Need help with testing hosting MP on local machine

[Jason_Williams 13431]

Guys,

 

After trying to test some MP missions hosted from my local machine we discovered that it seems to be broken. If you host a server and someone tries to join you get a hard lock and crash. I tested with multiple people with the same result. If anyone here wants to try hosting an MP mission either COOP or Dogfight can you post your result here. We thought it might just be blocked router ports, but it doesn't seem to be that. We may have broken it with our latest update or two. Maybe someone who has a history of successfully hosting on your local machine in the past.

 

All that being said Dserver seems to be working fine.

 

Can anyone else confirm this issue so I can have the guys take a hard look at it.

 

Thanks.

 

Jason

[-[HRAF]BubiHUN 367]

About 5 months ago we tried to host local missions(both dogfight and coop), but as soon as we or my friend joined both of your games crashed - so it is not a new thing.

 

Edited February 10 by -[HRAF]BubiHUN

[307_Tomcat 540]

I will try to check it again  today , I was hoping to play some PWCG COOP campaign with friends soon.

 

 

I reported this August 2018 (3.005-public-issues-bugs):

 

"I was hosting (from client) multiplayer game (coop and dogfight missions) in both cases my buddy was able to join, spawn in the ground (coop), in dogfight mission he was unable to spawn properly (grayed out Start button, playing engine sound but not spawned in the cockpit (I know this issue from busy servers), then he pressed spectate button and was in cockpit.  In both cases I could see his nickname in scores,can read his messages but I was unable to see his plane nor specate his plane.
What is wrong ?"
 

BTW I have opened and forwarded all ports on both ruters to my client. I have two non routable networks. One 192.168.1.0/24 on my interent DSL conneted to another  router on 10.0.0.0/24, my Il-2 client has ip addres from second network. "

 

similar report

 

 

 

 

 

[SYN_Haashashin 865]

Jason,

 

We are using that method to play our Coops. We did fly this week after the version landed and also after first hot fix. 

 

We didnt have any trouble at all.

 

You may want to contact Vander since we are using one of his computers for hosting.

 

Haash

[307_Tomcat 540]

Just one thing. I remember having hungs or crashing when I have empty content of missionname.list file. Adding manually  languages entries fixed it , I just copied from other , but I don't know how to generate it for given mission (I think it's not properly configured ME) or if it matters at all if it's from other mission (just language s) ?

Edited February 10 by 307_Tomcat

[77.CountZero 532]

Always worked ok, just test it with tm8 who was hosting coop and after it df from MP lobby, and no problems with joining or playing on his server, also never had any problems after any game updates.

[Jason_Williams 13431]

Hmmm.... thanks guys. I will continue testing.

 

Aday - I'll send you and Vander and email.

 

Jason

[SYN_Requiem 1036]

Busdriver and I often fly around on a server I host on my own machine, so we'll find out today if it's still working on our end.

[Jason_Williams 13431]

Thanks Req. Who's your ISP there in Texas?

 

I'm trying to figure out if it's

 

A.) The Game (Daniel thinks we are missing a pop up message that is causing the lock when no connection)  
B.) My ISP and Ports being blocked (I've unblocked them)
C.) Something with the Mission file (as suggested above)

 

Jason

[SYN_Requiem 1036]

The ISP is Spectrum. I can't remember when those patches/hotfixes came through but the last time we flew together on my local server was the 5th Feb (if that helps). It definitely seems like an odd problem.

[Jason_Williams 13431]

3 minutes ago, SYN_Requiem said:

The ISP is Spectrum. I can't remember when those patches/hotfixes came through but the last time we flew together on my local server was the 5th Feb (if that helps). It definitely seems like an odd problem.

 

Ok I had Spectrum in CA, but Cox here in NV. They don't like discussing port forwarding. Was hoping you also had Cox. Ya if you can test again with the latest update that would be good. I can also try to connect to you if you have time.

