bugs Simtropolis 9.0.x - Bugs & Issues Report Thread

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

18 hours ago, JP Schriefer said:

I realized today that it's possible to check people who downloaded content on STEx. So I was seeing Museu da Inconfidencia downloads and I saw a guy who made 41 downloads of the same file!!! I would like to know if this is a bug or he just loved the model to download it 41 times

Sounds like an attempted DDOS.

[Cyclone Boom 16,938]

18 hours ago, JP Schriefer said:

I realized today that it's possible to check people who downloaded content on STEx. So I was seeing Museu da Inconfidencia downloads and I saw a guy who made 41 downloads of the same file!!! I would like to know if this is a bug or he just loved the model to download it 41 times

That's an interesting one...

Downloads are logged when the button is clicked, not after the file completes downloading. This means it counts as a download, even if the user hasn't received the file. So in the event of a bad connection, as long as the user keeps clicking, it may keep adding to the total.

Guest can also download from the STEX (with limitation). From the list, these will appear to be the same person. When actually, they can be anyone browsing the site without being logged in. This could explain if the name "Guest" frequently shows up. Technically this is a usergroup, which explains why guests don't have a profile.

On your upload, I notice it comes in 4 parts for each rendered model. Each part counts as a new download, which is shown separately in the log. So this may explain why they come in clusters.

Another thing to consider is the time -- how close together each one is. If a user is recorded frequently in a very short space of time, I'd say this is most likely due to a connection issue -- either on the server or at the user's side. Each request will be logged, but the file may not complete. It is a great BAT though, so who knows...

Hope this enlightens on the possible cause.
 

---

Update on the site bugs:

I've been in contact with @Dirktator , and the bugs are still on the radar. Over the last few weeks, the board devs have been releasing frequent patches to fix issues, and improve stability. It's kind of a balancing act to ensure our fixes work with the new templates. Quite complicated... but some custom changes have been reset, and these need to be added back, step by step.

One the changes have been restored, we hope these transitions will become much easier in future.

Thanks all for your continued patience.

[Kim Sunwoo 817]

Hi everyone,

I've just noticed that my new entries are not appearing in the first page of the CJ section. They appear in the small "City Journal Entries" bar, but not in the main page.

A screenshot below to show what I mean:

[_Michael 2,681]

@Kim SunwooThis is a known issue, and has happened to me a few times. As far as I can tell, there is nothing you can do to rectify it.

[Kim Sunwoo 817]

On 28/1/2016 at 11:03 PM, michae95l said:

@Kim SunwooThis is a known issue, and has happened to me a few times. As far as I can tell, there is nothing you can do to rectify it.

Oh, that's a pitty, but thanks for letting me know!

[rsc204 21,817]

Is the omnibus broken?

I ask, because I was just about to commit a new tutorial, when I suddenly decided it would be better if I organised the images, hosted externally, into a sub-folder first.

Having done so, the board software simply will not accept that I have changed the link to the image. Laughably, it tells me I need to make the image less than 0px wide :D.

I figure what the hey, we'll sort it later with an edit, perhaps it's Photo Bucket taking a while to update the moved image? But alas, that turned out to be a stupid move, because the new article automatically locks itself to editing and comments?

OK, computer says no, I'll get the chainsaw...

I figure, let's just copy/paste everything into a new article and delete the old one... sigh. Nope, won't do that either, because every time I now link to the image (even when deleting and re-uploading it to Photo Bucket, thus generating a new link), it just shows a broken link image. Once more I'm told to use a size less than 0px?!?

Can I get some help please? Right now I'm stuck with an article that pretty much relies on the one screenshot that's now not a part of it. I've tested the link to the image and verified it's correct. The site software refuses to accept change it seems, which is quite ironic really. Because if this is progress, I'm going back to pens and paper .

:EDIT:

OK, I've sorted it now, it was copying the error over from the copy/paste. Doesn't really explain why it wouldn't accept the image in any other way, but C'est la vie!

That does leave me wondering though? Should we be able to edit or add comments to such articles? I seriously need an edit button, that's half the reason for using computers in the first place, no?

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Can't say I really understand the problem.  What size is the image that Photobucket thinks is zero?  You may have hit one of its limits as sometimes programmers goof things like that.

I'd like to see a better handle on this.  Is it a problem with Photobucket or the Omnibus?

[Cyclone Boom 16,938]

@rsc204

Maybe it's because Photobucket adds ~original after the image's extension, stopping the image from auto-embedding. Just speculating...

Anyway, I've unlocked the article so it should now be editable & allow comments. Thanks for writing it up!

So on submission, it automatically locked itself, yet was able to publicly viewed? To combat spam, the Omnibus previously had an approval system for articles, meaning they needed a staff member to unhide them. I guess there's something amiss here, as it used to work like features on the homepage.

