Successful Multiplayer Pause on LAN

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parker
New user
Posts: 5
Joined: 04 Feb 2011, 06:00
Location: Iowa, US

Successful Multiplayer Pause on LAN

Post by parker »

You'll want to test this before relying on it, but I've been able to pause a multiplayer LAN game with myself and my sons (8 & 10) who love this game. I've now created 2 scripts I call "pauseWarzone" & "unpauseWarzone" making it quite easy & convenient to use.

My situation is 3 ubuntu linux desktop computers running warzone 4.2.6 on the same home LAN. Joined by IP address NOT through the Lobby (which I have not tested).

It works by having the operating system suspend the warzone process on all 3 machines within a few seconds of each other. Then resuming all the warzone processes to unpause. Here's my scripts:

~/bin/pauseWarzone:
ssh computer1 -C killall -19 warzone2100
ssh computer2 -C killall -19 warzone2100
killall -19 warzone2100

~/bin/unpauseWarzone:
ssh computer1 -C killall -18 warzone2100
ssh computer2 -C killall -18 warzone2100
killall -18 warzone2100

Explanation:
First I setup passwordless ssh to computer1 & computer2.
"ssh <hostname> -C" will connect to another computer and run a command.
"killall -19 warzone2100" uses the killall command to send a signal to all "warzone2100" processes. The -19 is a SIGSTOP which will suspend a process.
Just run the killall command on the two other computers, then on the local computer.
killall -18 is a SIGCONT which will continue the process and unpause the game.


Testing: We've had a multiplayer game paused for 6 hours and were able to unpause it without a single error message. On the other hand, one laptop when into a sleep mode while paused, and when unpausing it dropped out and was no longer in the game.

I'd be interested if anyone tries something similar on MacOS or Windows.
matthew92
Greenhorn
Posts: 10
Joined: 25 Feb 2022, 19:01

Re: Successful Multiplayer Pause on LAN

Post by matthew92 »

That's pretty neat. I'm not too well-versed on scripting but SSH was definitely a nice idea.
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