The HOTW VII - Setup Thread III - The Trilogy

[LzPrst]

Devolution:

1. A passing down or descent through successive stages of time or a process.
2. Transference, as of rights or qualities, to a successor.
3. Delegation of authority or duties to a subordinate or substitute.
4. A transfer of powers from a central government to local units.
5. Biology. Degeneration.


Devotion:

1. Ardent, often selfless affection and dedication, as to a person or principle. See Synonyms at love.
2. Religious ardor or zeal; piety.
3.
1. An act of religious observance or prayer, especially when private. Often used in the plural.
2. devotions Prayers or religious texts: a book of devotions.
4. The act of devoting or the state of being devoted.


@ cybershy. as I am currently without girls, there are no cakes in my freezer bought a whole pack at the store though. stuffed now.

[LzPrst]

with the exception of myself, yes, these guys are quite devolved

[Toni]

[OzzyKP]

The save

[LzPrst]

we are starting up in 10 minutes yes?

[Robert]

Originally posted by LzPrst
@ cybershy. as I am currently without girls, there are no cakes in my freezer bought a whole pack at the store though. stuffed now.

Ah, and last week you almost hooked up a new girl but then we told you to get your bloody @ss home asap to play civ, so you lost here, right?

Btw, Ozzy, any good news about you and the girl last night?

[OzzyKP]

It was.... interesting.

[KunojiLym]

Hot?

[Robert]

Next friday we try:
9 players join in the lobby
4 players hot join in the game

I suggest that these 4 players are players with a very stable connection:
LzPrst, Frank, Kuno and Ryk

We came pretty far with the last attempt.
I suggest we go back 2 turns to avoid problems with the auto-save as well.

We need a sub for Nolan
Thrak should be back
Who else will be missing?

[deity]

Originally posted by CyberShy
Next friday we try:
9 players join in the lobby
4 players hot join in the game

I suggest that these 4 players are players with a very stable connection:
LzPrst, Frank, Kuno and Ryk

We came pretty far with the last attempt.
I suggest we go back 2 turns to avoid problems with the auto-save as well.

We need a sub for Nolan
Thrak should be back
Who else will be missing?

We got to keep going with this.

We collectively said we had the ear of Firaxis and agreed on using the Huge Terra map with more than 12 players; so we can't have talk about giving up!

I agree to go back a turn if Cyber has the save but I think we should all join in the lobby. I'm sure Firaxis would say this is preferable; well, at least for 12 players.

Can a Firaxian be lined up as a sub?

What we are doing is obviously pushing the envelope but it should bloody well work!

2 weeks ago we had a faultless 3 hour session. Maybe we should check which players were in that session and have them join the lobby first/launch the game/then let the other few in...

The game MUST continue or CONT

[Robert]

Analyses of our problems:

Error / fault:
Some of us experience problems when joining the lobby because they can't connect to some peers (players).

Problem:
Most probably some routers haven't been configured properly or some firewalls are still active

Impact of the problem: low

Solution:
A few attempts oftenly solves the problem automaticly since Warlords. A real solution would be a proper configuration of all routers, or even better, if players would directly connect their computers to their router (assuming that their modem doesn't include a router). The disabling of all firewalls.

Error / fault:
Some players drop from the lobby or the game

Problem:
There can be multiple problems that cause this to happen. The game crashes for some, the internet connection of some becomes unstable or the memory of the players computer is full which causes the computer to become unstable. There are many more reasons that may cause this problem to happen.

Impact of the problem: If players can succesfully reconnect and it doesnt' happen to often: Low
If players can't reconnect or it happens on a very regular base: High for that player, low for the game if a sub can be arranged.

Solution: Put all graphic effects on low /off. Improve the configuration of your internet connection. Get a better ISP. Get a better computer.

Error / fault:
When all players are in the lobby and the game is being launched all works fine untill the game is loaded. Then one or more players have their game being crashed or lose their internet connection.

Problem:
There's probably too much (network) activity going on in the very first seconds of the game. Some computers can't handle this and the game crashes for them. Some routers / modes can't / doesn't want to handle this and disconnect the internet connection temporarily. (as a prevention against internet attacks).
Because the game is 'growing' the (network) activity is growing (more data has to be computed / sent at the beginning of the turn) which may be the reason that we didn't had these problems in the past.

Impact:
If the host crashes or disconnects: high
If many players crash or disconnect and can't hot-join the game: high
If one or a few players crash or disconnect but they can hot-join the game: low

Solution:
Hard to say. Last attempt proved that lowering the number of players that join the game from the lobby lowers the number of crashes. Which is a natural result since with fewer players who join at the same time the data traffict over the networks is lower.
If these players can hot-join the game there doesn't seem to be a problem.
The last test showed that 11 players joining at once (the big bang) is too much. We may try with 9 players to lobby-join and 4 players to hot-join.

