Possible online bugs

[Alby]

The OP fire in online seems wierded out, sometimes between turn change over, you will get op fire requests, and of course, you cant OP fire. but game seems to get stuck in OP fire loop.
Also seem to be getting alot of OP fire requests, then when I confirm the op fire, nothing happens, Dont even see the original fire. was happening to opposing player alot as well. May have been lag but might wanna check it out. this was 3 person game.

[Paul Vebber]

"Phantom opfire" is a latency problem that is magnified in multiplayer games. It can be either opfire at units that aren't there, or units that Opfire at their previous target and no the one triggering the fire.

The "end of turn opfire" is when retreating units trigger opfire, its supposed to happen, and will work.

The game works in a "peer to peer" networking mode so each computer is "in control" during its turn sending reports of what is happening to the others. If packets arrive at the other computer out of order or get lost, then the games can "diverge" and get out of synch with each other.

If this sort of "weird" activity starts getting really bad, then the player whose turn it is should save teh game and send it to the other players and restart form that point. That should synch the games back up.

Our future games will use a "client server" setup...where teh game players on one machine and updates the others so this shouldn't happen. But are stuck with the original SP3 online setup in SP:WaW.

[WanhaPatu]

Opfire seems to work ok when I play human vs human games. But when we tried 2xhuman vs CPU-game, we didn't get any opfires The computer just shooted at us and there was nothing we could do.

So, still not able to play cooperavitely with my girlfriend against the computer. Doh!

[Paul Vebber]

Yes as we said before the online game is designed to be played by humans.

[MysticX]

Well then, can I ask what the purpose of fixing the AI in online games was then? It kind of got my (and others') hopes up to see that maybe that 2 Human vs Computer game would finally be possible. And it is, to a limited extent. If you look past the destroyed units that don't look destroyed. And the phantom tanks ressurecting 20 times as your partner moves into opfire he has no idea is happening.

There seems to be separate calculations done on each machine, causing a divergence between each player's view of the battlefield. I am wondering why it would be so difficult to make all calculations on the machine of the player whose turn it is, and simply send all results to the other players.

I know I'm not the only one disappointed that complete online AI support didn't come with 5.0 (and will most likely never).

-MysticX

[Alby]

Paul Vebber
Administrator
Member # 24

"Phantom opfire" is a latency problem that is magnified in multiplayer games. It can be either opfire at units that aren't there, or units that Opfire at their previous target and no the one triggering the fire.
The "end of turn opfire" is when retreating units trigger opfire, its supposed to happen, and will work.

Thanks Paul, what about being asked to opfire at something that hasnt moved, or fired at you, then you say "yes" to the request, then nothing happens?
Latency again?

[Paul Vebber]

Yes, when you play on a LAN you hardly get any of these errors.

[Paul Vebber]

Try playing vs the AI with opfirm off.

[Alby]

Well supposedly this summer, we get cable internet here in my small town hehe.
Any way i seldom play vs the AI, but when I do OP fire is off.
Think I kinda missed your point of why to do that?

[Paul Vebber]

because with opfire confirm on sometimes strange things happen in online play where one side is the AI.

[Alby]

OH got ya... well never play online vs the AI
only against humons(said like a ferengi, heheh)