Custom Lobbies Breaking Post-Game

[silent sorrel]

Sometimes after a game ends, upon returning to the lobby, everyone is automatically readied up, and the RM is unable to start a new game. This causes everyone to leave and start a new lobby. Probably happening about 1/4 - 1/3 of the time in the past couple days

[candid cloud]

@boreal halo This is mor info on it

[boreal halo]

Thank you for the report! To clarify, "the RM is unable to start a new game", is it that
A) The start match button is grayed out?
B) The start match button is available, but pressing it does nothing?
C) The room master receives an error when attempting to press the Start Match button?

We did attempt to roll out a tentative fix for this. We had a slight change in behavior where we weren't emitting a room state following a match start, leaving the game to think the room was still in a match.

So if you see any issues following this message, please be sure to follow up here with more info!

[silent sorrel]

@short rune which of Gamemaster's options describes the issue for the RM?

[silent sorrel]

This was happening as recently as a couple hours ago

[boreal halo]

We shipped a fix approximately 2 hours ago.

[silent sorrel]

Ok, I'll lookout to see if it persists

[modern escarp]

the button can be pressed which then it goes to gray for a moment and goes back to yellow. no errors or the button staying gray it just goes back to normal without starting the lobby. thus making us remake the room afterwards as it won`t start even if we passed around RM.

[boreal halo]

Thank you for the thorough explanation! Can you confirm if you saw this issue again following my message last night in this thread?

[modern escarp]

sure!

[boreal halo]

We hope last night's patch has resolved the issue.

[modern escarp]

rooms now start even if this happens!

[boreal halo]

Can you clarify? Based on the image, it suggests you're saying that the room starts even if everyone isn't ready. Is that right?

[modern escarp]

the symptom of people playing readying is one of the pointers that the bug will happen

[boreal halo]

Interesting. So we're seeing players already in match readying up?
Or are the players remaining readied up after the match is started?

[modern escarp]

sorry let me explain it more clearly.

we were having 2v2 for 4 matches

the limit for such bug to occur

mid 2nd round

3 people join in being the ones unready

[modern escarp]

asked them for a screenshot about our state in the screen

and started a game after

which it only just took an extra 20 sec to load

[boreal halo]

Got it! So normally you'd expect the lobby to fail? But instead it's simply that the lobby took a little longer to load?

So we would say this is an improvement from what you have been experiencing?

[modern escarp]

yes!

had a weird error in the first game that crashed a player tho

when pressing the start button it showed no server aviable then started the game with one less player

[gusty hornet]

the auto ready caused their ghost to be ready and the game started with a player missing

[boreal halo]

Wonderful! The long load time could be a coincidence. But moving forward, all lobbies may have the risk of a delayed start time.

We used to launch lobbied asynchronously which had a race condition risk with servers being ready. We now wait for the server to respond. This may cause longer load times but increases the success rate of lobbies starting correctly

20s is a bit long but not unbelievable.

[boreal halo]

The auto ready is a regression. We should be unreadying players on match start.

But good feedback! Going to make a note to see that we correct that.

[modern escarp]

we are still playing so I will tell if anything happens!

[boreal halo]

Appreciate the feedback! This is very helpful. It may be a bit for the unreadying on March start.

[short rune]

Hi tyrannism and @boreal halo . I have been room master the last few days and have been having issue B, I can click on the start match button, often times it doesn’t respond , and if it does, it needs like 15 ish seconds to buffer before the game actually starts

Thanks to everyone involved for looking into this

[boreal halo]

Hello! We've been made aware of ongoing lobby issues.

We have made two changes to our lobby system in the past few days, with the last change being shipped at 8 PM Pacific last night, or approximately 21 hours ago.

If you have experienced lobbies failing to start following our patch 21 hours ago, please inform us.

[short rune]

Awesome, will do. Thanks a lot

[boreal halo]

As for the 15 second delay before starting. We hope for lobbies to start sooner, but a delay in lobby starting is now expected behavior. The cause for this is we now wait for our servers to inform us they are ready before initiating the connection sequence. The consequence is users aren't getting that "instant start" experience they're used to, but in return, it guarantees that we avoid "Failed to start custom match" and/or the black void/ServerFarm issue we've seen in the past

Moving forward, a delay on lobby start will be expected behavior. 15 seconds is our upper limit. 20-30 seconds may occur but is undesirable. Beyond 30s, it's worth informing us if that becomes consistent.

[short rune]

Thanks for that detailed explanation 🙂

[modern escarp]

@boreal halo bug is back

[boreal halo]

Can you describe the issue in more detail? What is the issue? The game isn't starting?

Is this a frequent occurrence ot a one-off?

[modern escarp]

video seems broken for somereason but it is the same of what happend before

just happend in the rooms rn

[modern escarp]

.

[boreal halo]

Gotcha. i see the room is still open. Going to drop the room state in this thread for the dev team to look at later on

{
  "roomId": "NorthAmerica:58979145",
  "ownerId": 9676,
  "mapId": "LV0201",
  "rule": "Domination",
  "name": "Created by tropicalfruitman (3470)",
  "numSpectators": 6,
  "settings": "{\r\n\t\"EntryMode\": \"Public\",\r\n\t\"NumSpectators\": 6,\r\n\t\"EnablePlayersToInviteOthers\": true,\r\n\t\"EnablePlayersToChangeTeam\": true,\r\n\t\"EnablePause\": true,\r\n\t\"EnableInstructor\": false,\r\n\t\"TeamNames\": [\r\n\t\t\"Earthnoids\",\r\n\t\t\"Spacenoids\"\r\n\t]\r\n}",
  "ticket": "58979145",
  "serialNumber": 112,
  "locked": false,
  "matchedMapId": "",
  "matchedRule": "",
  "progress": false,
  "queued": true,
  "players": [
    {
      "playerId": 9676,
      "playerName": "",
      "playerLevel": 0,
      "playerIconItemId": "",
      "side": 2,
      "role": 2,
      "ping": -1,
      "ready": false,
      "refresh": false,
      "returnBattle": false
    }
  ],
  "matchId": null,
  "overrideMapId": null,
  "overrideServerId": null,
  "overrideRegionId": "us-east-1",
  "overrideRule": null,
  "overrideMinToStart": false
}

cc @sudden peak not an emergency; but do look at the room above. I notice that "queued" seems to be in the true state. not sure if that's smoke or if that's somewhat expected here

Thanks for reporting @modern escarp . Let me know if this becomes a recurring issue. 👍 Hoping it's just a one off

[modern escarp]

Sure I will report with a video if it happens again!