[Worf Son of Mogh]

Update: "Unearned achievements" are back. User_id was being reset improperly, causing a security check in the Unearned Achivements script to say, "Hang on, these aren't your achievements!" and abort. The issue with not being able to view others' achievement lists had the same cause. Both are now corrected.

Seems like that's something that could be dialed back to save processor time - perhaps to a button on the deckbuilder for "show me what this deck qualifies for"?

This is a possibility. It's been really nice the last 24 hours being able to check skill counts without waiting on the page to do a full-scale achievement check.

As some one who heavily uses the deck builder and achievements systems, I can say Having the achievement check be something i can trigger separately, just when i need to check it would be GREAT, I always want my decks entered ahead of time before I play them to make sure I did stuff right and if load/save times could be sped up in general and then i can trigger the achievement check when i need to towards the end would be great.
EXTRA bonus if the achievement check could be triggered on the deck as it stands with out having to save it, so if your trying to adjust ratios to get a x% affiliation right you can add a person trigger the check, add another etc. with out spending time saving the deck in between.

[Resistance-is-futile]

Yeah I agree as the sets grow and achievements grow the programming script gets longer and longer


Something should be done as load times in deck builder are very long sometimes unresponsive

[BCSWowbagger]

Seems like that's something that could be dialed back to save processor time - perhaps to a button on the deckbuilder for "show me what this deck qualifies for"?

UPDATE:

For one, Allen's suggestion is happening. It hasn't happened yet, but I've started writing the code. The plan is for decks to be re-checked for achievements in only the following cases:

(1) There will be a button in Deck Builder that says "Achievements", which will check the deck for achievements and list the results for the user.

(2) There will be a button on all Deck Lists that says "Check Achievements," which will check the deck for achievements and list the results for the user.

(3) When the deck is made public, achievements will be checked automatically and included in future deck listings. This is the only automatic achievement check that will happen.

(4) During new achievement releases, when already-public decks may be eligible for some of the new achievements, they will be rechecked (for the new achievements only) as part of the release process.

Throttles may be put in place to prevent too many users from checking their decks at once, given what happened last week. But my hope is that this will dramatically reduce the number of achievement checks the system is trying to do, and so it will be safe even without throttles. We'll see. (Also, see below about what anguss is working on. His plan is really what's going to save achievements from resource-consumption hell in the end.)

After this is safely in place, I'll run manual achievement checks for the past several days of public, recently-updated decks. Then the nightly achievements check will come back online. Then everything will be sunshine and roses, and I can get back to my original job, which was -- remember way back when? -- to get May 2016 achievements working.

For two, I've been in touch with SirRogue, and we are starting (starting!) to think about how we can empower him more. SirRogue did his part for the May 2016 achievement stuff; the bottleneck was a bunch of manual work that Maelwys needed to do but couldn't. I don't have the time to take up everything Mael was doing, so the future of achievements will depend on us figuring out how we can navigate that.

For three, anguss has been busy as a beaver digging into the SQL side of this. I handed him the most time-consuming query I could find (the TNG Federation Player query), and he handed me back an optimized query that used a fraction of the memory on my local database. I have now sent him ALL the SQL used by achievements, and we're going to test his optimization on the live site. He believes -- and I agree -- that the best way to improve the reliability of the achievements system is to go through every achievement one-by-one and optimize them each (possibly transforming them from single queries into stored procedures). So we're now trying to figure out exactly how we want to skin that cat, because there are (obviously) several hundred queries involved.

EDIT: Added the fourth case where achievements will be checked.

[CaptMDKirk]

Outstanding update, well done. Kudos for your hard work thus far.

[LORE]

Outstanding update, well done. Kudos for your hard work thus far.

+1

If ever there were nominees for "Community Contributor" badges, I am pretty sure James and Andrey will have earned those by the end of this.

[Armus]

Outstanding update, well done. Kudos for your hard work thus far.

+1

If ever there were nominees for "Community Contributor" badges, I am pretty sure James and Andrey will have earned those by the end of this.

Your nomination suggestions are noted. Thank you for your input.

[Worf Son of Mogh]

Outstanding update, well done. Kudos for your hard work thus far.

+1

If ever there were nominees for "Community Contributor" badges, I am pretty sure James and Andrey will have earned those by the end of this.

