Client issues

Report bugs found in Poker Mavens
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kbirtch
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Jul 04, 2008 2:56 am

Client issues

Post by kbirtch »

I would like first off to say that this post is not intended as a flame. =) I have spent probably 150 hours logged into Pmav 2.0, and will probably spend alot more. However, there are a few serious issues that prove to ruin a good experience for me with this software.

1) You have a giant gaping hole of a memory leak, your app takes up more physical memory than 3d accelerated games. Does this have something to do with issue 2?

2) As I write this post I realize the instance of Pmav running atm isint make any chip noise as par usual. When I check, I reveal that it has frozen on what appears to be one player's turn; something it does usually 1/50 hands. Tonight, its been 1/10 hands and excessive in length.

3) Players are able to idle on tables (sitting out) for an unlimited amount of time.

Please look into the following issues, as they really do ruin what could be a good gaming experience for me.
rjones33
Posts: 98
Joined: Tue Jun 24, 2008 6:51 pm
Location: Warrenville, SC
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Re: Client issues

Post by rjones33 »

Kbirtch,

What version of the server are you running? If you look through the posts in this forum you will see that the issues that you are talking about are being addressed successfully. Kent is working on the next release that contains alot of fixes and enhancements. It is being tested right now.

-Ricky
Kent Briggs
Site Admin
Posts: 5878
Joined: Wed Mar 19, 2008 8:47 pm

Re: Client issues

Post by Kent Briggs »

kbirtch wrote:1) You have a giant gaping hole of a memory leak, your app takes up more physical memory than 3d accelerated games.
Are you just referring to the client side? Since its just a SWF Flash application, the memory management is all handled by the flash player. How exactly are you detecting a memory leak and does it clear when you close the browser window?
2) As I write this post I realize the instance of Pmav running atm isint make any chip noise as par usual. When I check, I reveal that it has frozen on what appears to be one player's turn; something it does usually 1/50 hands. Tonight, its been 1/10 hands and excessive in length.
The pause/freezeup issue is related to disconnected players and the server still trying to send them packets. I've already got that fixed in beta and will have a public 2.05 update out soon.
3) Players are able to idle on tables (sitting out) for an unlimited amount of time.
Sitting-out ring game players are supposed to be removed after a set timeout period (10 minutes is default). However I've had another report of this not happening in all cases so I've already got that one on my list.
Kent Briggs
Site Admin
Posts: 5878
Joined: Wed Mar 19, 2008 8:47 pm

Re: Client issues

Post by Kent Briggs »

Kent Briggs wrote:Are you just referring to the client side? Since its just a SWF Flash application, the memory management is all handled by the flash player. How exactly are you detecting a memory leak and does it clear when you close the browser window?
To answer my own question, there definitely appears to be a memory leak in the flash client. I started getting sluggish behavior after about 2 hours of ring game play myself. Using a program called Process Explorer, I see that my browser was using about 200 megs of physical memory more than when I started and just slowly creeps up as time goes by even with no poker windows open. And when poker tables are open, they grab a chunk of memory that doesn't get released back when they are closed. Just logging out doesn't clear up the problem since the flash app is still running. You have to either hit the browser refresh button or go to another site and come back, or close the browser window altogether. Needless to say, I'm on it.
Kent Briggs
Site Admin
Posts: 5878
Joined: Wed Mar 19, 2008 8:47 pm

Re: Client issues

Post by Kent Briggs »

Kent Briggs wrote:To answer my own question, there definitely appears to be a memory leak in the flash client.
Well maybe not, now that I've looked at it. I had measured the memory usage wrong previously because my email client is integrated with the browser (mozilla). Also the "garbage collection" in the internet Flash scripting is slow to clean up. Turning off the chat and hand history collection seemed to stop all further memory usage. Those still use up more memory than I would expect so I'm still looking at it.
Kent Briggs
Site Admin
Posts: 5878
Joined: Wed Mar 19, 2008 8:47 pm

Re: Client issues

Post by Kent Briggs »

I think I've figured this out. There's no memory leak in the client that I've found but there is a performance issue with the hand history text box and to a lesser extent the chat text box. As these boxes fill with text, it takes an increasing amount of CPU power to append a line to them. After a couple of hours at the same table, there could be so much text that players will notice an ever increasing lag, especially at the beginning of each hand where the hand history adds a bunch of lines, one at a time, showing the seat assignments.

The immediate fix is to close the table window and rejoin since that empties the lists. The long term fix for the chat box will be to delete the oldest lines as new lines are added to keep a maximum size. For the history box I'll either add a "Clear All" button or redesign the dialog more like how PokerStars does it. The top part of their hand history dialog is just a scrolling list of hand numbers while the lower part shows the history for just a single hand, the one that is selected in the top part.
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