Community Request: Help with OOS Troubleshooting

With 0.34 "e" and later we added support for Gerikes's OOS logging. If you play multiplayer games (PBEM and hot seat games don't count) and would like to help us isolate the cause of the OOS issues please follow the following steps:

1. Play a multiplayer game until you get an OOS error.
2. The game should automatically create a "OOSLog.txt" file in the Civilization IV directory of every computer in the game.
3. Rename each of those log files to something easy to identify. Preferably {OS}{PLAYER}-OOSLog.txt (as in VistaKael-OOSLog.txt).
4. Zip those files up into a common zip and link them to this thread.

These logs should report everything in the game as each machine sees it. Using a compare utility we will be able to see which computer is different and what it see's that difference as. Then I can review any code that may have applied to that difference to see if OOS issues could arise from it.

Thank you for your help, hopefully this will allow us to get this problem taken care of.

Fantastic!

I'll get this up as soon as i get a chance. I'm really hoping it can be used to isolate and fix the immediate OOS error that FfH games generate when using pitboss. Pitboss FfH would open up a whole nother aspect of the mod for some of us!

sorry for hijacking the thread, but... what IS Pitboss?

Pitboss is a great little program that is included on the BtS disk. What it does is allow you to run a Civ4 multiplayer game on your computer that people can sign in and out of to play their turn. Most users set it to Simultaneous Turns and use the built in turn timer.

What this does is allow you to have a Civ4 game running in the background (doesn't take much sys resources, far less than Civ4 normally) and your players can log in through your IP address to take their turns whenever it is convenient to them. A common turn timer setting is 24hrs. So each player logs in to take their turn within that 24hrs. If they miss their turn, no problem, whatever they had qued just builds and they just loose the opportunity to move units that weren't on auto. If every player does take their turn before the 24 hr timer is up the turn advances early and restarts the timer.

It's kinda like a PBEM game that you know you'll get to play every day regardless of how many players. I vastly prefer it to Hamachi as i don't have to reserve 4+ hours for a game but can play whenever. Pitboss works particularly well for players scattered over large distances with different schedules. I've played 4 or 5 Civ4 pitboss games with friends around the US. The turn / day approach worked out very well for us and really encouraged roleplaying between turns. We had some great games.

While Pitboss does work with most mods, even pretty modded mods, for some reason it generates an OOS error consistently with FfH as soon as the second player logs in.

For a more succient answer go here...
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=152361

Same issue actually comes up with normal LAN/Direct Connect/Lobby games as well. Everyone has to quit to the setup screen if anyone wants to join into the game, otherwise you get an instant OOS upon a player joining.

But it should be noted that loading the game from a saved game and then letting the person join fixes the "New Player Joining" OOS.

In general, .34 seems much more stable than previous versions.

I don't actually play MP ever, but figured this thread deserves a boost since it's supposed to be useful.

lol well I suppose the reason why the thread was getting bumped down wasn't due to lack of interest in the subject, but because of the relative stability of 0.34 during MP.

From the few of the 0.34 MP games I have played so far, there hasn't been any OOS issues lately, the only problem seems to be the crashing at the start of the game when we tried to set it up (not the bug where everyone has to get back to lobby if someone wants to join mid-game, but when we tried to start a fresh game). This happens just occasionally, nothing a few restarts cant solve.

Tons of gratitude from me (and I suppose my MP buddies would agree) to Kael and the FfH team for their work on this issue and the new version.
Some of us would agree that playing against a human player is a totally different experience from smashing AIs.
I'd frankly say that FfH is too good a game that should be played smoothly on the MP side as well~

Very good to hear. We really did a lot of work in 0.34 to try to get things to a place where we felt like OOS's shouldnt be an issue. Sto went through the python line by line to look for things that could cause problems and found lots of good stuff. Hopefully its under control.

If not the OOS logging is going to stay in the main code so if we do get some issues we can track them down.

heh thanks again, appreciate it

This OOS is from starting a pitboss game. Here is how i got it...

Start up pitboss host w/ FfH 34g mod loaded
Log in and play first turn of first player
Exit out of game but leave pitboss running
Log in as second player - OOS immediately

This has been consistently true w/ FfH pitboss since i've been trying which has been at least early Shadow.

I also tried saving game after 1st player's turn and exiting out of everything then loading up game and starting 2nd player's turn. Got an OOS immediately just the same.

Attached is the OOS. It is only from one generated player as that is all that is logged on at the time and so i'm not sure if that will still be helpful. I've been logging in through localhost so it's only one player connected at a time. I've done localhost because i haven't yet figured out how to get my firewall set up to handle incoming connections. This shouldn't be the issue though as i can play normal pitboss games without the OOS through localhost.

Thanks Kael!

I dont think pitboss will work with major SDk mods. We have a lot of features to remember outside of the normal stuff and I doubt the pitboss engine is programmed to remember it.

It does seem that if PBEM can work, then Pitboss really ought to be able to. But I am not (yet) familiar with precisely how Pitboss works.

xienwolf said:

It does seem that if PBEM can work, then Pitboss really ought to be able to. But I am not (yet) familiar with precisely how Pitboss works.

Click to expand...

PBEM is basically passing around a save game. Its hotseat with the computer swapped out. Pitboss is supposed to maintain an active game and I dont think it keeps any of the FfH attributes.

Well, I'm going to try to talk with OverloadUT, he has designed a webpage to track Pitboss games, and might know a fair amount about how we can access the engine to control what is saved/sent.

xienwolf said:

Same issue actually comes up with normal LAN/Direct Connect/Lobby games as well. Everyone has to quit to the setup screen if anyone wants to join into the game, otherwise you get an instant OOS upon a player joining.

Click to expand...

apart from this issue my wife and I haven't experienced any other OOS case in version 0.34.

OOS issue in Turn 2, file attached!

Another OOS, Turn 4. We had always OOS, can play only in hotseat mode.

Cryptopsycus666 said:

OOS issue in Turn 2, file attached!

Click to expand...

Interesting, thanks!

Your random seed is off and you have 2 units that are in different spaces. It really weird that this could have happened by turn 2.

1. Was there anything unusual about this game?
2. Any events that popped up?
3. What mapscript did you use to generate the map?
4. Were you other to play other games without the OOS?
5. Do you typically have early game OOS's like this?

Cryptopsycus666 said:

Another OOS, Turn 4. We had always OOS, can play only in hotseat mode.

Click to expand...

This is the same as the first, different random seed and unit movement. It looks like the unit movement is with the AI players. Meaning I suspect that the random seed difference is the real issue, and it caused the AI to move to different tiles.

6. Are both the machines fully patched (windows xp with the latest patches)?

1. It was to short to suspect anything unusual
2. Second time (OOS_2) was this astrology event for me
3. Lakes, small, low level sea, nothing special
4. I don't understand. (sorry for my english)
5. Yes. Mostly between turn 1-10
6. I think not.