"This game has gone out of sync"

[Beginner]

"This game has gone out of sync" is an error I've been constantly getting lately while playing LAN games, and this messes the game up badly. It's like an AI takes over for the other player, though everything appears to be fine. But the game progresses differently for each of us... Could somebody help?

 

[ori]

are you playing Beyond the Sword? or Warlords? or Vanilla? which patch are you using, all use the same version right?

 

[Beginner]

are you playing Beyond the Sword? or Warlords? or Vanilla? which patch are you using, all use the same version right?

Thank you for your reply.

We are both playing the same version of Beyond the Sword, 3.13.

 

[ori]

the most likely culprit then is some pre-patch file in the game cache. There are a few ways to clear the cache - the easiest one is:
hold down the "shift" key while starting the game (i.e. during the startup screen) all players need to do this. If this does not work I can post more detailed instructions for manually deleting the cache...

 

[icylaw]

I have the same problem as the other guy. Would you please tell me about the alternate way to clear out the cache?

Im desperate

Also im playing Lan, with the newest patch

 

[ori]

you have to set windows to show hidden files since the application data directory is hidden by default.

the following directory:
documents and settings\<username>\application data\my games\beyond the sword
has to be deleted (it contains the BtS cache and proxy settings - BtS will create it again once you start a game after deleting the stuff). All players need to do this.
DO NOT delete
documents and settings\<username>\my documents\my games\beyond the sword
that would cost you all your saves

Welcome to Civfanatics by the way

 

[icylaw]

Thx a lot.. really helped

 

[InFeRnOg]

I just started having this problem today.

After the last time I played online with my buddy with no problems, I reinstalled all copies of Civ 4 (original, warlords, and BTS). To note possibly, I reinstalled the games on to a different hard drive.

We're playing BTS and getting the Out of Sync error after a turn or two.

I tried going into Application Data as mentioned above, but Beyond the Sword isn't even in there, only Civ 4 and Warlords. On top of that, there are no folders titled 'Cache' only 'Profiles' in those folders.

Any ideas? Not being able to destroy my enemies and conquer the world is really bothering me! Please help

 

[ori]

did you patch beyond the sword (the reason I mentioned above is the most common - but sadly not only reason for oos issues - and it is not impossible that some other things introduced with 3.13 are aggravating things)?
You might try disabling random events and see if that works, while most people who had oos issues with random events solved them by deleting the cache - some don't.
The fact that the cache is not there probably means that either it sits somewhere in a weird location after your reinstall or for some reason the game does not cache anything (did you disable caching? on my machine I have and thats the reason why this folder is not there)...

 

[InFeRnOg]

Ori:

I didn't disable caching - at least not knowingly.

One thing I can recall that might be an issue is that for Civ 4 and Warlords I chose not to uninstall the game configuration files when prompted what to uninstall. For BTS, I chose to uninstall the game config files.

Perhaps that might be the cause of the problems now (since the game config files that I uninstalled would've been used for the MP match I have going). If that's the case I can only hope reinstalling the games on to my C drive will do the trick.

Any other ideas or suggestions would be appreciated! Thanks!

 

[Zespri]

you have to set windows to show hidden files since the application data directory is hidden by default.

the following directory:
documents and settings\<username>\application data\my games\beyond the sword
has to be deleted (it contains the BtS cache and proxy settings - BtS will create it again once you start a game after deleting the stuff). All players need to do this.
DO NOT delete
documents and settings\<username>\my documents\my games\beyond the sword
that would cost you all your saves

Welcome to Civfanatics by the way

Thank you very much - helped me too!

 

[DedlyCobraMonky]

I have had this same problem with my brother when playing BTS. We have both cleared the caches manually before starting it up yet the out of sync error never fails to pop up sometime during the game.
Also, when i am in the middle of a game, sometimes the screen goes black and changes to center fit mode. Instead of being full screen, the sides have a black border. I look at the in game resolution And it has not changed and all of the options are how I set them before. I press the start menu button, right click the desktop background, and choose "graphics options" and the "panel fit." I then see that insted of being in the mode labeled "Full Screen (No Border)" it is in the mode labeled Center Desktop. When i choose "full screen" and go back into the game, within a minute the screen goes black and the goes back into the game in a bordered mode. Then the process repeats itself.

FYI I am on a Dell XPS M1330 laptop and i am running the Steam version of BTS on Windows Vista.

