Beta 2.1 - Multiplayer Bugs

[Void]

So me and my friend are finally back playing this now that I have screen text. We've encountered some bad bugs in just the last 4 games we've played.

BUG:
The game seems to randomly give one of us "Objective Achieved" even if the enemy was not annihilated. In the last 4 games we have played, our game came to a sudden end when one of us Achieved victory but the other did not. We were both playing on the same team against 6 computer opponents each on two separate teams. It seems to just randomly pop up. The last game we played, it popped up for me, then a minute later, popped up for my friend. We didn't even get a chance to find the computer opponents because this happened only 5 minutes into the game.

BUG:
When host quits the game, the game freezes for connected clients. Everytime I quit a game before my friend did, he would have to CTRL+ALT+DEL and end the process. Game totally just froze up.

Well, other than those two things, and for long games running out of sync by a lil', the improvements have been great! Love the vision sharing and auto tech sharing for teammates now, and the game is a ton more stable than what it was for multiplayer. Great job! I'll post multiplayer bugs here as we find them.

[Buginator]

So me and my friend are finally back playing this now that I have screen text. We've encountered some bad bugs in just the last 4 games we've played.

BUG:
The game seems to randomly give one of us "Objective Achieved" even if the enemy was not annihilated. In the last 4 games we have played, our game came to a sudden end when one of us Achieved victory but the other did not. We were both playing on the same team against 6 computer opponents each on two separate teams. It seems to just randomly pop up. The last game we played, it popped up for me, then a minute later, popped up for my friend. We didn't even get a chance to find the computer opponents because this happened only 5 minutes into the game.

You mean when you win the game, you don't see the fireworks?

BUG:
When host quits the game, the game freezes for connected clients. Everytime I quit a game before my friend did, he would have to CTRL+ALT+DEL and end the process. Game totally just froze up.

This is known.

Well, other than those two things, and for long games running out of sync by a lil', the improvements have been great! Love the vision sharing and auto tech sharing for teammates now, and the game is a ton more stable than what it was for multiplayer. Great job! I'll post multiplayer bugs here as we find them.

What do you consider long games?
It goes out of sync in a very short period of time...then again, it depends on how you notice that it is out of sync.

[DevUrandom]

You mean when you win the game, you don't see the fireworks?

I think he means that the game is declared ended (and the fireworks are showing) even if it logically cannot be at an end.

I think I had something similar on a friends computer recently (skirmish game). He was fighting one AI and when he nearly got it down (it still had a few buildings and units left though) he was declared victorious.

[Void]

DevUrandom got it right. One game, we were 5 minutes into it, neither me or my friend had even made it to the computer opponents yet and we were declared Victorious. Fireworks blarring, map circling. That was during our last game, and also, it was the only time BOTH of us have received it. Usually one or the other will have it happen, but usually not both of us.

Somehow, most games we play, one of us is declared Victorious for no reason. The stats screen will pop up, our map will start circling and fireworks will be going off. The computer opponents are still in game and we can still attack them... but the map decides to randomly declare a winner even with opponents left.

A long game for us is usually anywhere between 2-4 hours. We tend to start out with no bases  ;D  But the stability so far has been great. Although in long games (3+ hours) we noticed one of us tends to lag a little behind, we are still watching the same game it appears... just unit movement lags behind. Kinda like we're watching the same movie but one of us paused for a minute and came back while the other kept watching. The outcome is the same, building explosions, troop losses, but the other person just isn't there yet to see it all. Overall tho, HUGE IMPROVEMENT!!

But being declared a winner is really odd, because you will be playing the game, preparing for your next assault, and out of the blue the Victory screen pops up with your stats. You get all the end-game goodies without havin' accomplished your mission. I would fraps it, but like I said, it is totally random and usually occurs later in a game.

OOOOH, before I forget, ALSO...............

The Transport Ships may be bugged. Last time I played with them, I was able to load 'em up with Cyborgs and also unload all the Cyborgs but I was not able to move the ships at all. They ended up being stuck at a fixed location and just would not move anywhere.

[ratarf]

About the "win game" bug:
We've had this bug several times when playing in a LAN.
To reproduce this, you can try the following (This is how we tried to play about 10 times, and we got the bug about 9 times). I'll give ALL info just to make sure
- No mods used
- Map: Wheel, T1, No bases
- Fog of war
- Medium Power levels
- All structure limits at maximum
- 2 players in LAN allied against 6 AI players on hard (fixed alliances).

