Question on multiplayer

[Cervino]

Hello!

I have read that it is possible to start a multiplayer game in TCP/IP and, when the turns are too long, too switch the game in PBEM. However, I have not found how to do that switch. Is there anyone who can tell me how we can switch our TCP/IP games in PBEM ?

Thanks!

[Googlie]

I've tried that - without success - and am currently trying the reverse - convert a PBEM into an IP game, again with no success (so far)

Intuitively, I would guess that if your IP has simultaneous moves activated, it won't convert to a PBEM. (I think that was my problem when my group tried it)

I haven't tried it with a turn-based IP game. Perhaps, if the latter, each player receiving a gamesave might have to open it as a hosted IP game and work thru to the soloplay option, play the turn, and then save and pass on - at least for the first round - that may work.

Good luck - and post here if you find a solution.

G.

[Tau Ceti]

This has been done - from PBEM to IP to PBEM - in one of the tournament games, AXT042. The players organized it themselves, so I do not know how it is done, but I have PMed one of the players and asked him to post the procedure here.

[buster]

I have tried this several times.

Following the procedure below should work.

a) You do the IP game starting as usual.

When it is time to end off the host saves the game after the upkeep before ending his own turn. Smartest is basically that after upkeep you simply save and quit.

b) You then simply load the game as a PBEM, pick your password, do your turn and send to next player by mail.

If you turn on autosave in preferences, autosave turns can also be used as they are made on the beginning of each new turn. I have found there is normally no problem in this.

[Walt]

As cbn mentioned, I've made the switch back and forth from tcp/ip game to and from pbem game seamlessly and fairly often, although only in AXT042 have I ever done it with four participants. However, I have a lot of experience running the procedure in 3- and 2-player games.

The procedure to go from tcp/ip play to pbem is as buster described. The only caveat I'd mention here is to use the procedure that cbn describes. Make sure all players have finished their turns but /not/ pressed 'End Turn'. Once it's ascertained that this condition is met, the Host saves the game. If playing Ironman, this will end the session, or at least the Host's involvement in it. It's important to be aware of that. If not playing Ironman, the game is saved and the Host can inform everyone. At this point, everyone can drop the game. Once everyone's gone, the Host can exit the game without being asked whether he wants to cowardly slink away in shame (or something like that...). The Host plays the turn as a normal pbem turn and sends it to the next player.

To go the other way, from pbem to tcp/ip, the Host loads the saved game turn, chooses his faction, waits for everyone else to do the same, as one normally would in a tcp/ip game. The procedure varies a little bit from SMAC to SMAX, as more factions are available in the latter. Thus, all AI factions must be specifically stipulated by the Host. I don't know what happens if this step isn't performed, but I imagine the Host would receive an error message and the game would go no further until he stipulated the requisite factions.

For those who aren't acquainted with the procedure, tcp/ip games are easy to Host or Join. From the intro menu, once you've started either SMAC or SMAX, choose 'Multiplayer' and choose "tcp/ip game". At this point (or maybe the next - somewhere in there it asks you your name...) you're asked whether you'd like to Host or Join a game. If you want to Join a game (i.e., you're not hosting the session), choose Join. You'll get a system (Windows or, presumably, Mac, and now Linux) dialog box asking you to enter a specific IP address. Enter the IP address given to you by the person hosting the session. You'll see a window listing all the specs for the game you're joining, the persons already connected to the session and their faction choices and difficulty levels. Choose your own faction and difficulty level and check out all the settings (it helps to have multiple sets of eyes check all the settings to make sure they're all correct).

If you're hosting the session, before you start up SMAC or SMAX you should determine your IP address and let the other people playing know what that is. Windows 95/98 users can determine their IP address by clicking on the 'Start' button in the lower left hand corner of their task bar, selecting 'Run', and typing winipcfg.exe. For NT users (if SMAC even runs under NT...) it would be ipcfg.exe. Might be the same under Windows 2000 and/or Windows ME, but I don't know. If anyone does, please pipe up. I don't know the procedure for Mac or Linux users. Once you know the number, communicate it to the other players. Start up SMAC or SMAX and follow the steps above until it's time to choose Host or Join. Choose Host. You'll get the window/screen mentioned above with faction choices. The Host, however, must select the game to play. Choices are made by clicking on the small blue triangle (or carat) next to the specific game parameter choice. In SMAX, you'll need to populate the game with the AI factions and set their difficulty levels. In SMAC you just need to set the difficulty levels. The rest of the screen is fairly self-explanatory. If there are questions, post 'em on this thread or send 'em to my box, I'll be happy to help.

