robinn

Thanks everyone for your comments and let's hope @Gizmo and @Lisa read it

Wow the room list has sure grown bigger since I was last here! Makes it hard to find a specific room or room host player, so how about this idea which would help you navigate the list in the "For All" section... 1. Add a drop-down selector at the top of the page to sort the room list under the "For All" section by: a) Host name b) Room name c) Number of players in room d) Length of time room has been online. Promoted rooms could still appear the top of the list .... ?? 2. Add a "filter" box where you can type in a Host's name or room name (or any part thereof) and it would filter the list to show only matching rooms. This would make it so much easier to find a specific room you like to visit rather than scrolling and scrolling. This should be fairly easy feature to add imho To take this idea to another level (and not as necessary as the above idea), I could see adding a "Category" field that the room host sets when she/he shares it for public access where a single "Category" can be selected from a fixed list such as "Dance Clubs", "Role Play Rooms", "Sex Rooms", "Themed Rooms", "Event Rooms", etc. and that would cause the list to be organized under those categories. If no Category is selected that's ok too, it would show up under an "Uncategorized" group of rooms. You would not want to have user-defined Categories of course otherwise the list would become unmanageable, so would need to put some thought and get player input as to the list of Categories What do you all think?

But what if the you can login and dont' get kicked off but your profile and room list is empty (as it was for me several tiemes today), does your code detect that condition? Nice wok, by the way

How are you determining "Game Server Status" Colin? The site might allow you to authenticate but if the game Client can't retrieve your profile, room list, etc its not really playable. Robin

The really ironic thing is, the this game could be SO much better and make a LOT more money for the owners if they got their act together and started to treat their paying customers properly. But... IMHO.... 1) they don't care 2) they don't have the technical skills 3) are too stubborn to sell it off to someone who does care and has the skills Robin

Using a VPN won't fix it .... I always use a VPN and it's still broken. It's clear they are having server-side issues and the VPN suggestion is just a diversion. Get your shit together Devs or sell the game off to someone who knows how to do dev-ops for a multiplayer Unity game and more importantly knows how to COMMUNICATE with their paying customers rather than silence or BS suggestions like "use a VPN". The fact that a player had to create a game-status page (https://3dxchat-status.com/) and not the 3dx Dev Team is just another indication of how behind the curve the Devs are. CHIRP CHIRP TWEET TWEET - Robin

I'm also a software developer with some experience with server operations, ddos attacks, and a little bit of unity.... and almost 4 years experience playing here... 1) all the helpful suggestions about using AWS, Kubernetes clusters, etc. all depend on the scale-out architecture for Unity (which I don't know much about). You have to start with the scale-out architecture requirements of the game FIRST and then go from there as what your options are for better performance, reliability and cost. And I understand why gizmo/devs don't want to necessarily share that level of detail with the general player community, though I do hope they not too proud to consult with other game devs and hosting companies who have experience with these issues. 2) Mitigating ddos attacks is not simple, but its not rocket science either. As others have pointed out, there are established methods for doing it, but it does depend on how the game client-server communication works, and how that will change with the new scaled-out server architecture. 3) There is NO excuse for not having a RAID-configured disk system for the server(s) so that if one physical disk fails (which is almost guaranteed to happen every few years, and often after a reboot), there will be very little (or no) downtime because the data from the failed disk is replicated in real time to other disk(s). If in fact there was a disk failure.... shame on you devs for not configuring the servers with RAID (or ordering a hosted server configuration with RAID disks from the hosting provider). That's "server ops 101". 4) No matter what range of numbers you use, no one is getting really rich operating this game (I won't bore you with the math). The only way to make good money on it would be expand the player base as no one is going to pay more than we are today. And the only way to do that is to build a more scalable and reliable sever platform to support a lot of users. In general, since none of us (probably) have the inside knowledge that the devs have, so let's all get pissed off about it, then sit back and relax and wait for them to fix it.... and hopefully learn from their mistakes in the process.. Chirp Chirp Tweet Tweet - Robin

Hey everyone... things do seem seriously broken, less stable than I have seen in a long time, unusable at times. Possibly still some issues from the ddos attack or some lingering software bugs but I am guessing its also from a big increase in server loading which is stressing the back end. (Btw I'm a software developer and have worked a bit in Unity so I now something about this stuff :). My suggestion... I suspect that the devs are re-configuring or re-architecting the server side of the game to handle this which might take a while ... so chill while they do their work. More complaining won't help. If they don't fix this soon they will lose subscription $ and that's probably all the motivation they need. chirp chirp tweet tweet - Robin

just as I predicted... the update is probably pointing the game client at cloudflare (or other CDN) to mitigate the DDOS...

We don't really know whats going on, of course, so it's all speculation, but in general.... 1. it's much easier to launch a sophisticated DDOS attack these days for relatively little cryptocurrency and you don't don't have to know shit 2. 3dx seems to have increased it's visibility lately from from what I have seen - Robin

To add to my previous post.... it could be several days to a week because there is only so much the devs can do about this. There are probably only two resolutions.... 1. the attacker stops attacking maybe because they ran out of money to pay for the DDOS attack (see my previous post) 2. the devs front-end the game server with Cloudflare (or another CDN) like they have already done with the this forum site (if you haven't noticed). This may take an update to the game client which means we might all have to re-download the client if they move the game serer behind the cloudflare service. Success breeds visibility.... and visibility breeds enemies. chirp-chirp tweet-tweet Robin

Lol, it figures, the day I decide to come visit the game after being away for several months ... the sever is being DDOS'ed ! Everybody chill, this might take a while. DDOS attacks are getting harder and harder to mitigate unless you have taken precautions up-front. The stupid thing is you don't even have to be script-kiddie much less a real black-hat to launch one -- you can buy a sophisticated, week-long, DDOS-attack-as-a-service on the so-called dark web for $150-200 in cryptocurrency. It might be several more days up to a week before the devs sort this out. The bright side is that is this will probably motivate gizmo and team to put some DDOS mitigation in place which can't prevent it from happening again but can reduce the time it takes to get back online next time. Good luck gizmo and team! chirp-chirp tweet-tweet - Robin

A 64-bit version would be nice as it would help with memory restrictions, but there are probalby still a significant number of players who are stuck in 32-bit land and/or who have limtied memory in their PCs. If they make a 64-bit version available, even while continuing to offer a 32-bit download, rooms would continue to get bigger and more complex making it even harder for those users to play. Eventually, a switch to 64-bit is inevitable of course, but it should be done keeping ALL players in mind. There's my two cents. TWEET TWEET CHIRP CHIRP

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