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What needs to be said

• drmoose 3,543 Posts

  Thu, Mar 17 2016 2:38 PM

  alanti:

  Edit - totally agree with Andy above....my system and connection is far superior than when I started, but have 10 times as many crashes/disconnections.

  That's exactly where I was headed with this. Every year since I joined it has gotten worse, even when using better equipment and connections. WGT says they want feedback and particulars on disconnections and other errors. Andyson's got a great idea about making it real simple to get that info to them . If they only understood the magnitude of the players being negatively affected, they might see their way to make fixing these issues priority one.

  Doc :)

• ct690911 7,205 Posts

  Thu, Mar 17 2016 3:20 PM

  drmoose:

  alanti:

  Edit - totally agree with Andy above....my system and connection is far superior than when I started, but have 10 times as many crashes/disconnections.

  That's exactly where I was headed with this. Every year since I joined it has gotten worse, even when using better equipment and connections. WGT says they want feedback and particulars on disconnections and other errors. Andyson's got a great idea about making it real simple to get that info to them . If they only understood the magnitude of the players being negatively affected, they might see their way to make fixing these issues priority one.

  Doc :)

  You are absolutely correct..but, fixes cost money, or time, or both...wgt has no viable competition, so they figure they have a captive audience (are they wrong?). Without any real threat to their business model (aside from the flash rumors), their priority will remain making money by stocking the pro shop and then blitz advertising/marketing. People lose balls, threaten to quit, complain till the cows come home..all legitimate and wgt knows about them...but they also know we faithfully show up the next day..sigh 

• Pootick 1,185 Posts

  Thu, Mar 17 2016 4:44 PM

  What is the most disappointing aspect of this breakdown is the obvious silence of WGT on any progress or lack of to give us a fix. I find it very difficult to believe that they don't know what is causing the problem. So it looks like they are satisfied to keep up the routine of making us believe that it is actually our fault, by not clearing the cache, not adequately sending bug reports, etc. etc.. Maybe it has to do with the pop up ads that they want to keep intact, your guess is as good as mine. Whatever the reason, it seems appropriate now for WGT to give us a daily progress report in their effort to fix the blue screens and disconnects. That would require very little time or effort on their part, so why don't they do it? Could it possibly be that they know the problem but don't want to share with us the reason they can't give a quicker fix? Keep silent WGT and I will continue to think it may be related to advertising and or introduction of the mobile device play which are both big money makers for them.

  So WGT, if I am way off base and not even close, then please explain what the problem is. Thus far all we hear is that you are searching. Are you searching for the problem and haven't found it, or are you trying to fix the problem that you have found. Having any trust in what you tell us anymore is becoming very difficult. Please, how about a daily progress report for starters.

• Lesthanpar 1,502 Posts

  Thu, Mar 17 2016 11:30 PM

  VegasWade- One click, takes literally one second, and you don't have to leave the game. Try it.

   

  No thanks. I had a guy tell me one time to clear my cache after every single shot. Every shot absurdly ridiculous! Even if it works it detracts from my enjoyment of the game.

• andyson 6,415 Posts

  Fri, Mar 18 2016 9:24 AM

  VegasWade:

  There's a reason Flash is being discontinued. As a gaming format, especially multiplayer, it's far from optimal and always has been. It's being phased out now. And I hope I'm not coming off as preaching, Andy. I certainly don't mean to. I'm trying to help by offering tips that help me.

  As to benchmark Flash checker, my test results on Chrome, which is the browser I use to run this game. And thanks for that link.

  You've ignored the elephant in the room Wade.  If our computers and connections are so much better than 6 years ago why does the game play worse than 6 years ago?

  What's the reason Flash is being discontinued?  You didn't say.  You implied it was for performance.  Not true.  Flash is on its way out because of security issues.  It is vulnerable to exploits by hackers.

  Don't blame the game's performance on Adobe Flash either.  As our computers and connections improved over the last 6 years so has Flash.  For example, Flash added support for GPU hardware acceleration on version 10.  (I'm on version 21 now! Probably a bunch of improvements in those 11 versions.)  And in 2013, Adobe released Adobe Scout, a tool to provide memory and code execution profiling in order to improve the performance of Flash applications.  The question remains does WGT make use of these Flash performance improvements?

