MP experience, possible bugs and weird stuff
Some of us crazy maniacs who inhabit this board have been playing a MP game, well tried to play. It worked fairly well yesterday (7 CTDs which resulted in players dropping out, some possibly due to latency/connection problems).
I appologize if any of these have been reported, in SP or MP. I'll edit them out if I find them on the buglist (don't remember them there).
Possible bugs related to reload of savegames in MP :
x Young children change name inbetween loads.
Each load.
Children, very young, repressented by 'shadows' changed names when games were loaded. It's possible they are simply assigned a new random name as in at least one instance the same name was given (retained name) to a child.
x Troops being transported on sea walk on water.
One instance.
An army, muslim nation, previously being transported by boat appeared without boat, not moving but standing still on the sea. After a couple of days or 1-2 weeks they were gone (probably disbanded).
x Siege lead by nation X is lead by nation Y after load.
More than one instance.
When game was saved nation X was noted as commanding the siege, when game was loaded, nation Y was leading the siege. All units were contributing to the siege, even when not "allied" which is WAD though I think. Siege stealing is WAD as well I seem to remember reading, but then shouldn't the theft have taken place when siege was joined, not just on reload? Also, noted at least 2 occations when siege was not stolen by a higher ranking person.
Possible bugs related to loading and joining game :
x Several compress messages, each with long pause.
Several instances.
When normal, host only gets one compressing savegame message that takes time. Then a number of quick messages, without wait, for the rest of the players joining. However, during our attempted games today, several times the host had to compress the savegame as many times as there was players. We think that these games had a tendency to CTD much quicker and more often than when that did not happen. It's possible the players were supplied with slightly different savegame versions by the host.. or that network congestion was somehow causing the host to restart the compression for each new player that joined, or that the "Compress and send" function did not register that it had alredy done that..
x CTD on loading game, other players see CTD:ed player as "Connecting" while they are "Status OK".
30-50% instance.
Was not as common yesterday as today. Could be related to congestion/latency (friday). Known occurances when selecting a non-working nation (such as Steinmark). When not related to bad selection of nation to play (i.e. on reload of savegame or when nothing wrong with selection in other tries) most likely related to a bad savegame transfer, congestion/latency/timeout (as mentioned earlier) or problems with ports on firewalls/routers. ((Theory on my part being that the Join Game routine does not check to see if ports 2300-2400 are open for client, only 47624. Thus a player can join and select but will not receive a savegame from host as a connection cannot be established. Thus some kind of null-pointer exception is thrown, causing a CTD for that player and a lock/freeze for the other players.)) Interesting observation regarding these CTD/freeze things on load, usually the playrs can use TAB+text/enter as when in game, no text will show, but the *cough* sound will play. More often than not that will work, however sometimes.. trying to *cough* (we used that to signal quit and restart) causes a CTD for the player trying to *cough*. Regarding theory, this problem isn't restricted to savegames.. happens on new games as well.
Edit Note : It's possible that it does not happen on new games. The few times we had this bug on a new game could have been due to a bad selection of 'nation' to play. I know we crashed 3 times before I remembered Steinmark is not working in SP, so could be just savegame and my theory still valid (as in a new games, the players already have the scenario).
Edit Note 2 : The theory mentioned was tested and found not to be valid, see post further down.
red = ignore
Weird things during the game itself :
x Players get message Host was dropped (latency warning thing).
Two instances.
Same as when non-host CTDs, but game continues (as opposed to when host CTD:ed) and host is not actually dropped. When this message occurs, time moves on very fast (log hits like crazy). Most likely due to congestion, performance problem on host, client games thinks host lost, then finds he's not, and clients get big, big list of events/data (thus the speedup).
x Some notification of events fire multiple times.
Always for certain events.
Events such as Traits gained by Education for Children fire severals times ("xxx was given the trait Martial Education"). Possibly one time for each player in game. Also a possible link to the number of loads of the savegame, possible link to the renaming of said child upon reload. I think more events, such as A Pretty Wench also fires multiple times (a player had >20 bastards after 10 years of play). Väinö comment?
---------------------------------------------------------------
Restarts due to players getting dropped (player CTD) and load game CTDs where much more common today than our game yesterday (around 7 dropped CTDs and load game CTDs). Could be traffic/congestion/latency related (as I've said a couple of times).. could be related to existing save-game bugs, could be related to corrupt save game transfers, could be existing MP game bugs.
Game was also possibly more stable when only the same players from the game yesterday was present, so bad port setup, bad connection or performance when more than 5 players is a possible cause for many game CTDs and load-CTDs..
Note, host was on a 10/10 Mbit line for 90% of games (not when he was watching CSI Miami though). Players were Swedes, German, Finn, Dane.
