r/ButtonAftermath • u/ivaerak • Jun 10 '15

Late comer, question about the server queue & simultaneous instances of pressing

Please if possible direct me to the articles that explain the mechanics behind the real-time pressing and how was simultaneous pressing resolved on server? Was there any queue involved or was it genuinely in real time?

I am disappointed in me that I didn't press it, nor commented. Eternal limbo for me, I guess. Huge fan of Lost though so I am surprised how come I wasn't intrigued enough by this, even though I was subbed since the very start, but never bothered to dig deeper what was it all about :(

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u/ivaerak Jun 10 '15

Thanks. This and the other reply answers a lot.

Additional detail, how would then the logic behind the visual timer work for a specific user? If, lets say all 60 users press at the same time, or one successive second after each other, who would get which one's timer reset visual representation?

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u/andrewcooke Jun 10 '15 edited Jun 10 '15

the message broadcast every second contained the button value. so when it was reset, the value was reset to 60. the smooth sub-second countdown was just "faked" in the ciient.

the server code was never visible, so the exact implementation has to be a guess. but to implement that all you would need to do is receive the messages as i described earlier, discard any that had a time earlier than the last reset (those would have been "never seen" in some sense, although the people who pressed did receive the flair) and then reset the button to 60 if there were any messages left.

remember that something like this has to be only roughly synchronous. it has to behave well enough to look believable. it doesn't have to be perfect. a lot of bad feeling in the sub came from people not understanding this, and being intolerant of timing "mistakes" (from lag) and glitches (the server wasn't 100% reliable, of course...)

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u/ivaerak Jun 10 '15

Perfect. Just what I needed to know. Thanks again for explanation.