Your nomination suggestions are noted. Thank you for your input.

Seconded.

[BCSWowbagger]

UPDATE:

* This is very minor, but the images for Replicant Player and Do Androids Dream of Electric Tribbles? are up now. Thanks to Maelwys and Kamala for creating and sending me all the images for the May 2016 achievements!

* This is done:

(1) There will be a button in Deck Builder that says "Achievements", which will check the deck for achievements and list the results for the user.

(2) There will be a button on all Deck Lists that says "Check Achievements," which will check the deck for achievements and list the results for the user.

* It's been up for a day, actually, and the site hasn't crashed. This bodes well. Let's see if it holds up now that I've announced it.

* Still working on this:

(3) When the deck is made public, achievements will be checked automatically and included in future deck listings. This is the only automatic achievement check that will happen.

After this is safely in place, I'll run manual achievement checks for the past several days of public, recently-updated decks. Then the nightly achievements check will come back online.

* Andrey is sick, so I don't expect anything to happen with that today, but his last message to me says that we may not need to fix every query. We may be able to improve performance by fixing a subset of them. That would be fantastic. I'm supposed to turn on the slow query log so we can identify with certainty the most time-consuming queries -- but haven't had time to do it yet.

EDIT: Oh, and, thanks, guys, for the kind words. It's appreciated.

EDIT2: Like, five minutes after I wrote this, Andrey PM'd me with a bunch of new findings. He's pushing through!

[SirRogue]

* This is done:

(1) There will be a button in Deck Builder that says "Achievements", which will check the deck for achievements and list the results for the user.
(2) There will be a button on all Deck Lists that says "Check Achievements," which will check the deck for achievements and list the results for the user.

And it is amazing! At least as exciting as the Achievement buttons addition is how fast everything loads. Opening decks, saving decks, reloading decks. Like lightning!

I've been corresponding with James and passing along my praise offline, but add my voice to the public chorus of "well done"s and community contributor nominations.

[Cmdr Xym]

Not sure where this fits into the priority of getting things working, but there's several achievements that are still broken (no one is getting them).

[BCSWowbagger]

UPDATE:

This is done now:

(3) When the deck is made public, achievements will be checked automatically and included in future deck listings. This is the only automatic achievement check that will happen.

After this is safely in place, I'll run manual achievement checks for the past several days of public, recently-updated decks. Then the nightly achievements check will come back online.

There was an achievement run this afternoon, and there will be another tonight to pick up a few stragglers.

...and then we should be all caught up! Achievements are officially back online.

anguss continues his work on optimization, and Mogor has generously volunteered to help with that effort.

Meanwhile, I turn my attention tomorrow and next week to the remaining broken achievements -- all from May 2016. The full list of broken achievements is (UPDATING as they are repaired):

Just Like Old Times
Deep Roots
TOS Empire Player
Fear Will Keep Them In Line
Insert Undercover Agent
Issue Secret Orders
A Long Road
Reach Any Star
Ignored Jurisdiction
Defiant Reprisal
Children of the Light
Good Casting: Warner
Good Casting: Warner (Gorkon)
Good Casting: Warner (Madred)
Good Casting: Warner (St. John Talbot)
Great Casting: Warner
Great Casting: Warner (Gorkon)
Great Casting: Warner (Madred)
Great Casting: Warner (St. John Talbot)
Party Player
Let's Get This Party Started
Targeting Player
Spy vs. Spy
[May Hidden Achievement #1]
[May Hidden Achievement #2]

If, as of Friday morning, you still have a busted achievement that's NOT on this list, then I want to hear about it.

If it IS on this list, then know that we are working on it.

EDIT: What I'm really curious about is... will somebody win the hidden achievements the moment we fix it? I honestly have no idea.

[Resistance-is-futile]

Nice job James

[CaptMDKirk]

While you're in there, if you could, please change the "John Warner" achievements to "David Warner".

[Jono]

While you're in there, if you could, please change the "John Warner" achievements to "David Warner".

The Warner achievements also need to be in their own sub-folder like the other casting achievements

[Hobie]

Not sure if this is related or an issue (if it even is an issue), but the green news banner on the main page says:

"@Sblm Looks that way. Will contact appropriate people but it's 4 am Pacific time so may be awhile."

It is a fun puzzle to try and figure out what it is talking about though.