Appeal TWDT-J Terrorist vs Blind

[MHz]

+1 for the detective work, turb

[Unlimited]

There was a bot issue in which affected the match. Plain and simple. Wise decision to have it replayed.

[Jones]

I could be wrong about this one, but as far as I am aware the bot does not add to the lagout count when a player returns to the match from a disconnection after the round has started simply due to the fact that the player did not lag out during the match, however you do lose one use of the command. When a player returns from a legitimate lagout that happened during the round, which gets double checked by the bot, then you get +1 added to your counter.

This is correct.

[qan]

If that's true it's boggling my mind. Been tracking this issue a bit now and it's damn confusing. This is in the lagin code:

                            if (fnRoundState == 3) {
                                m_fnLagouts++;


                                if (m_statTracker.m_currentShip != null)
                                    m_statTracker.m_currentShip.updateLastTimeCheck();
                            }

So basically, once we're in the actual round (state 3 -- yes, awful convention, not my code, MatchBot is hell), it should always increment your lagouts when you lag back in. Regardless of when you lagged out initially. The number printed in the scorebox I verified is this same number being incremented.

There is a VERY small window of time where you can return to the arena just before GO, !lagout, miss the scorereset but still be in before roundstate moves up from 2 to 3. But even when this happens, lagging checks your bot-recorded number of kills and deaths, and if these are both 0, you're issued a scorereset to make sure game scores match bot scores.

What MC says about the +1 death not being recorded in !watchnme is pretty interesting, despite it showing as an arena msg. That seems to suggest there's something flawed with that system. But I searched for quite a long time and couldn't find anything wrong there. It's pretty simple code, pretty hard for anything to go awry. The only thing I could think of is if some nefarious mod sent an *arena to screw with people, but that's pretty unlikely. I could check, I guess.


Also, to clear things up, for TWDT we just use MatchBot modules, though, so it's essentially the same as TWD. In the past a specialty bot was used, probably based on bwjs, but not anymore.

[MHz]

If that's true it's boggling my mind. Been tracking this issue a bit now and it's damn confusing. This is in the lagin code:

                            if (fnRoundState == 3) {
                                m_fnLagouts++;


                                if (m_statTracker.m_currentShip != null)
                                    m_statTracker.m_currentShip.updateLastTimeCheck();
                            }

So basically, once we're in the actual round (state 3 -- yes, awful convention, not my code, MatchBot is hell), it should always increment your lagouts when you lag back in. Regardless of when you lagged out initially. The number printed in the scorebox I verified is this same number being incremented.

There is a VERY small window of time where you can return to the arena just before GO, !lagout, miss the scorereset but still be in before roundstate moves up from 2 to 3. But even when this happens, lagging checks your bot-recorded number of kills and deaths, and if these are both 0, you're issued a scorereset to make sure game scores match bot scores.

What MC says about the +1 death not being recorded in !watchnme is pretty interesting, despite it showing as an arena msg. That seems to suggest there's something flawed with that system. But I searched for quite a long time and couldn't find anything wrong there. It's pretty simple code, pretty hard for anything to go awry. The only thing I could think of is if some nefarious mod sent an *arena to screw with people, but that's pretty unlikely. I could check, I guess.


Also, to clear things up, for TWDT we just use MatchBot modules, though, so it's essentially the same as TWD. In the past a specialty bot was used, probably based on bwjs, but not anymore.

Very interesting, thank you.

Qan - in your opinion - if the bot generates a "+1" lagout message for a player, is it possible that the bot doesn't add a death to that player's score count? Surely the message being generated is synonymous with the bot counting it.

[Jones]

Shouldn't this be rather easy to see with !watchnme where bot says spikey 9 regardless what f2 says anyway. It should have already been discovered on his 7th death, maybe?

[qan]

They're right next to each other. Which is why it's so surprising:

                        m_botAction.sendArenaMessage(playerName + " has changed to spectator mode - +1 death");
                        p.reportDeath();

p is the player in question. This then goes to reportDeath on the player object:

    public void reportDeath() {
        resetOutOfBorderTime();
        m_statTracker.reportDeath();

And that's a really small method:

        public void reportDeath() {
            if (m_currentShip != null)
                m_currentShip.reportDeath();
        }

(reportDeath is literally one line that increments a stat that tracks deaths, and this is the scorebox stat as well as the stat checked to determine when someone is out)

A rare possibility I can see is that m_currentShip was null for some reason. And that doesn't add up, because once it's created it's never made null. Or maybe that his player object was recreated and there were two. I can't figure it out. There's a reason this probably hasn't come up before. It's definitely an edge case.

Rather than just rambling about bot problems, though, 2 concrete things I can add to the discussion:
- According to bot logs, maketso and spikey both only did !lagout one time. So there was no lagout/DC before the game started followed by !lagout after it started.
- maketso claims to have DC'd (according to his log). If he DC'd, he would have received +1 death, because this is not a spec lagout forced by the bot due to being over bot lag limits. This would mean that in order for the scores to work in the scorebox (accounting for the difference of 3 between Power's 41 kills vs Terrorist's 44 deaths), spikey could not have received a +1 death, despite the bot saying so, meaning there was a bot error. The final proof of this could be provided by anyone with a log of the match showing maketso getting a +1 for the DC.

