Troubleshooting Connectivity

[CanuckSoldier]

I certainly understand your frustration, as a fellow MP addict, but I believe there has been feedback from people like me, and other testers and MP veterans about the issues and certain stating over and over again, here, at poly and definitely at Civ4players that the dev's are aware of the problems(and have been since about day 3 after 1.52 was released) and have been working(even while on vacation) to resolve the problems. Sid himself shouldn't have to spent time posting in forums to let you know that they are working on it, I'd rather have the dev's spend there time fixing the issues

CS

 

[SPQR300]

But after they solved the connecting problems, there are still other problems...
-Sometimes CIV just crashes, and when I come back to the lobby everyone has crashed, except for the only one person who has just joined the game. It's very weird, someone joins, then suddenly everybody is kicked except for him...
-When I save a multiplayer game and recreate it, players can join, but the TURN TIMER FREEZES!!! But always. I tried it with two different savegame in 1.09 and in 1.52 too, but the turn times always froze! And only started again when everybody except me has left the game...
-WHY CAN PEOPLE PLAY DEAD civilizations? It makes games unplayable in the modern era, because people just enter the game to see that their civilization no longer exists, then they quit. Same thing applies for almost dead civ which no one wants to play with. Let the host shut some civilizations from players during the game!
-Some functionality for AFK would be very welcome. I mean if you have to go away for 5-10minutes you set the AI to play instead of you. You do not quit the game, but the AI is playing for you. After you have returned you take the civ back from the AI. Quitting a game and re-entering is very inconvenient if you only want to go away for a few minutes. Of course there should be a limit, let's say this only works for 10-20minutes AFK.
-More information shown in the lobby about games. (time it started, year the game is just in etc..)
-A game mode even faster then Blazing!
(I know this is not completely on-topic, but a developer actually reads this thread, so I rather posted it)

Soren, you think this AFK idea is doable? BTW are the developers reading the threads on forums? There are plenty of very good ideas and tweaks. The expansion game could make this exceptional game almost perfect!( for example useful nukes... http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=153455)

 

[dob]

I certainly understand your frustration, as a fellow MP addict, but I believe there has been feedback from people like me, and other testers and MP veterans about the issues and certain stating over and over again, here, at poly and definitely at Civ4players that the dev's are aware of the problems(and have been since about day 3 after 1.52 was released) and have been working(even while on vacation) to resolve the problems. Sid himself shouldn't have to spent time posting in forums to let you know that they are working on it, I'd rather have the dev's spend there time fixing the issues

CS

I had this problem from day one, but it certainly got worse with time. The problem was really mostly the lack of feedback from the devs, but seeing what a great game they cooked up, I feel confident they can handle this problem once they are on the case.

 

[iceviking6]

I don't know if anyone else has experience with this, but I don't get why everyone is bashing gamespy because I had these problems with a LAN game -- a LAN game being completely independent of gamespy. I posted the following in December...

------------------------------
Me and my cousins started up a LAN game over christmas and experienced MASSIVE "Connecting to Peer" problems. We even reverted back to 1.09 because of it. We also saved a game, and were unable to load it again since those joining would crash.

1. If person A started the game, person B could usually log in, but person C was left starting at "connecting to peer." If peson B logged out, then SOMETIME C could get in, but then B couldn´t join.

A nightmare and a long waste of time to say the least trying to get all 3 of us connected. Anyone else experiencing trouble with LAN games?

Note: We sometimes get similar problems with 1.09 but it we always got in eventually.. with 1.52.. impossible.
--------------------------------------

Note, all firewalls turned off. Reloaded the old 1.09 patch and managed to get a game going. Problems still persisted at times however. One of them could always join but it would block the other. We figured out that if the game was started, and they joined at the same time, they both got in. Go figure.

I don't see why all this is being blamed on gamespy when I experience problems with LAN games. Anyone else tried this?

RH

 

[MMV]

I understand your POV MMV, and believe me I and many other MP testers certainly do represent the MP community in ways that are far more effective than adding one more complaint to a thread like this.(this you should be more aware of as I see that you have joined the beta test).CS

Yes, I signed up a few weeks ago as per DTA - but never received the account activation email.


added: NOTE TO OTHERS - I am/was one of the lucky few that had NO problems with any aspect of the game programming prior to the latest patch - no freezes, crashes, connectivity issues etc.

 

[salqadri]

I don't know if anyone else has experience with this, but I don't get why everyone is bashing gamespy because I had these problems with a LAN game -- a LAN game being completely independent of gamespy.

