Faster MP Save Transfer

[bluekirby25]

Hey, my friend and I are playing multiplayer on SVN rev 9806, and we're plagued with constant OOS errors, one every 1-5 turns. Whenever we get one, I save the game and re-host the lobby. This is fine (and to be expected given the complexity of this mod), but the problem is that each time he re-joins the lobby, he has to spend 8+ minutes waiting on a loading screen. However, transferring the same save file takes a few seconds over Discord. However, when he loads the same savegame a second time, he loads in instantly, making it seem like the save was cached somewhere. Is there some folder that multiplayer savegames are transferred to that can make it so we can transfer saves through multiplayer instead?

 

[Thunderbrd]

1) If you're having a lot of OOS issues, I am guessing you are playing with events. If you turn off events in the game options (which can only be done on game setup unfortunately for a multiplayer game since there's no option to enter the worldbuilder there) you will likely have far fewer OOS errors. There's still a few, like don't move your naval units more than what they can move in one round or the pathing can cause an OOS at some juncture and don't try setting the same wonder to build in your cities. There's also a rare OOS in combat still that I haven't been able to lock down yet. But these are all much more infrequent and there are a number of events that are causing OOS errors, the majority of them in fact. So if you play without events you'll be able to enjoy a game much farther in.

At some point my wife and I will probably find where a lot more come up and I'm going to hopefully get those big repetitive ones we find repaired soon.

2) When you DO get an OOS, it's a nightmare to try to cut corners to break out of it... never seems to work to do anything OTHER than go out to desktop, reload the mod for both players, and reload the game fresh. Thankfully you don't both have to restart your computers (though it may help). Trying to have one player log out and the other keep the game open to wait on the other player to rejoin doesn't work. Trying to both go back to main menu and reloading the game from there doesn't work and really pisses ya off because it really takes a long time to do even that. So take the time to do it right or it's going to be tremendously aggravating.

That's what I've learned from trial and error and analysis. Again, I eventually play to really get in and kill these OOS errors but they are really some of the hardest bugs to sort out, particularly when they come from the python included in an event.

 

[bluekirby25]

I had my friend start hosting the game instead, and for some reason we've only had an OOS twice over the last hour, so at least there's progress on that front. That being said, the OOS's would be tolerable if the game transfer speeds were faster. (For reference, it's this screen):

The most relevant thing I could find was https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/transferring-game-data.369484/, but no one found any solutions. Given that the size of each file (at least at our stage in the game) is only a few megabytes, (which only takes a few seconds to upload). We also tried direct port forwarding, but the speed wasn't improved, so it seems like CIV4 is throttling the upload speed somehow. We can probably bypass this if the savegames are transferred to a folder during this process, but we can't seem to find any such location.

 

[Thunderbrd]

It's frustrating but yeah, it just flat out takes a long time.

If you are playing with events on, it IS possible to get a pretty good run but it's also possible to hit some pretty bad OOS spots that can really irritate, like every turn or couple of turns.

 

[bluekirby25]

Dang, alright well thanks.

 

[bluekirby25]

Hey, we actually found it!
The host sends the file being loaded to the other player(s), and they place the file in:

C:\Users\NAME\Documents\My Games\Beyond the Sword\Saves\multi\auto\

 

[Thunderbrd]

I suppose that should work, sure. Cool!