SUPPORT: Solving Connectivity Problems

Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2415

SUPPORT: Solving Connectivity Problems

Tips and Tricks

Most PC games are client/server. That is, someone creates a game and others join that game. The data then goes from you to the host (the server) and then back to the other players. Sins of a Solar Empire is client/server.

In Demigod, it is peer-to-peer. This was necessary because it needed to have the least amount of latency possible since your moves are directly sent to the other players rather than to a server first. Because the action in Demigod focuses a great deal on Melee in the third person (i.e. players can see their hits) a lot of traditional methods to mask latency aren't possible. Peer-to-peer reduces the problem of "lag".

The downside of peer-to-peer is that everyone has to be able to connect to each other. In a client server game, many people have heard someone say "I can join games but I can't host them." In a peer-to-peer game, everyone is technically a host thus greatly increasing the challenge of connecting players.

The solution developed is known as CVP NAT, a new feature of Stardock's Impulse Reactor development library.

So what problems can people have? Below are the most common issues:

Windows may fail to create a local socket. There's a million reasons for this unfortunately and your options are to try to rejoin a game or try hosting the game instead. It's not terribly common but feels very common when it happens to you. It will be more common if you have an older router as we have learned that older consumer routers are more likely to be problematic when opening sockets.
Your ISP is sending your messages with different IP addresses. This is common in Europe where people have DSL lines that have multiple IP and the router picks and chooses which IP to send things. It can also happen for people who have multiple Internet connections going. For instance, I have a Verizon 3G Internet connectiont that's always on. I also have a Comcast line on. If I'm trying to play a game, turning one of these connections off will likely help. At Stardock, we have a thornier issue -- we have 2 comcast lines in which our router picks the one with the most available bandwidth to send out a particular packet. CVP NAT has been designed to deal with a lot of oddball issues like this but it's not infallible.
Firewall. If youre firewall is blocking TCP or UDP packets, you won't be able to connect.
Windows failed to configure a local socket. This is another one of those annoying issues that can come up. It's similar to item #1. The best way to reduce these kinds of problems is to use Skirmish or the Pantheon. The "Custom Game" setup in Demigod is the most likely case this will come up since it requires multiple sockets to properly connect players.

TIP:

If you know what you're doing (and only if you know what you're doing) you can load a program that's in the bin directory of Demigod called ImpulseReactorOptions, set up the options there and then seperately go to your router and make sure those ports are port forwarding to the right machine.

To learn how to port forward, see this website: http://www.portforward.com/

To learn more about what ports to open see this document provided by the Monk (THANKS MONK!)

http://themonk.ca/Monk/Networking_and_DEMIGOD.pdf

demigod

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Quoting dustbeta,

reply 22

Ok, so 4th update in 2 days now. I am not sure on the details of the proxied connection but.... I find that I still cannot join games. In the connection details window I always connect to the host and no one else. And no one connects to me. When using the proxied connection, do any ports need to be forwarded or opened? I haven't seen any details of this new scheme yet.

No offence or anything, but its great to see that I'm not alone.

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Same boat, I bought the game yesterday and still cannot connect to anyone else's game nor can I host one. I'm gonna be asking for a refund soon if this keeps up. I figured I'd give it a last ditch effort here to see if anyone can help. I have tried:

Location: Canada

ISP: TekSavvy.com

OS: Windows Vista x32, tested on x64 system as well.

Service: DSL

Problem: infinite "Connecting to players..."

- DMZ'd my internal IP on the router

- tried with UPnP on and off

- forwarded the ports manually

- Ran a third party port checker, 6073 and 6100-6200 are verified as Open

- Unhooked the router entirely and connected directly to the DSL modem, still nothing.

- Windows Firewall is off

- No third party antivirus or firewall software installed

- tried running with command line /serverproxyonly, still nothing.

I can play host/join in any other online game(TF2, L4D, WiC, Warcraft 3, WoW, etc etc etc etc etc) without any issues. This game just seems to hate me for no reason.

Anyone from Stardock please? What's the deal? The only way my setup could be more open would be for me to hop on a bike and start running packets over.

