We need some netfix attention.

[dave_erald]

So, multiplayer seems to be hit or miss lately.

So far it looks like those with a very good router or programming knowledge can both host and join games, others can port forward and host but not join, others can only simply join, and sometimes neither at all.
And Hamachi only allows 5 people in one room (we may not usually see more then 5 at a time, but when we could mutliplay with 6 people this obviously falls short one person)


I love game day, but this seems to be getting in the way. Do we have a better instruction manual then what the OPU forum page shows, or are there fixes lined up?

EDIT: Yeah, this could have been posted in a feedback/problems section of OPU, but I like it here.

[PatchouliConfort]

I discovered some things about Hamachi, which could be useful to allow more people in it.
It is possible to  create more than one room, and then more than 5 people can join the network, and the game.

I hope it'll help !

[Hooman]

I'm not sure that helps since the game is peer-to-peer, where all clients must be able to see each other. If you created separate rooms, wouldn't that segregate clients on separate virtual LANs?

You're probably right about the NetFix needing work. I think the current problem with the NetFix is it's not properly instrumented to record information that would be useful to debug this problem. Perhaps some protocol updates are needed to allow for better logging and debugging of these problems. It's hard to fix things without knowing what's going on.

Some local logging was added at one point, but the problem with that is it's slow and cumbersome to get users to report the contents of their log files. Perhaps each client can send the server their view of the other clients. Discrepancies could explain the connection problems. I don't feel this information is particularly sensitive or anything, since it's mostly just ephemeral port number remappings, and perhaps checking for proper external IP addresses. If this information was collected and logged on the server, it may provide the answer to this problem.

[leeor_net]

Been asking people who have the problems to save their log files so I could check it out. Lev and Dave have also been begging me to take a look at the NetFix code. Not having a whole lot of network programming experience I doubt it would be particularly difficult to get the logging going.


Hooman, perhaps you and me can take a look at it together and go from there? At least to start getting some sort of debug logging going. Could probably add libcurl into it and have it automagically post the logs to a website form of sorts (did this once with a 'game' for login authentication... not particularly secure but it was effective).

[Hooman]

I was thinking add a custom packet type to send extra info to the server. Actually, might even be able to reuse an existing packet type that replicates the players list from host to clients. Just have each client send that data to the server and log it there.

We should work together on this. Perhaps evening your time.

[leeor_net]

Welp, starting tomorrow I have 6 days off. I mean, not really but I'm supposed to. Boss and all.


Anyway, yes, I'm game. We'll figure something out either via PM or IRC.

[Hooman]

We seem to have forgotten about this.

To get things started again, I'm going to suggest taking a look in NetFix/Client/trunk/OPUNetTransportLayer.cpp:455:
int OPUNetTransportLayer::ReplicatePlayersList()

Instead of just sending the prepared packet to other players (line 480), we should also send the packet to the game server. In the case of failure, the other players are notified (line 494), and again, we should also inform the game server.

Be aware the call to SendUntilStatusUpdate sets the checksum on the packet. If you try to send the packet before the call, the checksum might not be set.

[leeor_net]

We did. It doesn't help that my 6 days off turned into half a day off and the rest of the week was a whole lot of bullshit piled on top of bullshit. I still haven't gotten any time to myself at all.

[Hooman]

Yeah, I've given up announcing my plans to work on things during days off. They're the least productive days of all.

[leeor_net]

There was a time when a day off meant I could do everything. Now I just stare at the TV watching whatever on Netflix and sleep all day.

Adulting sucks.

[dave_erald]

Looks like Arklon might be working towards another solution, or something similar but different. Anything that brings in more multiplayerssssss