Muliplayer out of sync but not apparent...

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Muliplayer out of sync but not apparent...

By BULL on November 11, 2009 12:22:38 PM from

While playing online multiplayer, we are experiencing a "different" kind of out of sync. The setup is using a custom map created in Map Designer (~100 planets and 4 players...) and when launched there are two humans and two AI

What seemingly happens is that the game goes out of sync after some period of time but it's not apparent and there is no typical minidump, the game just continues on except that each of the human players is effectively playing a seperate, different game.

We can communicate via the return key and game saves "show up" on each side, but when we "meet" at the same planet (audio communicating via phone...) he wont see my fleet and I wont see his fleet. In some cases we both are able to colonize the same planet and build it up. (It initially led to some interesting arguments about who had what planet(s) with each of us trying to tell the other that they couldn't read planet names...)

Again, when the game gets out of sync like this, we can still communicate within the game, each of us sees any gamesaves that are initiated and there is no apparent crash. The first game this happened in we happily spent ~6 hours playing along (it's a very large world, and we were on opposite sides...) fighting along with the AI and eventually figured out that we had occupied the same space and time but never run into each other, only AI...

There's nothing like spending that many hours getting ready to crush your pitifull excuse of a buddy and then find out he's not even there...

help...

0 Karma | 27 Replies

First question which needs to be asked I'm afraid, what version of the game are you running?

Does this happen all the time or has it only happened once? First, you might try closing and reloading Sins before you play, which helps to prevent minidumps and desyncs in general. If this is repeatable then it would be helpful to the developers if you could each send them copies of your game replay and your custom map.

Sorry for the slow response, I didn't get any forum response emails... : (

The version I'm running is Entrenchment 1.041 (Although doesn't playing online necessitate utilizing the most current version??? 'no matter...)

No, it does not happen all of the time, or even frequently, but it has happened more than once... I would call it "several times" and only recently in the last few weeks.

How do I go about sending (more so, where as in what addy?) the devs those files? How do we know they really want them? I'm not saying they don't care mind you, but maybe they already know?

I guess I what I was really looking for was not so much an answer, but more of a validation from other Sinners having experienced the same thing.... Then I could either point to an issue with the game or a problem unique to my buddy's and I setup/map/other...

EDIT: On a side note, I checked my account settings and did find any options for new post notifications, does this board not support such things???

EDIT2: s/b ...did NOT find...

i had that too. it's annoying

The only time i have had this... is when I tried to restart a saved game that was an autosave cause the other humman dumped... it took us a long time to realize what had happend... but it was preety funny when we did.

It has happened to me several times the last few days. Don't know what the deal is but would love help if anyone figures it out.

I also have experienced this error. There were only two human players and no AI. We played maps found in the medium tab. Finally after the third time it happened we tried a tiny map, I think it was Point Blank. It didn't last long (obviously) but it didn't desync. I don't know what is causing it but it did it three times in a row and in the end we were unable to play. So I don't know if it's the same issue or not. This seems to be the best place to comment.

I have this issue also. And I would say it's frequently... Hope there's a fix?

I'm afraid I can't shed light on this issue however I would advise that if you are getting it often that you and wheoever you are playing with make sure you close down Sins and boot the game again on each new game. It is likely to reduce the chance of out of synch errors as it could be residue from previous games causing issues.

I had this issue every time I played with my brother on LAN (problem free connection), in Entrenchment 1.041 and Diplomacy 0.90, with and without the Distant Stars Mod.

The game is just out of sync between players, some events like the other playing with a capital ship or producing of some new units or sending resources seem to still be registere on both endsd, but pirates and which ships/planets are alive and whom they belong to all that is horribly wrong between the games.

It seemed to me that having more pirates and other units on a large map (we played 100+ planets, too, at times) made the problem more likely to occur, but it is very hard to tell when it starts to happen.

Couldn't the game resynchronize the entire game state periodically or something on high bandwidths or something like that?

This happens to me every time. It's rather annoying that multiplayer no longers works....

This happens to me every time with my brother as well (both on Entrenchment 1.041). It desyncs nearly-or-right away. Useless. What's the fix?

Happens to me too...no one knows a fix?

Happens to me too.

ive ran into a few instances of it also. im thinkign that, along with the mini dumps, it is something that will be fixed with the next aptch or diplo release

A buddy of mine and I are having the same issues. We're both running the basic version of the game (no expansions) and no matter what map type we play in or if it's 1v1 or 4v4, after 5-10 min, we are practically playing 2 different games. His units don't move and I don't see him taking any planets when allied. At one point he witnessed an AI wipe out my homeworld, yet I set strong with over 10 planets.

Has anyone managed to figure out a fix for this at all? I feel bad since I just made him buy the game.

Happens to me as well, Entrenchment running on a forge created map.

I can fix it if thoes among you who get sync bugs consistantly can send me some key data as follows:

I would recommend the host enabling sync error logging in their user.setting file. You will want to change the following entries to these values:

CalculateCheckSumTickFrequency 50
CalculateCheckSumDetail 3
SaveCheckSumSnapShotsInGameTickFrequency 0
SaveCheckSumSnapShotsOnSave TRUE
IsCheckSumLoggingOn FALSE

The user.setting file can be found in the \Setting sub folder of the Sins user data root folder, which appears in the following location:

Vista: C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\
XP: C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\Local Settings\Application Data\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\

where [username] is your windows account name. If/when a sync error occurs, red text should appear on all players' screen that says which players went out of sync with each other. Have those players submit their sync error logs found in the \CheckSum subfolder of the user data folder. These files will typically have a name like SyncError-Tick10325-Player0.txt.

For original Sins or Entrenchment send to support@ironcladgames.com.

For Diplomacy send to mmason@stardock.com.

I've seen games desync without any red text warning at all. In a game you notice that one of your allies hasn't moved their ships for a while and you start asking them and they'll tell you that in their game the ships are not at that gravity well and that they've colonized three other planets that you do not see, and that is when you know that you have a desync.

DS,

The Red Text of Doom only appears if the players that are desyncing both have the settings as described. If not, then it won't appear.

Likewise I'm having desyncing problems. It is fustrating in trying to solve this. My son who lives in Texas during school seasons, my brother & I are up to date with current upgrades to our games. However we still experiences "multi-universes" in where we start out in same game but somewhere along the line we somehow goes into different games.

The strangest part is we still can communicate with each other. It was funny at first but after a few games we are a little fed up with it.

When they say 'unrivalled scale' on the box, they arnt kidding. You not only get to play across a number of solar systems, but in a number of parallel universes as well.

On a more serious note, this problem is killing the game for me and my friends since it happens everytime we play despite us having the latest patch. I'll try and log this sort of thing so it can get sorted.

Edit - What program do you need to be able to open and the modify the user.settings file?

Yea, this is a serious problem. It's happening to my friends and I too and since Sins is my current favorite game, it really sucks! I want to play!

Edit - What program do you need to be able to open and the modify the user.settings file?

Notepad.

Every game me and my friend have played usually end up with "theres dudes attacking your planet" "no there isn't", reloading a savegame (me sending him mine so they match up) ends with one of us losing alot of things we had and its really getting frustrating trying to play at all.

We will definately be sending sync logs since we are trying to make our own mod.

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