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same problem im having but it seems that i can only get connection 1 way pls fix this problem for example i connected to person but he cant connect to me or person is connected to me but i cant to person and i find that /serverproxyonly dosent do anything or is that cos im in scotland.(this is not a firewall problem as its off nor is it an os problem)

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Thanks a bunch for all the effort Monk (and others in this thread).

I'm really confused at my issue though. I went through all the port forwarding and program access allowances on my router and McAfee firewall and PFPortChecker still said my port isn't open or reachable. So I turned off my firewall and enabled DMZ and PFPortChecker is STILL saying it can't connect to my 6100-6200 ports.

Your guide mentions a possible hiccup with UPnP enabled on the router but I don't even see an option for that anywhere.

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the_Monk

Join Date 01/2008

+222

Could it be that your ISP modem is also functioning as a router? That would create a "double-NAT" scenario and first thing you will need to do is either:

-- place your router's WAN IP into the DMZ of fhe ISP modem.

-or-

-- forward all UDP traffic on the specified ports from your ISP modem to your router, and then forward all UDP traffic on those same ports from your router to your PC.

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I solved the problem, with not connecting to any other players now, but when I´m in the Lobby, the Hosts kick me all the time.

Something I noticed is, that everybody except the host has a ping of 0ms and it´s not showing me ping too.

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Quoting Vernoz,

reply 2

Anyone from Stardock please? What's the deal? The only way my setup could be more open would be for me to hop on a bike and start running packets over.

Ah, the good 'ole Sneakernet...or I guess Bikernet.

I'm in the same boat as you, I have tried everything, and still can't play online. Very annoying.

I wonder...are more people with DSL unable to play, or is it an equal split of DSl/Cable/Other types of connection?

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I can't find a common denominator and I'm out of ideas Jeferex. My ISP at home works fine with every other game in the world, including others that use UDP over a P2P model for connectivity. My speedtest shows a 5mbit profile with 0.50mbit upstream which is around 60ish/Kilobytes a second and is more than enough for any online game. Honestly, Demigod is the most frustrating gaming experience I've ever had. Nothing I seem to do configuration wise matters, frankly it has to be the game.

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Quoting the_Monk,

reply 5

Could it be that your ISP modem is also functioning as a router? That would create a "double-NAT" scenario and first thing you will need to do is either:

-- place your router's WAN IP into the DMZ of fhe ISP modem.

-or-

-- forward all UDP traffic on the specified ports from your ISP modem to your router, and then forward all UDP traffic on those same ports from your router to your PC.

Thanks for the reply! I left out that the modem is not a router (although I'll check and see if I can put it into the dmz when I get home, anyway?), and that I've been running the game as "admin" because I have vista. I followed your guide pretty thoroughly

I have a Linksys WRT54GS router. the portfoward.com guide is a different firmware version though, my portforwarding page doesn't have a UPD/TCP dropdown choice and instead has a trigger range column and a foward range column. I've put 6000-6200 in both for now.

I have BellAtlantic DSL under and I'm not going through a dorm router. I'm not sure how to check if the apartment building I'm in has some kind of control either, but I doubt they do as they don't have any kind of cable or satalite set up for us (moving soon thank god!). I've never been able to host in games like WCIII so I guess that's possible though.

My only other guess is that I'm somehow missing a UPnP option on my router control, though I've gone through every option list I could find.

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Quoting Vernoz,

reply 8

Again, same. My ISP works great with ever other single game, the web/mail/ftp server I host, and I know that P2P is not being blocked.

And I know I have a quality router (my DSL Modem is set to bridge mode, so it does NOTHING), and on top of that I'm a networking specialist by trade, so I know nothing on my end is impeding the connections (ok MAYBE my ISP could be, but I doubt it, that's why I picked them.)

It is so very frustrating.

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Sorry Jef, I know the feeling. My refund went through today so this'll be my last post. Good luck in your efforts to work things out.

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i don't want to read the whole thread, but i do want to announce that yesterday, i read monk's guide and discovered that i had to disable UPnP and after doing that and deactivating the impulsereactoroptions.exe, i.e. unchecking that box, i was able to connect to a mate of mine to whom i usually could not connect.

thank you, monk.

edit: but sadly it seems, that i still can't connect to many other radom people, to whom everyone else is able to connect. i'll be stuck with "attempting to connect to: <player name>"

ports are correctly forwarded.