  So there it is.  Our computers, our connections, and Flash have all improved over the last 6 years.  Yet the game plays worse.

  Did you notice the complexity of the animations while you were running the Flash Benchmark program?  Lots of movement huh?  Compare that to the relatively simple meter animation of WGT.  It's amazing what our computers can smoothly display.  Why isn't the simple meter animation as smooth without us having to shut everything else down? Without us being told to shut off flag animations or reflections?

  Check this complex Flash animation out:  Refractive Flash Animation

  Pretty good huh?

  Again, what's your background Wade? IT person?

• VegasWade 486 Posts

  Fri, Mar 18 2016 11:45 AM

  Rather than jump quote you here, let's lay some things out. Flash not only has security issues, but it's a resource hog forcing computers to work harder. Performance issues are tantamount. Flash also has major memory corruption/leak issues. Everything bolded is a fact. It's is a platform that's able to be used on MAC, Linux and Windows, so a cross-platform, complicating it even more.

  In fact, 32% of all corrected bugs in Flash have to do with memory corruption. A look at every corrected issue and vulnerability over the years is compiled here: http://www.cvedetails.com/product/6761/Adobe-Flash-Player.html?vendor_id=53

  The problems with Flash go deeper than just "security" issues, as you stated. Here's an overview of the vulnerabilities that Flash has had in the past 10 years: 

  

  What's the issue? 

  "It's usually the legacy code (going all the way back to AS1 targeting much, much earlier player versions) that gives most of the problems."

  This article explains much of the problem. https://www.quora.com/Whats-wrong-with-Adobe-Flash

  I'll quote some relevant highlights here.

  According to Adobe, hardware acceleration is not supported under either Linux or Mac OS X, the latter because Mac OS X does not expose access to the required APIs.

  Flash itself has to maintain backwards compatibility with old versions. Flash apps also tend to use a lot of CPU resources. It's a memory hog. The platform itself has a memory leak, which is why I earlier pointed out that a memory cleaner used in game does help. There are memory cleaner apps you can use that run in the background and work automatically.

  Adobe Systems knew in 2009 that Flash had memory leak issues but had no idea on how to fix it and told that to The New York Times. http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/02/why-do-adobe-flash-videos-slow-down/?_r=0

  This article explains a lot. Great read, too, complete with Flash testing analysis for all browsers and operating systems. Flash Player: CPU Hog or Hot Tamale? It Depends.

  http://www.streaminglearningcenter.com/articles/flash-player-cpu-hog-or-hot-tamale-it-depends-.html

  Here's a couple of relevant quotes. 

  "Flash is efficient on platforms where it can access hardware acceleration and less efficient where it can't ... Apple complaining about Flash being a CPU Hog while not exposing "the appropriate hooks" to enable Adobe to access hardware acceleration seems disingenuous at best."

   "... the ability to access hardware acceleration is the single most important factor in the overall CPU load. On Windows, where Flash can access hardware acceleration, the CPU requirements drop to negligible levels. It seems reasonable to assume that if the Flash Player could access GPU-based hardware acceleration on the Mac (or iPod/iPhone/iPad), the difference between the CPU required for HTML5 playback and Flash playback would be very much narrowed, if not eliminated."

  So you're trying to play an AS game on WGT. Frank is running on his MAC, Sam has Windows 10, Jerry has Windows XP and Andy is running Linux. Just examples. What do you think is going to happen? Lol. See the problem?

  

  Does any of this answer your questions? 

  I'm moderated on posts, so this is likely to appear hours later. Have a pleasant day.

  
  

• andyson 6,415 Posts

  Fri, Mar 18 2016 10:51 PM

  VegasWade:

  In fact, 32% of all corrected bugs in Flash have to do with memory corruption. A look at every corrected issue and vulnerability over the years is compiled here: http://www.cvedetails.com/product/6761/Adobe-Flash-Player.html?vendor_id=53

  CVE Details Wade, do you realize what that website is?

  Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures is a dictionary of common names (i.e., CVE Identifiers) for publicly known information security vulnerabilities.  Its not all bugs corrected in Flash.  Its ONLY about security fixes in Flash.

  "In fact, 32% of all corrected bugs in Flash have to do with memory corruption."