Wow. That is excellent information. I had suspected this from the start, and have continuously trying to refrain people from bashing GameSpy when honestly, we really dont know where the fault is. If you want to bash, bash 'em all, or dont bash at all. Canuck I hope you read icevikings post. Let us refrain from placing the blame on GS, though Im not denying they may be a factor.

Thanks for your post Sorren. You asked for 2 people that work at hours X and not at hours Y. Well I havent encountered that problem, but, I exactly know who I can and cannot play with. I can almost ALWAYS play with people I have played with in the past, regardless of time. And I can almost NEVER play with people that I would get stuck on. And this has happened so many times that I now know for a fact which people I cannot play with. For example, I can never play a game in which SirPartyMan (SPM) is a peer. RedPheonix is another example: I can never play with him is he is a peer. But when he is host, or I am host, we can play (though not in the case of SPM). And note that other people seem to have no problems with SPM or RedPheonix. On the other hand, no matter what the time is, i KNOW that certain people I will have no problems with. Basically, there is some kind of wierd compatibility thing, where 2 people are either compatible or not with each other. If there is a host I cannot connect, I can still get in if he gives me his ip address, though on occasion that has failed too (and that is when maybe there really was a firewall issue). I also recommend you take a look at the LAN problem mentioned by iceviking, because if what he said is true, it is something you guys may be able to test internally.

Best of luck,

salqadri

 

[CanuckSoldier]

Yes I've heard of some people haveing problems with there LAN's, and on the flip side I know of lots of people that have have no problems with LAN games, so to be honest I'm not sure what the issue is with certain LAN configurations, but the errors they tend to get(generally "connection socket" errors) are not the same problems people have in internet game with peer or host issues. So I'm sure of one thing, and that is they are likely not related and LAN problems don't exonerate GS from being one factor in the internet equation....atleast IMHO.

CS

 

[Possibility]

Here is what I personaly think is the problem, its that too many people are trying to join a game all at once. If you play at 4am EST, you can join any game without issue. I did this the other night, i was able to get in 4 out of 5 games. I almost s**t a brick I couldnt believe it. During peak hours, I cant ever join any game.

It seems the only games I ever do get in too our the Huge map Epic Speed games, the ones no one ever wants to play, thus no is joining them. Or the other games I can get into are the private ones with a password that no one else is joining because they dont know the password.

And the reason the issue became bad after patch 1.52, is that with this patch people now could tell the difference between a game already in progress and one in staging. (Thank you firaxis for making that more clear, it was much needed!!) But it had a negative effect in that it caused more people to simultaneously join the games that were in staging.

Possibility

 

[Soren Johnson]

one bit of news... we have confirmed that there is a bug involving some uncleared data. Basically, sometimes (not always, but a reasonable amount of time) if you try to join a game and fail or abort (by backing out or timing out), you will no longer be able to connect to any other game, ever. This can be fixed by restarting the app. (backing out of the GameSpy lobby and coming back doesn't fix it - you need to exit out of the game entirely...) At any rate, sorry about this problem... it'll be fixed in the next patch.

 

[dob]

Great news Soren! Keep on it!

 

[SirT]

one bit of news... we have confirmed that there is a bug involving some uncleared data. Basically, sometimes (not always, but a reasonable amount of time) if you try to join a game and fail or abort (by backing out or timing out), you will no longer be able to connect to any other game, ever. This can be fixed by restarting the app. (backing out of the GameSpy lobby and coming back doesn't fix it - you need to exit out of the game entirely...) At any rate, sorry about this problem... it'll be fixed in the next patch.

Thanks a bunch Soren!!! I hope they are paying you double salary, one for designer and one for community spokesman

 

[SPQR300]

I still feel somehow that it hasn't solved this connectivity problem yet...

 

[dob]

I still feel somehow that it hasn't solved this connectivity problem yet...

I would bet on it being a small collection of bugs/problems, resulting in similar results; I.e. "connecting to peer..."...

 

[Phoenix_56721]

I can't even connect to the Gamespy server browser, I changed my gamespy id, several times....that didn't work. I tried changing my email address with a new gamspy id....that didn't work. Is there a workaround for this problem?

Oh and I am running v1.52. Civ4 is on my exception list and the correct port (2056) is open, I even tried shutting down my firewall altogether still nothing. My McAfee is disabled and I don't have zone alarm.

Please help.........

 

[risa2000]

Now, while we are on the topic, I would like to ask if anyone can explain 'Port' value in Civilization INI file.

