Development Cycle Archive
Thread: IT Focus Thread: Requesting information on the “Timer Bug”
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Thunderheart
Wed Mar 03, 2004 12:49 pm
#1
Hey TC sleuths. Everyone internally has been talking about the “timer bug”. We’re going to be looking at different possible causes and any clues you might have could help us.
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If you have experienced any long time delay such as super long incapacitations, mission timers, inability to maskscent, etc.
If this has happened to you please post what happened to you step-by-step:
-
What happened? -
What were you trying to do? -
What was the exact message you received? -
What were you doing when this happened? -
Where were you (Planet, location X, location Y) ? -
Is there anything else that happened to you that seemed important to the situation?
Thank you very much for your help on this 
MCPrimetime
Wed Mar 03, 2004 12:58 pm
#2
Ihad a 2 hour incapp because I was blackbarred while migrating stats. I assume you already know about this one.
Sutarion
Wed Mar 03, 2004 12:59 pm
#3
Not sure if this is what you're asking about, but there is also a timer problem with buffs. If you are killed while buffed, you lose your buffs. However, your Buff Timers are still active. Until they countdown, you cannot rebuff.
Not sure if this is intended or not...
Sutarion
Batlet
Wed Mar 03, 2004 2:02 pm
#4
Planet : Naboo
Had my bike out engaged some rebs and lost, and cloned uninsured in Theed. (my clone copy was not there as well)
Ran out medded up, stored my bike and tried to call it out again.
"You cannot generate a vehicle for3400 seconds"
Went out killed a mob and the timer got reset back to normal.
Happend a few more times, but one cant count on it to happen.
irott
Wed Mar 03, 2004 2:06 pm
#6
I think this is related to the timer bug. Instant night to day/day to night changes.
Best example I can think of was standing inside a city radius during the daytime. Switched to an alt who was about 800m away drove into the city zone, got off my speeder, instant change to night.
It seems that speeders are part ofthe problem, when buffed and crossing server boundaries, you get incapped and other strange occurances. Are we riding around on Time Machines that are disrupting the fabric of space and time? ^_^
Also the spice Nutron Pixie will instantly incap you when it hits the downer. It reverses the buff of +1000 to health to -1000. Your incap timer will run out but you have to wait 2 minutes for the downer to wear off and then the incap timer will start up again.
Before you would go down to 1/1 health and risk incapp but never be instanly incapped.
Utess
Wed Mar 03, 2004 2:12 pm
#7
The timer bug, from what I can tell, seems to be a decimal misplaced sometimes. Instead of 30 seconds(or 15 seconds I guess now) to call a vehicle, it becomes 3000 seconds or 1500 seconds respectively. Instead of 100 seconds to recover from an incap it becomes 1000 seconds.
We had an instance 2 nights ago when a group of us (Myself as Andria, Joanna, Calebzilla, Reeli, and Ikeesp) were on the Dantooine imperial outpost and were heading to the Mokk caves. Ikeesp is a doctor.
Two of his food and chemical crafting machines appeared to stop counting down when making buff packs at 14 seconds and 32 seconds respectively. Upon further inspection, it was still crafting, but those times had become 1400 and 3200 seconds to finish crafting, just randomly out of the blue 
So, it seems as if it can happen with any timer. And the only things I know for certain are
1) It isn't a random number, its always whatever the number should be, only with a decimal misplaced so its now a much higher value.
2) I've never seen the timer go past XXXX. I.E. if the timer should be 20 seconds, it might go to 200 or 2000, but if the timer should be 200 seconds, it won't go past 2000. At least in my experience with this bug on myself or others.
Always though, its a misplaced decimal increase. Its just it doesn't always happen at the start of the timer, it can happen any time during the timer countdown, which is probably why you are seeing such random numbers.
PoffMarko
Wed Mar 03, 2004 2:18 pm
#8
While DNA sampling I use Muon a lot and on the few occasions I died, 
, my stats were cloned but I was not allowed to take more moun gold until the timer ran out.
, my stats were cloned but I was not allowed to take more moun gold until the timer ran out.
Lerning
Wed Mar 03, 2004 2:21 pm
#9
I have seen this event (cannot generate vehicle for xxxx seconds) most consistently after I had been fighting, Was slain in battle and then cloned.
Sharlathea
Wed Mar 03, 2004 2:21 pm
#10
Sutarion wrote:
Not sure if this is what you're asking about, but there is also a timer problem with buffs. If you are killed while buffed, you lose your buffs. However, your Buff Timers are still active. Until they countdown, you cannot rebuff.
Not sure if this is intended or not...
Sutarion
I've never had that happen to me - The buff icons are still there, but you can immediately be re-buffed after your death.
One issue I have seen is with food and drink on death. Bascially, your food buffs are gone with the death, but when you clone you still have a full stomach, so you can't eat/drink anymore for awhile. Would make a lot more sense if you cloned with an empty stomach (I awoke hungry, thirsty, cold and naked...)
Jvani
Wed Mar 03, 2004 2:33 pm
#11
I was recreating these issues with a QA person before server came down this time but will post findings anyway. We were testing entertainer buffs going negative as you cross the zone boundary between Skystone (player city on Tatooine) heading towards Entha.
So far we've seen:
* Entertainer buffs alone cause mind mods to go negative * based on original stat, NOT the would-be buff
for example my mind stats are 800/450/500 and the negative mods Ive gotten are -799 -449 -499 (but my musician isnt master so the buff would have actually been only 337 focus 375 willpower)
* Doc buffs alone so far seem to be ok, including new re-buff ability
* Entertainer buffs + Doc buffs are causing Health/Action pool mods to go negative causing 30+ minute actual flat on back incap
* Something in buffs is causing stomach fill (both food/drink) when no food or drink has been consumed (not always though.. havent pinponted yet when exactly fictitious stomach fill happens vs not)
* Negative effect appears to be triggered by crossing boundary and we've seen a distinct day/night change when it happens. ** driving vehicle/walking/shuttle all same effect
* Logout does not clear negative effect
* Cloning does clear negative effect (but of course then buffs are gone)
* Entertainer buffs will not re-buff like doc buffs do now.. timer just keeps going from original and no message.
