Network games

[Omega]

ToS 1.4

I've got some computers at my home and me and my son wanted to play together against the computer. We had both played hot seat games without and game issues. Well except that closing down the battle simulator sometimes causes an exception. But I digress.

Anyway the PC's are connected via a 10Mbit Ethernet lan.

But the game play was unplayably SLOW!
we tried using both computers as the host with not noticable improvement.

Is their some setting we need to change?
Does the host computer have to be FAST?

I have a PII 233 and my son's running a K6-2 500 or a K6-500.
We have lots of memory in the machines I think. Both sould be well in excess of 128K.

Any help would be appreciated.

[LarkinVB]

No idea. The game (v1.4) is tested in internet environment and was well playable. In a LAN it is a blast.

I would LOVE to help you but have no real idea as your
specs are good enough to play a smooth LAN game.

I'm currently testing with a PENTIUM I (233 MHz) and
and an Athlon (1.3 GHz) and have no lag for either
hosting the game.

[AutoHost]

Fullscreen, or windowed mode?
DirectX version? DirectX different between both computers?
Anti-virus progs running? Other CPU-hungry apps running in background?

How do you have IP addresses setup for your two computers? DHCP/manual?

[Omega]

MODE: Windowed, started via the new TCC front end.

Don't know how to detiremine the version of direct X, but both
machines are running win98se and I checked Windows update and both are running the most current system software.
(How can I confirm the direct X version?)

YES, I have anti-virus and a distributed program running in the background. We tried shutting these down but on my slower machine (the PII-233) the clicking on the buttons was not responsive. The help text wasn't to bad but I had to use the keyboard to get the game to take inputs.

IP's are DHCP assigned by my GVC 4 port router connected to a 7 port hub.

It seems just wrong to see the computer move on the HOST machine. I suppose I could use a third computer to be the host.

Omega

[AutoHost]

To find your DirectX version, Start, Run, dxdiag

Near bottom of the window that comes up is 'DirectX Version:'

I'm not sure if you said that you successfully shut down your anti-virus and 'distributed' programs or not.

How much RAM do you have in the computers?

If you have never scanned your computers for 'spyware' or 'adware', you may want to download Ad-Aware. One place to get it from is here:
http://download.com.com/3120-20-0.html? ... tg=dl-2001

It finds programs and registry keys associated with 'spyware' and 'adware' programs that watch your web surfing habits and report back to their masters so they can target advertising at you. Nasty stuff, and it takes up CPU processing cycles too.

Have you Scandisk/Defrag recently? I recommend Scandisk once a week and Defrag once a month.

Do a CTRL-ALT-DEL and write down the programs you see listed. Then go to
http://www.answersthatwork.com/Tasklist ... sklist.htm

and look them up. You may find some that you can kill, saving more CPU cycles.

In your TITANS/DATA directory, in the BINIT.DAT file, there is an entry to specify the host IP address. AFAIK, that entry is not *required*, but may be helpful to you.

--
Ron Miller
Stars! AutoHost

[CrushU]

I also have two comps, they are directly hooked togeth using a twisted cable. Its LAN, and the host is always 192.168.0.1 and the other one is either 192.168.0.2-192.168.0.4 I have played a network game successfully and no lag, other than the time it takes for the comp to move (the animations). The host is a celeron 500 with 192mb of ram, directx 8.1. the other comp is an amd 150 with 16mb ram and directx 8.1. The slower comp runs any tos prog just fine, though it takes it a while to load, especially the factory.

I said we played a network game successfully. We also played another network game, and we had to save and exit. I believe it was the slower comp's turn. (faster was hosting) When we reconnected and loaded the game, the game hanged, saying it was slower comp's turn on both comps. Neither could give commands. Dont know whats up with this, I think i found a button that resyncs the computers, I might try pressing that.

[AutoHost]

The movement animations can be turned off for quicker play. Ask one of the pros how to do it.

--
Ron Miller
Stars! AutoHost

[rosary]

Press F1 for a list of commands. I recommend looking through this list.

During Battle mode of course.