like frame limiting, etc...:

 

https://www.dosbox.com/

 

It's definitely worth checking out the project if you like those older, DOS-era games.

[DoctorDitko]

Oh, absolutely! Didn't mean to take anything away from DOSbox!

It's true though, that the GOG team tweak settings and package the whole game+emulator up nicely so even non-techies can use it!