FOSS gamedev and creative worlds

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Just to put it on-record and ask if there's any possible client-side fix...

Details :

I've been exploring various worlds on the public server-list.

On multiple occasions, after clicking ''Connect'' and sort-of logging back in, the only result is a grey (gray) view without all the proper HUD-bar hearts or boxes, but with the info-text top-left showing coordinates 0,0,0 ( or more precisely 0.0,-0.5,0.0 ) and the yaw number varying with mouse-movement and the shape lower-right moving with left-mouse-clicks. Beyond that it's different server to server.

On the ESM Extreme Survival Minetest City server, 0,0,0 is inside a jail cell, which gradually fills in the view, sometimes painfully sloooowly. Moving/jumping/punching is possible, but usually it sorts itself out and puts me back to the previous session's location where I'd been before logging out. Once or twice I had to do as instructed by the notice in the jail-cell, to break the glass in the floor and drop out then journey back to where I'd been.

On the fiendishly difficult '' *** SurvivalWorld *** by Telesight '' after a server-crash disconnection the other day, trying to login again sees me totally stuck at the grey view, unable to even move. Typing commands like /home or /spawn or /msg goes through the on-screen motions but doesn't actually work. It's just completely stuck in a grey nothingness at 0.0,-0.5,0.0 without any HUD-bar hearts or boxes ... and it never sorts itself, however long I've left it.

I StartPaged my way to the IRC-chat-logs webpages and found that at least in the latter case the owner (Telesight) had suffered something similar and fixed it for their own player in the corrupted player-files - see : irc.minetest.ru/minetest/2016-05-30#i_4623419 + irc.minetest.ru/minetest/2016-05-30#i_4623435

My Main Question :

Is there ANYTHING I can do as a mere player, a Minetest client, to prevent or solve this grey-screen problem..?

Thanks for any help :)

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wat is your MT version???

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azekill_DIABLO wrote:wat is your MT version???

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Hi, yes, sorry, should have said, for several months I've been using the latest versions from the minetest-dev PPA for Linux-Mint, so whatever the latest numbers are, currently seems to be version :

201605301417-0~4865~ubuntu14.04.1

My suspicion is that it'll only be a server-side fix, corrupted player-files, as per TELESIGHT's comment on the IRC :(

Another player ''juli'' in SurvivalWorld also seems to have fallen foul of this problem. Sadly, according to /last-login command, TELESIGHT doesn't seem visit his world often, otherwise we could ask him/her directly in-game.
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Assuming your client is new enough to have the minimap, try turning it off (the enable_minimap setting, not just hiding it with F9). Also, if your client is old enough to have a "preload_item_visuals" setting, turn that off.

This bug seems to happen when the client takes too long to load everything ("Initializing nodes..." mainly) after connecting to the server. Both of those settings make loading take longer if they're on.

cheapie wrote:Assuming your client is new enough to have the minimap, try turning it off (the enable_minimap setting, not just hiding it with F9). Also, if your client is old enough to have a "preload_item_visuals" setting, turn that off.

This bug seems to happen when the client takes too long to load everything ("Initializing nodes..." mainly) after connecting to the server. Both of those settings make loading take longer if they're on.

Hi cheapie, thanks for the suggestion.

As I say, I'm using whatever's the latest daily dev version.

In the Minetest GUI I've found :

Settings..
Advanced-Settings..
_ + Client
__ + Graphics
___ + In-Game
____ + Advanced
______ enable_minimap ________ Enabled

and so I've double-clicked it to be ''Disabled''

Initial Results...

'' Extreme Survival Minetest City '' :

Logging into a less-than-busy (9/33) Thursday-morning server, it began the same as usual, straight into the 0,0,0 jail-cell, then it took about 8-seconds to drop me back to the mining location where I'd previously logged-out

'' *** SurvivalWorld *** by Telesight '' :

Nope, still stuck solid at a grey 0,0,0

:(

Thanks anyway :)

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I just started experiencing this problem with my android phone. I just got Marshmallow version upgrade, but was able to still play afterward without issue until that evening when I couldn't even connect for 2 to 3 days. Then when I was finally able to connect, I have been having this same issue, but without any resolution at all to anything but the grey screen, no health or food, only a stick, motion only within one node radius, can see notifications of people entering and exiting game but can't see there location on screen, command line does nothing, can't open inventory or crafting table. I logged in with a different account on my PC (was never able to log in with android account on PC) and everything seems to be working fine. However the PC-character can't see the android-character so it's more than just being stuck. So it looks like a player-file corruption which causes you to be sort of in the game but not really.

I should note that I was on the Exploranza server using version 0.4.13-6a1047d8-Android.

Also (0, 0, 0) on Exploranza server is at an area of sea-level water, so its not that I'm stuck inside a mountain or anything.

It is exactly as CuriousNoob suspected, the player file gotten corrupted. Zero bytes in fact, as if it got opened for writing, and then nothing was written. What I started doing is backing up the worlds/world/players/* (and other files) so that when this happens, I can at least get a fairly recent working version of the player's file, which contains inventories, mostly. I'm the owner of Exploranza and this occasionally happens. I don't know what causes it, but I suspect something in the core minetest binary that handles writing the player inventory files.

On one occasion, two players tried to sleep in the same bed to set the time to day, and both their files got emptied to zero bytes. I don't know if it was coincidental or if this is part of the cause of the bug.

Thanks so much for restoring my player file, Dan. I appreciate that you have been regularly backing up these files on the Exploranza server. I didn't notice anything wrong/missing on my account after the restore so it must have been a very short time between backup and the point of corruption.

Hey Dynamodan! It just happened again. I was playing yesterday and experienced some lag so I exited the program. When I went back in, I was stuck in the gray zone. Please restore my player file. Thanks.