how come somebody can move 5 tiles at once?

[Guest]

ive seen a couple of times that we were about 3 in the mosaic, and about 5 mosaics were moved to the same place at the same time... are there a button so i can move several mosaics with one click? that would help me making some space in new mosaics

[Ikelim]

What's happening is that it refreshes every 5 seconds, which is when all the tiles move at the same time.

[guest]

no it updates every 1 second

[Ikelim]

Nope, 5 seconds, I can count.

Edit: Oh wait, you're right.
Damn I should sleep more.

[El duderino]

Dude, I've seen it update in less than 1 second, and more than 3 seconds. I figure it depends on the server load!

I am programmer myself so I can understand what's going on .. . the more people moving tiles as the the same time, the lower your update speed (or that's what I think is happening).

From what I gather, most updates are like every two seconds so it looks like people are moving more than one tile at once, I guess.

[Ikelim]

ahh! I must have been counting when there were more people on.. Now it updates quickly.

[Markus W]

The typical update frequency is once per second. How often it really updates depends on your own connection speed. The one second is BETWEEN updates.

Then there is the time delay after sending your browser's request to the server, the server responding, and the message coming back to your server, being processed by your browser's Javascript engine. This second time period ranges between 0.3 seconds up to 1 second.

Sometimes, with net congestion, your browser may not even be able to send in the request. Or, it doesn't get one back. Sometimes connections do drop and "packets" are lost! Or the server is busy and can't respond quickly. This may mean that it takes longer than your usual 1-2 seconds, and then you typically see a lot of tiles move at once.

Be that as it may, we're quite proud with how the system works, so that even when you lose connection completely, or the net is slow, or your connection has a problem - you're never out of sync and always see what everyone else sees.

More about that in our blog:

http://www.thebroth.com/blog/106/player-synchronisation-and-z-index


For those who were present a few days ago when we got hit by being on the digg.com frontpage: We actually had to temporarily reduce the update frequency to 5 seconds in order to cope with several hundred people dragging tiles at once! Our server sure got a workout and we had a hard time trying to keep it alive. We sure learnt a thing or two about MySql (the underlying database used for TheBroth) under heavy load!

[xercess]

It would be nice to have something like a "palm" tool where you can move group of titles


*Like you put your palm on puzzle pieces to move/slide them"

[HaxR3]

yeah but then it would make it easier for the wreckers

[Frank Chen]

Oh~~~that's why....

[Portia]

i agree that it would be nice to move more than one tile at a time but i also think that it would be easy for the people who wreck your fun...

[misspie]

I agree that a palm tool to pick up more than one tile would be nice. I think this would be a great feature to add in "Private Rooms" with passwords. This would avoid the paranoia of having a "wrecker" use this tool. It would make it a lot easier for people to create their artwork.

[KarateGirl]

i dont mind moving only 1 tile at once, eventho it CAN become annoying when ur hiding tiles or moving a group of em to another place...but oh well, i like it how it is now.~

[BigTel]

Moving in bulk...Heck what's wrong with a shovel?...Oh and a tip for those who have tiles left over and don't know what to do with them...Tippex...messes the screen up a bit but it works...

[Portia]

yeah i agree with bigtel nearly all my works have tiles thatneed to be covered so tipex would be nice! x