Hi!

Since yesterday I'm having trouble with the forums. It started when I put my latest game into playtest. When you do this, a new forum post is made in your name. In this case, this also was the first post, so a new thread was opened. Only when I then looked at this thread (and the first post in it), even though the post was made under my name (and with my rep / post-count), it was presented as if someone else had made the posting. I did not have the usual "Edit" button that you have for your own postings, only "Reply" and "Quote".

And this strange behavior has been coming and going since then. Sometimes, when I click on "My Discussions", I see all the threads that I have posted in (just as one would expect). But sometimes, the playtest thread for my game which I mentioned above is shown as the only thread under "My Discussions".

When I look into threads with older postings of mine, my own postings then sometimes look like they were made by someone else (without the "Edit" button, but instead with the "Good/Not Good Feedback" buttons, where applicable, as if I could give myself some more rep! ;-). Sometimes I have a case where I don't see the Edit button, but when I refresh with F5, I then see it. When I click it to edit, I get the below error message. But sometimes everything works fine, I see the Edit button right away and can click it/use it normally.

Another thing: Just after I put my game into playtest, I also changed my signature to include a link to it. After I did this, I then went to an older posting of mine to check that I didn't make a mistake with the link. Only there was no signature at all! This persisted for a few minutes: I checked postings of other people who I know have signatures, but didn't see any of them. Then after a few minutes, the signatures were back again.

I tested from three different computers (all with IE 8) and tested logging out/in, closing all browser windows and all the similar stuff several times.

Anyone else having these problems too?

Doc

 

Server Error in '/' Application.

---

Runtime Error

Description: An application error occurred on the server. The current custom error settings for this application prevent the details of the application error from being viewed remotely (for security reasons). It could, however, be viewed by browsers running on the local server machine.

Details: To enable the details of this specific error message to be viewable on remote machines, please create a <customErrors> tag within a "web.config" configuration file located in the root directory of the current web application. This <customErrors> tag should then have its "mode" attribute set to "Off".

<!-- Web.Config Configuration File --> <configuration> <system.web> <customErrors mode="Off"/> </system.web> </configuration>

Notes: The current error page you are seeing can be replaced by a custom error page by modifying the "defaultRedirect" attribute of the application's <customErrors> configuration tag to point to a custom error page URL.

<!-- Web.Config Configuration File --> <configuration> <system.web> <customErrors mode="RemoteOnly" defaultRedirect="mycustompage.htm"/> </system.web> </configuration>

Everything is working fine for me though I haven't been on here much since Friday. I use both IE 7 and 8. I'll repost here if anything changes.

Update: It really seems as if my forum account was somehow "split": Check the first posting here in this thread I made. It currently shows my account with 987 posts. Then check this other post which I just recently made (playtesting "Pushy"): http://forums.xna.com/forums/p/36644/240462.aspx#240462
This one seems to have been made under my second forum "incarnation" that was split off yesterday - it currently shows 2 posts for me (one of them being the post in the "Pushy" thread, the other being the first post in my own "Doodles" thread I mentioned above). Both show my name, pic and rep though, so the split-off "incarnation" is somehow still connected to my actual account.
Of course either the 987 above will have gone up to 988 because of this post here now, or the 2 in the other post was now increased to 3, depending on which "incarnation" the forum chose for this posting here...

Well, whatever it is, I'll leave it alone now. If there is a forum problem that the "powers that be" want to fix, I guess they have enough information now and I don't want to continue to bore you others with this issue... :)

Doc

The ZMan also has the same problem :)

Hmm, things have been working fine for me, at least in FF. Haven't tried IE since I'm at work and stuck with IE6 there. :(

It really has something to do with the game post. It kind of gives your account a split personality and we're not sure exactly what's going on. Very few people have encountered it but it seems to happen right after uploading a game for playtest/peer review. The ZMan knows a bit more about it.

George Clingerman:

It really has something to do with the game post. It kind of gives your account a split personality and we're not sure exactly what's going on. Very few people have encountered it but it seems to happen right after uploading a game for playtest/peer review. The ZMan knows a bit more about it.

