Spring RTS Engine

I can host, and this problem never occurs when I do.
I've run games for hours without incident.
Also played on some games for hours, without it happening.

Recently though, after playing alot, I get dropped from games predictably now.

No warning or errors come up, just appears to lag out then drop.
Its been happening in 7/10 games I join to play.
Can anyone help?

Games run anywhere from 3-10 minutes before being dropped, so it averages around 6 minutes.

Hosting games myself I never have this happen, and neither do I get dropped players, although some ppl just can't join (rarely).

Using 1.5 mb down .768 mb up DSL, and as far as I know my ISP has me set on a Dynamic IP.

What mod(s)?

BA

I take it that nobody else is having this problem...

/me shrugs

Actually I heard another person complain about it recently, unless you play under the name Lucy, which I guess is possible.

LOL I was talking to Lucy about the problem last night, shes having big problems it seems - 8/10 games crash for her, she was hosting with LuaUI enabled and everyone starting dropping, but I think she needs to host without LuaUI.

I did draw a line of DT for building (not short, but not long) and dropped and a ally member drew a long line of DT and dropped....

richw wrote:I did draw a line of DT for building (not short, but not long) and dropped and a ally member drew a long line of DT and dropped....

Yes long building queues cause problems that can make you drop or the game lag or something.

could always be your ISP, or any hop between you and any of the games you connect to.

very few games allow people to play competitively from such far distances. since ping is so mildly relevant in spring, there's a world-spanning community that all plays together, and as such we aren't that used to it as gamers. any average game probably has ten to twenty nations through which everyone's route to the host spans.

no, i drop too


no warning, no hints, no nothing.


Its about the same time interval too, 2-4 minutes in and its over; units, nanospray and dust just flies tangentially off in any direction.



In previous versions of spring it used to occur on some maps without fail, green fields and tropical being pretty bad offenders. This version of spring does it on previously 'safe' maps.

hunterw wrote:could always be your ISP, or any hop between you and any of the games you connect to.

very few games allow people to play competitively from such far distances. since ping is so mildly relevant in spring, there's a world-spanning community that all plays together, and as such we aren't that used to it as gamers. any average game probably has ten to twenty nations through which everyone's route to the host spans.

that is a good theory.

I will start taking note of my hosts country of origin and see if that effects the drop rate

I don't think its a ISP problem, unless a backbone link has had major issuses with dropping packets for the last couple of weeks, I wonder if its a mix of Spring/LuaUI and maybe BA.

richw wrote:I don't think its a ISP problem, unless a backbone link has had major issuses with dropping packets for the last couple of weeks, I wonder if its a mix of Spring/LuaUI and maybe BA.

I think it might be a general internet problem, either at the host end or along some vital backbone.


I was playing a game recently with an american host, all the australian players simultaneously dropped (of which i was one).

Elkvis wrote:

I was playing a game recently with an american host, all the australian players simultaneously dropped (of which i was one).

That's interesting to note.


How hard would it be to put the little flags by people's names in the battle rooms? If it's not that hard I think it'd be a good addition to the lobby client

hunterw wrote:How hard would it be to put the little flags by people's names in the battle rooms? If it's not that hard I think it'd be a good addition to the lobby client

It's being added next version I think, it was in mantis.

Interesting development

I had an am having a conversation with someone who suffers from ocaasional early game drops like myself.

we compared situation.

Completely different hardware:
whats more, he had moved from intel/ati to athlon/nviada and was still experiencing problems.

Completely different country:
So not likely to be ISP related. i am in Australia, he is in poland and the host was in france

The only similarities were the brand of our routers (DSL), but the model numbers were different.

We both were using 512/128, but i am on a DSL service and he was using cable. So in the main, we are using different internet technologies for connection at our door.


We both dropped out of the game at the exact same moment.

I am stumped as to what would cause us both to drop at the same time except perhaps a failure at the hosts end. but if it were at the hosts end, why would some people be consistently droped and not others.

This is not a new problem, I have reported it here but it seems not to be ISP related.
I have reported this happening on greenfields and have tried to modify the map to fix the "possible cause " of this problem (when it was possible to play with different versions of the same map in the same game) but that didn't change anything.

Recently it seems to have increased frequency of occurrence.

It also seems not to be hardware related as I have changed almost entirely my machine specs (different mobo, Intel p4 -> AMD athlon x2, ATI radeon x800-> nvidia gf 7900gto, new hdd and ram, only peripherals and case are the same).

I was the one who dropped with Elkvis from the same game in the same moment.

Remember what happens when the game is over and the host leaves battle ?
Moving objects such as nanospray and moving units fly away frozen in the direction they ware moving before host left. Thats what it looks like when I drop from a game this way.

This problem is not mod specific, I have checked it on XTA, AA, BA, EE (different versions)

I made an interesting discovery:


Recently I was playing a game with a friend and we ware talking on skype through the whole time. We started a game with 2 other people, me and him vs them. At some point of the game i 'dropped' from his server the way i described here, but rather than just quiting spring i spoke to him through skype about the battle and his base, as he was quite new to the game. I was talking to him for over a minute. Then i quit spring pressing shift+esc and then "quit" button. Just after i did that he asked me why didn't i give him my units and order them to self destruct. I told him that the game was set to "comm-death ends" from the beginning and that i wasn't playing the game for more than one minute. Than he asked me how could I not play the game for more than one minute as my units have exploded just several seconds ago just about the time I quit spring. I asked him if he was sure of that and he confirmed. I was curious how could that be so I asked him to play with me a quick game on some greenfields game made by someone else, just to check something - just for testing purposes. We joined and set our ally teams to the same. Game had started. After the usual several minutes I 'dropped'. I asked my friend through skype if he recieved any messages saying that there was no connection to me. Not a single message. I asked him if he had received any messages about the connection to me when he was the host. The same answer. Than I asked him if he sees my units doing anything. He said that they didn't do anything (builders have finished building and stopped). I told him to .take my units and nothing happened when he tried to do that. For him I was still in game like he and other players. A minute passed. I told him that I will try to tell my units to self-destruct like previously and asked him not to write .take command even if he saw any messages saying that I left. He agreed. I pressed 'ctrl'+'a' then pressed 'h', marked "share selected units" but before i pressed Apply I told him to look at my units and say when my units explode to know the exact moment. 3, 2, 1 and I pressed "Apply". Suddenly he said that he took control of my units rather than seeing them explode. That was on his screen. On my screen my units ware still my units like at the moment I 'dropped'. After nearly 2 minutes after I had 'dropped', my units turned for him and the rest of the players into his units. I was sure that he didn't type .take command because he had a good microphone and I heard every time him hitting ENTER and spacebar on his keyboard. After I gave my units to him he saw my name as a spectator. And again when I have pressed 'shft'+'esc' and 'quit' button he saw me quiting the game in the exact same moment.



It appears that the host still received packets from my machine but:
a) hosts machine stopped sending any messages back to my machine, or they did not "land" where they ware supposed to,
or
b) my machine started refusing to accept hosts packets.


Considering that when I was playing with Elkvis we both dropped in the exact same moment, the b) option is unlikely.



Is anybody willing to check this or knows anything that might helps fix this issue ?

some problem here but also with absolut annihilation 2.23 ba 4.7 too.

all the nano floating around i am allways scared to see that again



another thing:
sometimes the games still goes on. the nanot hits the target the units move how they should but i cant controll anything. i can select my stuff but cant move them or give any comands.


i thought first it were my overlocked cpu that has been damaged lately but sooms not to be. well getting new hardware soon. it will be a swithc from amd/ati to intel/nvidia