Hello,
I just want to give a short sitrep on what the go is with the Altis Life server freezing/crashing as often as it does.
What we know:
From what we have recorded over the last few days, the server freezes between 20 and 80 players.
It involves failing to send network messages and swift build up of allocated memory.
Sometimes (although very rarely) it can recover from a freeze, however it will usually crash for using up all allocated resources.
What we have tried so far:
Completely reworked most network based ingame systems to lower the number of messages sent as much as possible (wanted list, gangs and auction house just to name a few).
Added support and started using a headless client. The headless client takes a load off the server by doing all database related tasks and runs server based processes (eg: cleanup loop, missions, etc). By doing this we ensure the server can focus on doing what it needs do, instead of spending time on all the things we add on top.
Trialed allowing extra memory to be used by the server, but it just made the server take longer to crash after it froze.
Trialed custom memory allocators. The crashes were still happening so we reverted back to the original malloc.
Running performance server binaries. This means we are a step above the main branch server executable with loads of stability improvements and memory leak fixes, while still remaining playable by main branch clients.
What our options are from here:
Continue to rework more systems (eg: house crates, dropped items, etc) until we have reworked everything.
Sit tight until 64-bit is released and hope it fixes all our problems.
Move the server onto a clean host and experiment with that to see if things change.
Something you could do while we work this out is update your arma 3 client to the latest performance binary. It may not help at all however if we all try to keep as up to date as possible it could make a difference. Simply download the performance client zip, drag the exe out of the zip, rename it to arma3.exe and replace the arma3.exe in your arma 3 directory with it. The binaries linked above are released by dwarden, a developer at Bohemia Interactive.
I understand this is frustrating for everyone who is involved with Altis Life, but if we can all be patient and soldier on for a little bit longer, we will have this fixed up.
Regards,
Connor