This is set to 2056. I changed it to 52056 and the game started generating UDP packets with source port 52056 and destination port 2056. This made impossible changing port value on machine which hosted the game.

Is there a way to setup the game so both ports are same, so all machines in MP could use the same port number regardless whether being client or host?

 

[SPQR300]

I rather make what I want to write small, because it's not completely on topic again:
CIV4 is one of the best games I have ever played with, the ideas, and gameplay is genial, but it feels like as if it had been coded by elementary shool pupils. No offence, but if I was the head of Firaxis, I would double the wages of the creative staff and the people who made the game so excellent and balanced, but I would fire all the coders, and the technical staff too...

 

[CanuckSoldier]

I can't even connect to the Gamespy server browser, I changed my gamespy id, several times....that didn't work. I tried changing my email address with a new gamspy id....that didn't work. Is there a workaround for this problem?

Oh and I am running v1.52. Civ4 is on my exception list and the correct port (2056) is open, I even tried shutting down my firewall altogether still nothing. My McAfee is disabled and I don't have zone alarm.

Please help.........

To access the GS lobby you have to open the ports it uses as well as 2056, look at the GS firewall help page for the ports

http://www.gamespyarcade.com/support/firewalls.shtml

CS

 

[Kirzon-Dax]

black_mischief, thanks for being right on the money with regards to Civ4 being one of the worst, if not the worst game in terms of online functionality.

iceviking6... thanks for pointing out (once again) that the problems are not limited to Game Spy.

salqadri, you are right on target. Firaxis needs to "realize that its their own problem (not Game Spy, not the players) and hopefully do something about it asap. If you still think that a turn based game is harder than rts, then i basically give up on you."

SirT, damn you hit right on the head >>> "But I would like to suggest that the angry mob forms, NOT because of the MP issues, but rather the lack of feedback on them. Civ players are a patient lot by nature, but when you get us addicted to Civ4 MP, then take it away, you should expect some withdrawal-driven actions "

CanuckSoldier you are obviously biased and your comments are meaningless and should be ignored by all.

Soren Johnson... where the heck have you and Firaxis representatives been. These problems have been going on for weeks! Your salary should be cut by 90%.

Below are some of the problems my playing group have experienced:

We've had no problems starting and joining a Game Spy game that is locked (by password). We've played until we were too sleepy for "just one more turn". We've tried to restart the game(s) at a later sitting. Some users could not rejoin the last version of the saved game due to what appears to be incorrect password. However, if we go back to versions saved several hours before the last save, we are all able to join. Don't see how this could be a game spy issue. Given the history of Firaxis, and it's complete inability to produce stable Multiplayer versions of CIV, and given the arrogance and incompetence I have seen at 2KGames and Take2 I'd suspect the problem is a result of poor software development.

Also have the following problem with Multiplayer that is not initiated through Game Spy:

First user starts a Direct IP based game
Second user joins the Direct IP based game
Third user joins the Direct IP game, after extended wait for peer.
Second user is kicked out of game.

The only ones who currently seem to deserve any praises/raises are the creative staff (look, feel, and ambiance) and the marketing staff. After all, it is the marketing/false advertising that persuaded myself (and I suspect many of the reported 1 Million who bought this game) to once again waste money on a Firaxis multiplayer game.

 

[kgober]

Now, while we are on the topic, I would like to ask if anyone can explain 'Port' value in Civilization INI file.

This is set to 2056. I changed it to 52056 and the game started generating UDP packets with source port 52056 and destination port 2056. This made impossible changing port value on machine which hosted the game.

Is there a way to setup the game so both ports are same, so all machines in MP could use the same port number regardless whether being client or host?

if you want to change the port number on the machine that's hosting, then everyone else will need to include the port number when they connect. for example, if the machine that's hosting has an ip address of 1.2.3.4, and you've changed that machine's port to 52056, then anybody who wants to connect to that machine should enter 1.2.3.4:52056 as the address.

-ken

 

[CanuckSoldier]

CanuckSoldier you are obviously biased and your comments are meaningless and should be ignored by all.

.

Well biased is ofcourse a matter of opinion, but meanlingless? I'm glad you represent an extremely some minority in that opinion or there's be alot less people who have played MP in the the last 3.5 years. I guarentee that if I've stated something as fact that it is just that, I don't push bs ever, anything I've stated as advise is based on my detailed understanding of CIV which I've been playing for 2 years now, and solely focused on testing MP mechanics, so I figure I might know something. On top of this the only reason I post here is to help people play MP despite the problems we have now. So feel free to ignore me but don't insult me by dismisiing my contributions so easily.

CS