Help figuring the RES internals

Accipiter · June 25, 2022, 10:56am

Excellent questions, and impressive analysis of the code

Question 1

All pending requests should instantly complete with a system.disconnect error code if the WebSocket connection is disconnected. Admittedly, neither the C# library, nor the Javascript does this! I need to fix that! Thanks for pointing it out!
But yes, a response should be guaranteed, usually within the default timeout duration of 3 seconds. However, a response may exceed this timeout duration by having the service extend it, or if the response contains nested data/resources that requires more time to fetch.

Question 2

The protocol currently does not support transitioning of resources into different types, including transitioning an error to a model/collection, or the other way around.
This is usually a non-issue, but the most common case when it can cause trouble is during service restarts. The scenario could looke like this:

Service A shuts down for restart
Client fetches collection from service B. Collection contains references to resources on service A.
Resgate fetches collection from B, but when following references to service A, it gets no response and generates notFound errors.
Resgate returns collection to client, including notFound errors.
Service A is restarted.

In the above steps, the client would end up with errored resources, and would need to reload in order to fetch them. Reload is possible since Resgate, unlike the client, does not cache errors.

As said, this has never been much of an issue; if it would become one, it could be solved by updating Resgate and the RES protocol with one additional event. But this would also add to client complexity.

Or did you see some other scenario where transitioning from errors might be needed?

farcaller · June 25, 2022, 11:43am

By reload there-- what exactly do you mean? There’s no specific mechanism I found to purge an object from cache so any call to server that returns a non-errored response won’t update it.

It’s a bit of a theoretical issue for now, I haven’t stumbled on any errored resources yet and I couldn’t find any specific handling of those in the mucklet’s source code.

farcaller · June 26, 2022, 4:17pm

And 3. Is there any protocol-level ping or anything that’d work like one? (I want to make sure there’s some keepalive traffic going over the WS).

farcaller · June 26, 2022, 4:43pm

never mind #3, I just found $character.ping call

farcaller · June 26, 2022, 6:50pm

The docs example for Change event object seems wrong as it’s missing the values within data.

Accipiter · June 26, 2022, 8:20pm

Oh!! You are perfectly right. I will update the docs!
Thanks for pointing it out!

The character ping is no keepalive for the WebSocket, but for keeping characters awake.
However, the RES protocol relies on the underlying protocols (WebSocket/TCP) to keep the connection alive.

farcaller · June 26, 2022, 9:04pm

Yeah no, can’t quite trust that. My reasoning is that TCP is at most a keepalive to the LB and WS’s ping is at most reaching the gateway. I guess keeping the characters awake is a reasonable side-effect for what I want to have (i.e. I want to hear from that specific backend).

farcaller · June 27, 2022, 4:50pm

Actually the ping doesn’t seem to prevent idling. What’s the best thing to counter that? I guess I can make the bot go “hmm” every once in a while but other than that?

Xetem · June 27, 2022, 4:59pm

The way I did it with my bot was sending a look me after every ping.

farcaller · June 27, 2022, 4:59pm

sounds like smoke and mirrors solution!

Accipiter · June 27, 2022, 7:56pm

This works perfectly fine and has no overhead to speak of.
But I guess we should have something to set active and idle state as well.
Maybe just a single setActiveState command?

farcaller · June 30, 2022, 4:45pm

I’d help me a lot if you could provide me with a schema (fields, their types and optionality) for the out event, it looks like I’m missing a couple fields here and there and I’d prefer to deserialize it proper instead of guesstimating.

Accipiter · July 1, 2022, 8:34am

Sure!
I will include all event types emitted to characters. I have excluded player events (such as broadcast) as they could be defined separately.

If the type is written within [brackets], it may be omitted. An omitted boolean will default to false.

General definitions

Event base

Properties used by all events.

Property	Type	Desc
`id`	string	Unique event ID
`type`	string	Event type
`time`	number	Unix timestamp in milliseconds
`sig`	string	Digital signature

Character object

Properties for character objects nested in events.

Property	Type	Desc
`id`	string	Character ID
`name`	string	Character name
`surname`	string	Character surname

Room object

Properties for room objects nested in events.