What that actually error is, though... is completely beyond me at the moment. It's a frustrating situation and I wish I had more.

[qan]

Had to read back -- looks like maketso did not receive a +1 (even though he should have) so if he actually DC'd, that's a couple of bot errors. Fantastic.

We'll sort out the standardization of the +1 death system soon. As it stands it's opaque as all hell, and the ambiguity of whether or not you'll receive a +1 is incredibly frustrating.

[MHz]

maketso did not receive a +1

Case closed then. The arithmetic checks out. Blind's kills + Terrorist's teamkills + Spikey's +1 lagout = 44, which is the actual score.

There's been a rush to judgement. But they were errors made in good faith. We respectfully await the reversal of this decision.

It's clear that - at some point - Spikey's score was not reset. He began the game with 1 death meaning his score seemed higher than it really was. But he did only receive 10 deaths, and the evidence confirms this now. Maybe he did not receive the *scorereset packet (he was lagging, after all.)

Speaking generally, it's not inevitable that a lagout should cause a +1 if it's caught by the bot (rather than server limits.) Personally I think we should remove server limits in league arenas and just have lag monitored by the bot. Lagging out should not cause a +1; the team already suffers the temporary loss of a player. Having a double standard of whether you're caught by server or bot is slightly ridiculous.

Removing the server lag limits in league arenas is the most elegant solution to this problem. You could just increase the frequency of lag checks sent by the bot if you're worried about lag. Tighten those limits if need be.

F11ing to avoid death is the *only* reason why you should get a +1. That has always been the spirit of the rules. Spikey patently didn't do that.

[Wirah]

F11ing to avoid death is the *only* reason why you should get a +1.

Are we actually able to distinguish between a player intentionally speccing vs a player lagging out? I suspect there's some trickery in place to distinguish between the two? bot limits vs arena limits?


Ideally I'd say we +1 for intentional specs and never +1 for any lagouts. I'm not clear on whether it's possible though.


If we can, then great. I'm not really a fan of +1 for lagouts in any circumstance.


Well here's an idea how we can determine whether a spec is a lagout or intentional... If the player's energy < max at the time they entered spectator mode then it must have been a lagout. It's often the case, but not always, so it's not a guaranteed method, but could definitely give an indication.

[qan]

If we removed arena lag limits (or raise them to the point that they are inconsequential) and only used the bot's lag handler to test for excessive lag, then we could distinguish between lag and an intentional spec/DC. It's possible arena lag limits have some granularity or element that bot lag limits don't, though. Not sure if anything would be lost.

I'm not sure if we can easily test for energy levels. Clients report deaths based on their tracked energy levels, which is one reason this game was so hackable before Priit's protections. It's in many cases client authoritative.

I still have no idea why maketso did not receive +1, though... the fact that any of this could happen seems to show there's something a bit rotten in Denmark. As a result I've had mysterious music running through my head all day. Something to the tune of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJRKedSUHg4

[roro]

Qan, not sure if helpful but:

SVS 4v4 league bots track a multitude of different stats that I haven't seen TW bots do - such as damage done, damage taken, assists & forced repels (damage done within a certain time frame followed by a repel by the damaged player). If i recall correctly the bot also notifies the arena with a message when a player specs midgame for whatever reason with a message along the lines of "ro lagged out/manually specced while taking 500 damage within the last 5 seconds).

Perhaps you could get some advice/steal some code from hallucination over there - think he runs the bot development.

[Turban]

while on the topic there is a very rare glitch where you can instantly respawn in the exact same location where you died sometimes resulting in two quick consecutive deaths in a row. what happens is essentially the same as someone doing *shipreset command on you with the exception that you do not get your weapons (e.g. repels) or energy back, and thus you will die to pretty much any weapon damage unless you can somehow make it to safety. it is not end of the world, but to make it more annoying you are invisible to others for a short duration which can be very deadly to the opposing team if it gets abused by the player. there are very few sub-arenas with this kind of spawning mechanic set in place, but not exactly sure why it happens in regular arenas on rare occasions.

nevertheless I am quite certain the bot tracks those deaths, and given the rarity of this happening I suppose it is not of high priority to be fixed even though it can sometimes win or lose you the game, and as far as the "rarity" of this goes it's pretty much less than 0.05% of happening after each death. very uncommon and some may have never even experienced it before.

also, unless my memory is absolutely terrible, there are certain types of lag outs where you do not receive an extra death to your counter which to me has always been quite weird given how .. uh, inconsistent it is.

[Turban]

SVS and Trench Wars run different server types—Subgame and ASSS. We are limited by what we can do due to this fact.

[skyforger]

while on the topic there is a very rare glitch where you can instantly respawn in the exact same location where you died sometimes resulting in two quick consecutive deaths in a row. what happens is essentially the same as someone doing *shipreset command on you with the exception that you do not get your weapons (e.g. repels) or energy back, and thus you will die to pretty much any weapon damage unless you can somehow make it to safety. it is not end of the world, but to make it more annoying you are invisible to others for a short duration which can be very deadly to the opposing team if it gets abused by the player. there are very few sub-arenas with this kind of spawning mechanic set in place, but not exactly sure why it happens in regular arenas on rare occasions.

Had this happen to me in JD once, both deaths were counted. Was told this is a Continuum client glitch, so probably no fixing that in the immediate future.