/F
Some of us crazy maniacs who inhabit this board have been playing a MP game, well tried to play. It worked fairly well yesterday (7 CTDs which resulted in players dropping out, some possibly due to latency/connection problems).
I appologize if any of these have been reported, in SP or MP. I'll edit them out if I find them on the buglist (don't remember them there).
Possible bugs related to reload of savegames in MP :
x Young children change name inbetween loads.
Each load.
Children, very young, repressented by 'shadows' changed names when games were loaded. It's possible they are simply assigned a new random name as in at least one instance the same name was given (retained name) to a child.
x Troops being transported on sea walk on water.
One instance.
An army, muslim nation, previously being transported by boat appeared without boat, not moving but standing still on the sea. After a couple of days or 1-2 weeks they were gone (probably disbanded).
x Siege lead by nation X is lead by nation Y after load.
More than one instance.
When game was saved nation X was noted as commanding the siege, when game was loaded, nation Y was leading the siege. All units were contributing to the siege, even when not "allied" which is WAD though I think. Siege stealing is WAD as well I seem to remember reading, but then shouldn't the theft have taken place when siege was joined, not just on reload? Also, noted at least 2 occations when siege was not stolen by a higher ranking person.
Possible bugs related to loading and joining game :
x Several compress messages, each with long pause.
Several instances.
When normal, host only gets one compressing savegame message that takes time. Then a number of quick messages, without wait, for the rest of the players joining. However, during our attempted games today, several times the host had to compress the savegame as many times as there was players. We think that these games had a tendency to CTD much quicker and more often than when that did not happen. It's possible the players were supplied with slightly different savegame versions by the host.. or that network congestion was somehow causing the host to restart the compression for each new player that joined, or that the "Compress and send" function did not register that it had alredy done that..
x CTD on loading game, other players see CTD:ed player as "Connecting" while they are "Status OK".
30-50% instance.
Was not as common yesterday as today. Could be related to congestion/latency (friday). Known occurances when selecting a non-working nation (such as Steinmark). When not related to bad selection of nation to play (i.e. on reload of savegame or when nothing wrong with selection in other tries) most likely related to a bad savegame transfer, congestion/latency/timeout (as mentioned earlier) or problems with ports on firewalls/routers. ((Theory on my part being that the Join Game routine does not check to see if ports 2300-2400 are open for client, only 47624. Thus a player can join and select but will not receive a savegame from host as a connection cannot be established. Thus some kind of null-pointer exception is thrown, causing a CTD for that player and a lock/freeze for the other players.)) Interesting observation regarding these CTD/freeze things on load, usually the playrs can use TAB+text/enter as when in game, no text will show, but the *cough* sound will play. More often than not that will work, however sometimes.. trying to *cough* (we used that to signal quit and restart) causes a CTD for the player trying to *cough*. Regarding theory, this problem isn't restricted to savegames.. happens on new games as well.
Edit Note : It's possible that it does not happen on new games. The few times we had this bug on a new game could have been due to a bad selection of 'nation' to play. I know we crashed 3 times before I remembered Steinmark is not working in SP, so could be just savegame and my theory still valid (as in a new games, the players already have the scenario).
Edit Note 2 : The theory mentioned was tested and found not to be valid, see post further down.
red = ignore
Weird things during the game itself :
x Players get message Host was dropped (latency warning thing).
Two instances.
Same as when non-host CTDs, but game continues (as opposed to when host CTD:ed) and host is not actually dropped. When this message occurs, time moves on very fast (log hits like crazy). Most likely due to congestion, performance problem on host, client games thinks host lost, then finds he's not, and clients get big, big list of events/data (thus the speedup).
x Some notification of events fire multiple times.
Always for certain events.
Events such as Traits gained by Education for Children fire severals times ("xxx was given the trait Martial Education"). Possibly one time for each player in game. Also a possible link to the number of loads of the savegame, possible link to the renaming of said child upon reload. I think more events, such as A Pretty Wench also fires multiple times (a player had >20 bastards after 10 years of play). Väinö comment?
---------------------------------------------------------------
Restarts due to players getting dropped (player CTD) and load game CTDs where much more common today than our game yesterday (around 7 dropped CTDs and load game CTDs). Could be traffic/congestion/latency related (as I've said a couple of times).. could be related to existing save-game bugs, could be related to corrupt save game transfers, could be existing MP game bugs.
Game was also possibly more stable when only the same players from the game yesterday was present, so bad port setup, bad connection or performance when more than 5 players is a possible cause for many game CTDs and load-CTDs..
Note, host was on a 10/10 Mbit line for 90% of games (not when he was watching CSI Miami though). Players were Swedes, German, Finn, Dane.
/F
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