Zugg Software :: View topic - Strange Mapper semi-hang.

Novice Joined: 18 Aug 2001 Posts: 43 Location: USA

I've had this problem for a while but I never got around to posting about it.
I have a fairly large map databse (a couple thousand rooms at least, I'm not sure what the total is) containing fourteen or fifteen zones. I am not sure as to what the specific problem is, but it seems that when I move around in map mode, when I enter a room already created, the room description loads, the exits load, then zMUD sort of 'hangs' for about 2 seconds (everything is stuck, I can't type, the connection timer no longer counts, etc.). After a couple seconds, everything is normal. The blue dot in the mapper updates to the correct room, any players/mobs/items that are in the room finishes scrolling onto my screen, and then my MUD prompt appears as normal. The connection timer also updates to where it should be.

When entering a NEW room by walking in to it in map edit mode, the pause is even longer - from 6 all the way up to 10 seconds!
Needless to say, 2, 6 or especially 10 seconds of being unable to move/enter commands can be quite deadly on a MUD.

I'm curious as to whether anybody else has a problem like this, does anybody have any idea as to why this occurs, and most importantly, how can I fix it?

My computer is a 400Mhz Pentium II laptop with 128 MB of RAM and an 8MB video card (Gotta love laptops...), I don't seem to be running low on system memory (even with winamp playing MP3s right now), so I don't think it's any stats of my computer.

Btw, the harddrive does NOT access or anything when zMUD freezes temporarily, so I don't know exactly what is happening.

Thanks in advance.

Novice Joined: 18 Aug 2001 Posts: 43 Location: USA

I just noticed that this hang also occurs in follow mode in the mapper. I am under the impression that follow mode is supposed to move the blue dot to your location on the map but not create new rooms as you move around the MUD. I have never had this feature work in any way (the blue dot never moves in follow mode for me, period). I do not save room descriptions or names, only exits. I don't know if that has anything to do with it.

When the mapper is set to 'off' mode, there is no hang.

Posted: Thu Jun 26, 2003 3:26 am

Change the preferences of the mapper so that the follow mode does not match room descriptions but just follows based on your commands. That will stop all lag in follow mode.

Wanderer Joined: 23 Aug 2002 Posts: 96

First, You neglected to mention what version of Windows you're running, as well as the version of zMud... but every instance of slowness in the mapper that I've seen has been because the ADO and MDAC components were not fully up to date. do a search of the forum and you should find a TON of posts in which people say how slow their mapper is, and eventually get around to actually following the instructions posted, and their problems are solved.

(sorry, but I'm too lazy to do the search for you and find the link to the page that describes where to get the downloads)

Novice Joined: 18 Aug 2001 Posts: 43 Location: USA

Sorry about failing to mention my versions.
I'm running Windows 98SE, and zMUD 6.62.

As to my MDAC components not being up to date, I'm like 95% sure they are, because Zugg personally helped me with updating the components a while back (I had this problem where my map files were a massive filesize, like 50MB, which turned out to be an MDAC problem. Zugg helped me via E-Mail and ICQ to get everything updated to fix that problem). Running the MDAC checker it says my MDAC version is '2.7 RTM Refresh (2.70.9001.0)'.

My map file sizes are back to the norm (current one is less than 2MB), and the problem I have in mapper doesn't seem to be completely constant. There are times when it does not seem to lag at all for entering already-created rooms. Creating new rooms seems to always hang, however.

I am downloading the components on the page here on Zuggsoft again just to be sure, but I'm not sure if this is the problem.

Any other input would be appreciated.

Novice Joined: 18 Aug 2001 Posts: 43 Location: USA

Just an update, I installed all the MDAC/JET components, and I still have the hang on creating new rooms.

I followed the instructions exactly;

First I rebooted my computer just on general principle. I closed all my auto-start programs (AIM, ICQ etc.).

I ran mdac27sp1.exe, went through the wizard to install it, then rebooted my computer when it was done.

