Tips for people having trouble with MP

[Tuberski]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov
Did you get PTW yet, Tube?

Nope, didn't even realize it had been released until today, and to think, I was at Wal Mart last night, and didn't mosey over to the electronics section......

ACK!

[monkspider]

Hey Bory, do you have MSN or any other of the various chatting aparatuses?

[ColdFever]

one more thing: if you have disconnection problems try to disable any antivirus-software. On my machine I had to disable "F-Secure Antivirus" to play without frequent ingame disconnections.

[Turambar]

Does anyone know if I'll be able to play multiplayer from behind my university firewall?

[notyoueither]

The rumors of only 1 on 1 are false.

Yes, it works better if you are all close. However, I have hosted 7 other players.

High ping times will kill you. For instance, if I hosted someone from Europe, that would drag things.

Then if I hosted someone from SE Asia, that would make things worse.

Bottom line, keep the ping times down, and it will work.

[metalhead]

notyoueither, I wouldn't say they are false. I tried entering 4 different games, and crashed every time. Now, it is possible that after I went to bed, less traffic or server maintenance or some other factor allowed it to function properly, but even with low pings, everyone that was trying to play the same time as me (9-11 PM EST) was not able to play.

[SpencerH]

So whats the problem with WIN ME?

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by monkspider
Hey Bory, do you have MSN or any other of the various chatting aparatuses?

yeah, I have msn... dosifei@hotmail.com

[monkspider]

Thanks Boris
I'm monkspider@hotmail.com

Now on the topic of more than one on one matches, I have been getting some PMs asking if there is any way whatsoever to play in games that have more than 2 humans. It *is* possible, but I can only advice that the most masochistic of souls try it.
If you follow the advice outlined in this thread, make sure no one is behind a router or firewall, running an out of date or pirated copy, no one has a ping below 200, possibly make sure no one is running Windows ME (I'm not sure on that one personally) and take time out before hand to hope for the best, you can maybe get a game going with four people. However, even if you do get it going, you can expect to be playing for an hour and only be at 3200 BC. It's really, really, really, laggy.
I have never heard of any games getting started with more than four people, but they may be theoretically possible.

[ggerrietts]

routers? firewalls?

Is the router/firewall issue a simple matter of port discovery at this point, or do we think the networking code is doing something stupid, like use externally-perceived IP addresses in addressing game-level packets?

Is the NAT/routers/firewalls problem only with hosting, and not with playing? I tried to get into the only available game I saw last night, and found that it had disappeared by the time I managed to get in -- or it crashed, or whatever.

Has anyone done work to identify whether it's the NAT or the firewall that causes the problem? I have some spare routable IPs but I don't really have anyone I know, that I can test with (and it'll be well into the evening, PDT, before I can be available to put a couple hours into it, anyway).

Do we think the problems have to do with the way the networking code was written, or is it just buggy code? In the latter case, there's very little that we can do to ease the pain; it's all about bugfixes. But in the former case, whole network topologies may be excluded from play.

I'm a little disappointed that the primary selling feature of this $30 add-on (namely, the multiplayer support) seems to be the piece that received the least amount of attention, in favor of inventing new game modes. I would have happily avoided turnless or regicide or whatever, if I could at least play the game against real people with distinct personalities.

[SpencerH]

Originally posted by monkspider
Thanks Boris
I'm monkspider@hotmail.com

Now on the topic of more than one on one matches, I have been getting some PMs asking if there is any way whatsoever to play in games that have more than 2 humans. It *is* possible, but I can only advice that the most masochistic of souls try it.
If you follow the advice outlined in this thread, make sure no one is behind a router or firewall, running an out of date or pirated copy, no one has a ping below 200, possibly make sure no one is running Windows ME (I'm not sure on that one personally) and take time out before hand to hope for the best, you can maybe get a game going with four people. However, even if you do get it going, you can expect to be playing for an hour and only be at 3200 BC. It's really, really, really, laggy.
I have never heard of any games getting started with more than four people, but they may be theoretically possible.

I just dont get this. 8 people playing PBEM with broadband could have a faster game than what you're describing. Surely multiplayer doesnt require the same amount of data movement as sending bics everywhere. How can it be so slow ?

[NeOmega]

Originally posted by SpencerH


I just dont get this. 8 people playing PBEM with broadband could have a faster game than what you're describing. Surely multiplayer doesnt require the same amount of data movement as sending bics everywhere. How can it be so slow ?

I think a lot of it has to do with the customizabiltiy of the game.

Alsio, I played 2 games with four people. The first was turn based, and slow. The second was simultaneous, and no that bad, except for the very beginning.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by metalhead
notyoueither, I wouldn't say they are false. I tried entering 4 different games, and crashed every time. Now, it is possible that after I went to bed, less traffic or server maintenance or some other factor allowed it to function properly, but even with low pings, everyone that was trying to play the same time as me (9-11 PM EST) was not able to play.

You may have a point about server load at GameSpy. I am not too familiar with how that works.

I can say that I responded to say that it is possible to play with 3 or 4, or more, players.

I have hosted 7. That game was very slow, due to the number of players and geography, but it can be done if all the players have figured out what they need to do to be successful.

[Zamphyr]

Is the NAT/routers/firewalls problem only with hosting, and not with playing? I tried to get into the only available game I saw last night, and found that it had disappeared by the time I managed to get in -- or it crashed, or whatever.

Games are only up while the are being formed, you snooze you lose.

Is the router/firewall issue a simple matter of port discovery at this point, or do we think the networking code is doing something stupid, like use externally-perceived IP addresses in addressing game-level packets?

the readme has all the port forwarding info in it. As for your offer to test, please do. I have the game on 3 machines on my LAN. All can join games(or host for that matter) but they cannot join the same game. This means my roomates and I can't get into a war with our buds in MD. I've heard there are programs to mask/adjust external and internal IP's but don't know that much about them.
Again any help is welcome.

[ggerrietts]

well, that SOUNDS like using externally-visible IPs to address packets. It's possible that they simply built something in to disallow multiple clients from a single IP, but I don't think that's a decision most developers would actually make; too much NAT in the world.

I haven't tried to do any protocol analysis (and won't) but that strategy suggests that everyone gets the network traffic for all endpoints, which in turn can be exploited to gain unfair information about an opponent's activities. Hopefully I'm wrong on both counts; if I'm not, the network code isn't going to be as good as your average FPS or RTS game's network code without a major rewrite.

Thanks for the pointer to the README. I should have checked first, but I was at work and wondering, and the game was at home (and beckoning).