Re: [simspark-devel] Countdown for Atlanta

[Joschka B. <jbo...@un...>]

Hi Yuan,

Yuan Xu wrote:
> Hi Joschka,
>
>
>   
>>  .... If the
>> application is too busy for SDL to create appropriate events, do you
>> think it would make sense to have an other application ("referee") that
>> connects to the server as a monitor and sends commands using the trainer
>> protocol? This way we could make the game kick of and do drop ball at
>> least...
>>     
>
> I can try it tomorrow.
>
>   

OK, great! Please note that the TrainerCommandParser will probably have 
to be adapted to the new agent (the current version probably only moves 
one body of the agent, since the spheres only had one body).

>> .... We could maybe ask teams
>> what they think about both of these changes. If people don't mind, we
>> could go ahead and do it, I guess ;-)
>>     
>
> OK, a discussion in the mail-list?
>
>   

Yes, exactly. I can write an email to the list later today or tomorrow.

>   
>> One more issue is that we have to make a definite decision about which
>> version of the timer to use in Atlanta soon.
>>     
>
> That's right. It is very important for my work.
>
>   
>> Ideal scenario
>> =========
>> ...
>> Options
>> =====
>>
>> The above can be implemented using threads or just in a single run loop
>> having different timing values for the different perceptors/effectors.
>>
>>     
>
> I hope my patch can meet the requirement.
> In the patch,
> vision perceptor runs at 25Hz ( the perceptor interval can can be set
> in rsg by setInterval ),
> render loop and monitor loop run at 25Hz,
> others run at 50Hz.
>
>   

Perfect! :-D

>> I think you implemented both options already (correct me if I'm wrong).
>> In my opinion, if the threaded version runs stably, this would be the
>> preferred option since it really boosts performance. However, if we
>> can't be sure that it runs stably, we should go with the single-threaded
>> version. Stability is more important than performance for the competition.
>>     
>
> Yes, you are right.
> The server can be configured in threaded or single thread mode in my
> patch, by calling method SimulationServer::SetMultiThreads(bool).
> I set the server run in single thread in the
> sparkSetupMonitorLogPlayer, so that the log player can run properly.
>
>   

Wow, that's even better than I thought. Just using a switch in the 
configuration file, we can use just a single-thread or the 
multi-threaded version? Awesome!

> I hope we can make the threaded server stable.
> I have fixed the bug which happened while agent connecting/disconnectiong.
>
>   

It runs stable on my laptop now, and it's quite fast! I can run 10 
agents with the integrated monitor and the rendering is still at 
acceptable speed. The only problem is the input not being usable then 
(the problem we already discussed).

With the single-threaded version, I can now run 6 agents on my laptop, 
which is great 'cause it means we can have 3 vs 3 games for sure :-)

One problem that I noticed was that there is an error message repeated 
many many times when an agent disconnects (something like 
"AgentDisappear called for unknown agent id", I'll write more detail 
later), both in the single-threaded and the mulit-threaded versions. 
Other than that, the server runs very stable in both configurations for 
me now :-)

>> We should make a decision about this on Saturday of this week (06/02).
>> On Monday of next week (06/04), we should try to release RC1 for
>> Atlanta, and shortly after that (maybe 06/09), we should make a final
>> release.
>>
>> Do you think we can keep this schedule? Please let me know what you think.
>>     
>
> I think we can.
> I will test the server as much as I can ;-)
>   

Great, thanks a lot.

>   
>> Also, as soon as you have a new patch for the latest CVS version, could
>> you please send it to me so that I can create a branch in the CVS?
>>
>>     
>
> The patch is here:
> http://xuyuan.cn.googlepages.com/rcssserver3D-timer-cvs0705310335.pat.bz2
>   

Thanks for providing the patch so quickly. I will commit some other 
changes to the main branch now and then create a new branch for the 
version with your timer. This should make developing and testing much 
easier.

> PS: the cvs updates so quickly, 

Working hard over here, too ;-) There's still so much work to do...

> I tested the patch, there are unknown
> some materials(such as "matLeft"),
> I think it is not the matter of patch. 

Yes, I also noticed that, thanks. I'll fix this in a minute.

> I need to sleep now ;-)
>
>   

I hope you could recover a little. Thanks for your efforts and keep up 
the good work!

Cheers,
Joschka