I ran jet40sp3_comp.exe which extracted updated files to my computer, then I rebooted when it was done.

I ran jet40sp6_9xnt.exe which did the same thing, then I rebooted.

I ran zMUD, got on my MUD and tried creating a new room, once again zMUD hung in place for about 5 seconds before the new room was created and I could do anything.

I'm not sure what else I could try to fix this, but needless to say it's quite a big problem. I nearly died to an aggro mob the other day because of it =(

SubAdmin Joined: 18 Nov 2001 Posts: 5182

You say your not capturing room names or descriptions at all in this entire database. That will definitely affect follow mode. The mapper system defaults to using the first line of description to trigger position update, optionally you can set it to use the room name. Since you have neither of those things you will have to provide the mapper with another triggering sequence to indicate successful movement. This is done in one of 2 ways: by making a trigger for a line that occurs in every room, with a command of #OK;putting a similar trigger pattern Preferences|SlowWalking section. The preferences method is preferred as the trigger will only be active when a movement is attempted.

Next on to the slowness...
How many rooms in you map (total between all zones:you can find out with #ECHO %numrooms)?
What is the size in bytes of the mdb file for your map?
Did you ever capture names or descriptions? If so estimate how many?
Were using any beta versions between the last public version and this one?

Novice Joined: 18 Aug 2001 Posts: 43 Location: USA

Thanks for the suggestions, I will look into the follow mode tip you suggested (that part isn't as big a deal to me as the slowness part =).

As for your questions, I just checked my %numrooms and it's 2045.
The size of my .mdb file in bytes (according to Windows) is 1.87MB (1,970,176 bytes).

I have attempted to capture room descriptions before (my MUD doesn't display room names on enter so that was never enabled), however, either some settings which I had set up or something about the way the MUD displays text simply wasn't walking hand-in hand. I only ever successfully stored maybe 10-20 room descriptions before it messed up beyond repair, so I disabled it (and being a stickler for consistancy, I deleted the room descriptions from those rooms so I wouldn't have some rooms with descriptions on file and the rest without ;).

And as to the BETA question, I don't _think_ I have used any of the recent BETAs. I had a fairly un-good experience with a BETA a few versions ago, so I am pretty sure that I completely avoided BETAs between this version (6.62) and the last public release version.

By the way, I do not have the 'load entire map into memory when loaded' option in the mapper preferences checked, as its description says it improves performance for 'smaller maps', just curious if it would improve or degrade performance with a map of my size?

Thanks for your continued help, I sure hope we can find some fix for this.

SubAdmin Joined: 18 Nov 2001 Posts: 5182

Seems that your database is over sized. This was caused by a number of poor implementation items in previous versions of MDAC and Jet. Once it starts the DB keeps running oversize even after updating the drivers.

To give you an example my map is 2500 rooms, 2.5MB and has full description and name data.

The solution to this problem is use the Compact Database command in zMapper. This will clean up anything that is crapping up the DB. I am guessing yours will drop to just under 1M.

Beginner Joined: 21 Oct 2000 Posts: 19 Location: USA

Howdy. I am in the same situation as BobXFett. I am running winxp SP 1, and have the latest version of Zmud. My mdb file is 10 megs. I have been using zmud for years, and have a large and complicated map, though not many room descriptions. The numrooms command tells me I have 11286. It sounds like your suggestion about the compact database is just what I need, only I don' thave Zmapper, just Zmud. Do I have to buy Zmapper to make this work?

GURU Joined: 23 Dec 2000 Posts: 4834 Location: USA

Nope, but you should after 30 days

Novice Joined: 18 Aug 2001 Posts: 43 Location: USA

Well, I did what you said (I own zMapper as well), and it did reduce the filesize of the .mdb file. It's about 1.57MB now. Unfortunately, I am still having the delay on new room creation (it doesn't seem to be quite as bad though, about 2 seconds of hang now instead of as many as 10).

