Tech Help: Resources and info on chat update

This thread is meant to be a resource index, since so much info is scattered. This is not a discussion thread or a thread to argue with each other over why you do or don’t like the new chat. Arguments and complaints will be removed; there are plenty of threads for that.

Only post here if you have resources, links, info, etc as to how you fixed any chat issues you had.

If you are experiencing technical difficulties, please make sure to uninstall your Flash Player completely first and then update to the latest plugin. Please also fill out Kongregate’s bug report by clicking the bug icon in the “Game” tab in the chat box.

Doesn’t work?
   * Fill out this form if you are having issues: http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=cEd1cWdMYlZ4NzJ5TlRjaV9ieWU2RlE6MA..
   * Fill out Kongregate’s bug report by clicking the bug icon in the “Game” tab in the chat box.

Does work?
   * Post here if the new chat works for you

Flash Player

   * Find your Flash version here
   * Uninstall the player by following the instructions here (Quicklink: Win Player Uninstaller)
   * Get the lastest Flash player here

Notes
   * Whitelist Kongregate on Ad-block
   * Updating your browser is obviously recommended
   * Read Emily Greer’s posts for information on what is being fixed

Other
   * Chat tutorial

Update
#posts-876760

Room full bug

Originally posted by emily_greer:

Good news, we got the full room bug fixed after all. Val, yup, Anthony is documenting all the bugs/fixes. And if you see one of those big avatars please report it as inappropriate and we’ll resize it.

Lag Issues

Originally posted by emily_greer:

this seems to be a problem mostly for people on XP/IE 7/Flash 10. We don’t know what’s causing it yet but will get it taken care of as quickly as we can.

Connection problems

Originally posted by emily_greer:

this is our highest priority bug right now. The vast majority of the problems are for people with XP/FF 3.08 or 3.09/Flash 10 and we’re getting a handle on that issue right now. People with unusual versions of Flash are having trouble, too — Flash 8 or earlier, and the 64 bit alpha for linux — but we may not be able to fix those, and instead prompt an upgrade.

Classic mode: Reverting to the old version

Originally posted by emily_greer:

And no, we’re not going to have old chat come back or allow people to play in classic mode. That doesn’t mean your concerns won’t be addressed.

Achievements

Originally posted by emily_greer:
we’re going to add the badges back down below the game and look at the design of the achievements tab to see if we can have all the goals show at once.

General Comments

Originally posted by emily_greer:

Actually you can still do this — switching between room chat and game chat is an option under chat options on multiplayer games. Because you’re still logged into both you can still see the full history so while it’s a little less obvious the functionality is essentially the same.

And no, we’re not going to have old chat come back or allow people to play in classic mode. That doesn’t mean your concerns won’t be addressed.

Originally posted by emily_greer:

the majority of Kongregators do not like the new layout

I think the majority of Kongregators who can’t login or have a lot of lag don’t like the new layout, which is fair enough because that sucks, but once we resolve those things and the achievements I expect they’ll like it fine.

Notes
If you are using Flashblock for Firefox, than the button to load the chat’s flash movie might be somewhat hidden. Usually it located on the bottom right “under” the game area (see screenshot).

This is not really Kongregate’s problem, more an old bug in FlashBlock, but it did not occur that often until now…

aC, you can go ahead and add my chat tutorial thing on here. It is not necessarily a fix, but it does show how to use the chat. I will be updating it every time I get a scrap of information.

I was going to make one of these myself, thanks for doing it for me ;) The one thing I want to add is

Muting Chat:

Originally posted by emily_greer:
On muting chat — we can consider adding back a mute all button, though our goal with this was to make it so that there was no chat-induced lag, so there should be no difference between having chat muted and leaving it on another tab. Since all of our testing has shown chat to be much faster we’re trying to figure out why some of you reporting similar or worse lag.

The lag is because of separate issues (that we’re working to fix), not the lack of a mute button. If you put chat on the game or achievement tab it will stay there even when you load new games so it’s actually more effective than our old mute button.

You can get into a room if it is full, If your firend is online in a full room if you go onto your friendslist in the chat and click Join Impossible Is Nothing (<—Example) Then you may join.

So will there be a mute button and or a way to have less lagg
Emily(Mod) said that this will hopefully reduce the lagg

I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that we’ve figured out how to fix the connection issues. The bad news is that it’s a complicated fix that has the potential to break a lot of other things, so it’s going to take us few days to fix it and test it thoroughly to ensure we don’t create more problems by fixing this one. In the meantime I suggest using either the Chrome browser on Windows (http://www.google.com/chrome) or the Safari browser on Mac if you’re having troubles, as they do not appear to be suffering from either disconnection problems or lag.

Our deepest apologies for the trouble this is causing people. We’re working very hard to get it fixed in Firefox and Internet Explorer, and will get those fixes up as soon as we safely can.

The issue is that the Safari browser on Mac is now giving me troubles. I’ve attempted to Reset Safari various times, cleared cache, but the browser still has issues when loading chat. I can load chat, but for some odd reason, Safari can’t load other people’s levels, avatars. Everyone’s pictures turn into weird boxed blue question marks.