Property	Type	Desc
`id`	string	Room ID
`name`	string	Room name

Events

Message events

Event types: info

Additional property	Type	Desc
`msg`	string	Message text

Character message events

Events types: say, pose, wakeup, sleep, leave, arrive, describe, action

Additional property	Type	Desc
`char`	character object	Character sending the message
`puppeteer`	[character object]	Puppeteer controlling character
`msg`	string	Message text

Character poseable message events

Events types: ooc

Additional property	Type	Desc
`char`	character object	Character sending the message
`puppeteer`	[character object]	Puppeteer controlling character
`msg`	string	Message text
`pose`	[boolean]	Flag if message should be formatted as a pose

Targeted character message events

Events types: whisper, message, warn, mail, address, controlRequest

Additional property	Type	Desc
`char`	character object	Character sending the message
`puppeteer`	[character object]	Puppeteer controlling character
`target`	character object	Targeted character
`msg`	string	Message text
`pose`	[boolean]	Flag if message should be formatted as a pose
`ooc`	[boolean]	Flag if message should be formatted as OOC

Target room message events

Events types: travel

Additional property	Type	Desc
`char`	character object	Character sending the message
`puppeteer`	[character object]	Puppeteer controlling character
`targetRoom`	room object	Target room
`msg`	string	Message text

Targeted char events

Events types: summon, join, leadRequest, followRequest, follow, stopFollow, stopLead

Additional property	Type	Desc
`char`	character object	Character sending the message
`puppeteer`	[character object]	Puppeteer controlling character
`target`	character object	Targeted character

I think I’ve got them all.

farcaller · July 1, 2022, 3:40pm

There’s quite more than I discovered, thanks! Could you add me a puppet on the test server (or convert my second char into one) for experiments?

Accipiter · July 1, 2022, 3:47pm

The test server is a replicate of Wolfery, and it is restored from Wolfery’s backups every 24 hours; anything not on Wolfery will be wiped, including any puppet I create. Instead, you can go to Miranda (Miranda’s Café), and type:

register puppet Miranda

Once I’ve accepted that request, you will have a puppet to control.
To try out the controlRequest, you could register Miranda twice using two different characters of yours. Then you can try take control between them.

Once done registering puppets, you have to wait for the backup restore (00:15 UTC time… I think. Or was it CET?).

Accipiter · July 7, 2022, 3:59pm

2 posts were split to a new topic: [Bug] Client tried to subscribe to deleted exit

farcaller · July 7, 2022, 4:36pm

Sometimes core.tooActive returns {seconds: xx} but other times there are no seconds in the data. What’s in there? Every time it failed on that side I had the traffic tracing off

Accipiter · July 7, 2022, 7:28pm

If core.tooActive contains no seconds, it is <= 1 second.
The data property returned in error messages is meant only for text formatting and localization purpose, so it isn’t really intended to be used as a reliable source of info.

The flood detection feature determines if a player is allowed to issue a command right away, of if they will get the core.tooActive error.

Which commands are you interested in knowing the cost of?

farcaller · July 7, 2022, 7:28pm

I don’t think I care about cost accounting client-side much, at this point, I’d rather try, fail, and wait for however long the server tells me.

The commands I do are limited to teleporting and room/exit management, though:

github.com

farcaller/mrm/blob/master/lib/agent.dart#L58


  });
}
dispose() {
  client.dispose();
}
ResModel get player => _player!;
ResModel get ctrl => _ctrl!;
_teleport(String roomId) async {
  if (ctrl['inRoom']['id'] == roomId) {
    logger.debug('already in #$roomId, skipping teleport');
    return;
  }
  _finishMove = Completer();
  await client.call(ctrl.rid, 'teleport', params: {'roomId': roomId});
  await _finishMove!.future;
}
teleport(Room room) async {

IcoTwilight · August 2, 2023, 10:53am

Update:

Targeted character message events

Events types: whisper, message, warn, mail, address, controlRequest

Additional property	Type	Desc
`char`	character object	Character sending the message
`puppeteer`	[character object]	Puppeteer controlling character
`target`	character object	Targeted character
`targets`	[list of character objects]	Targeted characters
`msg`	string	Message text
`pose`	[boolean]	Flag if message should be formatted as a pose
`ooc`	[boolean]	Flag if message should be formatted as OOC

Future:

Targeted character message events

Events types: whisper, message, warn, mail, address, controlRequest

Additional property	Type	Desc
`char`	character object	Character sending the message
`puppeteer`	[character object]	Puppeteer controlling character
`targets`	list of character objects	Targeted characters
`msg`	string	Message text
`pose`	[boolean]	Flag if message should be formatted as a pose
`ooc`	[boolean]	Flag if message should be formatted as OOC