A problem may be that with the growing of the game in the future even more and more players have to hot-join the game to prevent a big-bang to happen.

Error / fault:
The game freezes at the beginning of the first turn when all players have loaded the game

Problem:
I'm unsure but it may be that this only happened after one or more players crashed b/c of the earlier described big-bang effect. (Which was certainly the case in the last test we did monday night)
I can only guess for other reasons. Fact is that we've had this problem before and in many cases a 2nd attempt to load the game solved this problem.

Impact:
If all attempts result in a frozen game: High
If a 2nd attempt or the loading of another save works: low

Solution:
- Load the game from the lobby without players crash or d/c from the game (as described in the solution for the Big Bang)
- Don't try to do anything in the game before everybody reported to be in
- Don't alt-tab if you're not in windowed modus, at least untill all players have reported to be in
- Try to load the game again
- Try to load an earlier save of the game.

[Robert]

Monday the following people hosted:
- CT
He had most probably an unstable internet connection because multiple times all players were disconnected from his game. This is in line with last week when CT's connection totally broke. It's not in line with earlier sessions when CT's connection was great and he was a good host.

- Moker
Moker's hosting suffered most probably from the Big Bang effect. I think his connection is not to blame for that for it's a general issue with the game and not something that only affected his hosting.

- CyberShy
CyberShy's hosting suffered slightly from the Big Bang effect, most probably because the number of joining from the lobby was lowered.
CyberShy's hosting suffered from the 'freezing' effect. Most probably because of results of some crashing during the 'big bang'. It may be an isolated incident as well or be related to a corruption in the save-game.

- Deity
Last friday Deity's hosting suffered with performance issue and most probably Big-Bang effects. The Big Bang effects may be solved by earlier proposed solutions. The performance problems may be because of his computer or because of the large distance between his location (Australia) and the rest of the players (except KunojiLym)

Monday Deity hosted for a few (5) players. This worked fine, which proves that it's the number of players that causes the problems (Big Bang, data traffict over large distances). It may be as well that one of the missing players during the 5-players test is in fact the trouble-maker. I don't think that's the case though.

A suggest the following for next session:
1st: Moker hosts since his problem most probably was b/c of the Big Bang effect and we haven't experienced other problems with him so far.

2nd: If Moker fails I suggest that I (CyberShy) host because the last attempt monday evening got us the furthest so far. (assuming that the freezing-problem is an incident or can be solved by loading another save)

3rd: If both Moker and CyberShy fail CT should host since his hosting was really good during the first 3 sessions. If people drop from the lobby again in his game this problem may still be active though.

4th: Deity hosts.

I suggest that all hosts get at least 2 attempts before we switch hosts. If minor problems occur that have happened before (people bouncing, people dropping because of problems with their own connection) this shouldn't be concidered as 1 attempt. These problems will always occur and can't be solved perfectly.
the only reason why a attempt fails is:
- the big bang effect keeps occuring and players can't hot-join
- the game keeps on freezing.
If small-problems keep on occuring that oftenly that it affects gameplay the attempt should be cancelled as well.

We must avoid that we are being leaded by incidents though and switch from host to host and from sub to sub for every small incident that occurs.

I suggest that all 9 players lobby join at once to prevent long waiting times before the game starts. The 4 hot-join players may have to hot-join 2 by 2.

I believe that this tactic may have us finally back on track.

conlusion:
Moker hosts
9 players lobby-join the game immediately
4 players hot-join the game 2 by 2.

I suggest the following 4 players to hot-join
Frank, LzPrst
KunojiLym, CyberShy

[Robert]

I realise that's a lot of text. I'm a programmer / problem analyser by profession and I tried to approach it in a professional way. (having said that, the programs I normally approach are of a total different kind)

If you don't want to read it, that's ok, but please listen to those who want to discuss this during the session start and try not to intervene with solutions and ideas.

[deity]

I read it

Thanks for trying to think it all through Cyber. Good work.

We may yet get this game going.

Session 3 was the one where CT hosted and ozzy/Cyber organised several players to re-connect and hot join on the VERY FIRST launch of the game. We all finally got in and played for 3 hours without a hitch. I'm going to dig oput that group of 13.

[deity]

end of THIRD SESSION 1525 BC

India(Gandhi) - CyberShy
Egypt(Ramses) - Nolan
Vikings(Ragnar Lodbrok) - LzPrst
China(Qin Shi Huang) - KunojiLym
Choson(Wang Kong) - Deity
Inca(Huayna Capac) - Dangime
Kushren(Napoleon Boneparte) - Colonel_Treize
England(Victoria) - MMC
Celts(Brennus) - Omnipotent Trout
Arabs(Saladin) - OzzyKP
Carthage(Hannibal) - Rykoffe
Rome(Julius Ceasar) - Glohithia
Bulgaria(Cyrus II) - Toni