What is causing this impossibly long return time in AC Brotherhood on the PS3?

Question

I just sent the assassin recruits on a normal quest, but now, it shows this impossibly large number (ending in e+17) for all of my twelve recruits:

Is this a known bug? And if so, can I fix this?

I don't fancy waiting several billion years for this to finish...

Guess I can't use any assassin signals going forward - or restarting the whole game.

Wow - is your PS3's clock set correctly? I don't know if it uses that somehow for this or not. Asides from that, thats certainly a bug... but I can't find anything else about it on the internet — Timmy Jim, Commented Feb 15 at 21:03
@TimmyJim I'm not sure it's set correctly, and I've moved it recently. However, I've run hundreds of quests and never had that problem after moving, this appeared after making them all full-blown assassins. Also, my PS3 isn't connected to the network. — Vincent Guttmann, Commented Feb 15 at 21:25
@TimmyJim talk about egg on my face. I turned my console clock an hour back and everything is fine. — Vincent Guttmann, Commented Feb 15 at 21:44
That would probably make a nice entry for the current "Screenshot of the Week #109". — Daniel Schepler, Commented Feb 17 at 0:23
Here's a curiousity: the value seems suspiciously close to 0x444444444444444. — Siguza, Commented Feb 19 at 1:45

Vincent Guttmann · Accepted Answer · 2024-02-15 21:45:16Z

20

Okay so it turns out that my console clock apparently decided to jump an hour forward, which must've caused an under- or overflow in the game.

At least turning the clock back an hour seems to have fixed the issue.

answered Feb 15 at 21:45

Vincent Guttmann

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2

@KellyThomas No, I didn't change anything, which is the weird part. I did move it recently, and the only explanation I can find is that it connected to the open WiFi nearby and got the time from the network (despite me having network time disabled???)
– Vincent Guttmann
Commented Feb 16 at 7:33
3

this is why developers shoould use UTC instead of local time for timing things...
– Questor
Commented Feb 16 at 18:21
9

3e17 minutes is about 2^64 seconds. So I think you're right.
– Jason
Commented Feb 16 at 22:24
3

@Jason's spot on with the 2^64 seconds. Spot on answer. Internally the counter uses a 64-bit unsigned integer (max 1.8446744e+19). The variable stores the remaining seconds, divided it by 60 for the UI (max 3.0744573e+17). The fact that it's unsigned means that it's caused it to "wrap" below its minimum value in your case when the result was negative due to a time data fault. It is absolutely a type of underflow - an integer wraparound. 0/10 for data validation, devs - it is a bug. Can you accept your own answer as the solution?
– Rab
Commented Feb 17 at 11:22
1

@Rab: Actually, it's a type of overflow. Underflow is about loss of precision, which doesn't happen with integers.
– Matthieu M.
Commented Feb 17 at 14:55

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