Cannot play

I can get in normally now, so either the server has been fixed or it was a problem specific to your computer. If it's the first then you should be able to get online too, and we don't need to worry anymore. If it's the second we need to look a little closer:

I'm guessing that the "-- Connection..." "-- Reason..." and "-- Exception..." lines are repeated continuously? If so, the format of the error is the same as that in this topic, but there's one important difference: the line

This suggests to me that somehow your comp might be forcing the client to use a character encoding system it doesnt't like (anyone thinking to themselves "character encoding system, what's the strange man blathering on about?", see this wikipedia article). This is a bit of a surprise to me, since I didn't know the client accepted any information from someone's computer until it's loaded, but it's certainly possible (I dont exactly know the inner workings of the code ).

Of course if it was just a server error which has now been fixed this mystery is explained: your computer wasn't neccessarily sending anything to the client. If not, we'll need to find a way to stop your computer sending out this setting, though that may well be above my level of knowledge.

Quick disclaimer before I go: I DO NOT know the code. I DO NOT even understand the coding language being used. I AM NOT an expert. DO NOT trust anything I've said (except this bit ).

HTH
Mr Scrub

EDIT: by Mr Scrub to correct grammar

It was just a server error, I hope

The encoding exception is something different, and this gives me a change to waffle and brag, so I will

ThudGame, unlike most chat clients, accepts a wide range of encodings, so that we can have chinese players talking to eachother and cool stuff like that, while not using too many bytes in normal ascii speech. So normally, you just talk in regular ISO8859-1, unless you use a character like the euro, then it leaps into UTF-8. It'll also support (though this client will never send) UTF-6 and UTF-32, big and littleendian. If the encodings aren't found on your machine (and UTF-8 is required in a java virtual machine according to the standard) then it just does the best it can with what's available, but throws an exception to let you know why the text looks pooched.

Since it checks for these interpreters at load time, rather than at runtime, you'll see the exceptions in your console even before you see any game graphics or anything.

I should probably change the exception to a nice human readable message saying "Couldn't load UTF-8 parser will do the best I can with what I've got."

I'm having the almost the same problem... only on one PC so I assume it's some problem with the java version I have here, which I installed about a week ago :S

I get a constant repetition of the following message:

"Connection lost. Reconnecting...
-- Connection to 66.197.210.71 failed ! --
-- Reason: 'NORMAL' EXCEPTION
-- Exception info: java.io.UnsupportedEncodingException: UTF-8 [Could not load class: sun.io.CharToByteUTF-8]"

it continues until I close the window; can't see anyone else online or chat: i got others to test and it wasn't a server problem.

Any suggestions?

UTF 8 is, I believe, a required encoding for java compatibility. That said, I'll be fixing this in the next release, 2006b, so that it's not considered a fatal error to connect and discover that your java client can't actually display any text sent to it.

For affected users, this should just mean that they see a few strange characters where they expect the euro symbol to be.

That's my guess, anyway, I've no suitably broken system to test it on - maybe you guys can help me with that when I release the 2006b update?

Ah, thanks, prompted me to check and I have an old version of the JRE on this PC; udpated it now and everything's working fine.

Perhaps a link to the sun site for the download might be appropriate in a 'troubleshooting' or in the known issues thread... maybe even a 'non-issues' thread

Jeff...

Darn - if anyone else has this problem, couldja not-fix it? I'm trying to make it compatible with all browser JREs (otherwise, what's the point of writing it in cruddy ol' J1.1?), and I@d really appreciate having someone to test that it works in the archaic ones

I'll have the fix real-soon-now, honest!

Kinda hard thing to ask: "If you have a problem that goes away when you upgrade java, don't upgrade java"

I am also getting

on lost. Reconnecting...
-- Connection to 66.197.210.71 failed ! --
-- Reason: 'NORMAL' EXCEPTION
-- Exception info: java.io.UnsupportedEncodingException: UTF-8 [Could not load class: sun.io.CharToByteUTF-8]
Connection lost. Reconnecting...
-- Connection to 66.197.210.71 failed ! --
-- Reason: 'NORMAL' EXCEPTION
-- Exception info: java.io.UnsupportedEncodingException: UTF-8 [Could not load class: sun.io.CharToByteUTF-8]
Connection lost. Reconnecting...
-- Connection to 66.197.210.71 failed ! --
-- Reason: 'NORMAL' EXCEPTION
-- Exception info: java.io.UnsupportedEncodingException: UTF-8 [Could not load class: sun.io.CharToByteUTF-8]
Connection lost. Reconnecting...
-- Connection to 66.197.210.71 failed ! --
-- Reason: 'NORMAL' EXCEPTION
-- Exception info: java.io.UnsupportedEncodingException: UTF-8 [Could not

I have not changed anything yet so if you want details of my settings email me and tell me were to find the version numbers of what you want. The pc that i am trying this on is runs IE on XP Home edition which should have all the XPHome microsoft patches.

SANEAlex

Old JREs without UTF8 support are now (I hope) permitted to connect and play, and should get a single intelligible warning as they connect, instead of constant spammy exceptions. Whether the text will display OK, especially when people use the euro symbol, I don't know.

Other "Normal" and "Security" exceptions have been replaced with intelligible errors.

Please let me know if it continues not to work, and any other problems you have - I'll do what I can!