A couple (possibly important) things to consider: The switch /to/ tcp/ip screws players who have not yet taken their turns: everyone loses their turn in the mission year in which tcp/ip is started. Always. Thus, if you don't start a tcp/ip session, coming from pbem, with the first person in the turn order, then that person, and whoever else has gone already, gets a free turn (the turn they played before going to tcp/ip). Thus, I usually make sure that the last person in turn order has played and have them send the turn to the host instead of to the next/first person in turn order.

Something similar happens coming /out/ of tcp/ip and going back to pbem. The host (and anyone after him) get to play the mission year in which you leave tcp/ip again. That is, for them it's the next turn, but no advance of the mission calendar occurs. The only way I could see around this would be for the first person in the turn sequence to save the game, and resume play from his game save. But (and this is a big "but"), I don't know whether his save contains all the necessary information to continue playing the game. We will probably be testing this in AXT042 on May 12th unless someone can provide info to answer this question before then.

That's about all I've got regarding this topic. PBEM really does advance play in a mighty speedy manner, and I suggest everyone try it.

I'd like to make a suggestion for further tournament games: to facilitate switches from pbem to tcp/ip and back, I would suggest that the person with the biggest machine and best internet connection be placed first in the turn order. This would require Tau Ceti to inquire regarding these details (perhaps the intro message in the sign up thread could be edited) and, worse yet, to keep track of the details. Quite possibly impractical. The point may be moot if the remote game save has the requisite information to continue the game via pbem. Then the primacy of the Host would be largely irrelevant (although still convenient). We'll know on May 12th (I think...).

Thanks for reading...

Walt
[This message has been edited by Walt (edited May 08, 2001).]

[cbn]

I am part of AXT042 and as a participant it was an almost seamless transition . Both the direct connect session and the PBEM worked and all I had to do is play. We liked it so much that we are doing it again this weekend. As for methodology, Walt was the mastermind and is the one to ask-- although another player is hosting this weekend with Walt's help.

I do know that:

1.the PBEM turn was intentionally put with the first person in the turn order before we went into direct connection
2. We DID play silmultaneous moves-- its faster and none of us had met at that stage
3. Upon completion of the session, the host had to ensure that we all completed our turns so that they could do the necessary save and exit stuff.

4. Within minutes of finishing up the session I had the next PBEM turn so it is unlikely there was any problem there

The procedure that buster outlines sounds like the way it was explained to me. Apparently it is easy IF you follow the right steps but one wrong command can crash it and require you to start over.
[This message has been edited by cbn (edited May 08, 2001).]

[Googlie]

Walt:

Good stuff. We were basically following that procedure (I've hosted a few IP games in the past)

Problem was that the other players couldn't get access - they'd put in my IP number, then I'd get that 4 option screen (try 20 secs later, continue without, etc).

One was playing with the nocd crack, but that didn't seem to make a difference as the others couldn't get access either. I disabled my firewall, but again no difference. I have been able to in the past, so just wondered if it as 'cos we were loading a PBEM game. But even starting a new game made no difference. (Nor did trying with my laptop instead of my desktop - just wasn't able to accept them)

Ah well, that's life.

G,

[Closey]

quote: Originally posted by Walt on 05-08-2001 11:23 PM Windows 95/98 users can determine their IP address by clicking on the 'Start' button in the lower left hand corner of their task bar, selecting 'Run', and typing winipcfg.exe. For NT users (if SMAC even runs under NT...) it would be ipcfg.exe. Might be the same under Windows 2000 and/or Windows ME, but I don't know. If anyone does, please pipe up. I don't know the procedure for Mac or Linux users.

