Voidwatch, the Xbox360 and its issues/bugs.

[Kristal]

I wonder if the same issue is also responsible for the occasional invisible maws, confluxes and npcs on PC.

[Kaisha]

I wonder if the same issue is also responsible for the occasional invisible maws, confluxes and npcs on PC.

That's more a problem with XI's network code. It doesn't handshake on a lot of stuff, so if you miss the packet that says "Load this object up", it never double-checks that you received, so you're forced to either log, or run out of range of the entity to make the server resend it.

At any rate, I'm curious if that problem with the 360 is related to the problem where prolonged visits to a single zone start making FFXI jitter badly non-stop after a few hours. I used to have bad performance late into LS abyssea runs during its primetime, which tend to result in zoning out taking over 15 seconds to commence.

[saevel]

That's more a problem with XI's network code. It doesn't handshake on a lot of stuff, so if you miss the packet that says "Load this object up", it never double-checks that you received, so you're forced to either log, or run out of range of the entity to make the server resend it.

At any rate, I'm curious if that problem with the 360 is related to the problem where prolonged visits to a single zone start making FFXI jitter badly non-stop after a few hours. I used to have bad performance late into LS abyssea runs during its primetime, which tend to result in zoning out taking over 15 seconds to commence.

FFXI use's UDP on ports 50000+ to communicate with the world servers. UDP by it's nature is state-less, meaning no packet acknowledgement or session information. It also happens to be faster by requiring less processing and having less administrative overhead. UDP's used for things where missing packets won't result in a failure, things like VoIP and VTC connections.

[Kaisha]

Greetings!

There was another update from Yoji Fujito in regards to the Xbox 360 freezing issue during Voidwatch that I would like to share with you all.

I'm curious if this 'fix' addresses one of the ancient bugs I've seen from time to time, where a manticore's breath attack will come out as a series of glitched looking squares.

Also curious if a byproduct of it will reduce severe lag on special effects like 10+ people smacking a mob when it has a spikes effect up.

FFXI use's UDP on ports 50000+ to communicate with the world servers. UDP by it's nature is state-less, meaning no packet acknowledgement or session information. It also happens to be faster by requiring less processing and having less administrative overhead. UDP's used for things where missing packets won't result in a failure, things like VoIP and VTC connections.

I know how UDP operates, but it doesn't excuse that there's zero checks done regularly to ensure all entities in the area are as expected.

[Sarick]

I know how UDP operates, but it doesn't excuse that there's zero checks done regularly to ensure all entities in the area are as expected.

This could be helped if SE had a /resend for zone data.

[saevel]

I know how UDP operates, but it doesn't excuse that there's zero checks done regularly to ensure all entities in the area are as expected.

Umm apparently you don't. The entire purpose of UDP is fire and forget, if data is lost ohh well it'll be sent again eventually. If the UDP datagram is lost, then there is on way for the client to know it didn't receive it and thus ask for it again. It's session-less, there is no SYN/ACK nor FIN packets to indicate the opening and closing of connections, the game programmers have to incorporate that themselves. Using some form of packet checking would defeat the entire purpose of UDP, might as well use TCP and let the network handle lost packets for you.

In short, it's impossible for a client to check data it doesn't know about. As far as it's concerned those aren't supposed to be there because the server hasn't told it that they are there.

[Duzell]

Howdy!

I’d just like to give another update on the status of the Xbox 360 freeze issue.
We have performed tests with the editing program applied to the Windows version and a number of minute problems have been eliminated. As such, we will be implementing the current editing program into the game during this month’s version update.

We would like to keep a close watch on this even after the version update, so if you see any problems, please be sure to let us know!

I know mirosoft is not going to allow you to set up a test server since there still upset FFXI doesnt need gold membership, but are the dev team able to set up 360s locally and hook them directly into the test server for testing purposes or are the poor hapless 360 users guniee pigs for each update and they go live without testing on every platform?