MPMPM - Multiplayer Mod DLC-hack (Updated!)

[Dreadicon]

A lot to read, thanks
The game doesn't crash on pressing the load button. It loads fine. The problem is that after any random crash (internet connection, mod related, desync), when you load your game and the map appears, it skips one turn for the human players, plays the AI turn, and only allows you to make the next turn. I will still try to track it down to a specific mod, but no trace in logs doesn't help.

So, that issue actually plagues a lot of vanilla multiplayer games. It's a known bug around some of the forums; apparently was introduced by one of their more recent patches. Your civ shouldnt fully loose the turn; build progress/move progress/research/etc all advance, but you cannot issue any orders whatsoever for a single turn. No thread i've seen knows why, or has a good workaround for it, unfortunately.

But the best thing you can do is searching the lua scripts from the things you think they might causing problems.
You have to look for any lines, that could be executet different for human players.

Thanks, I have taken a look at the code; only GetActivePlayer is used of the ones mentioned, but it's used......ALOT. mostly in interface stuff, but there are over 100 occurrences of it, so that's going to be a long battle. I'll have to work on it over a few weeks most likely.

There are known conflicts between multiplayer mods and some of the lua functions that fiddle with the save/load process. It's never been fully explored just what the problems are or how to fix it, but it causes a lot of the save/load flukery you see (cache corruption, losing turns after desyncs, game crashes when trying to reload a save from within the game)

Also, nothing in your database.log looks out of order (the contentpackage.localizedtext error happens for everyone, I think, and the rest is standard stuff you see for every MPMPM package...).

Thanks for taking a look at the log. Concerning the cache corruption, it actually doesnt happen just when loading/saving; it also happens when I start a new game/load a game (which works fine), then return to the main menu, and start another game (new or loaded; doesnt matter which I do). It somehow corrupts the database entries for displaying building and tech information, so that the entries are there, but all information used for display is nil. I'll have to dif the cache some time here; that might reveal some useful info. Thanks for the help so far everyone!

 

[Maxsilv]

With few friends we're trying to play Communitas mods in multiplayer by using MPMPM and we have the same desync problems as Dreadicon. We're looking for a way to fix these issues too.
So, if you need help we're here, even if our knowledges in modding are a bit more limited.

 

[Kesler]

I'm trying to put together a "Immersion" pack of sorts, and I'm not sure if all the mods work properly:
-RED Modpack + Hotfix + Ethnic Units
-Communitas Map
-More Luxuries + Pantheon
-Civ names by policies
-Conquest for UU
-Natural Wonder Fix
-Civ 4 Diplomacy
-Historical religions
-Info Addict

Do any of you know which of these do and do not work? I think Info Addict is not possible.

 

[Serp]

I'm trying to put together a "Immersion" pack of sorts, and I'm not sure if all the mods work properly:
-RED Modpack + Hotfix + Ethnic Units
-Communitas Map
-More Luxuries + Pantheon
-Civ names by policies
-Conquest for UU
-Natural Wonder Fix
-Civ 4 Diplomacy
-Historical religions
-Info Addict

Do any of you know which of these do and do not work? I think Info Addict is not possible.

Info Addict is possible (atleast there are some modpacks that included it. When I tried to include it, the game crashed in 70% of the cases, when I tried to go back from a game to main menu, so I did not included it. Don't know why... but it seems on other modpacks this does not happen.

For More Luxuries + Pantheon you could use the versions from my modpack. I'm not sure which "more pantheon" you mean, but maybe the Belief Expansion pack I included in mine?
If so, I already added the new luxuries to the new beliefs.

Communitas Map is multiplayer compatible even without a modpack. see my modpack post

 

[manekk]

I'm trying to put together a "Immersion" pack of sorts, and I'm not sure if all the mods work properly:

-RED Modpack + Hotfix + Ethnic Units - ?
-Communitas Map - ?
-More Luxuries + Pantheon - yes
-Civ names by policies - yes
-Conquest for UU - can work in SP, can cause issues in MP
-Natural Wonder Fix - yes
-Civ 4 Diplomacy - can create issues, but there are fixes
-Historical religions - yes
-Info Addict - ?

