Does extern run over the span of a few minutes or is everything pretty much instantaneous? If not instant, does it run a little early or continue AFTER it is set to run?

Hmmm....I seem to have asked a question no one can readily answer...


Traitor! Get on it! [;)]

It takes only seconds for extern to run. It starts at the time it is scheduled to run it will take prolly about 5 seconds or less.

if you pay attention when extern runs and hit C T you will notice the timing. (then check logs to see the new day and port upgrades/planet annoucements)
with a lot of active players and fighters out in space, it will take a tad bit longer to run and clear all those sectors, but you wont really notice it. its all within 5 seconds i believe.

Will Extern run at ALL before its set time for any reason? See I ask because I'm in a game where this player claims it began running lke 4 minutes early. I think he just wants his million experience he lost to a red corpie. [:D]

Extern runs on a 24 hour timer, not a time. So, if for example, the time was set backwards 4 minutes, extern would run (at least from the game's perspective), 4 minutes early. I'm not sure if this behavior was modified in .58 or not.

Tern is supposed to run at midnight on said server.

is the player goin by the game time (c,t) or the time on his taskbar?

Only way it could have ran early, according to server time not his time, would be if a sysop hit the extern button on the server itself. I have seen it run late because of other problems, like running in win2k there is a bug that stops extern in the middle of it and throws up an error and wont complete till you click ok. I have never seen it run early tho...just make sure he is looking at actual server time and not his own clock.

I have seen extern run early and late. Assuming the system time is accurate and isn't messed with (either by the sysop or by an automatic time sync program), then it should start at the scheduled time for the first game. Note that extern only runs in one game at a time, so extern in the 20th game on a given server might run 45 seconds later than extern ran in the first game.

quote:Originally posted by Boss

Only way it could have ran early, according to server time not his time, would be if a sysop hit the extern button on the server itself. I have seen it run late because of other problems, like running in win2k there is a bug that stops extern in the middle of it and throws up an error and wont complete till you click ok. I have never seen it run early tho...just make sure he is looking at actual server time and not his own clock.

I stated already how extern works. It CAN run early, for the reason I already described. It doesn't do a system time check, it goes on tics. Once the right number of tics have elapsed, extern runs, regardless of what the system time says it is. With the change in how TWGS handles system time changes in .58, it may be different now, but I don't think it is.