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Replay bug discovered, understood and options to fix permanently

Discussion in 'Game changes and Updates' started by Eric, Feb 27, 2014.

  1. Eric

    Eric Administrator Staff Member Administrator Forum Moderator Official Author

    Just wanted to give an update as we have been fairly silent this week, late last week we uncovered a bug in how we are currently calculating boost/gravity directions that can add variability depending on device/browser the replay was recorded on and being watched on.

    We started to get an increased number of replay failures on tracks that have a fair number of boosts / gravity starting on the 20th, which correlated to a new version of Chrome.

    Basically what we found is that the new version of Chrome introduced an altered algorithm for some of the trig functions that lead to some new "angles" for boosts / gravity that is calculated on the client. This is not just limited to new versions of browsers but also different browsers may produce different values, the higher the precision the more likely values will differ. Unfortunately current Free Rider tracks were not created with understanding this "bug" and we have not dealt with it before as Free Rider 3 was insulated from this Flash was used to perform calculations which seemed to be more consistent.

    Since a large number of replays were now "broken" that were generated on previous version of Chrome and watched on newest version of Chrome, we fixed the precision of direction of boosts/gravity to a number that should work majority of the time but would not break existing autos.

    Now that we understand the issue we have a couple options to fix this permanently:
    • we could either re-write the track codes in a way that would not push trig calculations to the web browser which would require a fairly big re-work
    • version new track codes created with the Free Rider HD track creator so that we can perform calculations that will be much more consistent across browsers + devices than we are currently
    We are leaning towards the 2nd option but have some more testing to do first.

    Replays are currently not too important but we do have ideas to incorporate racing to play a bigger role in the game and to do that we would want a fairly solid replay system.

    Well that may be a little heavy but thought we would share what is currently going on.
     
    THEMONSTER, Sono, speedy__XD and 2 others like this.
  2. Blaze06h

    Blaze06h Well-Known Member

    Welp, so we got broken replays now. Someone call Kirby to suck that little bug...
     
    THEMONSTER likes this.
  3. DarkPlant

    DarkPlant Member

    Who cares about the replays? :x
     
    THEMONSTER likes this.
  4. Blaze06h

    Blaze06h Well-Known Member

    And nobody cares about the time (leaderboard times)?
     
    THEMONSTER likes this.
  5. DarkPlant

    DarkPlant Member

    yes, the leaderboard times but not the replays of the times. I'm not saying they have to remove them but I have no use for them :p
     
  6. Sono

    Sono Well-Known Member Official Author

    I personally love watching replays. That is how I learned all the tricks I use now to get high scores. I also find it useful to help me beat the leader. I just race his/her ghost over and over until I manage to pull ahead. It's great fun :)
     
    Skrampt likes this.
  7. Blaze06h

    Blaze06h Well-Known Member

    I think this way too. :)
    Also, "I just race his/her ghost...", you should definitely read Internet Rule #29 and #30.
     
  8. Sono

    Sono Well-Known Member Official Author

    I see you have recently found yourself enjoying urban dictionary?
     
  9. Blaze06h

    Blaze06h Well-Known Member

    Well, I actually found that somewhere else though, but I recently found that urban dictionary had this information.
     
  10. Sono

    Sono Well-Known Member Official Author

    Anyways, back on topic now.

    Besides your awesome bug squishing skills, Eric (and team), I found this post very interesting as I did not know about how Google Chrome has trig functions.. How exactly does this work? I thought trig functions were pretty much universal, so how did they alter it? o_O
     
  11. viiruMIAIMIAU

    viiruMIAIMIAU Active Member Official Author

    "All kids are undercover FBI agents." ROFL
     
  12. Blaze06h

    Blaze06h Well-Known Member

    Beware from now. ;)
     

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