  WRONG!  32% of security vulnerabilities in Flash had to do with memory corruption.  242 of the 746 total security vulnerabilities in the last 12 years.  746!!  313 in 2015 alone!!

  Thank You. You helped me make my point that Flash is on its way out because of security issues
  

   

  VegasWade:

  This article explains much of the problem. https://www.quora.com/Whats-wrong-with-Adobe-Flash

  It doesn't.  Actually the article from 2012 is very flattering to Flash! Here's an excerpt:

  "Benjamin Colwell, Programmer writes:
  

  I have personally seen some awesome Flash implementations that are very efficient, error-free, and beautiful examples of what is possible if you do it right. One simply has to take a look at The FWA (http://www.thefwa.com/) to see some prime examples. So no, the Flash technology itself is not a problem or a resource hog, it's just how it's sometimes used that makes it look bad.

  As Steven Grimm said in his answer, the biggest hurdle to public perception (of Flash) is the bad user experience caused by poorly-coded rush jobs. I personally guarantee that I could write a HTML5/JavaScript program that will crash your browser, and/or hog a ton of CPU. It's easy to write a bad program-- but much harder to do it right.  <snip>

  Flash is an awesome technology, AS3 is an awesome language, and Adobe is doing some really great things with it moving forward."

  That's one experienced programmer's opinion from 2012.  Poor design and coding gives Flash a bad reputation.
  

  VegasWade:

  Flash apps also tend to use a lot of CPU resources. It's a memory hog.

  Matter of opinion.  A lot depends on how powerful your CPU is and how much memory you have.  When I play this game on my 4th generation i7 with 16G Ram I'm running at 7 to 8% CPU and it's only using about 400Mb of RAM.
  

  VegasWade:

  Adobe Systems knew in 2009 that Flash had memory leak issues but had no idea on how to fix it and told that to The New York Times. http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/02/why-do-adobe-flash-videos-slow-down/?_r=0

  2009 huh?  I bet they've fixed that one by now!  Flash Version 20 had 2 memory leak problems reported by games in their problem log.  A soccer game and a Farmville.  None from WGT.   The latest Version 21 (March 10th I think) has no Memory Leak problems reported yet.

  VegasWade:

  This article explains a lot. Great read, too, complete with Flash testing analysis for all browsers and operating systems. Flash Player: CPU Hog or Hot Tamale? It Depends.

  http://www.streaminglearningcenter.com/articles/flash-player-cpu-hog-or-hot-tamale-it-depends-.html

  Great read?  I wasted 15 minutes on it.  How is a test from 2010 relevant?  And the test run on vintage 2010 hardware comparing how much CPU time is used on an Apple computer and Windows computer running YouTube videos via HTML5 and Flash.

  VegasWade:

  So you're trying to play an AS game on WGT. Frank is running on his MAC, Sam has Windows 10, Jerry has Windows XP and Andy is running Linux. Just examples. What do you think is going to happen? Lol. See the problem?

  It'll work fine, no problem.  That's exactly why WGT outsourced multi-platform service development to Exit Games in 2007

  VegasWade:

  Does any of this answer your questions? 

  The only question I think I had was: Is your background in IT?  But the content of your post answered it for me..
  

   

• VegasWade 486 Posts

  Fri, Mar 18 2016 11:26 PM

  Andy, go play semantics and quote whack-a-mole with someone else. I'm done. You're the victor. 

• ct690911 7,205 Posts

  Sat, Mar 19 2016 5:23 AM

  'The only question I think I had was: Is your background in IT?  But the content of your post answered it for me..'

  i've read the posts of both Andy and Wade...above my head x 2...so is Wade an IT guy or not?....lol

  ct

  ...and if wgt is finished when Flash is discontinued, how much longer do we have to enjoy the game?

• andyson 6,415 Posts

  Sat, Mar 19 2016 7:25 AM

  ct690911:

  ...and if wgt is finished when Flash is discontinued, how much longer do we have to enjoy the game?

  Interesting question and topic for a new thread.  This thread is about the current state of disconnects.

  VW brought up the demise of Flash as a way of pointing the finger of guilt for disconnects at Flash. Implying Flash is a dying POS platform so it must be the problem.  But he totally ignores the fact that even though our computers, our connection, and Flash are better than they were 6 years, the game plays worse and disconnects are worse than ever.