v1.04 is available, please try MP

[Johan]

Originally posted by Waffen
Well.. After a night of testing, here are my results for the US 1.04 patch (your milage may vary):
1) The chat CTD bug is still there. Will crash a client often when they try to chat. This is still the #1 most common crash bug.
2) The "Waiting for players" screen has been removed - meaning that the game appears to "hang" at the "loading scripts" stage of loading. This isn't actually a crash/hang.. But is far less informative than previously.
3) Playing with a fast cable connection and PII as host, 4 players was the realistic maximum for a reasonable game. We tested a 7 player game, but not on a faster connection/computer combition. I'm curious how many players a 1 gig+ machine with a T1 could support..
4) We ran into far less "random" CTD bugs. We were able to play the Napolean's Ambition scenario until someone crashed due to chat bug - which is a far cry over 1.02.
5) Lag is still a major problem at higher speeds or large number of players.

So while this wasn't the dramatic improvement we'd hoped for, 1.04 is definately an improvement over 1.02. We'll continue to report on any bugs we find when we start our new long term game.

Waffen

1) I've never been able to reproduce this, but everyone says its there.. I've looked through the entire chat-code and I'm baffled. Does this happen when you press tab or when you send the chat message?

2) Oops. It's kind of fun that nobody commented on it, and I didn't even notice it myself. For whatever

3) Its been a while since I did my statistics on the datatransfers, but with a big enough bandwidth there should be no limit to number of players.

4) Sounds nice. Any savegames with reproducable crashbugs helps immensly in eradicating the problems.

5) Yes, the amount of data thats transferred is rather large, and since we made the bad desicison to go with DirectPlay as a protocol it means that we have to use tcp/ip for protocol.

 

[Johan]

Originally posted by AndrewT
Johan, have you been testing Lan, Internet or V-net? I wonder if you have been doing Lan while the people having problems are mostly doing the other two. Is there any different except for the user interface screens?

I've been testing all three types.

 

[Johan]

Originally posted by Waffen
The chat bug occurs immediately upon pressing <tab> or the ctrl-f12 combo. It happens pretty frequently, at least on the NA releases running over an internet connection. I should try running a LAN game just for reference. Obviously you'd know better than I would, but if you're not getting this at all you might try running the NA version. I've never heard of any Swedish customers complaining about this, although it was happening to both a Norwegian and a Dane we play with.

Just tried it with a 1.04 NA and it does not happen for me.

I'm about to go insane now.

 

[Johan]

Originally posted by taz
The no1 reason by far for crashes are lagging players (almost always modem players)...

Well, the supported minimum speed is 512kb/s.