Clarifying OOS solutions

[wayeward]

I am sorry to hear that others have been having this issue with FFH, a friend and I (one on XP and the other on VISTA) have been having this problem since BTS FFH came out. Our games usually go out of synch within 20-80 turns and no amount of reloading, rejoining, or rehosting helps. We have given up playing, in other words.

None of the patches solve the problem, as is becoming apparent. But here is a list of things others have suggested and we have tried to use to fix the problem with. Perhaps they might work for someone else, they haven't for us.

1. disabling "random events," to no effect. Probably because so much of the game depends on events that cannot be disabled at all. (Are the computers relaying messages such as when I get a free carnival? etc.)

2. deleting the the following directory: documents and settings\<username>\application data\my games\beyond the sword-----in order to "remove the cache" data, also to no effect. One should note, however, that when I went to find this hidden folder (with hidden folders enabled in Windows) it did not, in point of fact, even exist, at least according to windows. Should this be a warning sign? I have no idea.

3. Holding "shift" upon restart of game to remove cache data, also to no effect in the game.

4. installing a replacement DLL for C:\Program Files\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Beyond the Sword\Assets\CvGameCoreDLL.dll, which was thought, in another thread, to help with OOS errors.

5. Had both civ players try hosting, to no effect. Same OOS error within 27-80 turns into the game. Or, when reloading a game that previously went out of sync, getting the same out of sync error within 3-10 turns.

6. Tried direct connect, Hamachi, and through gamespy, to no effect.

7. Had routers set up in different locations in the house, with both wireless and direct connect (through an ethernet cord, yes they still exist) tried. Opened all ports. Even tried bypassing the routers entirely.

8. Reinstalled FFH, and finally reinstalled the game and BTS. I haven't tried to format the computer yet, but I would rather not.

9. tried re-downloading FFH, thinking that perhaps our downloads corrupted the installer to files therein in the transfer process.

I guess it seems likely that this may be caused by a incompatibility between Vista and XP. Anyway, I hope this isn't a problem that will have to wait for XP users to be phased out before it is solved.

 

[neodragon11]

getting rid of vista would be a good step to fixing a lot of problems im sure but doubt it has muhc to do with the oos problem.. happened quite a bit last night but we managed to get quite a few turns in before we went oos.. what we tried is if we went oos saved game closed it opened it up to lobby and started again.. oos less often then waiting for someone to return or starting the game alone then having the other person join..

 

[xienwolf]

Does normal BtS work fine? And are you the Vista user? Maybe Vista stoes the cache elsewhere.

 

[wayeward]

Does normal BtS work fine? And are you the Vista user? Maybe Vista stoes the cache elsewhere.

Oh sorry, forgot to mention that. No I am the Xp user. Other things we tried was setting the vista machine up at another residence, in another province (Canada), and still got the same problems.

Other BTS mods, including TAM work perfectly, in multiplayer as well as single player. Ive played marathon games (1500 turns?) in TAM in BTS with no errors ever.

 

[Bringa]

Hi,

Here's an update on the OOS situation from our point of view. We're playing 2030h, both of us on XP. We used to have a lot of OOS errors, but also a lot of CTDs when reloading etc, so we decided to do something rather extreme: I rared my entire Civ4 dir and uploaded it to my friend. After this, the OOS situation has improved a lot.

Another note: it used to be that one person rejoining (in a two player game) was sufficient to resolve an OOS. Not anymore. The OOS persists even after a rejoin. What we have to do is save the game and rehost by loading.

We played for 114 rounds today with only three OOS:

Round 55: This OOS happened in the middle of a round (that is to say, not after one of us pressed end turn). I had the event that gives all my units Cover I (Tower shields) and my friend used a great sage to build an academy. We both believe the OOS came right after we clicked on our respective action.

Round 87: My friend recaptured a city the barbarians had taken from him. Again, the OOS happened the instant he recaptured his city.

Round 114: And this finally was a more classic OOS, happening between turns. We ended the round and the game went OOS. Things that happened at the beginning of the next round: someone finished the Pact of the Nilhorn and a Great Engineer was spawned in a city.

I have save games for each of these rounds.

 

[Elgorath]

have anyone tried to play turn based?
maybe simultaneous turns factors into OOS problem?
just a thought....

 

[PeasantLord]

Both of us are running patch h at the moment, I am running Vista, he is running XP.

Our last game we went out of sync at about turn 170.. and after doing the regular things (clearing cache, etc) we went back out of sync every 5-6 turns after that.

Just a quick update.. we tried another game last night using patch e.. and we didn't get any OOS errors. (we made it to turn 150).. We will continue our game this weekend, and try the next one with patch f..

 

[Elgorath]

good to see that others are getting similar results as I am
patch F is good and something with patch G made the game go OOS

 

[Kael]

I've gone through the changelog between "f" (reported good) and "g" (reported bad). The only potential OOS issues that I see are from changes to the event code.

So theoretically a "g" game with events disabled should be as unlikely to OOS as an "f" game.