 

Jason

[SYN_Requiem 1036]

1 minute ago, Jason_Williams said:

 

Ok I had Spectrum in CA, but Cox here in NV. They don't like discussing port forwarding. Was hoping you also had Cox. Ya if you can test again with the latest update that would be good. I can also try to connect to you if you have time.

 

Jason

Yeah sure, I'll boot it up. I'll be on the official BoS TS in a couple mins.

[Jason_Williams 13431]

Ok meet you there.

 

Jason

[TP_Silk 154]

Hi Jason - I was hosting multiplayer dogfights on my machine after the patches on Sunday and also had a hard lock and crash twice. I didn't particularly think anything much of it until I saw this. Please let me know if you want/need further details and I'll PM them.

[=RS=Stix_09 71]

Something else that does not work in self hosted dogfight missions is the  checkzone MCU's do not trigger for the player, only the ai.

That has never worked. I believe it works ok in coop , just not dogfight multiplayer unless u run it via dserver.

[Jason_Williams 13431]

Ok guys,

 

After testing with Req (thanks Req!) we got it working and I can host on my local machine again, but not with the mission I want to test which was built by Gambit. So, maybe there is something wrong with that mission file?

 

The biggest issue was my Windows firewall was blocking the connection to my machine, not my router ports. Turned off Windows Firewall and it worked, but Gambit's mission fails to send if the other player does not have it. You get an error message. So, I've narrowed it down to maybe that mission file, but seems weird. I'll try testing with others in the community to see what's up. 

 

Crashes once you are actually in the mission is a different animal and needs to be addressed by the team and not related to what I'm dealing with here. Feel free to post a report though when it occurs so we are aware of it. 

 

Haash - I've reached out to you and Vander by email. Hit me back when you have a chance. Would like to do some further testing with you guys since you are both expert mission makers. Maybe Gambit has a mistake in his mission file.

 

Thanks for your input guys and this particular issue looks like it was mainly caused by my network settings and a missing dialog in the GUI which the guys will fix.

 

Jason

[TP_Silk 154]

Jason - did you re-save it after extracting it and before trying to host it? 

[BlitzPig_EL 1605]

I'll be hosting later in the day today, and if issues arise I'll let you know.  I run on Spectrum as well.

[Jason_Williams 13431]

51 minutes ago, TP_Silk said:

Jason - did you re-save it after extracting it and before trying to host it? 

 

No but I will try re-saving it. Good suggestion.

 

Jason

[307_Tomcat 540]

Jason , did the list file is empty?

[Jason_Williams 13431]

8 minutes ago, 307_Tomcat said:

Jason , did the list file is empty?

 

I’ll check after breakfast.

 

Jason

[Jason_Williams 13431]

1 hour ago, 307_Tomcat said:

Jason , did the list file is empty?

 

Nope list file was filled in properly.

 

Jason

[TP_Silk 154]

2 hours ago, Jason_Williams said:

 

No but I will try re-saving it. Good suggestion.

 

Jason

You have to do this so that the mission will work properly. I've always supposed that this is so that absolute file paths get re-saved in the mission files, but you would probably know better than me. Certainly it is not possible to host a downloaded mission without re-saving in the location you're going to run it from.

[307_Tomcat 540]

1 hour ago, Jason_Williams said:

 

Nope list file was filled in properly.

 

Jason

I see.

 

I just tested  mission provided with the game, I can't see others players, but I see connection message and can use chat,  we spawned on the same airfield, i asked him  to destroy radio tower and i saw it collapsed but I did not see any shots, plane , impact or heard any sound just dust. There is AI in mission and he was not able to see them, only me.

Edited February 10 by 307_Tomcat

[Jason_Williams 13431]

49 minutes ago, 307_Tomcat said:

I see.

 

I just tested  mission provided with the game, I can't see others players, but I see connection message and can use chat,  we spawned on the same airfield, i asked him  to destroy radio tower and i saw it collapsed but I did not see any shots, plane , impact or heard any sound just dust. There is AI in mission and he was not able to see them, only me.

