IMPORTANT clue discovered in "DEFEAT" bug (which still lives!)

I just discovered an important clue in the infamous "DEFEAT" bug in ShadowEra. I used to encounter this bug all the time in October 2012, then the bug went away for a month or two (I thought it must have been fixed), but now it is BACK. I've gotten the bug twice today. BUT, I discovered a very interesting clue, which I think will help the developers fix the problem. The clue is below.

BUG REPORT:

DESCRIPTION: When playing ShadowEra, and it is the other player's turn, there is a very long pause (two minutes maybe) where it seems like the other player is letting the timer run out, then ShadowEra announces "DEFEAT" even though it was NOT your turn, and you might even be way ahead. You still get the RANKING benefit as though you WON (weird), but you DON'T get the experience points or the gold from the win.

PLATFORM: iPhone 4

VERSION OF ShadowEra: v1.612

STEPS TO REPRODUCE: Bug occurs when ShadowEra says, on both players' screens, that it is the other player's turn. (That is the CLUE!) You can see this in your server logs of a game I played about an hour ago. Please look in your server logs for a game between "Illusionator" (me) and "Duke1977", that ended at about 1:00pm Eastern Time on Dec. 15, 2012. We were part way through the game. Neither of us had a clear advantage. I finished my turn, and pressed "END TURN." Screen showed "Duke1977's Turn". I waited for a minute or so. Then, I sent a text message through the game that simply said "?", because I didn't know what Duke1977 was waiting for. Duke1977 replied with "Your turn". I replied to that with "Bug...says your turn". Duke1977 said "Weird. Offer draw?". I sent the message "OFFER DRAW", but it was too late, the game timed out and said "DEFEAT" on my screen (even though I hadn't lost). It also INCREASED my Ranking to 245 (as though I had won), but did not give me the experience or gold from a win. BOTTOM LINE: Both our screens showed it was the other player's turn, until it finally timed out and showed "DEFEAT" on my screen.

HYPOTHESIS: I think this problem occurs when there is some kind of communication error (that is not visible to either player), so that when one player clicks "END TURN", the message somehow doesn't get sent all the way to the other player's game. So, on both players' screens, it shows it is the other player's turn. Game finally times out, and one (or both) players screens say "DEFEAT," but BOTH players get a Ranking that credits the game as a WIN, but the player (or players) that see the "DEFEAT" message don't receive the experience or gold from the win.

POSSIBLE FIX: This is just an idea, but one possible way to fix this bug might be if there is a long pause, for the game to send a message to the other player's game asking for the status, to see if that other player clicked "END TURN". This would be a fail-safe, in case the "END TURN" communication doesn't make it all the way through the network to the other player.

I would LOVE it if the ShadowEra developers could PLEASE fix this bug. It is SO discouraging to be playing a great game, then suddenly get a long pause (when it shows it is the other player's turn) and then says "DEFEAT" on the screen. What a gigantic bummer. Thanks so much for listening!

-- Randy Forgaard
ShadowEra ID: Illusionator

Today i just got the opposite bug, my opponent seems to quit and i got victory screen but loose rating.
The match occured after the match between a1 busti 2 and Imperio168. But was too short to appear. Plateform ipad

I don't believe what you just told us is the problem. Look at THIS and you'll see why your opponent may have suggested a draw. Me and my friends were going to conduct tests but shortly after I posted the blog a new shadow era update was released as the 1.70 update.

Thanks for all the details! Unfortunately I checked the server logs and it didn't show anything abnormal for that match. I've been trying to reproduce this issue but no luck so far... :(

I've had it happen several times today actually. One thing that is actually very strange is that once I confirm that its happening, I offer the draw and shortly after the message appears the game ends. I'm actually curious if there is anything wrong with the way we're offering draws that could be causing the bug to end the match. I remember way back when I started this bug was frequent everywhere but offering a draw usually ended up working. Now it seems to end the match. Its just a thought.

I too think its something similar to what the OP has suggested in some form. I'm merely brainstomring a bit.

Depends really when you try to offer the draw. If you do it after you've waited for a bit, the timeout period might take effect already and you end up with a defeat. The problem is that if you offer a draw too early, your opponent will doubt if the game actually froze. Too late and he might not accept in time. I was playing a game before where I was soundly beating this guy and would have won in a turn or two. My opponent cast a fireball and the animation stopped mid-zoom. I knew at that point that the game froze. I offered a draw early and the guy accepted nearly immediately. He was probably wondering why I was offering the draw. If he was winning though and I offered a draw too early, most likely, he would have ignored it.

Well I just had the same bug, but I offered draw in time an got a draw. Search PPUOD vs. Sedire. They said that it was my turn while mine said it was his turn.

Ok, after successfully troubleshooting the old "Time-Out" bug a while back, I decided to try and uncover the mystery behind this nasty new "defeat" bug. After 100's of matches on several separate platforms (PC, Android,iPhone3gs and an iPone4), I have found the following. This seams to only happen when either you or your opponent is using an iPhone. Knowing that bit of info is critical, because if you have ever owned an iPhone for any extended period of time I am sure that you have noticed that they are bad about not being able to keep a constant connection, especially if you are holding it in landscape view,(which everyone does when playing Shadow Era and most other games) and your hands cover the ends of the phone it will completely cut off your signal until you move your hand. So with all that being said, I am positive that the problem is iPhones losing signal right as they are ending their turn. I don't know much about programming, but I think a relatively easy fix for this problem would to ad code into the game to force packets back and forth from player to player constantly, starting every time "Player A" ends their attack phase and until "Player B" Starts their sacrifice phase.

I hope this info helps you devs out so we can get this pain-in-the-ass bug squashed once and for all.

In-game name ; Pharm

Bug was actually corrected 24 hours ago on the server side. If you're still having issues, please let us know!

Ok, maybe here's a bit more information that might be useful. Maybe not. Anywho...

So, I was just playing on my laptop and midway through the game, I got the "wifi - 30 second countdown" pop up (saying I wasn't connected to my wifi connection). I most certainly was, as everything else on my laptop was just fine, connection wise (websites loaded, able to connect to Apple's App store, etc...). However, I was also looking at the Shadow Era forums at the same time. When I went to go back to the forum topics page, the page wouldn't load and stopped responding. This tells me that the SE forums are somehow linked to the game servers. I don't know if they share hardware or just the same connection, but the two going down at the same time struck me as odd.

It is apparent that the disconnection came from the Shadow Era end, and not my own wifi connection. However, I am confused as to why I got the "wifi - 30 second countdown pop up". It seems to be that the "disconnection" pop up is being called incorrectly. As far as I can tell, this is the go to message whenever any type of connection disruption is encountered. This is bad.

Anyway, I hope this leads to further help in tracking down this annoying bug.

(And as of this writing, I still cannot connect to the Shadow Era game servers, but the forums seem to be back up)