Need Your Help Now

[DarkCloak]

I've been playing online with a bunch of friends at work for some time now, and we've come across some rather interesting bugs.
Here are some of the problems I've come across:

Pictures not matching up. For instance, my opponent rolls a PzIV past some of my troops, but to me it looks like a King Tiger.

Opportunity fire firing at the unit that had been previously targeted during the players turn instead of firing at the unit that triggered the opfire. Example; A russian squad emerges from the tree line. A request for opportunity fire from my GE Rifle squad pops up, I hit 'yes' and my squad opens fire on the russian mg atop the hill crest it had fired at in the previous turn.

Units seeming to jump hexes. For instance, an OpFire request comes up to shoot at a certain moving unit. The request is ignored to conserve ammo, and suddenly the unit appears back in the previous hex as though it had never moved.

Direct fire attacks not appearing and seeming to have no effect, yet when players resync at the end of the turn, the supposed untouched units are dead or suppressed. An example of this; the other night I was playing against my roommate online, I could hear the shots from his computer, but on my end the enemy unit was just standing there. After he had done his supposed shooting attack, an OpFire request comes up, I click 'yes'. But my unit fails to shoot, it doesn't even flinch. This continues until the turn ends and I begin my turn, in which my unit of 10 men suddenly jumps to 8 men with no casualty reports or anything.

One thing I've noticed with these bugs is that a lot of them tend to revolve around opportunity fire.

Some other issues I have with online play are as follows:

Time limits. The problem with playing a 5 minute time limit is that most of that time is gobbled up in exchanging fire,shooting animations and opportunity fire requests.

Custom maps. An auto-download feature would be nice, instead of having to email the map file ahead of time. It would also be nice to have a custom map with custom Victory Locations. The computer always wants to randomize the victory locations on custom maps, which really takes the fun out of playing on a custom map.

[Bernie]

Originally posted by DarkCloak
Custom maps. An auto-download feature would be nice, instead of having to email the map file ahead of time. It would also be nice to have a custom map with custom Victory Locations. The computer always wants to randomize the victory locations on custom maps, which really takes the fun out of playing on a custom map.

When setting up a custom scenario, you do have the ability to chose various VH settings, including "as designed". Try clicking on the VH settings toggle in the designer and watch how they cycle through.

[Alby]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by DarkCloak
I've been playing online with a bunch of friends at work for some time now, and we've come across some rather interesting bugs.
Here are some of the problems I've come across:

Pictures not matching up. For instance, my opponent rolls a PzIV past some of my troops, but to me it looks like a King Tiger.

DONT KNOW ABOUT THIS ONE??

Opportunity fire firing at the unit that had been previously targeted during the players turn instead of firing at the unit that triggered the opfire. Example; A russian squad emerges from the tree line. A request for opportunity fire from my GE Rifle squad pops up, I hit 'yes' and my squad opens fire on the russian mg atop the hill crest it had fired at in the previous turn.

OP FIRE NEVER HAS WORKED GOOD WITH ONLINE PLAY DUE TO TIME LAGS
IT IS BEST TO TURN IT OFF FOR ONLINE GAMES IMO

Units seeming to jump hexes. For instance, an OpFire request comes up to shoot at a certain moving unit. The request is ignored to conserve ammo, and suddenly the unit appears back in the previous hex as though it had never moved.


AGAIN THE OP FIRE THING


Direct fire attacks not appearing and seeming to have no effect, yet when players resync at the end of the turn, the supposed untouched units are dead or suppressed. An example of this; the other night I was playing against my roommate online, I could hear the shots from his computer, but on my end the enemy unit was just standing there. After he had done his supposed shooting attack, an OpFire request comes up, I click 'yes'. But my unit fails to shoot, it doesn't even flinch. This continues until the turn ends and I begin my turn, in which my unit of 10 men suddenly jumps to 8 men with no casualty reports or anything.

BACK TO OP FIRE AGAIN



One thing I've noticed with these bugs is that a lot of them tend to revolve around opportunity fire.

AHA YOU HAVE SEEN THE LIGHT! LOL

Some other issues I have with online play are as follows:

Time limits. The problem with playing a 5 minute time limit is that most of that time is gobbled up in exchanging fire,shooting animations and opportunity fire requests.

OP FIRE OFF AGAIN HELPS HERE TOO

[Charles2222]

Pictures not matching up. For instance, my opponent rolls a PzIV past some of my troops, but to me it looks like a King Tiger.

Sounds like a new realism feature, IOW the Allied player will see all GE tanks as Tigers.

[Ranger75]

I play online once each week. I agree with the concerns raised by others in this thread. Here are a couple that have not been mentioned:

1. "Double Crews": Three times I have killed a vehicle and two crews have dimounted. They have the same designation and can move independently. I have worried that this must screw up the database, so I have always tried to "park" one out of harm's way and ignored it.

2. Voice: I assume Roger-Wilco remains the proper way to permit voice communication during the game.

3. PLEASE IGNORE THIS COMMENT _ PROBLEM SOLVED _ I HAD TO USE THE F2 KEY TO CORRECT IMPROPER PLAYER DESIGNATIONS. I built a scenario, sent it to my opponent, and it did not quite work right. Some of the units, (about 25 out of 390), would not move properly. First, the game would not find the units when I hit the "next unit" key. I could only get them by going to the unit list and highlighting them. Second, when I moved one of these units, it would not trace a path. It jumped to the destination hex. Third, If one of these units triggered op fire, the game froze. For a while I could "move" these units to the exit hex and clear them out of the way. Later, sending any unit to the exit hex also froze the game. I have this scenario if you would like me to send it to you.