Still, I've been told there shouldn't be any noticable delay at all, so I don't understand what is wrong =(

Novice Joined: 18 Aug 2001 Posts: 43 Location: USA

Not sure if this sheds any light on anything, but all editing of a map in the mapper causes a slight hang, whether I am creating new rooms, deleting old ones, modying exits etc.

Beginner Joined: 21 Oct 2000 Posts: 19 Location: USA

OK I used zMapper to compact my database. It reduced the .mdb file from 10 megs to 9.3. I still get about a five second hard freeze everytime I map a room. Any more ideas? Maybe I should go back to an earlier version of zmud?

Novice Joined: 18 Aug 2001 Posts: 43 Location: USA

Nobody has any more suggestions? (Sorry for bump, just really want to exhaust everything there is to try cause this problem is ruining my exploration on MUDs).

Should I contact Zugg via bug report about this or am I out of luck?

Newbie Joined: 01 Jul 2003 Posts: 1

It sounds like the error is not from zmud (not directly).
From the sound of it, it maybe that the database is larger than the format was designed to handle.
It is not zmud that causes the lag when creating or moving, it is the database itself creating a unique record (room) or searching for a unique room.
I used to have a nice database that seems on the surface like the zmud one, when there was about 200-500 records it ran smoothly, only having a 1 or 2 ms lag on record creation or deletion.
A cologue of mine used the same program and over the course of a few weeks created close to 5000 records, the database would lag for 2-5 second every search and longer on creation.
The only real solution perhaps is if the database was recoded, maybe even creating a index file for increasing search (movement) and creation time.

Novice Joined: 18 Aug 2001 Posts: 43 Location: USA

Aren't there plenty of users with maps even larger than mine who have no noticable delay, though?

I believe I've read users stating that in threads similar to this.

Newbie Joined: 13 Sep 2001 Posts: 8 Location: USA

I'm having this same problem too. I'm running Win XP (SP1), and the most recent versions of MDAC and JET 4.0. My map is seperated into many zones. It's 4093 rooms, and 4.97 MB. I just ran Microsoft's JET database compressor, and it got it down from 10 MB... But it still lags 5-10 seconds when creating new rooms. Makes it quite time consuming to map simple areas! Ah well. Anyone have a suggestion not posted yet in this thread?

Mike

Wanderer Joined: 23 Aug 2002 Posts: 96

I have 4552 rooms in my map currently, with approx a 1 sec delay to create new rooms, if that makes you feel any worse.

Posted: Tue Jul 08, 2003 6:55 pm

In responding to BobXFett's email on this, I did have an idea. When you are in MAP mode in zMUD and move to a location on the map that already has a room, zMUD needs to determine if the room just displayed by the MUD is the same room as the one already on the map. So, zMUD captures the room name and the room description and compares the captured data with the stuff already stored in the map database.

zMUD takes the room description and strips it to the first line and then does a search for that and the room name in the database. Since the room description field in the database is not indexed, this comparison might be taking the 5 seconds that is being reported.

However, this should only happen when moving over an existing room and not when creating a new room, unless there is something wrong in the code. BobXFett mentioned in his email that he is not capturing the room names or descriptions from the MUD and is using MAP mode all of the time. This is probably a bad idea since it's not how the mapper is designed to work.

Anyway, I'd be interested to know from some of these other users if their mapper is configured properly to capture room names and descriptions or if they are doing something unusual like BobXFett is.

Finally, my only other idea is that so far, everyone with this problem seems to be running Windows XP. Someone reported in the zMapper forum that the Jet 4 SP 7 is now available. I'd be interested in having someone try that to see if it helps. You'll need to get it from the Microsoft site.

Posted: Tue Jul 08, 2003 7:07 pm

Hmm, nevermind, I was wrong about how the code worked (was remembering something in an older version). zMUD never searches the database for the description. It looks up the database record by Room ID and then compares the first line of the description with what is captured from the MUD.

So, I'm still stumped. I don't see anything in the code that would cause this kind of delay.

