Mac to Mac disconnects - MP

[Ferigno]

A buddy and I were capable of playing multiplayer games over the internet with each other. Every now and then we'd get a disconnect, but whoever was hosting would just go into the autosaves and host the game from the most recent one. Worked like a charm.

Post patch, we had an AWFUL time getting one up and running without it disconnecting, and we were completely unable to load an autosave. We would get all green lights, launch, and then wait forever only to have it load without one of us. I'm assuming some sort of disconnect in there.

What happened? Any advice? Any mac players experiencing this? It was all fine pre-patch. We have both downloaded the same patch and single is fine.

 

[AlanH]

Just guessing - in trying so hard to get it working cross-platform, they've broken the Mac-to-Mac mode.

 

[AspyrRyan]

That doesn't sound like anything we saw during testing, and we played a lot of multiplayer. Send a ticket in at support.aspyr.com. If you include the system specs for both computers involved, we can try to replicate the issue as closely as possible.

 

[Ferigno]

We troubleshot the hell out of this today and have determined that it is a VERY specific scenario that won't work.

We both have macs. I have an imac, he has a macbook. We can start a MP game between us. It works fine. Smaller maps work extremely well. We can play with no issues. So we play about 6 or 7 turns, and then go back to the main menu. I load up the autosave from our last turn. He joins in the staging area. We're all green and good to go. I launch. His screen drops the staging area and just goes to Atlas holding the globe, and I keep the staging area up for about 30 seconds. Then I go to my leader screen and the map loads without him. Just his leaders name and not his screen name, which clearly means he has not joined. His game freezes and must be restarted. Every time, no exceptions. We both have the most current patch.

Here's the REALLY bad news. Some friendly person named msredux helped me troubleshoot. ms had a mac. We tried this exact scenario and we got a reload to work perfectly. I fear that this is my buddy's problem.

He bought it in a CD format, I bought mine off steam. That is the only difference we can detect.

 

[Ferigno]

Well, after a number of failures, and tests all over the place, he's going to do a re-install from steam instead of the discs. It's the only thing we can think of.

It's so simple, and so consistent. Play a multi game for a while (8 turns or so), go back to main menu, load up the same game from the autosaves, and once we're all green and hit launch, he locks up on "atlas holding the globe", I sit there for a while, and then eventually go into the game without him.

Hopefully a reinstall will fix it. It clearly is not connection issues because we have no problems playing multiplayer games and this locks up every single time exactly in the same place. He has the same patch I do and we're both on macs. No idea why this isn't working.

 

[Ferigno]

Bah. We did a full reinstall of the program on his computer from steam. We can play multi together just fine, but cannot load an autosave and have us both in it. It is incredibly frustrating. I submitted a support ticket with aspyr. The weirdest part is that we WERE able to do it until the patch came along.