4. PLEASE IGNORE THIS ONE, TOO. THE F2 KEY FIXED THE PROBLEM. The latest scenario I created will not work online. The system only recognizes one player. (The screen that lets us pick sides only has one option instead of two.) The computer takes control of the other side. When I investigate the sides in editor mode, (under Deploy - HQ), The scenario reports that both sides are called player 1. If I load the scenario for local play, I can choose human and computer sides.

5. Ammo vanished: I was playing "Steel Shield" online. On about turn five or six, all of the mortars on the US side went to zero ammo. They could replenish when I moved them to an ammo dump. It was almost as if the depletion of one mortar unit got copied to all. On-board and off-board howitzers had no problem. There was no impact on the German side.

6. There was an earlier thread in the forum that mentioned a TCPIP problem. I don't remember the details, but I seem to remember that errors accumulate during the synching of sides leading to serious difficulties for large or long scenarios.

7. Adjacent fire sound: This is not a big deal, but when firing at an adjacent unit, the sound effects are (frequently?, always?)off. The fire effects seem just fine. We don't mind, but it might represent some sort of path error in the program.

This is a great game. On-line is the best way for me to reach a live opponent. Thanks for looking at improvements.

John Van Vliet

[MacCready]

Does SPWAW work on a LAN network?

[Antonius]

I haven't played spwaw on-line for a while, mostly because it's very hard to fight 2vs2 battle without any of the players getting busted out before the end and it's very tedious to resume the game afterwards.

I would like the game to pause and a display a message whenever one of the players gets outs of synch temporarily.

To resume interrupted battles it would be great to avoid sending save files by email and be able to start from the a save on the host's PC

I have often wondered if it would help if all players shared the same timing preferences (movement delay, message display, etc) and thus if it wouldn't be better if the host's preferences were imposed on the guests, much like realism options.

[Alby]

Originally posted by Antonius
I haven't played spwaw on-line for a while, mostly because it's very hard to fight 2vs2 battle without any of the players getting busted out before the end and it's very tedious to resume the game afterwards.

I would like the game to pause and a display a message whenever one of the players gets outs of synch temporarily.

To resume interrupted battles it would be great to avoid sending save files by email and be able to start from the a save on the host's PC

I have often wondered if it would help if all players shared the same timing preferences (movement delay, message display, etc) and thus if it wouldn't be better if the host's preferences were imposed on the guests, much like realism options.

As I played alot of multi player games, I experienced your pain!!
the Save game problem only makes it worse!
Does evryone know what im talking about with the save game screen??? how it repeatedly pops back up..

as for sending your files, do you have icq or another messenger??
thats how we used to send the save file when a player disconnected.

[Antonius]

Originally posted by Alby
As I played alot of multi player games, I experienced your pain!!
the Save game problem only makes it worse!
Does evryone know what im talking about with the save game screen??? how it repeatedly pops back up..

as for sending your files, do you have icq or another messenger??
thats how we used to send the save file when a player disconnected.

Here is how it goes for me:
First we spend 15 to 30 minutes finding each other on icq. Even with a scheduled game, somebody is late or temporarliy busy with something else and anyway there's always some chat before the game goes under way. Sometimes we need more time if somebody does not turn up and we need to find another available player among our contacts.
Then we start playing and after a variable amount of time someone gets disconnected (if it is me my screen freezes), the game is interrupted and we all go back to icq and the host starts sending his autosave files, either by icq or by mail. After that we go back to the game, having lost at least 15 minutes which may not sound very much but easily counts double when it's 1 AM and the need for sleeps gets much more felt once the excitement of the battle has faded because of the disconnection.
If after resuming the battle someone is disconnected again then we stop playing altogether since there will always be one player who will have had enough.

The end result is that we often chose to play some other game where we experience less disconnections or can be much more easily resumed...

[Alby]

yes I know, its tuff
especially if someone is using a dial up internet service.

[DarkCloak]

When setting up a custom scenario, you do have the ability to chose various VH settings, including "as designed". Try clicking on the VH settings toggle in the designer and watch how they cycle through.

Yes, The last time we've tried that, all the reinforcement flags weren't set properly. It's pretty annoying having reinforcements come piling into a swamp hex, or on the other side of a river.

[Ranger75]

1. My opponent can spot the smoke from my artillery and gain valuable intelligence. Fair enough. So, to create some confusion and add to the fog of war, I have other units in the rear area pop smoke. The value of that is diminished because the game reports that "Unit such and such just popped smoke".

I see no purpose in telling the enemy that a given unit popped smoke. The enemy can see the smoke, and so can I. Let's omit the message.

2. If we lose the Internet connection in the middle of a turn, the AI takes over and runs units all over the place. That can reveal units that we are keeping hidden. How about just freezing or killing the game when the connection is lost? We are going to have to reload anyway. (And yes, it would be great to reload from the last save without having to transfer files.)

I play four hours each week with a retired Marine LTC. He is much better than the AI, although he can't resist an attack.

I salute the Matrix team, and extend my thanks to the participants in the forum who have helped me greatly.

John Van Vliet

[Akmatov]

Gentlemen,

I am DELIGHTED to see this development. Over the years I have suggested this method of getting some of your products to your people and I really think it has great potential for a niche market.

Now I can finally get the two MegaCampaigns I missed!

Many thanks,

[BruceAZ]

Hello David:

There are some scenario and campaign items that I would like to see added but do not consider them a "problem" if they aren't available. I sent them in before but I think Mike moved them to another forum. No big deal.

The only problem I have ever had with SPWAW is with the game crashing to the desktop. I have learned to manage this by saving after every turn, and not playing continously for a long periods of time. I think I overwhelm my computer resources and need to restart after an hour to clear every thing. This happens with great frequency while playing Germany vs USSR. My system is a P4 at 2 gig with 500 MB of SDRAM. It handles all other games including UV with ease except SPWAW.

Good luck on your update.

Recon
Semper Fi