 

Ok so, let's put this experience to the side for a second and treat it separately. This mission was tweaked by Daniel recently so let's look at this in it's own branch. I can help you test this later today if you can or tomorrow we can try. Looks like you are 9 or 10 hours ahead of me.

Jason

 

About the original topic with Gambit's COOP mission. Vander helped me test connecting to MP missions hosted on a local machine. Here's what we found and we eventually had success, but only after finding some things amiss which I will discuss with the team.

 

Spaces in the filename (Gambit's mission) appears to have been the problem with sending/receiving his mission. Vander added underscores to the name and it worked. Vander and I both successfully hosted the mission in question. Also, we identified 4 issues total that need to be looked at or discussed with the team.
 

1. Missing Dialog when cannot connect from server causes game to hard lock/crash.
2. Blank .list files preventing download of missions between host and client
3. Resaver tool may not be working correctly (creates blank .list files or adds wrong data to .list files) Saving in ME itself seems to fix problem.
4. Names of mission files must not have spaces in filename for sending/receiving mission files between local hosted server and client. Spaces in filename do not seem to affect ability to play SP missions.

I hope this info might be useful to some of you.

I'll be on TS later today to do more testing. If you see me on there say hi and let's test and see how it goes.

 

With our Air Marshall system coming I want to make sure our MP is working well. I have not played much MP since I moved this past summer, but now I can re-focus some of my energy on testing MP. Thanks to Gambit, Req and Vander for helping me. I also had group of guys on TS last night help me test this as well. Thanks everyone! 

 

Jason

[TP_Silk 154]

Jason - our squadron regularly works with missions with spaces in the titles and we send the mission files back and forward between us. The names aren't particularly long or complex, but spaces in the mission name or file name do not appear to in any way affect people being able to connect to the games. The only difference is maybe that we host on DServers because of the bug where check zones don't work properly on player-hosted Dogfight servers just now. The critical thing is that when you unpack the zipped files onto your machine, you should do so to a sub-folder of the .../multiplayer/dogfight/... directory and once you have unpacked them you need to open the mission in the mission editor and then just save it. After that all works fine. We host in this way at least once a week and fly three times a week together on a hosted Dserver for practice.

 

I would say that your points would probably comprise a 'best practice' still though for fail-safe.

Edited February 10 by TP_Silk

[307_Tomcat 540]

1 hour ago, Jason_Williams said:

 

Ok so, let's put this experience to the side for a second and treat it separately. This mission was tweaked by Daniel recently so let's look at this in it's own branch. I can help you test this later today if you can or tomorrow we can try. Looks like you are 9 or 10 hours ahead of me.

Jason

OK , we can try tomorrow , I will be avalibale from  21 UTC. Which TS ?

26 minutes ago, TP_Silk said:

Jason - our squadron regularly works with missions with spaces in the titles and we send the mission files back and forward between us. The names aren't particularly long or complex, but spaces in the mission name or file name do not appear to in any way affect people being able to connect to the games. The only difference is maybe that we host on DServers because of the bug where check zones don't work properly on player-hosted Dogfight servers just now. The critical thing is that when you unpack the zipped files onto your machine, you should do so to a sub-folder of the .../multiplayer/dogfight/... directory and once you have unpacked them you need to open the mission in the mission editor and then just save it. After that all works fine. We host in this way at least once a week and fly three times a week together on a hosted Dserver for practice.

 

I would say that your points would probably comprise a 'best practice' still though for fail-safe.

It looks like the problem is with transferring mission with spaces in the name automatically by the game, but if you have it send by e-mail etc and saved in right folder it gonna work.

Edited February 10 by 307_Tomcat

[TP_Silk 154]

Not so sure about that - if we download the files one of our missions by connecting to a hosted session of it then someone re-saves it, they can host it again right away on their own DServer even with spaces in the title. We've done this several times when a server has had small issues and crashed early on our Ops evening. Maybe that's not what you meant though. Or it could be specific to in-game hosting I suppose. As I said, we use Dservers.