If your C3C is locking up when you try to host...

[neorowen]

Some people are experiencing a problem with conquests when they attempt to host a MP game of any sort. The game screen simply locks up. None of the buttons work, no options can be changed, and you must use task manager to kill the game.

I have been looking into this issues and have found some interesting things. First off, if you are experiencing this problem, answer this question:

Do you own/use a linksys router?

I do. I figured out that I started to experience problems once I upgraded the firmware on my linksys wrt54g router to 1.42.3. Once I removed the router from the equation (used two wireless ad-hoc devices, long story, I'll post if anyone is interested) I was able to host again.

I have been going over this with a Tech from Atari but I need more information to give her. So, those of you experiencing this MP hosting crash issue please post your setup and network config here. Maybe we can nail down this problem and take it to Linksys, Atari, or whoever.

 

[Duantalus]

That’s a really interesting discovery, it may be that Civ III has issues with sending packets over certain types of routers, or maybe just wireless ones, I remember vaguely trying to help before but running out of time before I could really help, sorry about that. I think that it might be helpful, with this new idea, to find out what people are having problems with it and getting the make and model numbers of all their networking gear to see if we can find some kind of pattern.

In the meantime you may want to try updating the firmware of your router, the latest version appears to be 2.00.8:

http://www.linksys.com/download/firmware.asp?fwid=201

and see if that clears up any problems.

It also makes me wonder if the built in encryption, for wireless, may be a part of what’s causing the problem, I seem to remember seeing problems because of that before. It also may be related to the network card.

It also appears that the networking run through the router you have is actually parsed through a linux kernel (2.4.5), I’m not sure but that too may have something to do with the issue (since linux doesn’t use the MS TCP/IP protocols most likely used by Civ III).

Anyway, should be interesting to find out.

 

[neorowen]

Originally posted by Duantalus
In the meantime you may want to try updating the firmware of your router, the latest version appears to be 2.00.8:

Actually I use the 1st version of the router so my firmware has not been upgraded yet.

The truely odd thing is that it worked and we played two or three C3C mp games over the LAN. The one day it stopped, the only thing I can guess is that was the day a roomate sent up the new firmware. The new firmware came with a whole new GUI and I'm thinking that once again Linksys screwed something up.

 

[bobsimmons99]

I'm using the linksys WRT54G, and i was using the newest firmware. I was able to host ONE game, and after that it stopped working. I was messing around with it for hours trying to figure out what the problem was when I stumbled across this post. So I tried disabling my wireless network connection and sure enough, i was able to host again (fat lot of good it did, since that's my LAN connection). So I decided to try downgrading my firmware back to the one that came with the router originally. Not an easy task, since the newest firmware won't allow you to do it. I had to follow the directions from the dslreports messageboard to get it to downgrade.

Once that was done though, the problem was solved. I tried hosting several times just to be sure, and i haven't noticed any problems. There's a pretty big delay when moving units, but other than that it's running fine now.

Edit: thought i'd add the firmware version i downgraded to, in case anybody wants to know. I switched to v1.01.4. When you download it from the ftp site, you have to get that one from one of the zip files.

 

[bobsimmons99]

I decided to try another version of the firmware and see what results I got. When I upgraded to v1.30.7, the problem came back. So far for me that means 1.30.7 and 1.42.3 both have the same problem.