Bukkit

bergerkiller, the more I think of it, the more I believe the pathfinding initiation in TrainCarts should be implemented to be done "offline", that is, in its own (asynchronous) thread.

Meaning this: when a player (admin) issues the command "/train reroute", the plugin would create a separate thread and start finding all nodes, ie. places with destination signs and intersections, since I believe that's what constitutes the "graph" your plugin then would use when sending the carts around.

The thread would schedule this calculation over a longer period of time, say, doing only one node/connection per tick, for example (this actually could be parametrised in config.yml). Periodically it would then report to the admin who issued that command via a chat message about how many paths it has found, the newly found destination names etc. When the thread finishes its job, ie. has found all nodes and marked all connections between them, it closes with a final message.

It does not matter that this process could take several minutes; it is a very small price to pay for a smoothly running server while doing the calculations in background. And, this approach has the benefit of not having to sit on a minecart while the routing calculations are being done -> no crashing the server at the first intersection as it is doing at the moment!

When a train network changes, ie. new switchers/destinations are being added, the admins could easily schedule running the recalculations to a quiet time at the server, possibly also notifying other players that the train network is temporarily out of use, until it has been recalculated.

What do you say?

EDIT: If I haven't totally misunderstood your code, the calculations that would need to be put in its own thread are related to the explore() method in class PathNode. But I haven't looked deeply into this.

Just gonna ask a last time.

Will you add the train portals?

I have been waiting for like 2 months now and there have been a lot updates but still no portal.

I hate it to be asking this a lot but because you keep saying you will add it.

I keep checking this page every day almost and still no good news :/

@lagoboss

No prob, glad to be of help. And no, you're definitely NOT a "total noob" - you took NoLagg into good use and solved your problem :) I have used NoLagg several times to investigate situations like yours. Been able to identify problems with plugins many times. NoLagg is another great plugin by bergerkiller.

- - -

As for myself, I think I might try and patch-fix the server crashing problems (due to pathfinding calculations being too much for the server) on my own...in case I find a simple fix, I'll do a temporary build and share it, in case someone else has some use for it.

All of a sudden, I'm the expert on this plugin...it is quite funny, considering we've used it for not more than 3 weeks now :D bergerkiller, I think it is about time you step up.

Anyway, here's my 3 cent's worth: the "server can't keep up" is the most annoying message Minecraft has. Also, it is the most vague: generally it means the server had too much to process at the given time, so it got left behind somewhat. As for the reasons of this: they can be numerous.

Certainly, as leagris has reported some "leaks" coming from the persistent trains, that could definitely to my view be a reason for those "lag peaks". But if you want real proof of that, you should install NoLagg and use "nolagg examine" to monitor the processing of different plugins for some time.

As for me, we do not have trains on our server, we use only single carts. What's more, our carts are not persistent, ie. they get created when a player starts his ride and destroyed when he stops at a station. So, I'm sorry but I cannot help you further with your problems.

bergerkiller, it would be extremely nice to hear what's happening with this plugin...since you do seem to update your other plugins. Our server transportation is crippled until the pathfinding is fixed. At leagris's server, I think things are quite bad as well with the memory leaks.

@NeoRichards

I can answer your last question: this station sign should do what you want.

[+train]
station 2
30
continue

This makes your carts to sit on the track above that sign, wait for 30 seconds, then continue.

OK, maybe I'll test it out, while waiting for the pathfinding thingy to work again. I'll let you know then - if it works, could be a nice addition to Wiki!

EDIT: OK so here are the results.

• basically, using

[+train]
trigger
test1

and

[+train]
announce
Arriving in: %test1%

do work together.

BUT: when the cart runs over the trigger sign, which is now in record more as you see, the same thing happens as with the pathfinding: the passenger and cart freeze at the position of the sign indefinitely, until the server crashes (becomes totally unresponsive). I don't think the proglem is with linking %test1% to the announcement sign, as the same happens with the trigger sign only.

So, to add to your work: trigger signs set to record mode freeze and crash the server!

Meanwhile, I added one enchancement proposal to tickets.

...and, one question: would it be possible in any way to use SignLink to do this: when a passenger's cart exits a station, the passenger would get a chat message which would tell how much time until the next station is reached? I couldn't think of a way currently, but we don't (yet) use SignLinks, so haven't really been trying for real...but I think this would be WAY cool feature! :)

EDIT: BTW, I am blind. Did not notice your message about you preferring to get comments and discussing on the main Bukkit thread instead of this one. Does it still hold, ie. should I start using the Bukkit thread instead of this?

Well I sincerely hope you fix the pathfinding asap - to us, using vertical rails is a marginal issue, but 60% of our metro network uses destinations, so in practise, 60% of our server's transportation network is completely broken atm, and has been for almost a week now.