I agree, having an article in a visible locked state isn't very useful -- that's not how it's supposed to work. I'll check if anything needs tweaking in the settings, otherwise I'll add it to the bugs list.

[rsc204 21,817]

In the end I copied and pasted everything into a new article and deleted the old one successfully, but there is something weird going on.

In case it helps decipher the problem, here are the steps I took:

• I wrote up the article first, including the affected image file.
• I resized this image to make it a little smaller.
• As I was about to upload the second image, it occurred to me, I should be organising my Photobucket better. So I created some subfolders and placed the second image there.
• Once more I resized the image.
• I then moved the first image into the new folders on Photobucket. This of course changes the hyperlink required to access it.
• So I removed the original image, then tried to add it as a new one, with the new link.

This is where the problems started. It was as if, despite adding a new image, it was using the old link. Everytime I'd get the little black square thing that indicates an image is not there. This I could sort of understand, but when I copy/pasted the article into a new article (to edit it), the error persisted.

I fixed it by only copying the first half, taking care not to include/highlight the line containing the now invisible image. I then did the same with the lower half. At this point, when I entered the new link to the image, it displayed correctly. I did test the link on another site in-between to make sure it was working. But somehow, just copying this dead link into a new article was preventing me from getting the image to display, which is kind of odd.

Anyhow, it's no big deal, and everything is fine now. I just had a $*£&"$*% computer moment. The main thing is the ability to edit/comment. Since I may add to it at some point if I can think of any worthwhile additions. I noted the last addition by SimCoug had the same setup, so I wondered if this was intentional or not.

Thanks for your assistance with this Cyclone :).

[LivingInThePast 364]

Writing posts that contain anything other than plain text is a problem. There seems to be now no way to work in the not-rich text environment. This way, I'm forced to use the "Link" feature to prevent my URLs from screwing up instead of using the

[url]

tags, and is overall a big pain. I prefer to use code rather than buttons for most posts, and Simtropolis is the only forum that doesn't let me do that.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I agree there are a few times when I would prefer to use BB code and even HTML, but incorporating these into the editor has some security implications.  Some constructs must be forbidden, and this makes life difficult for the implementers as each such entry must be interpreted in detail.

I can live without this, and I used to want to write everything in assembler.  In network terms, I would prefer XML.  One gets into coding habits, and it is not bad to break them and do something at a higher level.

[Cyclone Boom 16,938]

Improvements to BBCode parsing are apparently on the radar.

In the editor, there will also be an option to disable auto-embedding of links.

From the release of IP.Board 4.0, there's been a focus on the live editor, and trying to move forward from BBCode. Although I agree, it's nice to strike a balance for user preferences. In which case, would something like this be useful?

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Good question.  I've noticed that links do get auto-embedded and have generally tried to avoid them.  I am not sure it is a bad feature, it is just not to my personal taste.

[schokoladeneis 1 193]

I did not read all pages/comments in this thread, so maybe this was already adressed here and fixing this problem is already planned. I have serious troubles navigating the STEX. Maybe it's just me but I think it's the layout of the STEX not beeing optimized. e.g. I having troubles navigating to a list of the latest Uploads.

Often all I get is this page https://community.simtropolis.com/discover/11/

On this page there is a "Stream" of files sorted by latest activity but i don't find the option to filter this list for uploads only.

Now after some searching i found this page: https://community.simtropolis.com/files/category/1-simcity-4-buildings/

This is the actual page I tried to find, but naviagating to this page is only possible via "ST Exchange" -> "SimCity 4 Buildings".

Maybe it's possible to link this page on the main page to give it a more easy access

 

Thank you

[_Michael 2,681]

Just noticed this appears as the page heading when on a CJ entry.

[rsc204 21,817]

Actually I must say having just transferred a 14 page tutorial from HTML into the omnibus, for the first time the new forum software actually felt like it had some merit. No offense to those who set it up, but some days you feel you are fighting it to do what you want. Dynamic editing in this scenario however was a real blessing.

One small annoyance, can I get the top bar for formatting to "follow" me as I go? Some serious scrolling required every time I needed to add new bullet points.

Also, once more I've locked my own article and already see things I need to edit :(. I don't like the idea of bugging moderators every time I edit it, but something is amiss with adding content to the omnibus. Whilst you're at it, could you unlock the one I did a few weeks back also :). Thanks,

MGB.

[Cyclone Boom 16,938]

On 29/02/2016 at 8:36 PM, michae95l said:

Just noticed this appears as the page heading when on a CJ entry.

Looks like this has occurred since the latest patch the other week. It should be the name of the CJ, and that number represents the ID of the journal.

I've added it to the bugs list on the opening page.
 

2 hours ago, rsc204 said:

Actually I must say having just transferred a 14 page tutorial from HTML into the omnibus, for the first time the new forum software actually felt like it had some merit. No offense to those who set it up, but some days you feel you are fighting it to do what you want. Dynamic editing in this scenario however was a real blessing.