Our tactic was: One player with number 1, one with number 6. The one most to the left (me) would try to rush the AI player on the other side of the hill with his first machinegun vipers.
Most of the time the bug occured as soon as I started attacking structures of the AI player. After a few times we thought we had found the key:
if you attack an AI player's buildings BEFORE he has produced any combat units, the bug occurs.
But that turned out to be not 100% right. It's kind of random.

Really, if someone manages to solve this bug, tell me! It's so strange...

[Void]

ratarf, my friend and I usually play defensively and wait for the computer to attack us before we start our slaughter    We've experienced this problem on Clover, that one 8P city map with all the squares (can't think of the name) and Ying Yang was the last one we had this happen on. We also did not use any mods, had a T1 no base map, had fog of war on, we were playing with high power levels, and default structure limits. We were playing with us two on a locked team vs. 3 CPU on a locked team vs. another 3 CPU on a locked team, all set to most difficult level.

[sq2]

i had a feeling that the declaration of defeat (for the ai at least) was when they had no
builders and no factories. (maybe they surrender?). i noticed this happening a lot on zigguart.

(n.b. starting with no bases)my ally ai would build a powerplant then would send off the
starting trucks to the enemy, i would assume to build oil extractors/derricks, the trucks
are destroyed, and the player would drop to the bottom of the list, and i can no
longer give them units/power (i assume this means defeat)

also seen this happen when the ai goes vtol crazy, they hunt the factorys then oil/power
then builders, after all that victory usually follows

might explain victory so early, say if you destroyed the trucks before they built a factory...

[ratarf]

Nope, not true. I was the only player that had any combat units. They had a factory and a lot of trucks. The bug occured before the factory got destroyed.  ;D
My guess is that it has something to do with the fixed alliances.

[doom3r]

I played with Kacen twice yesterday on a 2 humans vs 2 cpu and he told me he had this bug twice, while I never had it. I was the host and he was joining my game, maybe this would help.

[ratarf]

When we had the bug, it was also 1 player that got the victory message. Sometimes it was the host, sometimes it was a player who connected.

[michaelb]

I just had a 1on1 LAN game, and we experienced some issues. By out-of-sync, forgive me if this is obvious, I assume you mean the events occurring in the two games cease to properly line up? Well, if that's the case, then I certainly had some very bizarre issues with that. On his screen, my units were running around attacking buildings in his base. On my screen, they were quite happily sitting around at my base, and buildings in his base were just exploding as if on their own accord. At first I thought maybe it silently disconnected us, and AI took over my player. But I was able to chat without problem, and eventually it seemed to correct itself until it seemed we were playing the same game. I don't really understand the network code behind Warzone, so I have no clue how this could happen. I didn't even know something as drastic as that even *could* happen...

[doom3r]

To see if other players are still connected, press the numpad Enter key and see if that player has got ping.

[Buginator]

I just had a 1on1 LAN game, and we experienced some issues. By out-of-sync, forgive me if this is obvious, I assume you mean the events occurring in the two games cease to properly line up? Well, if that's the case, then I certainly had some very bizarre issues with that. On his screen, my units were running around attacking buildings in his base. On my screen, they were quite happily sitting around at my base, and buildings in his base were just exploding as if on their own accord. At first I thought maybe it silently disconnected us, and AI took over my player. But I was able to chat without problem, and eventually it seemed to correct itself until it seemed we were playing the same game. I don't really understand the network code behind Warzone, so I have no clue how this could happen. I didn't even know something as drastic as that even *could* happen...

That is pretty much normal.  The game always had that issue, and still has that issue.
A fix that I did does mostly solve it, but at the expense of bandwidth (which isn't a issue on LANs).

[00Nobody]

The bug with the "Random Victory" has happened to me and my friends on MULTIPLE occaisons, and we've played almost all maps. I think its just an error AI coding though, for as far as i can tell it doesn't happen without computers. I have yet to play a game with just human players that does this.

[michaelb]

That is pretty much normal.  The game always had that issue, and still has that issue.
A fix that I did does mostly solve it, but at the expense of bandwidth (which isn't a issue on LANs).

Hm, that's really unfortunate. I was using the latest 2.1 beta, so was this fix included with it, or did I experience that issue even with the fix in place? What exactly is going wrong? Are player actions being lost over the network?