Matrix Games Forums

I have problems with multiplayer, it's not working properly.

If there is anyone who is using any win98 version and the multiplayer works for him, could he post it here, thanks.

It does this: When i go to the lobby, i get disconnected from the server in between 10 secs and few minutes, and if i'm fast or lucky enough to get into the game, it lags so that any ship is not really there where i see them at the moment, when i shoot them the shots pass right through them, even from point blank range. Everything moves smoothly though. And every once in a while, all ships sort of quickly jump from their current location to new location closeby their previous location, like lag. This happens every 20 to 30 seconds i think.
On the first try the game ran for a while, maybe 5 minutes and then everything stopped, music started to stutter and harddrive went nuts, using drive in pace of the music, this continued for a while and then the game crashed to desktop. On second try it didn't do this, i didn't wait for it to crash.

I used Starshatter Central server, only one i see. I had pings between 90 and 130.
I think i'll try my own local server, see what happens.

My system is:

Hardware:

amd athlon 1.4 ghz
512 mb ddr ram
geforce 3 ti 200 64mb memory
2 megabit download / 256 kilobit upload internet connection

Software:

win98se
starshatter v. 4.5.0

EDIT:
I tried making local server, and it worked fine, except a crash to desktop at first try.
However i had pauses in the fighter trash mission on my local server similar to those "jumps" i described earlier, and seems that it's not lag, in multiplayer it's just harder to tell when the pause comes because everything moves while it is actually paused.

Also seems that everything lags somehow, guns are pretty useless for me, because the shots won't hit, very rarely they do. Also the Lead Computing Optical Sight (LCOS) seems to lag behind, (which it doesn't do in single play or when i'm server), making it even more difficult to hit. Missiles work better. I even rammed ships and all that happened was that my ship bounced off of it (maybe server side configuration?) It didn't do that on my server.

After the "jump" i also once got some characters printed in the middle of my screen, something like "< % &/ !#"

Could someone post MD5 checksum of the downloadable install file who downloaded the game? Just to make sure that mine is not corrupted in any way.

although not a computer expert by any means I think the problem may be win98 itself...

I had a similar setup before upgrading and even with the 512mb ram and graphics card I found that the memory sucking capablities of win98 would still cause issues.

Whatever blackhole was in win98 that sucked up all that resource I never figured out...but in my case it was definitely a memory problem...

with XP and the same amount of memory...slight upgrade in processor and graphics cards and WOW!!

truly a big diff...for me anyway [:'(]

Yep, it may be. But these symptoms suggests the most common problem: bad connection. Maybe the connection just isn't good enough for this game. Except for a crash and those symbols printed on my screen.

My opinion about win98 and xp is that win98 consumes less memory while xp has far better memory management. I've heard about memory problems people have had with win98 but i haven't had those, with win98se at least, save one case, where 2GB memory address space of win98 for all programs isn't enough, whereas xp gives 2GB memory address space for all invidual programs. But that isn't directly related to lack of actual memory.

Anyway, how about that MD5 sum so i can confirm that the game is not corrupted?

the problem is that you don´t have enough space. you need around 2GB of space to run the game correctly. I once had only 500mb and i couldn´t go to the planets atomsphere. the game crashes and quits. so i freed up some space to about 4 to 5GB and now the game runs correctly. the computer takes up space when you open a program and converts the space into virtual memory and when the program quits you gain the space back. i have a program that doubles the speed of the computer and internet too. if you`re interested. give me your e-mail address and we can discuss this some more.