[AnnisTheMad]

BUFFER OVERFLOWS - what they are and why they happen to you

A NEWBIE GUIDE

lots of players have been reporting the buffer overflow errors which are happening and there are all sorts of extreme measures being suggested from re-installing the game to formatting the hard drive. none of which will do much good, im sad to say.

buffer overflow errors usually are caused by mistakes in the program. the operating system is not *often* the cause. let's explain this in the most basic terms and if the eyes of experienced python coders glaze over reading this then too bad.

in fiesta you move your character through very pretty, textured landscape and do wild things. in your computer, however, all these interactions are actually huge amounts of numbers whirling round inside. complex formulas are repainting the ground and trees your character walks on every micro-second, giving the smooth impression you are dancing over the grass. looks good to you but underneath your computer is going frantic, drawing lines all over your screen and filling them in and working out where the shadow should be and clever stuff like that.

as you are hitting monsters and watching those lovely purple numbers flash up (gotta love those crits!) - down in your machine, more mundane boring things are happening. your computer is keeping a steady count of everybody's hit points sent to it by the server, working out how many seconds until you can use skills/spells again, bookkeeping basically.

all this artwork and accounting is kept in huge boxes full of numbers, and it is here the mistakes are happening.

when you start fiesta, the program builds millions of boxes to store these numbers - or data in. nice neat rows of boxes which are all carefully labelled. in theory.

now data isn't just numbers, it is letters too, which programmers refer to as “strings” and if you thought writing programs was “money for old rope” that might confirm your suspicions.

when we write a program, at the start, we have to tell it what sort of data we are putting in each box. is it a name like “ratman fighter” or is it a number “60” like the number of seconds in a minute. if you think of how many different names for things there are, how many different sorts of numbers are used by the game, you might begin to get a grip on how large the program behind your game is and what it has to handle.

make a mistake in this bit of the program and already you have problems. try telling the program that a couple of boxes are for 2 numbers then try sticking the word “mushroom” in the boxes and you'll find there is not only not much room, but no room at all for your mushroom. halfway through the mushrooming comes an unpleasant message from your computer “these are not the data you are looking for.”

this is a simple silly mistake and shows up easy. but when we are feeding large amounts of data into millions of boxes – what can happen is that the computer uses more boxes than it was told to use for various bits of data.

for sake of a very silly example, somewhere in the code meant for “mushroom” is the word “mushroooooom” caused by a tired programmer with their nose on the keyboard. expecting eight letters here, the computer shrugs and finds some more boxes to put the extra ooooo's in. computers gave up asking questions a long time ago and now just do what they are told, even by tired programmers who have drunk too much coffee. now bad things happen. the wrong data gets into the wrong boxes. looking in these boxes for something else later, the computer stares at the “oooo”'s and thinks “should that in there?” but carries on as best it can and steals some more boxes from somewhere else. it is doomed already.

at some point the good times have to end, there are no more boxes available to store the data in. the computer tries to store one last piece of data and the whole lot spills out everywhere, like my suitcases do when the catch gives out. with mushrooms cascading out all over your computer, the program shuts down in one last despairing act of sacrifice, dying and in doing so, stopping mushrooms from appearing all over your desktop. it could happen, be afraid.

computers are perfect, humans cause the problems. every time a new batch of data such as a new map, a new monster, a new item is added to the program, there are also new opportunities for mistakes. with so many patches being bolted in – every so often, the wrong sort of data gets in (or even not enough data – that can happen too). sometimes the data is hardly ever used so the error goes undetected for months.

even a new line in the chat box can break a program, and believe it or not – being able to type just about anything in a chat window potentially causes a lot of bad problems. even really very fast machines have their limits.

imagine twenty gold spammers standing round, a dozen people trying to outshout them and some idiot adding to the noise getting a talk show title in Reomen. per second – this is a vast amount of data pouring through your machine, most of the processor is grinding away trying to process the flood of chat wheezing past on your screen. at some point your machine gives up. there is just too much data to be processed at one go. halfway through re-painting the screen, one line too many of spamm hits the chat box and your computer gives up and goes out for coffee instead, leaving you looking at the login screen and swearing. we can't blame the spammmers for everything but they make a good target. you might hear programmers talking about “execution” when they talk about running a program but if we executed all the spammmmers, it would be a good start.

