I realize that the game runs on computers and that computers crash, but can we get backups more often. It really sucks when you loose three hours of work because of a server crash. I had spent a great deal of time mining, running trade missions, and collecting all of the Helio that I had mined in one location before the server crash only to see all of my hard work lost in an instant. I realize that there are many things that there are many things that you want to work on to improve the game, but loosing that amount of my time is so frustraiting that it makes me not even want to play the game.

Major stats (licence levels & points, money, standing, equipment and location, etc) should be backed up at least once an hour, but every 10 to 15 minutes would be much better. If this would take up too much systems resources than, perhapse this information should be mirrored on our computers in the Vendetta application somewhere.

From what I understand, the game saves your information whenever you change sectors, dock, or logoff.
Also, storing character information on the client is not safe as it would very prone to being edited.

Roach, it's just a game. Experience can be got back, so can helio standing and equipment. Mentor points (ahem) are even a trivial matter. In contrast to other RPGs where say, the items you get are based on random drops, and if a particular unique was lost in such a server malfunction it's highly unlikely you'd get it back; in contrast to that, it doesn't matter so much in this game. All you lost was a few hours of botting. And, judging by the fact that you're bored enough to play this game, you'll have plenty time to get it back. So relax, even if the devs can't set everything back to the way it was, all you have to do is exactly what you did before. The system, I think, is just fine.

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Never mind. I just read the News post...
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omg! i lost about 20 deaths! thanks alot andy :D

ah well, what can you do, im sure i can make that up with my free week :)

Rhapsody, just to let you know...

I don't play this game because I'm board and can't find anything to do, I play this game because I love it. There were other things I could have done this afternoon, things I would have liked to have done, but I chose to play this game because I enjoy it. I didn't spend the day botting, I spent the day doing something else, something that took a lot of time and paitience. Now I don't get to enjoy the fruits of my labor and it sucks. Now I have to do it all over again, when I would rather do something else next time I play.
I know this is just a game, I'm just saying that it is frustarating....

...Oh screw it. All I'm saying is that I don't like covering the same ground twice and it would be nice if the game backed itself up a little more often. Don't tell me that I shouldn't have an issue when I do.

heh, the problem was a one in a million shot, highly unlikely to ever happen again if andy will just RTFM ( =P ).

normally your character is saved every time it leaves/enters a sector or docks at a station, and the server does a complete backup every morning if i recall. I dont know how much would be gained if the backups were more often, to the best of my knowledge they havent had to use the backups very often (if any) since the game went live over a year ago.

Anyway, you got a week of free game time added to your account because of it.. the people I really feel sorry for are the poor newbies who created accounts since 4am CST this morning... they dont even HAVE accounts anymore.. boy will they be confused.

the people I really feel sorry for are the poor newbies who created accounts since 4am CST this morning... they dont even HAVE accounts anymore.. boy will they be confused.


Well, its not as if they are dropping in by the 100's.

@ The Suggestion.

Well, I reckon i'd have lost something, and like you say, this is the internet, _anything_ could happen, a new virulent worm thats POSIX complient, that eats SQL data bases,ect ect.

And no way im repeating yesterdays activities, took me all day to get a tri sub-nation bounty :( gone, poof (which I had actually sold to get another character some cash, bah, thats gone too!) - but saying that, if the backups were every 6 hours, well, 6 hours of me ingame can be a lot of activity - one way to prevent no data loss would be to have 2 data bases that stay in sync (through ingame events) but dont sync when the devs poke about (for 24 hours, or until the devs click "sync") the game uses the first to get info, but *puts* it in both. Of course, that system isnt 100% either, nothing is in the world of computing.

Fine, I will declare a bounty on YODA's HEAD!!! And not just any bounty but a Tri-Bounty!

wtf dude, I say you're pretty damn lucky they backed up as recently as they did. I mean, a few hours? what do you want them to do? bog down the servers by backing up every couple minutes?

I mean seriously, we should all thank the devgods that we weren't set back WEEKS due to an out-of-date backup.

The backups need to be done on an off-peak time, because it really bogs down the running server. Once a day at 4AM is about as often as we can afford.

a1k0n takes aim at database, hits enter... "ULTRA KILL!"

LOL I still think we should have Unreal Tournament-style announcements in-sector when we get kills. Perhaps just in specific "dueling" sectors. That would be fun.

/me runs from the armies of RPers ready to kill Leber

Roach stats do get saved every time you leave a sector. If the server crashes you only lose the small amount of work you did without leaving a sector or logging out. Unfortunately the issue that just happened was not a server crash. All the saved information was deleted. This has never happened before (I've been playing for two and a half years) and it's extremely unlikely it will ever happen again.

I don't understand why this is not possible.

Assume each character is 200k of data.

Once per hour, backup every character that is currently online.
Assume the peak is 1000 chracters online at once.

Additionally, back up a character when it disconnects/logsoff.
Assume 400 per hour log off.

This will put a data strain on the server of roughly 280 MB/hour, or 78k/s, with minimal CPU usage. Surely in this age of 12MB/s ethernet, 20MB/s firewire/usb disk drives, and 50 MB/s SATA, this is not beyond the imagination.

> with minimal CPU usage

Database backups have more than "minimal CPU usage". Depending on the type of backup, the size & complexity of the database, and other factors, database backups can be very CPU intensive. And while the backup is running, the database tables are often locked to maintain a consistent state, and while the tables are locked they cannot be updated. That means that if a database backup is running every 15 minutes, then for however long the backup takes to run, no stats can be updated until the backup finishes.

ananzi's point I believe is that you only backup the information that applies to characters online. So Beo didn't really refute it.

But personally, I don't see what all the hub-bub is about, I mean honestly, this is the ONLY time this has ever happened,

<Sarc>I mean sure, Andy is likely to do this over and over again unless we engage in some drastic "solution" to this problem. But look at the fun it adds, its an additional level of risk (should I play today, should I not play...EXCITING!) in absence of anything else being dangerous</Sarc>

Can't we just drop/lock this?

People lost several hours of gametime. Yeah, it sucks, but it won't happen again (right Andy? :D), so why are we discussing it?

Borrowing a phrase from ananzi...

I thought it ran on a M$ Access database? Was a1k0n usiong the wrong manual to make changes to the DB? Everyone knows Access is foolproof.

We "back up" characters every five minutes while they're online, and the instant they log off, and every time they warp. We make a complete copy of the database every day; it isn't an incremental backup, and yes you could rightfully argue that we could make incremental backups much more frequently. But that isn't really the point; the backups are made in case we need to get old data for some reason, not to keep a single up-to-date mirror.

The reason the full database copy bogs down the production server is because it locks each table, and the server has to wait if it needs something (i.e. whenever somebody logs in and so forth).

Seriously, I'm actually fine with the current schedule of backups. One a day is OK by me. I mean, i was freaked out when I logged in and saw no chars, but even if I had been playing for 6 hours, not a HUGE deal.