* Crossing back across the same boundary repairs the negative modifier and buff looks normal/positive. Then going back across once more causes it again etc..
* Attempted to generate vehicle on "bad" side of boundary and got message You cannot generate vehicle for 3315 seconds.... but crossed back to good side and it was able to generate it within 15 seconds.
I think that is where we were at. Was just about to suggest testing by buffing in Entha (non-player city) and heading towards player city... but its feeling just like more of a time difference than anything.
I'll be on as my alt Nvara again when server comes back up with doc and entertainer alts ready to test again.
-Jv
So far we've seen:
* Entertainer buffs alone cause mind mods to go negative * based on original stat, NOT the would-be buff
for example my mind stats are 800/450/500 and the negative mods Ive gotten are -799 -449 -499 (but my musician isnt master so the buff would have actually been only 337 focus 375 willpower)
* Doc buffs alone so far seem to be ok, including new re-buff ability
* Entertainer buffs + Doc buffs are causing Health/Action pool mods to go negative causing 30+ minute actual flat on back incap
* Something in buffs is causing stomach fill (both food/drink) when no food or drink has been consumed (not always though.. havent pinponted yet when exactly fictitious stomach fill happens vs not)
* Negative effect appears to be triggered by crossing boundary and we've seen a distinct day/night change when it happens. ** driving vehicle/walking/shuttle all same effect
* Logout does not clear negative effect
* Cloning does clear negative effect (but of course then buffs are gone)
* Entertainer buffs will not re-buff like doc buffs do now.. timer just keeps going from original and no message.
* Crossing back across the same boundary repairs the negative modifier and buff looks normal/positive. Then going back across once more causes it again etc..
* Attempted to generate vehicle on "bad" side of boundary and got message You cannot generate vehicle for 3315 seconds.... but crossed back to good side and it was able to generate it within 15 seconds.
I think that is where we were at. Was just about to suggest testing by buffing in Entha (non-player city) and heading towards player city... but its feeling just like more of a time difference than anything.
I'll be on as my alt Nvara again when server comes back up with doc and entertainer alts ready to test again.
-Jv
Chrysalide
Wed Mar 03, 2004 2:54 pm
#12
We think that we've tracked down the problem with this crazy timer business. I believe that Test Center is on it's way back up right now with the fix, so I'd be interested to know if anyone is still having problems with getting any unusually timed system messages from this point forward.
This fix should resolve the errant system messages, and it may also fix the strange behavior that we're seeing with buffs and incapacitation. I'm not entirely convinced that these two are the same bug, but if we get back on TC and we don't see any more buff problems, then I guess they were. 
Additionally,thismight also fix the rapid day/night cycles.
Additionally,thismight also fix the rapid day/night cycles.By all means, if you get back on Test Center and still notice errors or bugs related to the timing of any of the various systems, please continue to bring them to our attention in this thread. And as always we welcome any concerns or comments on any other type of bug in the daily bug thread found here in the In Testing forum.
Once again I'd like to thank everyone for their assistance in helping usnail down this issue.
BlueOx
Wed Mar 03, 2004 3:06 pm
#13
* What happened?
I was trying to sample a resource for the first time and received a message with a hideously long wait time. The timer "reset" when I shuttled to another city and I was not able to replicate the situation even though I returned to the same spot and did the same set of actions I had done previously.
* What were you trying to do?
I had surveyed several resources and when I decided on the one I wanted, I closed the survey tool interface and typed "/sample" manually. I hadn't sampled in the past 20 minutes or so, but received the message nevertheless.
* What was the exact message you received?
"You must wait 1961 seconds before you can sample again." Subsequent tries yielded messages with the amount of seconds properly decreasing (1923, 1856, etc.)
* What were you doing when this happened? Where were you (Planet, location X, location Y) ?
I was waiting for the shuttle in Dee'ja Peak, Naboo. My loc was directly to the right of the ticket taker.
* Is there anything else that happened to you that seemed important to the situation?
I had just used an awful lot of interfaces in quick succession. I had just taken two crafting missions, talked to the NPCs, crafted the mission items, bought a shuttle ticket and double clicked on the droid to check the shuttle wait time. I had also just surveyed about a dozen mineral resources in rapid succession and my mind bar was pretty low because of it.
I was trying to sample a resource for the first time and received a message with a hideously long wait time. The timer "reset" when I shuttled to another city and I was not able to replicate the situation even though I returned to the same spot and did the same set of actions I had done previously.
* What were you trying to do?
I had surveyed several resources and when I decided on the one I wanted, I closed the survey tool interface and typed "/sample" manually. I hadn't sampled in the past 20 minutes or so, but received the message nevertheless.
* What was the exact message you received?
"You must wait 1961 seconds before you can sample again." Subsequent tries yielded messages with the amount of seconds properly decreasing (1923, 1856, etc.)
* What were you doing when this happened? Where were you (Planet, location X, location Y) ?
I was waiting for the shuttle in Dee'ja Peak, Naboo. My loc was directly to the right of the ticket taker.
* Is there anything else that happened to you that seemed important to the situation?
I had just used an awful lot of interfaces in quick succession. I had just taken two crafting missions, talked to the NPCs, crafted the mission items, bought a shuttle ticket and double clicked on the droid to check the shuttle wait time. I had also just surveyed about a dozen mineral resources in rapid succession and my mind bar was pretty low because of it.
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