ZeroGravitas
The Destroyer
Having played a fair bit of multiplayer recently, it's hit home how limited wiring is on servers due to bugs or fundamental limitations of the game in this mode. I'm aiming to collect a fairly concise list of the known problems, here, for reference. To clarify exactly what type of builds fail and in what ways, to potentially help players avoid wasting time or find work-arounds. (And to have some basic ground-work laid in case we ever manage to erect a T-MEC server, or something crazy.)
Fingers crossed that the 1.3.1 wiring update patch will make this thread (somewhat) redundant. Perhaps @Cenx can drop us a hint below
. But these issues seem to have been around a good while and coding wiring updates to work seamlessly despite sizable internet connection lag is pretty unrealistic.
Please post replies if you can confirm or clarify any of the listed issues, or have knowledge of a distinct one not mentioned. Please provide simple, clear screenshots or Gifs. Also, I imagine I'm duplicating effort here, so by all means post to any preexisting list like this and any threads elsewhere that cover similar bugs.
[1] Partial Wire Activations:
(A) These most commonly manifest when only part of a large number of actuated or active stone blocks change state, leaving hard to fix tears between block states, jumbling things up and being a disheartening nuisance to fix. Example image posted to the sub-Reddit by kheftel:
Concurrent rows of actuated pearlstone blocks, all wired to a single switch (to auto-collect crystal shards). Actuation state has broken down several times. Wiring as follows (here):
My personal experience has shown that there seems to be no way to be sure of avoiding this issue, even over a (very low ping) local network connection (although more distant players seem more certain to experience/cause issues). However, I've never seen relatively small chunks of a few dozen actuated blocks (e.g. for concealed entrances), entirely on player's screen, ever go wrong. Where-as, the same number of switched blocks spread out in a long line, off to one side frequently gets fractured. Possibly more so when switching using pressure plates or pressure plate track (this may be pure conjecture).
@critcodedtuna seems already well versed in this issue, having seen replies on bug reports on this forum: November 2014, January 2015. Also commenting that my turbo truffle worm farm design does not work correctly in multi-player (unsurprising considering it's hoik lengths change state 30 times per second). Although, there may be other issues that affected it's (mal)function too (see below).
(B) Incorrect teleporter destination. Seemingly a different manifestation of the above issue, where the server (or client?) gives up on a wire activation before exploring to the limits of a wire connection. Example - I've observed a relatively simple teleporter based mob collector, that previously worked just fine, then continuously fail to send mobs to the pad at the end of the line (pinging them back and forth to either end of the spawn area instead):
Row of teleporter pads fail to send pirates over to the floating, actuated pad above the lava trap on the right (hence them walking in). This particular instance of the problem was fixed after removing and replacing the floating teleporter pad. But the problem recurred. Also, the pad may have disappeared later, am somewhat suspicious of it's setting.
[2] Many rapid wire activations crash the server(?)!
With just a simple minecart based mob statue farm, I've had my (vanilla) server crash from running it (for a few minutes), on several occasions. It generally kicks the players, telling them simply "server found" but not allowing re-connection. Once I had a hard crash that required a full reboot of the server machine. I'm 95% sure these crashes were related to the wiring activations, rather than an accumulation of loose items (overflowing from bug-net, etc), or co-incidence.
I'd quite like to know if others have had similar, extreme problems from such simple mechanisms (or if different server software can ever help, etc).
[3] Paradoxical player/mob location due to wire/actuation delay in hoik-tronic mechanisms, etc.
Logic says that the pressure plate you hit should have actuated the next hoik tooth and sent you to safety, but you somehow take go the other route and end up in the lava... Basically, there's almost always a fair sized lag, of a few game ticks, between triggering the change of state of a block and that change actually being registered as having happened in the world. So when one is traveling very fast, e.g. in a hoik track, one tends to take a route that's a fraction of a second behind what you might expect.
Related, mobs/NPCs(players?) become invisible while traversing a hoiktronic mechanism, but may do so correctly (observed in my old Digicomp mechanism). Spooky. Presumably the game tries to hide out-of-position characters that it thinks it needs to magically move to a new location (when their position on the client PC somehow goes out of sync with where the server says they are...?).