This problem has been going on quite a while. I know when I last posted my game the forums would only show my game as "My Discussions" and nothing else. It kinda freaked me out as I thought that no one else could see my game post.

I never got the errors you got but I did spend about 2 weeks as 2 different users... eventually it went away I think by itself though I did tell Sean so maygbe the MS guys found something to fix it.

Fine, I don't mind being schizophrenic for a while... :-)

        What? Who said that? Was that me?

Doc

The ZMan:

I never got the errors you got but I did spend about 2 weeks as 2 different users... eventually it went away I think by itself though I did tell Sean so maygbe the MS guys found something to fix it.

Yes, we identified the issue and patched up the broken users but we didn't have enough time in our schedule to isolate and fix the bug. I'll get access to the current forums database and see how many people this is affecting and see what I can do about a proper fix.

I guess this hasn't been fixed yet... Added a new project to playtesting last night and now "My Discussions" list only that new topic and if you look at my playtest (link in my signature), you'll see two posts from me with different post counts.

Nothing is breaking for me (yet), just thought I would bring this up again.

Spyn Doctor:

Fine, I don't mind being schizophrenic for a while... :-)

        What? Who said that? Was that me?

Doc

Best line from the movie What about Bob:  Roses are red, violets are blue, I'm schizophrenic, and so am I.

My score also went down around 200 points...

I can't access my playtest thread at all.  Perhaps I am suffering a similiar fate.  I put a game into playtest and then changed my signature as well.  Seems like that is that steps that do you in.

Fixed.  I had to remove the link to my ZenHak playtest from my signature, then everything went back to normal for me.  I was linking to the actual game not the forum thread.

My score dropped to 0.  Is that because I haven't been posting here in a while?

Just today I've noticed that when I sign in, after entering my email and password it takes me back to whatever page I was on, but I'm not actually signed in. I have to click the "Sign In" button again, at which point the page refreshes and I'm now signed in. Not sure if it's related or not, but it's no longer saving my email address either...

An update on this topic:

Since I am refreshing my game with a new playtest build almost every week, my forum accounts is continuously in this schizophrenic state. I have gotten used to it by now, but there is one sad side effect: In the playtest thread of my Your Doodles Are Bugged! game, I get a lot of good playtest feedback, but I am unable to mark this as "good feedback" and give my playtesters their well earned reputation points. :(

Depending which of my two forum identities seems to be in use when I view this thread, either I don't see the "Mark as good feedback" links at all (I guess the forum then thinks that I am a normal visitor to the thread, not the OP). Or I do see the "Mark as good feedback" link but when I click it, my feedback doesn't stick. I.e. when I later come back to the thread, the post which I previously marked as "good" does not show the "Good Feedback" icon, but instead still shows the "Mark as good feedback" link that an unmarked post has.
And it's not a case of simply taking a while to propagate through the database, because even if I come back days later, the posts which I previously marked as "good" still show up as unmarked. There must be posts in that thread which I have attempted to mark as "good" about 10 times or so, over several weeks, and they still show up as unmarked. Strangely enough, at the beginning this worked every now and then, so of the first postings in that thread there are some that I was able to mark as "good" (eventually, usually with several tries). But with all the latter posts, I so far had no luck.

Doc

Spyn Doctor:

Since I am refreshing my game with a new playtest build almost every week, my forum accounts is continuously in this schizophrenic state.

Yeap, I'm seeing the same thing on my account again since submitting a game to playtest and peer review. The strange thing is, it's not all the time either... sometimes I'll be Bizzaro-Kris and then I'll be normal Kris. Right now I'm back to normal, but I was my other self earlier today (I most often notice when i view My Discussions and see only 5-6 topics listed).

With Sean leaving, I wonder if this will be fixed anytime soon.

Sometimes during the middle of the night the forum will stop working for me. Usually the whole Indie Games Distribution section goes down and sometimes the rest of the forum along with it. I'm guessing it's being backed up or something during those times.

It usually comes back to normal after an hour or two.

I haven't had any of the crazy problems you have been experiencing though.