Rollback advice please

[Stagger Lee]

I'm in a game where we had a rollback not too long ago and things are going a little off the track. Items and troops disappearing, regular troops becoming commanders, mages losing magic and research abilities, and strange messages from the host (llamaserver).

Are there any rules we should follow when attempting a rollback, and how far back can we/should we go.

This game is early, but quite a lot of fun and I think we all would like to play it out.

Thanks for any help.

[vfb]

#1: Don't rollback
#2: If you do rollback, everyone needs to delete all old .2h files
#3: Don't rollback
#4: See #1

[Zeldor]

Find a cheater and get him banned. Someone submitted a .2h file that was generated with pre-rollback turn, so differet unit IDs.

[Psycho]

Originally Posted by Zeldor

Find a cheater and get him banned. Someone submitted a .2h file that was generated with pre-rollback turn, so differet unit IDs.

What could someone gain by doing this?

[Stagger Lee]

Thanks guys. I get that most rollback experiences are painful memories, but I'm asking for the best road forward from this point.

Will rolling back one turn and deleting all .2h files be enough? The original rollback was two turns ago, but the strangeness started this last turn. Is it possible to roll back 2 turns without creating more problems?

I know it's difficult to talk about, but opening up is the first step to recovery. You may be helping yourself more than us.

[Septimius Severus]

You know I think rollbacks can be handled several ways:

1. Not doing em at all.
2. Giving everybody equal chance to resubmit and thus to "cheat" as it were.
3. Only allowing the affected individuals to resubmit (in the case of server issues that cause a stale).

Because of the dishonesty of some players this is what makes it so problematic.

However, with an issue that affects all the players like what you are describing, such as weird things going on, number 2 might be the best way to proceed unless everyone agrees to just deal with it and move on and hope for the best.

[Zeldor]

Psycho:

New magic paths, new commanders, etc. You can even have 4 air queens that way in the game.

[Tollund]

Originally Posted by Septimius Severus

3. Only allowing the affected individuals to resubmit (in the case of server issues that cause a stale).

This one only works if you are only rolling back a single turn otherwise the game is likely to become fatally corrupted.

[rdonj]

This is pretty much the one time a rollback should be given - i.e. to fix some ridiculous bug. Rollbacks are a pain, but this situation probably does merit a rollback and deletion of files to fix the game.

[Gandalf Parker]

Rollbacks seem to be particularly a problem if its a pbem game. Not due to server actions but due to player actions. A server can just zip the game before each hosting, so rollback on the server is just unzipping the save.zip to the directory. But getting players to ALL rollback to older files is more difficult. It shouldnt be since email can automatically provide for player backups but its the implementation that fails. Im not sure if I have ever seen a step-by-step instruction on it.

Obvious is a word which should only be used in personal reference, not when referring to the general populace. Having worked Customer Support for many years I can verify that ANYTHING can benefit from instructions. No matter how simple the task seems, and no matter how insulting the instructions seem, there is always a benefit to posting them (in a general public manner so that no one has to actually admit that they needed it). If that wasnt true then there would not be cooking instructions on the toaster pastries box.

Gandalf Parker
--
Customer Support Rules for Writing Help Files:
A) lay out the steps
B) rewrite to include checks for "did you do this step"
C) rewrite again and break down each step into 3-5 separate steps
D) give to a child for proofing
E) give to the childs parent for final test