Closing the vu-graph theatre

[EarlPurple]

Zmud99 has said a couple of times that he cannot close the theatre room if there are more than 400 spectators.

 

Why not? Is this problem going to be resolved?

[uday]

When a vugraph room is closed, all specs are dumped immediately into the lobby. This causes a burst of activity in the system, as (say) 2500 users do something in lock-step.

This in turn causes sluggishness for some seconds as the server deals with the activity.

 

I have asked Zmud99 to leave the Vugraph table open at the end of a segment, to allow users to trickle out on their own.

 

For smaller vugraphs, or when the system load is lighter, it doesnt matter. This is just a precaution for Istanbul.

[EarlPurple]

I thought that something like that may be the case. In that case you can use some delaying tactics. It might take a bit of programming but it would be an exercise.

 

Firstly make the room invisible, so from the outside nobody sees it (and nobody new can enter), but it does not immediately go offline.

 

Then perform a scheduled "boot" of each player at a time, but at a rate the server can handle, so, for example a loop of

while ( specs_remain)
{
  boot_spec( BOOTS_PER_CYCLE );
  sleep( SLEEP_TIME );
}

 

The boot_spec() command would simply tell the player that the broadcast is over (like it does now). They need not know that for the next 20 seconds or whatever some of the other spectators might not have been removed yet.

[uday]

I understand some of the coding issues involved, Earl B)

A shutdown based on a timer is not rocket science, but it isnt a 3 line while loop either.

 

When making changes, one needs to balance, among other things, the risks associated with a code change versus the gain. I played around with a version that used convoluted tricks to gracefully closethe vugraphs, but decided to use the simpler manual approach ( less risk that something complicated crashes at runtime ). Safer.

 

I was forced to insert new code (to fix a problem that cropped up with large numbers of users ) during an important period (the istanbul vugraphs ) . This was a rare case where the code changes had to be risked, because the alternatives were much worse.

 

In this case, the minor pain isnt worth the major risk. There is no real downside to leaving the vugraph tables open for 20 minutes after a match concludes.

[mrdct]

I've long been an advocate of operators keeping the vugraph presentation open for some time after play has finished which has a number of other advantages. including:

 

- the operator can check the official scores to his own and make corrections if necessary so that the eventually LIN files will coincide with the actual results.

 

- late-comers can see what the match result was, rather than having to wait hours for the WBF site to be updated.

 

- enables commentators to engage in a little bit of post match banter and analysis

[Deanrover]

I understand some of the coding issues involved, Earl :rolleyes:

A shutdown based on a timer is not rocket science, but it isnt a 3 line while loop either.

 

When making changes, one needs to balance, among other things, the risks associated with a code change versus the gain. I played around with a version that used convoluted tricks to gracefully closethe vugraphs, but decided to use the simpler manual approach ( less risk that something complicated crashes at runtime ). Safer.

 

I was forced to insert new code (to fix a problem that cropped up with large numbers of users ) during an important period (the istanbul vugraphs ) . This was a rare case where the code changes had to be risked, because the alternatives were much worse.

 

In this case, the minor pain isnt worth the major risk. There is no real downside to leaving the vugraph tables open for 20 minutes after a match concludes.

It is now 20:00 Paris Time and the Womens' final rooms have still not closed. It must be a good 90 minutes since the match concluded. The drawback here is that many users will come online, see the "Live vugraph is now in progress" bar, think "cool", go into the vugraph and find that it has, in fact, finished. A minor nuisance.

[nikos59]

A minor nuisance or a major blessing: they will be able to

keep the lin file and study it at leisure.

 

n.

[EarlPurple]

I agree with your points, Nikos. It would be a relatively minor change, I guess, to change the broadcast message (i.e. the "live vugraph in progress.." message).

 

I would prefer, however, if they could somehow arrange for vugraph results to go to a site a bit like the tourney results ones. May be kinder on the server too as I guess these results are stored on a different server.