Bot Questions - Problem with changing settings with bot and getting checksum Anonymous - Wed Mar 23, 2005 10:50 pm Post subject: Problem with changing settings with bot and getting checksum
Hey guys, I've rewritten Vampz football bot for use in HZ, with a million new additions. I'm nearing the end of completing the bot, but I've come across a problem.
I have to change settings for various ships throughout the game (especially on punts and field goals). I change things such as ball friction, prox, ball speed, etc. The problem that keeps happening is that checksum errors are created and sent to the sysops. This normally causes people that get the checksum error on them to be disconnected.
We enabled the *set security:securitykickoff:1 to stop people from being kicked, but I still get the checksum errors. My question is, it seems the changing of all the settings during play is what is causing the checksum errors to be produced. Vampz original football bot caused these checksum errors to be produced as well, although without the same frequency since he was only doing settings changing during certain times (punts).
Does anyone know how to cause these checksum errors to not be produced when changing settings? I tried doing a *shipreset after settings changes, but that didn't seem to work. As well, if not, is there any way to get the checksum errors to not be sent to the sysops?
Thank you so much in advance for your responses.
Cyan~Fire - Wed Mar 23, 2005 11:31 pm Post subject:
Subgame has always had problems with these things. It seems to load the security checks from the settings at first and then not update them even if the settings are updated. You'll have to find what settings changes are generating the checksum and simply not make those changes.
Mr Ekted - Thu Mar 24, 2005 12:00 am Post subject:
That's not the issue. When you change the settings on the server, the server must send them to all clients. This is a 1428-byte structure which gets broken into several pieces, each of which is sent reliably. If, during this time, a security check is triggered--which happens every 2 minutes--any clients that haven't received the full settings packet still use the old settings to generate the checksum.
The way around it is to have the server either 1) not trigger security checks near changes to settings, or 2) be tolerant of replies with the old checksum and requery those clients once all settings change packet acks are received.
Anonymous - Thu Mar 24, 2005 1:44 am Post subject:
Yea, this is what I was afraid of. Thank you very much for your time and responses. I reduced the amount of times settings are changed to attempt to minimize the impact and affect on sysops.
As for controlling anything server side, unfortunately I don't have control of the HZ server Although if I talk with the sysops anytime soon I'll mention it.
Mr Ekted - Thu Mar 24, 2005 2:25 am Post subject:
It's possible to do even better. The security check is sent to all clients at the same time. Your bots will get this packet (S2C 0x18). If the bot core ahndles it and passes it to the modules, you can predict when the good times and bad times are to modify settings. If your zone can tolerate delayed changes, this could work perfectly.
Maverick - Thu Mar 24, 2005 3:45 am Post subject:
Yea and then *shipreset everybody so they use the new ship settings?
Nickisis, I am very interested in this bot. Do you release it when its finished? (That would be awesome )
Also, has Vampz released its source to the football bot?
Although if I talk with the sysops anytime soon I'll mention it.
)