Thanks
-PJ

 

[Nyarlathothep]

Same problem with Direct IP games, BtS 3.19. All of the above didn't fix it in any way. WinXP/Hamachi (without Hamachi, it doesn't even work in any way)

After a while, OoS errors happen. Once they happen, they do so frequently (every 2nd turn or so). Deleting cache/profile/etc and restart of the game doesn't help. I also disabled caching which has apparently no effect at all.

Edit: It seems to help to enable write protection on the cache directory. A bunch of error messages every time you start + load a game, but otherwise it works fine and no OoS so far =P Pretty strange that you cannot disable the damn caching via .ini (has no effect, uses cache anyway) and that you need to use such crude methods to get Multiplayer to work..

Edit: It rests stable longer, though events will eventually kill the sync. Before 3.19 this was no problem for me. Now, they somehow destroyed MP for me as well.

 

[DedlyCobraMonky]

how would I enable write protection for the cache?

Edit to my first post: The blinking screen continues, and even if I allow the game to go into a bordered screen, the blinking does not stop. Also, a see a notification saying "your driver has not responded but has recovered" so i think that this may be the problem.
Thanks

 

[Nyarlathothep]

For write protection you need to change the security tab of your cache directory and disable writing access to it in your OS.

I really cannot recommend it if you are not an experienced user. It could cause quite some trouble if you modify around without really knowing what you're doing. Also, this is different in different OSs.

I also doubt it has a big effect, the main thing seems to be that events cause these OoS errors.

 

[Icevulture]

Played a game with random events turned off. Not 1 out of sync message the entire game. Seems this feature is what's causing the problem and while it sucks having to turn them off, if that's what it takes then that's fine.

 

[munky]

Played a game with random events turned off. Not 1 out of sync message the entire game. Seems this feature is what's causing the problem and while it sucks having to turn them off, if that's what it takes then that's fine.

and for me this is working now: turning off random events.

also i have winXP so every game i manually clear the cache. yeah, yeah, shift and all of that blah blah ways of auto-clearing the cache; but to be one hundred percent certain i clear the cache manually. between every single MP game. i noted when i first looked in the \cash directory that two file dates existed -- a full month between them. and during that period i was having a lot of OOS issues.

i think the two are the key (no random events and clear the cache), we will see what develops...

{playing RoM with Huge Maps and 3 of us on one team. about 9 AI civs. has nothing to do with routers, ISP host, or even PC power of the player starting the game. but we are doing it DirectIP.}

question -- my Vista MP players say there is no cache formed in Vista, is this true? they dont clear it cause they say it doesnt exist on their PCs.

 

[munky]

we got an OOS with all the above off when one team mate activated a Catapult attack on a city.

upon rebooting and connecting again, once again when he highlighted the Catapult we got the OOS.

just throwing that out there...

a reconnect twice happened and since then no OOS.

ah, whatchagonnado?

<update: played a whole another night and no OOS so it really looked associated with the Catapult first attack, odd isnt it?>

 

[PieceOfMind]

Pretty sure the OOS there is coming from two different RNG results on two different machines. Generally speaking OOS are closely related to RNG-related events. That's why turning off random events helps, since every time a random event occurs there's another possibility for another RNG results mismatch.

Other things that use the RNG, like automating exploring and great person births don't cause OOS (to my knowledge) because other players don't need to roll the RNG for those - it only affects the one player.

By the way, I have no idea how to fix the problem. I'm only repeating here what I've heard and what makes sense to me. You can't turn off combat but I suppose if you played an Always Peace game with No Random Events it might just be possible to be 100% sure of avoiding OOS.

P.S. This thread might be of interest for further research.

 

[munky]

Pretty sure the OOS there is coming from two different RNG results on two different machines. Generally speaking OOS are closely related to RNG-related events. That's why turning off random events helps, since every time a random event occurs there's another possibility for another RNG results mismatch.

Other things that use the RNG, like automating exploring and great person births don't cause OOS (to my knowledge) because other players don't need to roll the RNG for those - it only affects the one player.

By the way, I have no idea how to fix the problem. I'm only repeating here what I've heard and what makes sense to me. You can't turn off combat but I suppose if you played an Always Peace game with No Random Events it might just be possible to be 100% sure of avoiding OOS.

P.S. This thread might be of interest for further research.

is that thread's oos fix file current for version 3.19? is states it is for 3.17 only... curious. i see that there is a naval oos effect that it focuses upon as well.

thank you for the link and thoughts on the randnum stuff...