In ME winipcfg should probably work since it's pretty much similar to 95/98 and in 2000 you've got ipcfg. Don't know about Mac, but in Linux however you've got ifconfig to tell you your ip.

[cbn]

Googlie

I attempted a 2 player game (new game- no PBEM at all) and we had the same problem of not getting past that 4 option screen. We had this reagrdless of who tried to host. The other player informed me that this was an issue with his firewall that had occurred before but he thought he had fixed. He indicated that people with firewalls have a fair bit of problems with direct connection. this is all second-hand information I know but is there a possibility that you were having a continuing firewall problem despite any steps you took to disable it.

[buster]

The problems described with connecting can well be firewall or router configuration problems.

Directplay uses one port for initiating a connection and then some other ones for actually exchanging data. Having the first (around 40.000 if I remember) open and the ones needed for data (between 4.000 - 5.000) closed would give exactly this phenomenon.

I can dig up the exact ports numbers and supply some explanation and guidance if wanted. It applies to people who sit behind a router and/or have some sort of firewall running.

Besides network problems, I have seen such errors also sometimes if someone (not original first player of a pbem) tries to host.

On going from IP to PBEM my experience is that the best working files are autosave files. Host can turn on autosave by going into prefs once the game is started.

I have seen problems if a save is made after a player was dropped. If someone has to leave an IP game it should be done by resigning not by closing smac. From my experience a save made after a player lost connection is unworkable (another reason to turn autosave on).

As a note I have almost always played with Sim moves off. It is possible that sim moves introduces some other problems.

[Walt]

quote: Originally posted by buster on 05-09-2001 02:59 PM As a note I have almost always played with Sim moves off. It is possible that sim moves introduces some other problems.

I haven't tested this systematically, but I've had a few experiences that lead me to believe that once simul moves is selected and played, it's not possible to play successfully in a subsequent tcp/ip session without having simul moves enabled.

Walt

[Walt]

I thought I'd offer an update regarding something I mentioned in my first post. I hosted a 2-player tcp/ip session a couple days ago which had been played and was then continued via pbem. I was not first in the turn order, so when we ended the tcp/ip session and saved the game, I went through the procedure outlined above but also asked the other player to save the game. We then continued from his game save via pbem: he opened the turn as a normal pbem game.

Result: the mission year remained the one we'd just played, but no one lost a turn (or we both received an extra one) because he was first in the turn sequence.

So, it looks like it's possible to make the pbem-tcp/ip-pbem transition without unfairly providing advantage or disadvantage to any faction, as long as you pay attention to entering/exiting tcp/ip in the proper turn order.

Walt

[Walt]

Boy, I'm really spamming this thread...

Well, we played AXT042, but were stymied more by network lag than anything else. Still, previous experience in the two-player game indicates that the pbem-tcp/ip switch can be made without unfair advantage inhering in any player.

In AXT042, we gave up after one hour of log-on problems, and another hour of play that only saw the passage of three turns.

I think that if all players are geographically proximate and have decent systems that even a 4-player game of tcp/ip could be made to run smoothly, though.

[Misotu]

quote: Originally posted by buster on 05-09-2001 02:59 PM The problems described with connecting can well be firewall or router configuration problems ...

Buster, you're entirely correct on this. I had problems with not being able to get beyond the game set-up screen when I tried IP a while ago. We could connect up, even talk on the screen, but never actually launch a game. Eventually I found that the problems were solved by using my back-up dial-up connection, instead of my standard cable connection. Different servers operated by different companies using different ports.

Also, some ISPs have apparently disabled ping. I was never able to establish whether this mattered, but it might ...

[buster]

It is a problem with some ISPs trying to protect their customers. Also a lot of business and institutional networks have restrictions.

Chances are that if an ISP is blocking ping and trace requests they will also be blocking a lot of other stuff.

Additionally some cable and DSL providers recommends a system setup which while giving very fast streaming (long continuos transmits) have a very long latency. (Response time). Smac multiplaying is much more sensitive to latency than to link speed as it seems to do a large amount of very small transmits rather than a few large ones.

This is something that to some degree can be adjusted on ones own system (adjusting network buffer and packet size) but in some cases it may turn out that it will run better with a modem connection than with cable or DSL.