My Shard has a weird problem. Community wisdom needed.

[PigPen]

ServUO Version

Publish Unknown

Ultima Expansion

Mondain's Legacy

I have a RunUO 2.1 server that has been active for over a decade now and I have just noticed a problem.

Here is an example:

If a player enters the Hythloth dungeon (or other busy area) he experiences a brief pause (temporary hang up) where he is stuck for a moment. I have noticed that kind of thing myself (as the admin) in various places but never knew why and never really thought too much about it.

However . . today I was talking with a player who is part of a 'real life' group and was told that when one of them enters Hythloth (or a few other dungeons), the other members or the group also get paused even though they are doing something different on a different facet. This happens even though in real life they are in different cities with different IP addresses and different Internet providers.

To test the problem I had one of the group enter Hythloth on Trammel while I was running around on an open green area on Malas. When they got paused, so did I (for about 3 seconds).

I am unsure but it strikes me that the problem may be with the Spawners being triggered in certain areas (like some dungeons etc) where the size of the spawn may be causing a temporary overload of information being requested from (or responded to by) the server.

1) Has anyone else experienced this?
2) Would it help if 'SmartSpawning' was turned off?
3) Would forcing the shards overland XML Spawners to be always spawned rather than popping everything on at once solve the problem?
4) Is there anything else (other than spawning) that could be the cause of the short period freezing of players on the shard when a player somewhere else enters a busy area?

I would really like to get this major annoyance resolved so my players can enjoy a smother experience on the shard.

I greatly appreciate anyone and everyone looking at this post and for any help/ideas you may have.

Many Thanks

*bows*

 

[SeifUO]

Did you modify something in MondainRegion/DungeonRegion OnEnter() or LocationChange()?
Or PlayerMobile OnMove() LocationChange()?

 

[PigPen]

Thank you for that and your time . .

So I did some checking and:
1)There have been no changes in my MondainRegion or DungeonRegion and no changes in my PlayerMobile regarding OnEnter(), LocationChange() or OnMove().

2) I went into the dungeon Hythloth and changed all XMLSpawner setting for 'SmartSpawning' to false instead of true. It is early to know for sure (maybe I need a Server reboot to properly test), but making that change seems to have made a small difference.

That's all I know at the moment. I will try and test anything the community can think of on tis one.

All ideas appreciated.

 

[Chucl]

i feel like it has nothing to do with the dungeon region or even xmlspawners, i have around 3k on my shard all are active , 0 issues.

You can have lots of xmlspawners doing area search and such like getonnearby etc and it wont use cpu at all. Just turn off every xmlspawner and see if it still happens.

Maybe a custom script doing a heavy task in the background?
If no one is moving does it happens? / if there are no players does it happens?

do a .dumptimers command and see what comes up