On a side note:
Civ Names by policies - really funny, but the amount of popups was driving me crazy
Civ 4 Diplomacy - mod idea is great, but it still requires a lot of love and attention, and Putmalk is gone for vacation I think. In my games it debalanced the overall feeling, all the civs were happily trading technologies pretty cheap, so going for tech is pointless, your vassals can still denounce you, vote differently, very rarely want to break free (maybe it was other mods' impact), it wasn't working with mod civs, and a few things more, overall - your choice

 

[manekk]

Thanks, I have taken a look at the code; only GetActivePlayer is used of the ones mentioned, but it's used......ALOT. mostly in interface stuff, but there are over 100 occurrences of it, so that's going to be a long battle. I'll have to work on it over a few weeks most likely.

Good luck, I've started 3 months ago, and when I thought I have eliminated a bunch of mods and a lot of problems, I got stuck at performance polishing. The only good thing out of it is that I'm starting programming courses soon to be able to do more myself

The thing is that it's easy to make a modpack, but it's so fkin difficult to make it comfortable to use.

Anyways, since I believe I'll be stuck now for long, if anybody encounters these two bugs and solves them, I'd be more than happy (I know I already mentioned them before, but I think one I have described not correctly, and I promise to stop bchin after this post):

1. After loading a saved game (no matter whether after a resync, or just an auto save or regular save to mae a break) all the human players loose 1 turn. The workaround is to always save at the end of the round, when all players are done with actions, but it's kinda silly

2. Really long breaks between turns - I was wrong before, the computer actually wastes plenty of time AFTER human players finish their turn, but BEFORE the AI players begin theirs. I have no clue what it does in the meantime

Other bugs I will try to solve in other forums, or directly with the mods authors.

 

[Kesler]

Info Addict is possible (atleast there are some modpacks that included it. When I tried to include it, the game crashed in 70% of the cases, when I tried to go back from a game to main menu, so I did not included it. Don't know why... but it seems on other modpacks this does not happen.

For More Luxuries + Pantheon you could use the versions from my modpack. I'm not sure which "more pantheon" you mean, but maybe the Belief Expansion pack I included in mine?
If so, I already added the new luxuries to the new beliefs.

Communitas Map is multiplayer compatible even without a modpack. see my modpack post

Info Addict runs with it, but doesn't show up. It's odd.

I meant the extra Pantheons for More Luxuries, which does work.

I also got Communitas to work, which is great!

Civ 4 Diplomacy - mod idea is great, but it still requires a lot of love and attention, and Putmalk is gone for vacation I think. In my games it debalanced the overall feeling, all the civs were happily trading technologies pretty cheap, so going for tech is pointless, your vassals can still denounce you, vote differently, very rarely want to break free (maybe it was other mods' impact), it wasn't working with mod civs, and a few things more, overall - your choice

I disable a lot of Diplomacy, so it works for me.

 

[civaddiction]

Updated my modpack!

@civaddiction

Is sharing opinions working in your modpack? It doesn't look like it does for me.

I'm not sure, I'll have to check up on that. I do know, however, that InfoAddict has a detailed Global Relations tab that you can use to take a glance at opinions much faster than using the Diplomacy route.

 

[cicero225]

I'm trying to put together a "Immersion" pack of sorts, and I'm not sure if all the mods work properly:
-RED Modpack + Hotfix + Ethnic Units
-Communitas Map
-More Luxuries + Pantheon
-Civ names by policies
-Conquest for UU
-Natural Wonder Fix
-Civ 4 Diplomacy
-Historical religions
-Info Addict

Do any of you know which of these do and do not work? I think Info Addict is not possible.

I recall testing RED once for someone once and it looked okay. Granted, all I did was start the game and look at warrior, so I can't prove it works beyond that.

More Luxuries and Pantheons you should probably use Serp's version as he says (though I recall it working fine the one time I tried it, except for some missing luxuries).

Civ Names by Policies definitely works.

Civ 4 Diplomacy works but might require some tweaking. It has come up a few times in the thread but I forget the details.

Info Addict seemed fine the one time I tested it, but again I didn't really take a close look at it.

 

[civaddiction]

I'm trying to put together a "Immersion" pack of sorts, and I'm not sure if all the mods work properly:
-RED Modpack + Hotfix + Ethnic Units
-Communitas Map
-More Luxuries + Pantheon
-Civ names by policies
-Conquest for UU
-Natural Wonder Fix
-Civ 4 Diplomacy
-Historical religions
-Info Addict

Do any of you know which of these do and do not work? I think Info Addict is not possible.

I have RED Modpack, More Luxuries + Pantheon, Civ names by Policies, C4DF, and Info Addict working together in my modpack. Civ Names uses math.random which can cause desyncs, but I replaced it with Game.Rand. If you want to use C4DF with another dll mod, you'll need whoward's dll or the Community Patch base.

 

[Serp]

Updated my modpack!

Hey =)

Maybe you should remove my note regarding siege units in your thread.
Because I only did the changes in my override folder (because I was too lazy to do the MPMPM process again). So if someone replaces their Civ5Units.xml with the file I uploaded, they will delete your modpack and have mine instead

About Thals Flagpromotions (which is maybe the practicals mod ever exists ) you should check your logs. Maybe xml log, if there are any errors regarding that mod or lua.log, if the mod is loaded and/or producing errors.

Hmm... what do you use from the Community Project? Maybe you can take a look at the original thread of Flagpromotions I linked in my post.
Because the original Flagpromo mod depend on Community patch (or now only recommend it). The important thing here is the order of loading the mods. So the dependencies are important.
If the original mod works for you. Take a look at the modinfo from my version. There I wrote in which files I did my changes. Then go to these files and search for "Serp" and you will find all changes I made and you can copy them.

 

[Gedemon]

R.E.D. Modpack was my test mod for MPMPM, you won't have problem with it alone. It should even be usable in any MP game (ie the other players don't need to install it) as it change nothing to gameplay (but this was not tested in a complete game)

 

[cleaner]

Hello everyone,
apologies for the long post, but I would like to be detailed to hopefully make it easier for anyone trying to help me.
I used Gedemon's version of this when it came out "back in the day" and after a Civ 5 break wanted to use the newer one to make a new mod pack. The list of mods I want to use consists of mods that add items like great works of different kinds, resolutions, and religions, as well as these:
Capture Great People (v 2)
City States Leaders II (v 7)
Civ Names by Policies (v 8)
The whole collection of Civ Accurate Maps from sukritact here at CivFanatics
Great Prophet Historical Names (BNW or GK) (v 30)
R.E.D. v28
Tectonic Map Script (v 4)
TerrainTextureMod (v 2)
At first it all appeared to work fine, but then I encountered text errors like "TXT_soandso" which made me try to make the modpack again with another version of the tool and just continue playing. This fixed that problem, but resulted in there being no religions listed anymore in the World Religions info window. At a later stage I found new civilizations which had their city banners messed up by spacing among other things. There I also saw the Washington logo, which was mentioned would indicate something missing if it was red, but it is light blue in my case. Also, when the world congress was established, I was unable to access it in any way.
Since then I've been trying all three versions mentioned in the first post. The old one attached to it, the one linked on Steam, as well as the one in the section where it says what to do when assets or graphics are missing and you should use that version. All but the Steam version throw the error on line 160, resp. 179 regarding the folder names. When checking the log file it states:
"Copy Mod's Data To MPMP Folder for Civ Accurate Maps: Gods and Kings (v 1)
Path to "My Documents" folder :H:\System documents
Path to the mod's folder :H:\System documents\my games\Sid Meier's Civilization 5\MODS\Civ Accurate Maps: Gods and Kings (v 1)
Mod's path does not exist, aborting..."
Checking the mod packs folder in the assets shows that the maps aren't copied. In game it gives an error regarding the missing dds file when selecting a civilization and instead just shows a bright red rectangle instead of the map.
I can't change the mod's folder name to the one it mentions since I can't have ":" in it and don't know either where it gets that name from.
Long story short, it seems to not copy some things and I would like to know if there is any way to fix it or if anyone had similar experiences. Thank you very much.

PS: I don't know for sure what else is missing apart from those maps.

 

[Kesler]

R.E.D. Modpack was my test mod for MPMPM, you won't have problem with it alone. It should even be usable in any MP game (ie the other players don't need to install it) as it change nothing to gameplay (but this was not tested in a complete game)

When I first read this I saw "R.E.D. WW2 mod", got really excited for a moment.

 

[Gedemon]

When I first read this I saw "R.E.D. WW2 mod", got really excited for a moment.

I've not tested anything to load a scenario map in MP yet, but I know that the mod itself can be converted and a game launched with a mapscript (yep, I've tried that at least)

Since I've started to think of MPMPM (and that's some time ago) I've tried to code my mods keeping MP in mind, and since I've made it I was able to test some of my code in MP games with my other mods, and start converting it to MP.

At the time R.E.D. WWII was coded without knowing anything about MP coding obviously, but latest version already use "GameEvents.PlayerDoTurn", the other parts should work, except that I still need to change all the references to "math.rand" (there are some, expect LOT of desyncs if you don't change them...)

Of course you won't go far as there is no "advanced start points" like in civ4, but the mod's mechanisms should work, and you could run a script to fill a random map with culture and cities for each civs.

