Олег Поленин Posted January 2, 2020 Share Posted January 2, 2020 (edited) As long as I remember, timers in DE had various gitches that made them: lagging behind the actual time, like showing the building still being built despite already being built; skipping from time to time, as if the lagging timer got updated I assume this glitch must be there due to some weird mechanics used to count the time, but... well... Couldn't you just store somewhere the target time for each counter, so that whenever the screen is updated, it shows the diff between current date and end date? Wouldn't such approach fix the problem? Or is the issue completely different? Edited January 2, 2020 by Олег Поленин Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grizzlyfilms Posted January 2, 2020 Share Posted January 2, 2020 Must gi in and out sometimes to get the flag timer right and the GPS timer to refresh is a bit slow sometimes Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. D Posted January 3, 2020 Share Posted January 3, 2020 7 hours ago, Олег Поленин said: As long as I remember, timers in DE had various gitches that made them: lagging behind the actual time, like showing the building still being built despite already being built; skipping from time to time, as if the lagging timer got updated I assume this glitch must be there due to some weird mechanics used to count the time, but... well... Couldn't you just store somewhere the target time for each counter, so that whenever the screen is updated, it shows the diff between current date and end date? Wouldn't such approach fix the problem? Or is the issue completely different? It's not exactly that simple; difference between two dates is exactly how the timer works already. The problem is the "whenever the screen is updated" bit, i.e. the 1-second tick itself. It seems that there are minor (micro) variations in ticks on different devices, then the ticks get frozen when the app or its screen go into "background mode" and the timer itself never really knows when it gets frozen or if it lags. The "skipping" bit is the timer synchronizing the current & end dates with the server and refreshing the visible countdown on the UI, i.e. resolving differences caused by UI lags and freezes. Unfortunately, unless the server-side synchronisation happens on every tick (which, as you can imagine, would be a massive load) there isn't much I can do as a quick fix. There are some ways I could address this problem, but the effort involved in refactoring this functionality just outweighs the gain, so the issue is a low priority at the moment, sorry! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Олег Поленин Posted January 3, 2020 Author Share Posted January 3, 2020 (edited) But what I mean is: store the target time locally, on the device and as perceived by the device. I understand there might be a more or less significant drift between the device and the server, but the time should be pretty consistently flowing on both devices. When you register a capture event at the device at 10:15, and the server time is 10:17, then store target time on both device and server, 10:30 and 10:32 respectively. Each time you update information from the server, you may get both server times (current and local) and adjust the local timer, but to be honest, you'll need this much less often, likely only when the game restarts. The actions are still gated by the server, thus any local drift won't mean anything, and the UI will be more predictable. Edited January 3, 2020 by Олег Поленин Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. D Posted January 3, 2020 Share Posted January 3, 2020 It could be done, yes, but as I mentioned above, the problem is relatively minor (compared to the top 10 issues in my list) and there are only so many hours in a day (most of which are already reserved by my primary job). So yes, at some point in the future I will look into improving the timer accuracy, but I can't promise it will be in the next release! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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