From: amrk@troi.cc.rochester.edu (Andrew Markiel)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Re: 12AM vs Commanders
Summary: Whaddya mean, seg fault (core dumped)?
Date: 27 Jul 92 05:15:03 GMT
Organization: University of Rochester (Rochester, NY)

We were scheduled to play our SINL game against 12AM on Saturday, but when only
6 of their players could show we decided to call it a scrimmage. In retrospect
it seems like we got the better of the deal, as we weren't playing so well.
They recruited Wreck and Stiletto and we were off.

12AM rather predictably chose Fed, since both Earth and Vega were agri (to the
agonized cries of our poor SC bombers). We were left with a rough choice
between Rom and Ori, but eventually settled on Rom with drac and indi agri.

Things got off to a fairly even start, they took the first planets but we soon
countered, and as the initial armies ran out I think it was about even. At this
point some people stated that they couldn't see Sirius at all. I guess they
quit out and rejoined and it fixed up.

I guess about 25 minutes into the game, we decided to og their base (Wreck) as
it had advanced. Our first wave was miserable, but the second seemed to do some
nasty damage, and on the third wave, when I saw how few defenders were around
him (he'd just made it to Earth) I thought we were going to kill him. We came
in a big wave, and then....and then.....

he simply vanished. He didn't cloak, he didn't die, he simply vanished from the
game. At first I thought we'd gotten him, and I somehow missed the explosion
(even though I was right next to him), but he never showed up in the kill list.
After about 30 seconds, I decided he must have gotten ghostbusted, and was
about to sub myself out when...
Panic!
Automatic reboot in progress.....
My machine rebooted! Glah, I was not a happy camper. I got back into the game
about 5 minutes later, and 12AM started congradulating me for being so kind as
to sub out while Wreck was ghostbusted...well, it wasn't exactly kindness...

So, about 5 minutes after I get back in, Wreck is back in the SB! Somehow, he
got booted out without losing the SB, so our og wave was wasted. At this point
I think we were down to about 6 planets. We stayed about this point for a
while, then, about an hour into the game, my client exits with

Unknown packet type: -97, aborting...
Unknown packet type: 0, aborting...
Segmentation fault (core dumped)

Bleah. Not pretty. I've never had this happen before (I'm using the standard
bronco UDP client from pittslug). I've still got the core file, in case anyone
wants to try to analyze it to see what happened. I guess this happened to other
people too, so it wasn't just a local problem. It sure broke my concentration..

After I got back in, things were just unplayable. I spent the last hour getting
about 1 update per socond. It was sort of fun trying to og, wondering if I'd
see anything before the ship selection window. By this time I'd become
completely unnerved and was spectacularly inneffective. We spiralled down and
I think ended with 3 or 4 planets.

I'm awfully glad this wasn't an official game, or I'd have felt rather bad
about how things went. I hope people can figure out what went wrong with the
server/client, as I wouldn't want my client seg faulting in a real game...

-Grey Elf
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek