Multi Player bugs and crashes - After the 18th of August 2014

[NevFin]

SVN revision 8497

I was playing a hotseat game when some strange things happened with my neanderthal warrior (which had been a captive). Outside the border of my opponent it appeared as a barbarian to my opponent as it should. When I moved him into my opponents cultural borders my opponent noticed the flag changed from barbarian to mine. Then, since we were not at war, I was able to move my neanderthal into his city since he did not have the strength available to kill me. My neanderthal was operating like rogue or ambusher. This did not seem logical as he wasn't an invisible unit.

 

[Thunderbrd]

SVN revision 8497

I was playing a hotseat game when some strange things happened with my neanderthal warrior (which had been a captive). Outside the border of my opponent it appeared as a barbarian to my opponent as it should. When I moved him into my opponents cultural borders my opponent noticed the flag changed from barbarian to mine. Then, since we were not at war, I was able to move my neanderthal into his city since he did not have the strength available to kill me. My neanderthal was operating like rogue or ambusher. This did not seem logical as he wasn't an invisible unit.

Sounds like it still needs to be set to bAlwaysHostile.

 

[sintri]

insta OOS building wonder as player on the same team. Occasional OOS with unit naming enabled, units show up as not having the additional naming schemes when playing on the same team as well.

 

[Thunderbrd]

insta OOS building wonder as player on the same team. Occasional OOS with unit naming enabled, units show up as not having the additional naming schemes when playing on the same team as well.

The first happens when one player on the team has it set to build somewhere and the next tries to set it too. It's supposed to not let the second player do that but for whatever reason (who the hell knows where that was in the code) it's not protected against this anymore. I'm not terribly surprised by unit naming but glad its an issue that's easily avoided by never renaming units.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Announcement!

(@DH: Please place this notification in the first post on this and all subsequent MP bug threads.)

In Assets\XML\A_New_Dawn_GlobalDefines.xml, the following tags should be adjusted to show as:

	<Define>
		<DefineName>USE_MULTIPLE_THREADS_SPAWNING</DefineName>
		<bDefineBoolVal>0</bDefineBoolVal>
	</Define>
	<Define>
		<DefineName>USE_MULTIPLE_THREADS_PROPERTY_SOLVER</DefineName>
		<bDefineBoolVal>0</bDefineBoolVal>
	</Define>

and

	<Define>
		<DefineName>NUM_CITY_PIPELINE_THREADS</DefineName>
		<iDefineIntVal>1</iDefineIntVal>
	</Define>

To run an MP game without many OOS errors. Multithreading causes problems for MP play. However, Alberts2 was saying a while back he was doing something to get the game to automatically switch multi-threading off in an MP environment - some of these may be safe to leave at default. But I recently discovered that the property solver one is still an issue if its on.

I've also solved a combat based OOS and will be committing that solution shortly.

I've found one that has to do with what I think is an event that awards somewhere around 2k gold potentially. Something about how the event played out caused an OOS but its very rare.

The matter discussed above about the wonder building has to do with trying to build the same wonder as your team mate so if you communicate what wonders are being built you can avoid that problem.

The naming issue is in all OOS reports and appears to be a safe local difference on both systems.

 

[Civmatrix]

I am playing a hotseat game. Something on your recent svn updates causes my game to freeze when I end turn. I havent played in a few months. The Mod was working fine on a earlier version. But I the game always hangs whether its a random generated map or custom one. I cant even get out of the first round in a new game. Hopefully you have time to fix soon.

Version 8606

Im downloading the core version 35 to try and run for now.

 

[olduser]

To run an MP game without many OOS errors. Multithreading causes problems for MP play. However, Alberts2 was saying a while back he was doing something to get the game to automatically switch multi-threading off in an MP environment - some of these may be safe to leave at default. But I recently discovered that the property solver one is still an issue if its on.

I must have forgotten to commit that change somehow because i remember adding seperate defines for SP and MP games last year.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I am playing a hotseat game. Something on your recent svn updates causes my game to freeze when I end turn. I havent played in a few months. The Mod was working fine on a earlier version. But I the game always hangs whether its a random generated map or custom one. I cant even get out of the first round in a new game. Hopefully you have time to fix soon.

Version 8606

Im downloading the core version 35 to try and run for now.

Get the most recent. It's been solved.

I must have forgotten to commit that change somehow because i remember adding seperate defines for SP and MP games last year.

It MAY only be the property solver. I was confused because until I looked at the globals I was not aware that we had multi-threaded the property solver at all. But yeah, that's the thing that was causing trouble that I saw... and it may have been the only aspect of multi-threading that was.

 

[olduser]

Get the most recent. It's been solved.



It MAY only be the property solver. I was confused because until I looked at the globals I was not aware that we had multi-threaded the property solver at all. But yeah, that's the thing that was causing trouble that I saw... and it may have been the only aspect of multi-threading that was.

It's not just the property solver, the city pipeline leads to OOS errors because produced units can get different ID's if you use more then one thread.

 

[Thunderbrd]

It's not just the property solver, the city pipeline leads to OOS errors because produced units can get different ID's if you use more then one thread.

True but I wasn't seeing that issue so I'm saying you may have successfully disabled multi-threading for MP for city pipelines.

 

[sintri]

multiple barbarian units with swapped ids.

other ones just additional building built for one player while not for the other, and units in different locations.

 

[Flinx]

wrong thread, sorry.

 

[Thunderbrd]

multiple barbarian units with swapped ids.

other ones just additional building built for one player while not for the other, and units in different locations.

Assuming you're playing with multi-threading disabled in the GlobalDefines.xml, these are fairly infrequent right? I've seen a few similar ones but they don't happen often so this has led me to conclude they are probably due to occasional events which are extremely difficult to narrow down without finding a repeatable OOS point and having a save that leads directly into it (and being able to get the same # of players working on the issue.) Even then, many events are going OOS in python so would be beyond my ability to address. Which is why I've let the few we've been encountering go without further attempts to diagnose. At a point, it's nearly impossible to get them all but so far I haven't found a constant source of them that couldn't be addressed to the point of being able to play a very satisfactory MP game. We now go hours and hours without one.

If you ARE getting OOS errors nearly every round it really must be a matter of the GlobalDefines setting. Assets/XML/GlobalDefines.xml lists 4 tags that mention the term THREAD in them. The first three show a 1 in their definition and they must be set to 0 for all systems in play. The last shows a 4 in its definition (City Pipeline threads) and it must show 1.

Do that and you should rarely have an OOS issue.

 

[sintri]

Yea, threading was reduced to one, read around were rumours that it didn't matter but does seem to help. There are rare oos that'll always happen on certain turns, have encountered them 2 or 3 times. Was unable to resume matches from an oos save in earlier svns for whatever reason, worked last night so we were just resuming from the oos. One of the reoccurring oos came from an ai gaining access to 3 resources on one player's while not on the other. Majority of the oos didn't reoccur when you reload previous saves.

Did get a 150 turn oos free stretch till we stopped the night after we high prioritized civ 4 process, though haven't a clue if the game defaults the priority back to normal when you alt tab back in. Curious enough though the first time it oos'd still after 17 turns, after we reloaded didn't run into an oos for like 2 hours.

On a side note, friend did up from a 6600 to a i4790k, processing turn speed differences were ridiculous.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I'd ask for the saves that lead to repeatable OOS errors if you had only one other player but even that would be extremely difficult to fix.

They are very easy to bypass by saving after the OOS takes place and going from there usually. One round into an OOS won't usually produce much weirdness.

 

[sintri]

Yea, was thinking about booting up a third computer for bit more control group but he didn't want to. Just wasn't sure why svn 8580 and prior we couldn't just quit and rejoin nor use an save after the oos. It would just instantly oos when we tried either. Only one that wouldn't instantly oos was saves made before an oos or the autosaves which also wouldn't have an oos to begin with. Latest svn's working fine doing either so haven't a clue the cause less there was some issue with his other computer.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Yea, was thinking about booting up a third computer for bit more control group but he didn't want to. Just wasn't sure why svn 8580 and prior we couldn't just quit and rejoin nor use an save after the oos. It would just instantly oos when we tried either. Only one that wouldn't instantly oos was saves made before an oos or the autosaves which also wouldn't have an oos to begin with. Latest svn's working fine doing either so haven't a clue the cause less there was some issue with his other computer.

Quitting and rejoining has never worked quite right... maybe for Vanilla but I've not seen it work properly for any RoM derivative mod. You can usually get away with just going back to the main menu at least.

Strange that the saves wouldn't work after an OOS though. I did make a major repair to OOS errors that could stem from combat so the latest SVN is better? Quite likely true. And really make sure the 3rd computer is running with exactly the same files, most notably those multi-threading adjustments. I've never been able to test with a third system but it shouldn't be any different than 2 really provided all computers share the same file sets.

 

[Toffer90]

Quitting and rejoining has never worked quite right... maybe for Vanilla but I've not seen it work properly for any RoM derivative mod. You can usually get away with just going back to the main menu at least.

Also the very first turn of any MP game usually instantly OOS, so after creating the world one has to restart the game and load the initial autosave.

Strange that the saves wouldn't work after an OOS though. I did make a major repair to OOS errors that could stem from combat so the latest SVN is better? Quite likely true. And really make sure the 3rd computer is running with exactly the same files, most notably those multi-threading adjustments. I've never been able to test with a third system but it shouldn't be any different than 2 really provided all computers share the same file sets.

If the cache is not cleared, the save from after the OOS will very often instantly OOS when loaded. Hold shift when launching the game to clear out most of the cache.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Also the very first turn of any MP game usually instantly OOS, so after creating the world one has to restart the game and load the initial autosave.
If the cache is not cleared, the save from after the OOS will very often instantly OOS when loaded. Hold shift when launching the game to clear out most of the cache.

Oddly, I've not seen either of these situations with this playthrough.

 

[Toffer90]

Oddly, I've not seen either of these situations with this playthrough.

Odd, though it has been some time since I last played MP, so something might have changed.