Warzone Freezes in Multiplayer

[Bevels21685]

Soemtimes when I am playing multiplayer warzone will freeze when people attack with large numbers of units. This only happens when I play with certain people. I will know when someone is about to attack because my screen will freeze and the sound will disappear and then maybe 2 minutes later the screen will unfreeze and ive either won or lost the battle. It is very irritating when this happens. I think it has to do with lag because it happens more the worse the person's ping is. It happens regardless of who is hosting. Also, if they are really lagging (red ping to me) the game will start to freeze immediately. Any1 else had this problem? Please help.

[KenAlcock]

Yeah I get it too, and sometimes as host. I have also noticed that playing with certain players makes the issue more likely to occur. I even get it on some maps in skirmish. My shot-in-the-dark guess is the collective poly count is too high--with all the mass units and defensive structures--and the screen is not being updated as fast as the game is being calculated and transmitted through the sync buffer. But I'm not a developer so I don't know this.

[Buginator]

Soemtimes when I am playing multiplayer warzone will freeze when people attack with large numbers of units. This only happens when I play with certain people. I will know when someone is about to attack because my screen will freeze and the sound will disappear and then maybe 2 minutes later the screen will unfreeze and ive either won or lost the battle. It is very irritating when this happens. I think it has to do with lag because it happens more the worse the person's ping is. It happens regardless of who is hosting. Also, if they are really lagging (red ping to me) the game will start to freeze immediately. Any1 else had this problem? Please help.

What kind of hardware do you got? Do you get any warnings / errors in the logs ?

[Verin]

This only happens to me as a host, ive related it to flamers.

[NoQ]

That's an almost blocking issue for me. I can't host the games, since in 50% of games i host i will hang for 80% of time and loose everything (though sometimes it's all ok). I think it's because of high-ping (>1000) players.

When it hangs, i don't see the picture updated, but i sometimes hear the sounds like messages or explosions. But still my research and production is halted. tcpdump shows that packets still go to and from other players (or at least to and from some players), and they don't seem to notice anything. The hanged application can be killed with SIGKILL, but not with SIGTERM.

(linux)

[NoQ]

I've heard others reporting this problem as well.
Fastdeath The Famous Host says he has this once in 6 or 8 games.

[Verin]

Ive further related it not to effects and strains on the computer, it tends to happen in 8 player servers I host. It can freeze at any random time for no apparent reason, the most recent was when i was making some cyborgs in the menu.

[Zarel]

This is a known bug.

[Alo]

zarel

is there no way around this bug? any way to atleast reduce the frequency of freezing?

what exactly is it related to? too many no. of units on the map? high ping times? both?

[Zarel]

We are in the process of alleviating the bug before the next release, but it is difficult to fix entirely.

The bug is mainly caused by a poor connection between one of the players and the host. I've heard players say that the freezes happen more often if one of the players is cheating, but I can neither confirm nor deny that speculation.

[Verin]

That leads me believe the red-yellow-green connection dots are not accurate, with the latest version though i have seen about 50% less freezes when hosting.

[Buginator]

That leads me believe the red-yellow-green connection dots are not accurate, with the latest version though i have seen about 50% less freezes when hosting.

They are a very, very rough estimate.
The ping goes to the host which then sends it to the other person, then it goes back to the host, and back to you.

For the freezing, that is the fault of crappy connections for the most part, but we are working on something that will make sure the host never 'freezes' because of a crappy connection.

[KenAlcock]

IMHO, this is the top Warzone issue, and I hope that all you hard working developers will prioritize this issue above all other bugs and enhancements. It has become pretty rare to see an 8-player multiplayer game finish all the way through to to the end without some sort of lag or freeze.


However that being said, ever since v2.3RC1a, I can get Warzone to freeze even in skirmish on some maps. It always seems like once there are enough units, structures or both, the game starts lagging. And this even with my video card settings turned down to increase performance.

[Buginator]

IMHO, this is the top Warzone issue, and I hope that all you hard working developers will prioritize this issue above all other bugs and enhancements. It has become pretty rare to see an 8-player multiplayer game finish all the way through to to the end without some sort of lag or freeze.

Um...AFAIK, only one person is working on this.

However that being said, ever since v2.3RC1a, I can get Warzone to freeze even in skirmish on some maps. It always seems like once there are enough units, structures or both, the game starts lagging. And this even with my video card settings turned down to increase performance.

This has always been the case, once the unit count gets up there, then things start to chug, unless you have a wicked fast CPU (4GHz+) & Vid card (Fermi 480 SLI / crossfire 5970), but it still will chug on that if enough units are on screen at once.

[Zarel]

Um...AFAIK, only one person is working on this.

And we all appreciate you for it!