So, try the SP7 Jet update just in case. Also, try turning on the "Load entire map into memory" option just to see if that does anything also.

Novice Joined: 18 Aug 2001 Posts: 43 Location: USA

I'm beginning to wonder if it has something to do with my databse or the size of my database.
If I create a new database and start mapping, things work real fast and smooth, like they used to.

I'm going to do some more testing on the different zones of my map, as well. I think the delay may be more pronounced when I am mapping in a larger zone.
And keep in mind that the delay I have occurs for any type of modification to the map, not just moving into rooms. If I right click a room in the mapper and go to edit its properties, there is a delay before the dialog box opens, or if I press the delete key with a room selected, there is a pause before it asks me for confirmation (and another pause before the room is deleted, after I click OK).

Also, I'm not sure if this means anything or not, but even though I had already used the 'Compact Database' command via zMapper on my database, when I downloaded the Microsoft compacting utility (from the page on Zuggsoft.com about MDAC components), it compressed it even further.
The size of my map database is now 1.53MB. After compacting it with zMapper it was 1.58MB. I still have a backup of the 1.58MB file, but I'm currently using the 1.53MB one.

I'll look into SP7, although I don't know if that will help or not.

Wizard Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 1551 Location: Australia

I have 7074 fully-described rooms in 8 megs of MDB file (I haven't bothered compressing the database). What y'all are describing was the problem that I was suffering from too - you create a new room and it lags out for a few seconds, or you move room and it takes 1-2 seconds to move, especially if you have the room properties dialog open. I was running WinXP (no service pack) and I tried installing the MDAC and JET updates... it said it installed properly, but MS pulled a number and the MDAC drivers don't install properly under WinXP (non SP1)! So I manually installed the drivers (took about 3 hours of messing around with ini files, etc) and suddenly it was working great. All I'm saying is 99% of these 'mapper is slow/mapper hangs/etc' is because of bad MDAC... so really, double-and-triple check that.

Novice Joined: 18 Aug 2001 Posts: 43 Location: USA

Not sure if Zugg is gonna check this again or not.
If either Zugg or somebody else could tell me what the versions of all the files related to MDAC/JET that could be affecting this should be, I could check them all with the version checker utility and see if something isn't up to date.

[EDIT]
Okay, I've just done a bit of testing.
I have not yet looked into SP7, but I did enable load entire map into memory. That did not improve performance at all for my map database.
I also created a new zone within the same database and tried mapping in it. Even though that zone had no rooms in it, I had the same 5 second pause for room creation as I moved. Here's how it looks as I do it:

522 74/50 102913 > n
The Llik street continues mainly to the north here. To the south you can just
see the dock where you came in from. The street looks treaded, but otherwise it
is in good condition. There is some litter that on the street that moves lazily
with the wind that is blowing through here.

There are two obvious exits: south and north.

*Pauses for 5 seconds here*

522 74/50 102913 >

I also just created a new database file and tried mapping (without descriptions again, trying to be consistant for testing), and there is no delay more than maybe half a second, if that, from when I enter the room command to when the room is created on the map.
I think if the problem were my MDAC components, a map of any size would have delays, and all databases would have the same problem, correct?

If that's right, then the question becomes whether the problem is the size of my database (perhaps my computer can't handle that many rooms?), or the specific database (perhaps it's messed up in some way) itself.

I'm not sure of the best way to figure that out, though.
[/EDIT]

Wizard Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 1551 Location: Australia

Nah, smaller maps don't have as much delay... I think it's to do with the number of index/lookups, when you have a smaller index then you don't have as much of a wait... when you have 100,000 entries in the exit table, then the delay starts getting noticable. It's gotta be the MDAC. The version checker needs to say that you have MDAC 2.7 SP1 (2.71.x.x) ... an unpatched WinXP (no service pack) is MDAC 2.7 RTM (2.70.x.x).

If you have got MDAC 2.7 SP1 (and Jet) installed correctly, then maybe there's something else wrong... but check your versions first. http://www.zuggsoft.com/data