so – without getting technical about it – errors are most probably either in the data used to make the game objects or are caused by an excessive amount of instructions being passed through your machine. the first sort you can do nothing about, apart from report it as a bug and where it happened. the only other solution is to make your computer process instructions faster and contrary to some bad advice appearing on the forums – wiping your hard drive is not the answer!

for a very simple start – you can look down at the bottom of your screen on the right hand side. where you can see the taskbar clock (on most setups) and to the left of the clock digits will be a lot of small icons. hovering the mouse pointer over some of these will reveal what they are. if you press the right hand mouse key over some of these icons, some of them can be closed or quit. chat programs slow the machine down badly, so do many other programs all trying to run at once. turning the anti-virus software off – you do have anti-virus software on your machine?? - is probably a bad idea, leave it on. but do you need all those chat programs running? fiesta needs some space to work, you can get all your programs back when you next restart the machine, don't worry about turning them off.

if you found this very basic explanation of how programs fail to work helpful and had previously thought that buffers were something to do with trains – then you probably will need to learn a lot more about how a computer actually runs before you tackle ideas about process priority and clever stuff which actually starts to mess with how the computer works. this is NOT a good idea at your skill level, you need to empower “computer tech” skill before you try this, okay?

i hope this has explained in more or less plain english, what a buffer error is and what causes it on a newbie level. please understand that the game is actually still being built. that is the meaning of the word “beta release” - “beta” in ancient “geek” meaning “probably broken, we were still writing the code at 6 a.m. and none of us have actually slept for three days, and we have run out of coffee.” so before you get angry at your program for crashing – have a thought for the poor dev team who have written this super game which you are enjoying for FREE. you get what you pay for.

but basically, what we all could do with less spammmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm~#^£%$
NO CARRIER

BUFFER OVERFLOW IN TOPIC “BUFFER OVERFLOWS - what they are and why they happen to you”

forum terminated*








.geek
if i(think)>0 then i(am)=true
i do some coding in c but i haven't got my head round python yet, i've written programs in all sorts of languages from bbc micro basic and assembler, up to php which i'm on now. please don't evangelize about what i should be writing in, i am not a techie and i could never understand the fuss about not using goto.

* wishful thinking after wading through some threads, sorry.

note to centrix etc.
im not actually sure whether this belongs in troubleshooting - if not - delete it.

[Serric]

This is an excellent post! Thank you Annis!

In fact, I have added it to my NEED HELP? LOOK HERE! thread.

:gives Annis a cokie: Huzzah!

[DarkAngelTsubasa]

For those people who need visual example of this error, here is the picture.


I myself got dc from Apoline server, but i have no problems with Teva and Bijou.
It is a server problem. Don't worry too much.

[Shahared]

This is actually one of the reasons that code needs to be debugged so often. These types of error are caused by incorrect code causing overwriting to the buffer, plain and simple. It is explained very well in this wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffer_overflow
In the end, the more data collected to be given to the development team the better, since this comes down to them finding the programming cause for the overwrite. The article is mainly focused on buffer security and vulnerability, but I think our problem with it is some sort of code checking problem, maybe something that builds up over time as more and more data needs to be dealt with.

[AnnisTheMad]

Originally Posted by Shahared

These types of error are caused by incorrect code causing overwriting to the buffer, plain and simple. It is explained very well in this wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffer_overflow

having read the wiki article, i have to say it would be clear as slow slime mud trails to anybody who has never coded before. a lot of the players on here are either very young or are just playing the game on a machine they actually know nothing about. my article was written with complete newbies to computers even, who would think a code injection was something a mad doctor stuck in you.

this is a game in beta, this is a game still in design stage. we need more inexperienced computer users playing this game. things which seem obvious to old geeks and gamers like me, are alien and confusing to complete newbies - even with a 'friendly' interface which fiesta has. lots more work should be done on beginner guidance, convert a complete newbie and you have more commercial life out of them than experienced gamers who drift from one mmorg to the next. once a newbie is introduced to and taught the game basics then they will be more likely to visit the cash shop. more attention to beginner guidance and eliminating power levelling, will result in players staying in the game longer than five minutes of bafflement before leaving for good. the new players should be where the design focus is concentrated. they learn from the game - the game learns from them.

my article does just that. we have a huge number - one in five or more posts about the buffer overflow problems from scared newbies and responses from the clueless wonders who have enough knowledge to be dangerous, suggesting wiping hard drives - which i assure you will result in negative customer experience, to use the slang term.

programming errors are scary for anybody - more scary for the programmers maybe, but entry level users will be lost forever. if i can put just a few minds at rest, (and save a few hard disks) my work is done here.

