Multiplayer Problem

[Gumpo]

Im trying to play a LAN game of SMAC, and after a few turns of flawless playing, the game hangs.

It doesnt exactly crash, it just doesnt continue to the next turn - every player's end turn button is flashing "waiting" and the log says its waiting for other players to finish, but nothing ever happens.

All of the computers have windows firewall disabled, and have no other firewall software installed. All computers have the Windows XP compatibility update, as well as the latest patch installed.

One of the computers is dual-core, but even without the dual-core machine, the lockup still happens.

Anyone know what i should do to fix this?
(P.S. - We're playing by TCP/IP)

[Flubber]

I don't know the answer but wondered if this problem persists even if you change who hosts the game ?

[Mart]

how about doing it "hard way"
save often, every turn even, and when it happens, just restart. I think it is possible, that there are bugs that leak memory or other similar. TCP/IP has more bugs than pbem.
When I was playing by LAN we needed to restart on occasion, smthg like in the case you describe.

[Gumpo]

It happens no matter who hosts, and the error generally occurs within two turns of starting the game.

Also, interestingly enough, i've noticed that if any of the computers play a "multplayer" game by themselves, (host on TCP/IP but only play against 7 computers) the problem still happens after a few turns.

And yet, all the computers will run the game flawlessly in single player mode.

[Kyttn]

I have the same problem sometimes, although I find it just occurs at random intervals in the game. We tried everything we could think of but the only way we've been carrying on the games is to Save it and restart.

Sucks, but it only takes a tick to load up so i'm not overly bothered. But, if as you say it hangs after two turns, thats not really possible :/

Maybe you could run it in win98 compatability mode? one of the guys i LAN with can't play smac without doing that. He has the same system as me, same installation of smac, just seems buggy :P

Kyttn

[Gumpo]

Actually, compatibility mode for 98 and 95 both crash the game before it starts, and the other modes dont seem to have any effect.

At this point, i think im just going to install IPX and do it old school.