[4] Long delays in teleportation: right after joining a server, while map is still updating, etc. May take over a second to be teleported after clicking a switch. Very occasionally fails altogether.
[5] WIP (work in progress): Please help me flesh this post out...
Edit: credit to @stefnotch for starting a thread on the same topic a long while before this.
Fingers crossed that the 1.3.1 wiring update patch will make this thread (somewhat) redundant. Perhaps @Cenx can drop us a hint below
. But these issues seem to have been around a good while and coding wiring updates to work seamlessly despite sizable internet connection lag is pretty unrealistic.Please post replies if you can confirm or clarify any of the listed issues, or have knowledge of a distinct one not mentioned. Please provide simple, clear screenshots or Gifs. Also, I imagine I'm duplicating effort here, so by all means post to any preexisting list like this and any threads elsewhere that cover similar bugs.
[1] Partial Wire Activations:
(A) These most commonly manifest when only part of a large number of actuated or active stone blocks change state, leaving hard to fix tears between block states, jumbling things up and being a disheartening nuisance to fix. Example image posted to the sub-Reddit by kheftel:
Concurrent rows of actuated pearlstone blocks, all wired to a single switch (to auto-collect crystal shards). Actuation state has broken down several times. Wiring as follows (here):
My personal experience has shown that there seems to be no way to be sure of avoiding this issue, even over a (very low ping) local network connection (although more distant players seem more certain to experience/cause issues). However, I've never seen relatively small chunks of a few dozen actuated blocks (e.g. for concealed entrances), entirely on player's screen, ever go wrong. Where-as, the same number of switched blocks spread out in a long line, off to one side frequently gets fractured. Possibly more so when switching using pressure plates or pressure plate track (this may be pure conjecture).
@critcodedtuna seems already well versed in this issue, having seen replies on bug reports on this forum: November 2014, January 2015. Also commenting that my turbo truffle worm farm design does not work correctly in multi-player (unsurprising considering it's hoik lengths change state 30 times per second). Although, there may be other issues that affected it's (mal)function too (see below).
(B) Incorrect teleporter destination. Seemingly a different manifestation of the above issue, where the server (or client?) gives up on a wire activation before exploring to the limits of a wire connection. Example - I've observed a relatively simple teleporter based mob collector, that previously worked just fine, then continuously fail to send mobs to the pad at the end of the line (pinging them back and forth to either end of the spawn area instead):
Row of teleporter pads fail to send pirates over to the floating, actuated pad above the lava trap on the right (hence them walking in). This particular instance of the problem was fixed after removing and replacing the floating teleporter pad. But the problem recurred. Also, the pad may have disappeared later, am somewhat suspicious of it's setting.
[2] Many rapid wire activations crash the server(?)!
With just a simple minecart based mob statue farm, I've had my (vanilla) server crash from running it (for a few minutes), on several occasions. It generally kicks the players, telling them simply "server found" but not allowing re-connection. Once I had a hard crash that required a full reboot of the server machine. I'm 95% sure these crashes were related to the wiring activations, rather than an accumulation of loose items (overflowing from bug-net, etc), or co-incidence.
I'd quite like to know if others have had similar, extreme problems from such simple mechanisms (or if different server software can ever help, etc).
[3] Paradoxical player/mob location due to wire/actuation delay in hoik-tronic mechanisms, etc.
Logic says that the pressure plate you hit should have actuated the next hoik tooth and sent you to safety, but you somehow take go the other route and end up in the lava... Basically, there's almost always a fair sized lag, of a few game ticks, between triggering the change of state of a block and that change actually being registered as having happened in the world. So when one is traveling very fast, e.g. in a hoik track, one tends to take a route that's a fraction of a second behind what you might expect.
Related, mobs/NPCs(players?) become invisible while traversing a hoiktronic mechanism, but may do so correctly (observed in my old Digicomp mechanism). Spooky
. Presumably the game tries to hide out-of-position characters that it thinks it needs to magically move to a new location (when their position on the client PC somehow goes out of sync with where the server says they are...?).[4] Long delays in teleportation: right after joining a server, while map is still updating, etc. May take over a second to be teleported after clicking a switch. Very occasionally fails altogether.
[5] WIP (work in progress): Please help me flesh this post out...
Edit: credit to @stefnotch for starting a thread on the same topic a long while before this.
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