sexacutioner

It's a bug with Join in Progress and Arma II. When the server is first started, it saves ONE time to send to people joining. So say the server is started at 5:30, then that is the time it sends to all joining clients. When you join, it will be 5:30 for you. Someone who joins an hour later, it will also be 5:30 for them, but since you've been playing for an hour your game will be 6:30. If you quit and rejoin it will again be 5:30. I've seen a lot of server admins saying that restarting the server "fixes" the time sync problem. It is actually irrelevant, but appears better since it forces everyone to rejoin the server and their time will be closer. This is especially annoying for servers that have been started at sundown, because in order to make sure you aren't in the dark when others are in the light you have to keep disconnecting and rejoining the server to reset back to server start time. The forum rollback deleted a post I had in bug reports detailing possible ways to fix this problem. I'll have to find some time to look up solutions again. Basically involves either setting the joining client to serverTime although I think that is bugged too, so otherwise using publicVars to set the sync the client time and re syncing already joined clients every 20 minutes or so to account for lagging pc's. Also this: https://dev-heaven.net/issues/13581 Posted 2 years ago :). If anything will get them to fix Arma it's DayZ though. Seen some really old bugs getting patched out finally.

Yea, the game probably just uses the addMagazine command to set your character back to it's previous state. Maybe you could have your character shoot off a few rounds in the debug forest or wherever but that probably wouldn't work too well.

1. Time sync issue. I posted a bug report and ways to fix I'd link to but the forum rollback removed it :(. Basically when you join a game the server sends you a time (i.e. 5:30) and your time continues from there. When someone else joins an hour later it is 5:30 for them and 6:30 for you. Someone else joins in another hour it is 5:30 for them, 6:30 for the other guy, and 7:30 for you. Unless you quit and rejoin every once and awhile eventually it becomes night for you and day for them. No idea what time it actually is for the zombies. My suggestions for fix is to check the serverTime and set JIP people to that (although I think there is a bug with serverTime too) or just keep publicVars on the server/client to send the proper time to new joiners. Anyway that's my top bug. Mainly because other suggestions are obviously going to be fixed but this is easy to pass up (since many don't even know it happens). 2. Performance. Another item commonly overlooked in the demand for other bug fixes and features, but something I'd like the devs to keep on top of. Haven't seen the code myself but there are some major problems that have to be fixable. I've noticed if Arma II is not restarted every time I leave/re-join a server then it has more and more layers of slowness. I guess some code in the mod is running on top of itself or something is getting loaded in duplicate or something. This doesn't happen with other Arma missions. Other suggestions would be hopefully try to keep the loops/number of scripts running down to a minimum. I've noticed multiple contributors in patch notes before and that scares me that each contributor adds another script. If it's not being done already I'd hope for moving as many (if not all) of the script loops into one loop and giving time back to the game as much as you can (don't loop unless you need to). 3. Disconnect exploits. Hard one to fix since there are so many legitimate disconnects from a server. I would suggest if you disconnect and reconnect to the same server it's fine, but if you leave and go to another server you can't go back to the one you were on before until you wait an hour. This would have to be explained within the game though, otherwise everyone would think it was bugged. Some of the bugs mentioned above are Arma default and difficult ones to fix. Like the enemies walking through walls. I've tried to mod that out in my own missions and it's pretty tough. Managed to fix some building objects/walls just by making their wall hit detection VERY thick, and still doesn't work all the time. For doors it seems since OFP days the AI works in a way where it knows the lay of the map only when the server starts. So an open door is open from there on out; a closed one closed. They won't go through doors that start closed and become open, but will always go through open doors that become closed. Only way I could think of that is scripting out some vectors and crap for each AI, and could be near impossible to optimize in any working fashion. Another one that Arma II core needs fixing for. Dying on environment is another one I doubt could be modded out. Been that way since OFP days.

Been that way since Operation Flashpoint, Arma 1, and now Arma 2. I expect it to continue being that way in Arma 3. Nothing much changes in the Arma world, although I still love playing ;)

So last night I noticed a big problem in the time of day setting for a few servers. I joined a server after dark in my timezone (TEX3) and noticed it was still daylight. The time in the game was just before sunset. I played for a couple hours and had to restart a few times because of death. After awhile I realized it just wasn't getting dark out. The next character I played lasted longer and during this playthough it DID start to get dark out. I noticed someone on local chat mentioning how every server they join is daytime which years of Operation Flashpoint scripting made me think something was wrong here. So while it was still dark for me I restarted my character on the SAME server (TEX3) and as I guessed the time was once again just before sunset. I asked in local chat if it was night or daytime for the other players in-game. Most people thought I was joking but a few reponded with varied results. The ones who just started it was just before sunset and for some playing longer it was dark out. One person said they had been playing for hours in the dark now. I decided they messed up their script and joined another server. This one started up at the same time (just before sunset). I checked another and another and all servers began at the exact same time of day. I tried asking what time other people had in the game on these servers but people thought I was dumb and kept trying to explain timezones and different server times. It's probably a hard concept to realize if you've never scripted any Arma engine games but I assure you this is easily possible to mess up. Every client on the server was running their own time of day. Night for some; Day for others. So with the problem of people getting tired of always having to play day or always having to play night the server admins took it upon themselves to set the time. My guess is they put in code in the ini that players run when they start that sets the time which isn't synced throughout all clients. You need to keep the master time variable on the server and sync it with the clients when they join otherwise it won't work. This is a hard problem to catch if you aren't looking for it because most people don't realize it's even possible for two players to have different times on the same server. So keep an eye out. You could be playing in dark while the bandit down the road is in sunshine. This mod needs to implement a sped up time of day. People have normal life schedules and don't always want to have in-game time the exact same time. If it's not put in the mod the server admins will try to fix it themselves and break everything.

Another thing to consider is what time it is for the zombies. If there is a discrepancy between clients time, then server time is probably different too. So if the server time is dark then sometimes during the day the zombie's line of site is probably not always correct. Too bad this is such an easy thing to fix, but not obvious enough to bother.

What the hell. Horr1d gave me negative reputation for my reply. He's over here talking about some sort of magic to keep track of tons of zombies feelings and gives me negative for mentioning the glaring flaw in his plan.

According to what I've just discovered that wouldn't matter since the time it will be when you join is only the time when the server was started, not the current time in their timezone.

The lag is bad enough with the zombie scripts as they are.

Also this: http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/6thSense.eu:EG#Join_in_Progress Which looks to me if you change the time through scripting it won't get synced unless you do something about it yourself. So if servers are trying to speed up time they need to sync the JIP people. Makes me wonder if it's raining for everyone at the same time too.

So is this an Arma II Join in Progress problem? If so I suppose the fix would be to use something like this: http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/6thSense.eu:EG#Determining_if_machine_is_Ingame_Server.2C_Ded_Server.2C_Player_or_JIP_Player To determine if the player is a JIP in the init and then set the time for them.

They need to keep the time information on the server and sync clients on join. If speeding up time you need to sync the new time every so often too because of lag.