How to Fix: This is how I fixed it. I first cleared my cache, Rest Safari, and every time the same problem as shown above appeared, I refreshed the page itself. After doing a refresh three times, I was able to get the chat to load properly and once chat loaded, the game loaded.

I reported that the chat locked my whole browser. But after one or two minutes, it seems to give up loading the chat and the game loads. That gave me an idea for a work-around : before loading the chat, write the current time to the hard drive, and once the chat is loaded, clear it if the difference is less than 10s os so. Now, check for that timestamp before loading the chat and if you find it, don’t load the chat.
That should make some users happier. =)

I’m using Opera on Linux (Debian unstable, 64-bit platform). The new chat doesn’t load for me, a uniform gray tab appears instead, with no loading symbol. The game info tab shows correctly, with all the info, and the achievements tab comes up gray with a loading symbol on it. When playing Kongai, the game chat seems to show up correctly, but I see no text and cannot enter text (if I press the return key, it seems to begin a new paragraph but doesn’t submit the line).

Originally posted by AlisonClaire:

I was going to make one of these myself, thanks for doing it for me ;) The one thing I want to add is

Muting Chat:

Originally posted by emily_greer:
On muting chat — we can consider adding back a mute all button, though our goal with this was to make it so that there was no chat-induced lag, so there should be no difference between having chat muted and leaving it on another tab. Since all of our testing has shown chat to be much faster we’re trying to figure out why some of you reporting similar or worse lag.

The lag is because of separate issues (that we’re working to fix), not the lack of a mute button. If you put chat on the game or achievement tab it will stay there even when you load new games so it’s actually more effective than our old mute button.

Simply as an observation: I think some people like to mute chat not because of issues with lag but instead because they prefer not to read the sometimes less than intelligent chat.

I think people generally handle change a little better when they know more what to expect and features they’re used to having access to don’t simply disappear.

However, regardless of the bugs I’d like to express my appreciation to the staff and programmers who’ve done a tremendous job not only with the redesign but with the resulting fallout that occurred.

There are a few things I don’t care for but they don’t outweigh the many new benefits to even begin to worry about.

Hopefully that’s some small modicum of encouragement! Thanks again!!

OPERA/FIREFOX SILENCE ON LOAD GLITCH

I have experienced this glitch twice so far, as have several other users. If you experience this issue, doing a page refresh 1 or 2 times seems effective.

We just released some changes to the site that we believe should fix most of the connection problems Firefox users have been having, plus a fix for special characters in private messages and several other smaller bugs.

We are still working on the lag fixes but are making good progress and expect to release some fixes for that at and some additional bugs on Monday or Tuesday.

If you are still experiencing disconnection issues please help us further diagnose by filling out this quick survey. Thanks for your patience!

I find that the one thing that creates really much lag, is if people enter or leave a chatroom. This is the same reason why loading the chat lags – 100 people “enter” the room!

Perhaps it’s worth optimizing that code?

All right guys, it seems that with the recent repairs you have made we got some improvements in this new chat. I’m still using IE, but somehow now i can enjoy the chat.
I can’t play, because there’s too much lag yet… but i believe that things will only improve in the next few days, right?

Keep it up!!!

Originally posted by Pimgd:

I find that the one thing that creates really much lag, is if people enter or leave a chatroom. This is the same reason why loading the chat lags – 100 people “enter” the room!

Perhaps it’s worth optimizing that code?

Yup, that’s one of the things we’re working on. That plus some other changes should help a lot, but we need to do a little more work and a lot more testing before we can release it on the site. We’re hoping to get it out tomorrow or Tuesday.

Originally posted by explodingferret:

Yep, same here. I had it working on linux/amd64 by using the 32-bit plugin in the emulator, but some time in the last couplo of hours or so it broke.

To clarify:

BEFORE CHAT UPDATE: Everything worked perfectly, all the time

AFTER 04/22 UPDATE: Chat/Achievements broke with 64-bit plugin, some games crashed browser. Emulated 32-bit plugin still worked (albeit slowly)

AFTER TODAY: Chat/Achievements completely broken in all circumstances, some games crash.

:(

On the plus side the ‘report bug’ link now works.

Um, OK, ignore that. It’s probably just something I changed on this end, or a momentary glitch, because it works now.

What I’ve actually done since then is set up an entire 32-bit browser and all the libraries it needs, duplicated my profile, and am now running a separate browser just for kongregate. I’ve coloured it a spiffy black so I can easily tell it apart from my 64-bit browser.

um i got Google chrome and it eliminated all of the lag for me i pretty sure i have flash player 10 so if u get Google chrome and use it it fixes lag

Well, it happened again. a few hours back it worked perfectly, could see achievments and chat, no problemo. but now its broken

So we just figured out another bug: the Firebug 1.4 alpha release is incompatible with some of the ajax calls we are making, making it impossible for people to connect. If you are using Firebug and having connection problems please revert back to 1.3 and it should be okay.

We’re still working hard on fixing lag issues and hope to have an update out either tonight or tomorrow with some fixes.