[Bug] NL v12.10 Long Pause When Both Online Features and Update Check Enabled

[kaywhyn]

Steps to Reproduce:

• Make sure both Online Features and Update Check is Enabled
• Click on empty space on the title screen to go to level preview screen, load a different level pack from the F2 menu, or click on Style Manager from the F3 menu

When doing any of these three actions in Step 2 with both settings enabled, there is an extremely long pause (easily seen because the scroller text stops scrolling) of at least 10-15 seconds. Once the game does unpause, doing these same actions in the same session, i.e, if you haven't yet exited out of NL, will be fine, loading after only a second. After you exit NL, the long pause problem returns. IIRC, the NL player didn't have this problem before the most recent server move when both were enabled, only happening not long after the move was complete, so it might be related to it, but I'm not certain. v12.9.4 and below are not affected, so you can have both settings enabled and there will be no long pause.

A temporary workaround appears to be to have one or both settings disabled. Then there won't be the long pause problem. I have already tried doing an antivirus scan and adding a firewall exception and/or whitelist NL, but these didn't fix the problem. I think before the server move I never had the long pause problem when both settings were enabled on v12.10 or beyond, and I prefer to have them both enabled. In the meantime, one of the settings disabled will do for now.

update: If online features is enabled, the long pause only occurs when clicking style manager or when prompt to download missing styles when trying to load a level with missing styles. The other two occurrences of clicking to go to the preview screen or loading a different level pack will not have the long pause problem when online features is enabled.

[namida]

I had this the first time NL tried to access the server after reformatting my PC, but not again since.

[kaywhyn]

Ok, I tested it on an Asus laptop that I haven't used in years and same thing happens. Only that one has Windows 7, so it happens on both Windows 7 and Windows 10 when both online features and update check are enabled. Not sure if any other Os'es make a difference, eg, MacOS, Linux, etc. It's like I said, I'm not going to reformat the one I currently use, but I have several spare laptops lying around in case I want to test something. Also, from what it sounds like the problem appears to be linked to the code rather than the server side and that it's probably just a case of code cleaning up.

Thanks for looking into this!

[namida]

Alright, so, it's hard to say for sure with this kind of bug, but I've made some changes that will hopefully improve this (and did so in the best equivalent situation I could set up - pointing it to a large file instead, and cancelling while it was downloading).

I don't know exactly what's causing the lag in your case, so I can't say for sure if this will fix it, but here's hoping. This fix will come as part of V12.11.

[kaywhyn]

I know we diagnosed this the last time, but I'm going to go ahead and attach the NL log just to see if there's anything else that can be done. So it's clear  that NL is trying to access the url mentioned in the text file if both online features are enabled. I still have no idea why the long pause is still happening in 12.11. I just decided to enable both again after having only the online update check enabled for months. I also remember the problem going away all of a sudden, but I think it simply started happening again once I rebooted my laptop. 

[namida]

It doesn't look like this will be possible to fix without altogether replacing the internet code with something else - it'd appear something is causing a freeze for about 21.4secs (the time is remarkably consistent!) when initially making the connection to the URL, prior to actually beginning any download from it. In turn, it seems to be impossible to cleanly interrupt the connection during this time - the options are basically either freeze until it's done, or outright crash NL.

I'd still like to get this fixed, but it's going to be one of those ones that gets looked at later rather than sooner unfortunately.

[namida]

kaywhyn has mentioned on Discord that this issue has eventually gone away on its own. This further supports the theory that it's related to security software or similar, and not something within NL's control. As there's no leads on what's causing this in the first place, and I've already put a lot of time into attemping to implement a "cleaner" cancel with no luck, I'm going to close this matter now.