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If, after portforwarding, and the game doesn't work, spending another 48hours playing with your router or modem would really not help as the fault lies with GPG/Stardock and their AWESOME P2P connectivity in an attempt to reduce delay to minimal. Yeah great, I'm having 0 delay. DOI, I'm not able to PLAY. AT ALL.

Kudos Stardoooooock. And GPG. For being so ambitious in trying P2P when it phails, SO BAD.

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I have tried forwarding all ports from 6000-6999 both TCP and UDP to my computers internal IP address. I have enabled 1-to-1 NAT to my machine with one of my public static IP's. Nothing works. Also, I don't know about this proxied connection thing, but I have never seen it even attemept to use it. How does this work? Why has 0 info been provided about the proxied connections?

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Add me to the MP woes. I've tried everything in the past 2 days to no avail. Ports are fowarded correctly, Utorrent can see the ports I have open for it, etc. I'm just really impatient now. I complete understand wanting to innovate etc with the whole P2P system but there comes a point when this amount of your player base cannot play a significant (some would say, the entire portion) portion of your game that you need to go back to the drawing board. Especially wehn they've already paid for it.

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One thing that I noticed is, when I want to play Demigod in MP and I try to connect to someone, my MSN loses connection and Firefox too.

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Is there anyway to ask for a refund? at this point I've tried everything and I don't have much of an ISP choice way down here. Besides the fact that it's complete bullshit that I'd have to switch ISPs to play this game. Biggest crime here is that I'm completely addicted to SP but that can only go so far.

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its not an isp problem its to do with the nat multiplayer code that they used for the game and it should be fixed before balance changes are made as we paid for it too and the same ammount as everyone else

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Vernoz I'm in the same boat a you. Teksavvy internet (Ottawa). Tried all the usual methods to get it up and running. Do you know if you are running MLPPP? I think that may be the reason things aren't working for us but I'm not sure. It's good to know that we're not the only Teksavvy customer unable to connect. I'll check into their forums and see if I can find more info.

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ignore this post pls

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It's pretty clear that the multiplayer problems are not going to be fixed by any patch, or even a bunch of patches. The main issue is the P2P model. Why not use a client/server model like every other game out there?

Demigod is a good game and it has lots of potential, but at this rate it will lose the majority of its playerbase before things get better.

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Hey Stylez!

Given that we're both in Ottawa, both with Teksavvy, and both using a WRTG5L with Tomato Firmware, I think the only difference making it work for me and not for you is that you're using MLPPP and I'm not. Try it without.

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Not running MLPPP and I tried it on the Sympatico connection at work and from a friend's house who is on Cogeco cable. I think somewhere in the netcode it randomly picks someone and says "ok give it to this guy sans lube" to be honest. Decided to check back after the latest patch and it looks like more people have problems after it as usual.

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Aight, as I finally found my way to this incredibly slow forum, through all the Sub-forums, here's my problem:

When I attempt to connect to a game online, be it Skirmish or Custom (haven't tried Pantheon but it'd be really odd if it's not the same there) I get this message:

Cannot connect to a NAT faciliator. Please try again later.

Either, it's something incredibly special, or it's because my ISP blocks UDP traffic- which would be severly problematic with peer-to-peer gaming. Hence I wonder if there's a work-around that might work. Otherwise I'll just have to stick with these newbie-AIs until I possibly could get myself a new ISP (not so simple, it's because of where I live- in a student flat).

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I have the classic, "Failed because of NAT" Error as well.

Router: D-Link DI-624S

ISP: Wireless, I cannot remember the name of the company, From New Zealand anyway.

All the ports forward, Tried DMZ Zone

UPnP is disabled, SPI Mode is disabled

No Windows/Any Firewall.

Avast is shut down when I try MP

I tested too see if my P2P traffic is being block and it's not, I even Bit Torrent fine my client says nothing is blocking it.

And of course im using the /serverproxyonly parameter, Tried with and without.

I'm all up to date and everything(Router, DG etc), Yet I can't even join a game, I try host and people just drop when they try to connect too me. I have never found a game I could not host and play online with this is a first and the AI are so stupid and boring I want to play some real live humans !

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