Microgaming - WTF is going on here!

[vinylweatherman]

This is truly strange

I was running tabbed gaming at 32Red, and returned to find only ONE slot was still spinning happily away. Ladies Nite was shown as a tab, but the other three had been ditched.

I had a "casino error 2" window, despite the fact that Agent Jane was happily playing away.

I closed the error window - and then things got REALLY strange.

I could not stop Jane, I could not switch tabs, I could not even see the Ladies in a sub-window by hovering my mouse on the tab. I could not even exit the casino in any way whatsoever. Everything I tried was blocked, and I got this dull "thud" from Windows instead. I cannot even move the casino window, it is locked in place.

I then tried something equally strange. I double clicked the icon, and managed to launch a second incarnation of 32Red on the same computer whilst the first was STILL RUNNING. This is SUPPOSED to be IMPOSSIBLE

When the second incarnation launched, it stopped the Agent Jane slot from running in the first, and was the ONLY way I had managed to do this, everything else had failed.

Thye second incarnation is running fine, BUT the first incarnation remains a permanent scar on my desktop. I cannot move it, nor unload it, yet it is now doing nothing at all, having been fully disconnected in favour of the second incarnation.

Looking in task manager, I can identify the two incarnations. The stuck one is using around 4 to 5% of CPU, and around 43,000K of memory. Despite this CPU usage, it is now doing nothing.

The working incarnation is using around 50% of CPU, and 200,000K of memory.

I have had 32Red do this strange thing before, but I have not tried looking into it any deeper, I have just done what I am about to do now - use task manager to put it out of it's misery.

It works, but I should NOT have to be doing this on a regular basis, the software should NOT be getting itself into this state in the first place!

Microgaming have screwed up once again, with yet ANOTHER bug in the lobby.

[vinylweatherman]

During the time it took me to post the above, this happened AGAIN. Strage thing is, the casino is in 2 states at the same time. It is both disconnected (casino error 2), and connected (see Jane happily spinning away).
What seems to be missing is the 5th tabbed game, Adventure Palace.

BEFORE the tabbed lobby, there would sometimes be this error 2 from within a game, but when exiting the game and returning to the lobby, the casino itself was fine, and certainly NOT disconnected. This clearly has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with the internet, else when the connection dropped, the WHOLE casino would disconnect. It must be an unhandled software error, which creates this additional set of problems BECAUSE it happens in a tabbed environment, and on one of the tabs, rather than the displayed game. It leads to the casino STILL running some of the games, yet with the entire thing LOCKED OUT to the user, so the game cannot be stopped, nor the casino exited (other than by "brute force" through task manager).

When individual games have an "error 2" within a tabbed environment, the software FAILS to handle it properly, and the lobby ends up in this strange state.

[Rusty]

It could be that the error message is just inaccurate.
Do you know that error 2 is specifically a disconnect error?
Is it possible that one of the tabbed games was unable to receive or send for some reason and the error reporting just landed here?

[vinylweatherman]

It could be that the error message is just inaccurate.
Do you know that error 2 is specifically a disconnect error?
Is it possible that one of the tabbed games was unable to receive or send for some reason and the error reporting just landed here?

It IS a disconnect error, and it IS associated with one of the tabbed games. The question is WHY can ONE game not be able to communicate with the SAME SERVER that the other 4 are happily communicating with.

It looks like there is an untrapped error. The server has "dropped a packet" somewhere, this being the reply to the game, but there has NOT been any attempt by the client to reestablish contact, and the software MUST "know" that contact is still available, because it is doing it for the other games. WHY does the client not simply ask for the "lost" packet to be resent, which would be a reasonable attempt to recover the error without having to throw the player out of the game.

There is a more specific problem when this happens during tabbed gaming. When 3 or 4 games get "casino error 2", it prevents any action being taken by the player, because the entire client enters this "blocked" mode, and will not accept ANY commands from the player. Even the EXISTING game that is running in the foreground of my first screenshot would not accept any commands to stop or close the game or casino. I could not tab anywhere else to a window that might have allowed me to close the casino either. The ONLY way I was able to eventually close it was through the task manager.

This problem could be more serious. What if a player was making bigger bets, and the lobby froze, but they could NOT stop a game that was still running, but had appeared to have entered "suck mode" at a time when they had a significant balance. What if this player knew little about computers, and simply sat helplessly watching the slot "suck" the entire balance, unable to stop the game, nor close the casino. They may not think it "safe" to do anything more forceful (like pulling the plug from the wallsocket), nor know how to identify and stop the task from the task manager. Even if they did, they might worry that forcibly aborting the casino could cause all their balance to "disappear".


I have my suspicion that the problem is caused when a game gets the error, and is then unloaded by the client, BUT it's ERROR WINDOW is NOT unloaded along with the game. This window thus becomes invisible, so it CANNOT be closed, and this then results in the entire lobby being locked out from processing ANY further commands, because the client REQUIRES the window to be closed BEFORE any further commands can be accepted.

Given how common this situation has always been, I would have thought MGS would have tested how such errors were handled when tabbed play was in use.

[mclee321]

I have my suspicion that the problem is caused when a game gets the error, and is then unloaded by the client, BUT it's ERROR WINDOW is NOT unloaded along with the game. This window thus becomes invisible, so it CANNOT be closed, and this then results in the entire lobby being locked out from processing ANY further commands, because the client REQUIRES the window to be closed BEFORE any further commands can be accepted.

Spot on, there is a dialogue box open and invisible somewhere. This locks out all of the other UI functions. What gives the game away is the 'ping' noise when you try to click on something else inside Casino.

I was frozen out from a options menu, rather than a error (if I recall). I killed the casino via task manager.

[darkpixie]

This was happening to me constantly. I gave up and quit playing.

[Rusty]

You are right. Given the potential serious consequences for the player of such a bug I am surprised it got through MGS QC. I would expect it of Rival or Topgame perhaps but not MGS.

On the technical front I don't disagree with any of what you say though there are potentially many possibilities as to the cause. We don't know how the error reporting is handled so it is possible it is not a network problem at all even though the error code is for a disconnect error.
It could take some tracking down by MGS but it certainly needs addressing.

[felicie]

How in hell do you keep track of your money with all this going on (or off)?

[vinylweatherman]

How in hell do you keep track of your money with all this going on (or off)?

The balance shown is the total casino balance, not just a balance for that individual tabbed game.

There is not much point in this tabbed system anyway, except to beat sjn in the Slotsmeister once in a while

[patrina]

Hey all..long time no hear, I have been ill for quite some time, but feeling better now
I am not sure if it is my computer or not, but I am having a heck of it. I can download and install, & connect to all my MG casinos, but loading? Oh boy..it takes foreverrrrrr....just now, loading Moonshine, it took about 15 mins. I was reading VWM's post and read about the cpu usage, I don't understand much about cpu, but I did check my cpu while the game was loading, and it was going from 95-100%
Has anyone else had this problem with loading? Even the banking page took a while, but not as long as the games, also when the game is loading, it just shows a full screen picture of the game and all it has on the screen is the word "loading" with the loading bars going around...and around...and around...can anyone offer any help or advice? This would be greatly appreciated! thx much
Patrina