To disable events change the following in your CIV4GameOptionInfos.xml file:

from:

		<GameOptionInfo>
			<Type>GAMEOPTION_NO_EVENTS</Type>
			<Description>TXT_KEY_GAME_OPTION_NO_EVENTS</Description>
			<Help>TXT_KEY_GAME_OPTION_NO_EVENTS_HELP</Help>
			<bDefault>0</bDefault>
			<bVisible>0</bVisible>
		</GameOptionInfo>

		<GameOptionInfo>
			<Type>GAMEOPTION_NO_EVENTS</Type>
			<Description>TXT_KEY_GAME_OPTION_NO_EVENTS</Description>
			<Help>TXT_KEY_GAME_OPTION_NO_EVENTS_HELP</Help>
			<bDefault>1</bDefault>
			<bVisible>1</bVisible>
		</GameOptionInfo>

That will give you the option to disable events and it will be seleected by default. Make sure all the players in the game have made this change. Please let me know if a "g" game with this change signifcantly improves the OOS's.

 

[Bringa]

have anyone tried to play turn based?
maybe simultaneous turns factors into OOS problem?
just a thought....

We are not playing with simultaneous turns.

 

[PeasantLord]

Just a quick update.. we tried another game last night using patch e.. and we didn't get any OOS errors. (we made it to turn 150).. We will continue our game this weekend, and try the next one with patch f..

Update #2 -

We continued our patch e game this afternoon.. The game went OOS on turn 239.. then again on 247, and again on 252, then from there on it went out of sync every turn onward (253,254,255).

 

[LastWordz]

Had a LAN game today, reverted back to patch E - no OOS errors - except for one that occured around turn 300, which was fixed by the host saving game and we both went back in - no more errors occured until we quit around turn 389. One computer was Vista, the other XP.

Since others are reporting that the last mostly stable version for MP is E, it would seem that something changed in patch F onward is creating the issues. Although, to be fair, haven't tried patch F yet in the same situation. Will try to do so sometime this week.

 

[ushram]

Can someone please sticky this until it is resolved. This issue really needs the attention of the whole community, it is ruining the multiplayer experience

 

[Kentarion]

I've gone through the changelog between "f" (reported good) and "g" (reported bad). The only potential OOS issues that I see are from changes to the event code.

So theoretically a "g" game with events disabled should be as unlikely to OOS as an "f" game.

To disable events change the following in your CIV4GameOptionInfos.xml file:

we did a test on that.

XP/Vista, patch h

for no reason the OOS startet after this weekend. i read some hints but this config in CIV4GameOptionInfos.xml is the only thing helped (deactivated events).

so, game works fine without OOS, BUT however - it's clear - there are no smith/calabim/whatsoever events. this doesn't really hurt the gameplay, but i would appreciate it if these little gimmicks will be working in future without having OOS problems. it makes the game more - lively, i like this random events very much - bad or good, i love it.

Thanks for that help - i'll have a look on future patches maybe i find a note with OOS problem solved - would be very very cool.

Keep up this magnifisent work! I worship the FFH crew!!!

 

[Shakiko]

Just stumbled upon this thread , so sorry if some information might be outdated, but at least for us, we also got all those OOS issues, too.
We "solved" those temporarily by reverting back to patch "e", which is playable just fine and gives us no issues at all. (no OOS the last 4 whole games we played)
Patch "f" already got some OOS, starting with "g" it's unplayable (like OOS every turn on turns 200+, most of the time not being able to solve it by reconnecting)

It's not much of information, but I'll try to help narrowing it down this weekend when we meet up again the next time and try to "no-events-version"

Thanks alot for your support to this issue and keep up the magnificient work !

 

[Roghar]

Its not events. I tried again last ngiht to play with a friend, patch H, events disabled, and it was OOSing constantly. Once a game OOSed, it was lost, even going back to a save it would start OOSing soon after

After 5 game starts, 4 on simultaneous and 1 on alternate turns, we went back to patch E and it worked a charm, with events, until we went to asleep at about turn 200

I wish I realised this a month or two ago! That was the first good run of MP I've managed to have for ages

 

[TinkerJohn]

Hello we've been having OOS issues with Patch H since we started using it. EVeryone is using patch H with the Media Mod installed.

During games of 3+ people it will OOS constantly. About every 3-10 turns.

During games of 2 people we've still had OOS but they are managable, maybe once or twice in the first 50 turns, and then sometimes none for the rest of the game. Still... its kind of annoying.

 

[bigtrac]

Been playing with patch H. Everything has been fine and had no OOS's until turn 491. Can't work out why as there are no obvious events occurring differently than any other turns. Saved the game, and reloaded, but the OOS's occurs at the start of a new turn. Can save and reload but then it happens again on ending and starting a new turn.

The only thing I can think of is that an AI player has built something which is causing the effect.

Will try and post more details once I've had a look at the OOS again and maybe tried isolating the error. The problem is, it'd be quite difficult to isolate due to having to go so far through the game.

 

[Bringa]

Hi,

My friend and I are playing a game of 2030h (with my modifications as described in my thread, but those shouldn't ELIMINATE sources of OOS) and we noticed something odd. We had an OOS one round and just decided to end turn and see what happens, and the OOS went away. Just thought I'd throw that out there and encourage others to try the same. Our game is pretty OOS free, but I'm waging a large scale war against the Bannor and every turn is taking forever, so we'll have to wait and see.

 

[spleendamage]

My friends and I play internet games nearly every Friday and for a while we would have OOS issues bring each game to an early end. Usually it was me who was out of sync and I am the only Vista user of the four of us.

The problems would typically start occurring right after we would trade world maps.

Once we started using patch "f" the OOS problem virtually stopped. Last week (using f) we finally got one in a game around turn 480. This week we are, somewhat nervously, patched up to "h."

No OOS issues for us playing the standard BTS game, but seriously... who wants to go back to playing that after playing FFH2?