ATM I have absolutely no idea if it will be difficult to make the MP setup screen chose a scenario map instead of a map script, or if we'll need to convert the scenario map to a map script first (there are mods/tools for that last part)

But one day I (or someone motivated enough) will have a look...

 

[Kesler]

I've always wished that Firaxis added multiplayer Scenarios. They would be a ton of fun and add even more longevity and value to the game. The hard parts would be syncing up the dynamic events, but it would be worth it.

 

[Ilyu]

Hello,

I'm working with Dreadicon on making the Communitas expansion pack work for multiplayer. We used this mod to package the pack as a DLC but as Dreadicon already told you we encountered a serious problem of cache corruption. Each time we have more than one loading screen (like we launch a multiplayer game and we have a de-sync or i load a game and start another game or the other way around) it become impossible to chose a production and the tech tree is unusable as you can see in the screen below.

Spoiler :

This continue until we quit the game or we try to unload/reload a DLC or load/unload a mod (Dreadicon need to delete the cache to get rid of the problem).

We tried to see what in the mods could be responsible for this, and our prime suspect is a file named TW_init.lua.
We found that by suppressing the line responsible for the update of the database we could prevent the bugs described above (at the expense of the tooltips, but that was expected).

Spoiler :

table.insert(Game.Stats.Buildings[objectID], stat) at line 714
and table.insert(Game.Stats.Promotions[objectID], stat) at line 764

For the moment TW_init.lua is executed each time a game is initialized, and we think this may be the cause of our problem.

Actually all lua files are loaded by InGame.lua wich mean they are loaded each time a game is launched (or loaded). So we're here to ask if you guys have an idea on how we could execute this script at the launch of civ V. Of course that would be the best solution we can still ensure that the script is only executed once.

I hope my explanation were clear and please excuse me for any grammatical or spelling mistake this post can have.

 

[cicero225]

Hello,

I'm working with Dreadicon on making the Communitas expansion pack work for multiplayer. We used this mod to package the pack as a DLC but as Dreadicon already told you we encountered a serious problem of cache corruption. Each time we have more than one loading screen (like we launch a multiplayer game and we have a de-sync or i load a game and start another game or the other way around) it become impossible to chose a production and the tech tree is unusable as you can see in the screen below.

Spoiler :

This continue until we quit the game or we try to unload/reload a DLC or load/unload a mod (Dreadicon need to delete the cache to get rid of the problem).

We tried to see what in the mods could be responsible for this, and our prime suspect is a file named TW_init.lua.
We found that by suppressing the line responsible for the update of the database we could prevent the bugs described above (at the expense of the tooltips, but that was expected).

Spoiler :

table.insert(Game.Stats.Buildings[objectID], stat) at line 714
and table.insert(Game.Stats.Promotions[objectID], stat) at line 764

For the moment TW_init.lua is executed each time a game is initialized, and we think this may be the cause of our problem.

Actually all lua files are loaded by InGame.lua wich mean they are loaded each time a game is launched (or loaded). So we're here to ask if you guys have an idea on how we could execute this script at the launch of civ V. Of course that would be the best solution we can still ensure that the script is only executed once.

I hope my explanation were clear and please excuse me for any grammatical or spelling mistake this post can have.

If you're sure that's it, then based on my combing of TW_init.lua (assuming we're looking at similar versions of the files...the one I'm looking at is https://github.com/Thalassicus/cat/blob/master/Cat/Tools/TooltipWriter/TW_Init.lua ), you may want to try uncommenting the lines:

line 635:--if not Game.InitializedStats then
line 747: end

I suspect that's a check they had for the table being loaded more than once that they must have decided was unnecessary. However, it's possible there may be a difference between reloading a game in the base game and loading it when playing with mods which makes this matter again.

 

[Ilyu]

I suspect that's a check they had for the table being loaded more than once that they must have decided was unnecessary. However, it's possible there may be a difference between reloading a game in the base game and loading it when playing with mods which makes this matter again.

I tried it, but the game behave the same way than before. I think this value is set to true each time a loading screen is over, wich would explain why testting it doesn't have an impact on this problem.

 

[cicero225]

I tried it, but the game behave the same way than before. I think this value is set to true each time a loading screen is over, wich would explain why testting it doesn't have an impact on this problem.

Hmm, in that case you may want to just explicitly check the table for a pre-existing entry before allowing it to insert. i.e.

if Game.Stats.Buildings[objectID] == nil then
    table.insert(Game.Stats.Buildings[objectID], stat)
end