[Hollocus]

A very good and simple explanation! Thx!

I usually close as many programs as I can before running Fiesta....it's true, the game runs faster and there's waaay less errors.

[DJ91990]

I'm getting the exact same errors as you!

I've closed; Skype, Msn, Asn, Add, Adhd...and everyting elce that could possibily be slowing down the game!

I'll try Bijou but so help me if it happens agan...I'll be forced to stop playing for the rest of the weekend untill things quiet down.

I've even did a full maintanince cheak on my pc and optimized it.

You think your lazy programers!? Look at me! I'm too lazy to even begin typing in "Hello World!" in RUBY!
}Ruby_message
}Display_message "Hello World"
}Display_button...forget this! I'mtoolazy!

[Shahared]

Originally Posted by AnnisTheMad

having read the wiki article, i have to say it would be clear as slow slime mud trails to anybody who has never coded before. a lot of the players on here are either very young or are just playing the game on a machine they actually know nothing about. my article was written with complete newbies to computers even, who would think a code injection was something a mad doctor stuck in you.

this is a game in beta, this is a game still in design stage. we need more inexperienced computer users playing this game. things which seem obvious to old geeks and gamers like me, are alien and confusing to complete newbies - even with a 'friendly' interface which fiesta has. lots more work should be done on beginner guidance, convert a complete newbie and you have more commercial life out of them than experienced gamers who drift from one mmorg to the next. once a newbie is introduced to and taught the game basics then they will be more likely to visit the cash shop. more attention to beginner guidance and eliminating power levelling, will result in players staying in the game longer than five minutes of bafflement before leaving for good. the new players should be where the design focus is concentrated. they learn from the game - the game learns from them.

my article does just that. we have a huge number - one in five or more posts about the buffer overflow problems from scared newbies and responses from the clueless wonders who have enough knowledge to be dangerous, suggesting wiping hard drives - which i assure you will result in negative customer experience, to use the slang term.

programming errors are scary for anybody - more scary for the programmers maybe, but entry level users will be lost forever. if i can put just a few minds at rest, (and save a few hard disks) my work is done here.

I wasn't trying to insult your post in any way, quite the contrary, I liked it quite a bit, it was a good explanation for the uninitiated. But there is nothing wrong with the 'complete newbies' as you so sweetly called them learning more about their computer.

I grew up when computers where first starting to show up in peoples households. As an inquisitive kid I messed around allot on my first real computer (I had an atari 8600 computer system before that, but it doesn't really count). I learned allot of stuff all on my own, and there are allot of people who are capable of teaching themselves. I encourage all new computer users to learn as much as they can, because, and I know this sounds sooooo corny, but 'knowledge is power'....Yup, I really just said that

Anyway, I meant my reply to be directed towards you really, since you understand buffer overflows more, and I only meant to say that I think the programmers need to debug the code more. I find that more and more software is released without proper debugging and testing lately. I hope problems like this show the industry how important debugging is, but unfortunately programmers are a dime a dozen in the current industry, and going over code for hours on end all seems like a waste of time in these days of development software doing half the coding anyway.

In any case, sorry if my previous post seemed hostile, I did not intend it that way Nice post, and keep up the good work!

[YuniAura]

so this can be fixed?....

[MrDummy]

Yet i have also buffer overrun in game. It's first time for me to see the error.
I think it's caused by goldspammers who break the server system thanks to many illegal hacked logins. Yes, the only high activitation is the goldspam in the general chat window.

What do you think? It's possible caused by hacked server logins? They are not registered before but directly accessed to server with special written program so they can goldspam ingame?

Some goldspammers post around 2-3 rows in a second! High spam speed. That makes server more work to send rows to all players! It's only pure wasted server usage.