TCP/IP getting started

[theohall]

Attempted with a friend to get a TCP/IP game going tonight and had no success.

We tried:
1) Using both the primary and secondary IP numbers from my PC as a host. He couldn't find me.
2) Naming the computers, both him as a host and me as host - neither worked.
3) Surrendered

Opponent can't determine his IP number due to his ISP assigning one when he logs in instead of him specifying an IP number.

Any hints as to what we need to do to actually be able to connect?

[Closey]

Try running winipcfp.exe when connected. (C:\Windows\winipcfg.exe) It'll tell you what IP you've got.

[theohall]

thanks Closey.

In an unrelated issue,

we got by the IP thing finally, but it took FOREVER too load and when it finallly did a window was at the top which said "Preliminary Phase: Upkeep" and neither me or my opponent could do anything.

Any suggestions?

[Closey]

Hmm, yeah, those upkeeps can take a while. I play tcp/ip at home over a little network I've got set up here, and even then the upkeep can be slow. Don't know what the game does really, haven't looked into it much. Guess it's sending stuff between the computers.

Try playing another time and wait a while to see what happens, if it'll go on past the upkeep.

What kind of connection have you got? Maybe it just takes some time to send it if you don't have a very fast connection. (Not having played tcp/ip over the internet I don't know how long it usually takes)

You could try a smaller map and see if that changes the time you'll have to wait.

There's probably someone else who's got some better suggestions tho.

[theohall]

My amigo and I only have 56K connections which is probably why it's taking so long.

We were even using a tiny planet.

The problem is probably the slow upload speeds from our 56Ks, so maybe we just have to wait for our broadband access opportunities.

Thanks again. If it's slow on a local LAN, it's gonna be way slooooooow over the 'net.

[Rastapopoulos]

theo,
I have succesfully played in TCP/IP mode with a friend who is located in the US, and I only have 56k as well. It's true it does take a while, especially when initiating the game, but eventually it seems to work. In my case at least, it probably depends on all kinds of factors like your ISP and whatnot.

We found it most convenient to keep an ICQ chat window open at all times so we could keep up a decent conversation while the game was loading and later on as well. Much better than using the built-in chat line, which is slow as hell and very buggy.

We managed to play about 20-30 turns in a couple of hours, then saved the game and continued as PBEM. Sometimes there are some strange phenomena when you first start the TCP/IP game, like all units having already moved, you can normally just ignore that and let the next player not do anything in his turn. That way, one year just passes without anything happening, which is acceptable unless the tactical situation is very critical.

Another thing is, after 20-30 turns in TCP/IP, the game tends to get buggy, it is a good idea at that point to save and start the game again with that save, usually things will get better.



------------------
May the fungus be with you...

[Closey]

quote: Another thing is, after 20-30 turns in TCP/IP, the game tends to get buggy, it is a good idea at that point to save and start the game again with that save, usually things will get better.

What kind of bugs do you usually get? I've played a tcp/ip game for about 12 hours straight once and didn't really notice any bugs. (Except for maybe the usual ones) But that was of course over a LAN and not with a modem.

[Rastapopoulos]

quote: Originally posted by Closey on 03-26-2001 02:04 AM What kind of bugs do you usually get?

Just weird things happening like somebody else's units showing up on my command nexus (F5 or what it is) and strange things like that. Nothing that really affected the game, but we chose to save and start anew from that save file before it would get worse. Nothing hurts so much as loosing 4-5 hours of gaming due to some weird bug.

When I played over LAN I never had these issues either, everything was fine there.

[johndmuller]

I don't know if this is your problem or not, but when I first experimented withe a LAN game it seemed that the simultaneous/notsimultaneous option - when set to simultaneous - lead to a lot of network activity and many instances where one person had to wait for ??? (updates or whatever) to finish before they could do anything. I don't know if that is relevant at the very beginning of the game, but I imagine it would otherwise be a big factor over the net.

There may also have been improvements to IP behavior in some of the patches; if you haven't loaded them, that might help too.

[theohall]

thanks for all of the hints. We think the problem is my friend being on AOL. We both have all of the patches.

Our setup was tiny planet, non-simultaneous, dense clouds, strong erosive forces, average lifeforms, no unity map, all five victory conditions on.

We had to wait forever and kept getting an error screen every 10-20 seconds after setting up the rules. Choosing "ignore..." allowed the game to continue loading.

It took darn near 20 minutes just to get to a Planet screen where I could see my units. My buddy still had the setup screen and after about 10 minutes of "Upkeep" with that error window popping up again and again, my buddy finally got Planet screen. After another 5 minutes of nothing, we surrendered.

We are going to try having him be the host when he gets the chance, since the problem may have been on my end. We just don't know.

Thanks again for all of the information and ideas.

Edited part: We also kept a Yahoo chat window open the whole time to make sure things were still moving along.
[This message has been edited by theohall (edited March 27, 2001).]