Glad to hear, and we hope the other areas can be improved upon.

I believe the devs are continuing to add refinements, and aiming to make the software more stable. An issue with a board this size is the mass of data accumulated over the years. There's lots of things which can go wrong -- even the smallest change to a line of code. Unfortunately these bugs often show up more prevalently on larger communities like ours.
 

2 hours ago, rsc204 said:

One small annoyance, can I get the top bar for formatting to "follow" me as I go? Some serious scrolling required every time I needed to add new bullet points.

Agreed, that would be a very useful addition. If not possible to adjust in the templates, it would be a very worthy suggestion to pass on.

Maybe it'd be useful to have an "ideas box" type thread, where suggestions like this can be collected together.
 

2 hours ago, rsc204 said:

Also, once more I've locked my own article and already see things I need to edit :(. I don't like the idea of bugging moderators every time I edit it, but something is amiss with adding content to the omnibus. Whilst you're at it, could you unlock the one I did a few weeks back also :). Thanks,

Both now unlocked.

Did the first article (slope mods) lock itself again when edited? It would seem this is a bug, as I couldn't find anything in the permissions. Also added to the list.

[rsc204 21,817]

On ‎07‎/‎03‎/‎2016 at 1:23 AM, Cyclone Boom said:

Did the first article (slope mods) lock itself again when edited? It would seem this is a bug, as I couldn't find anything in the permissions. Also added to the list.

Why yes it did, see if you can guess what I would like you to do once more

Quote

Spoiler: Could you unlock them once again for me please. Hopefully I've caught all the little niggles this time :).

 

[Cyclone Boom 16,938]

@rsc204

Ah, no worries!

A very irritating bug for sure. Until this can be fixed, I'll make a habit of checking they remain unlocked.

Don't want this to discourage anyone from editing their articles.

[Moonraker0 192]

I've tried downloading a couple files from the STEX in the past couple days, with no success.  I hadn't tried to download any new files from the STEX for at least a few months.  When I click the download button on a STEX file, it always sends me to a page saying I have an ad-blocking browser extension enabled (I don't) and that I need to disable it so that the STEX AdFly links will work.  There is a link near the bottom of that page to a Knowledge Base article, but it's broken—seems that at least the "simtropolis.com" part is missing from the link.  Oh wait, I just figured it out:  turns out I wasn't signed in and now that I am, it works now.  However, if it is the intention of the ST management that guests be able to download from the STEX, this should be looked into.

My browser is Opera 35.0.2066.92.  My operating system is Windows 10.0.10586.  The only extensions I have installed are:

• LastPass 4.1.2
• Magic Actions for YouTube 6.8.9.5

I believe the second extension has functionality for blocking advertisements over YouTube videos, but I don't use it.  That's the closest thing I have to an ad-blocking extension.  Also, I tried downloading a file as a guest using Microsoft Edge to see if that made a difference, but I got the same result.

[Cyclone Boom 16,938]

Thanks for the report.

Yes, to help fund site costs, the STEX has AdFly enabled for guests when clicking the download button. Like you say, when signed in, members should be able to bypass this and download files directly.

If you tested without addons, it might be a browser setting (e.g. scripts, cookies) which could interfere with AdFly pages.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

And, of course, you can miss this entirely by being logged in.  Won't your browser allow you to set up an automatic login to the site?  Mine does (FireFox).  Simply stores the login details including password.

[Moonraker0 192]

Yes, I can have it keep me logged in with cookies, but I'm just reporting this because it seems like the intended behavior of guests being able to download if they view the AdFly page first is not working.  Cyclone Boom, I'm not sure what setting in my browser would be interfering, since I use the default/standard settings for scripts and cookies, and nothing to block any functionality in those areas.  Also, it is still odd that the same result happens in Microsoft Edge when not logged in (I don't use any extensions in Edge).

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

And how does Microsoft Edge differ from Internet Exploder?  I got the impression there is little difference except the name.

[Moonraker0 192]

I'm not too sure, perhaps the main difference is the interface.  I haven't really used Edge all that much and only use Opera as my main browser.

[Moonraker0 192]

I've just found out that (in regards to the previous bug I recently posted about), if I click on a link to another site in the description of a STEX file, I get the same erroneous AdFly blocking message and can't proceed, even when I'm logged in to Simtropolis.  This is on Opera 36.0.2130.32, still with no ad-blocking extension ever installed.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Did you try in  another browser?  I never have this problem with Firefox.

[Moonraker0 192]

Yeah, I just tried it again using Microsoft Edge to test, and got the same result.  I don't have any other browsers installed on my computer.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Interesting.  AFAIK, if you are logged on, you should not be seeing Adfly.

[Haljackey 17,325]

GIF test

https://i.imgur.com/oIin2fr.gif

 

GIFV test

https://i.imgur.com/oIin2fr.gifv

 

Results:

GIF slow

GIFV embeds broken.