knardi

Join Date 04/2009

Tried to play with four friends tonight--nothing worked

I want to play Demigod with my friends. So badly. But nothing ever works. There are a million tiny problems. If they aren't fixed, then I will just have to give up the pipe dream of actually enjoying Demigod.

We did a 5v5. One person's machine was slow, so everyone played the Demigod: The Slideshow for about 8 minutes until someone quit. THAT IS BAD DESIGN. A slow machine shouldn't ruin everyone else's game! I know you made Demigod lock-step on purpose as an attempt to keep lag low. I am telling you that that was dumb.

After that we decided to play 3v3 with an AI player. When one of my friends hosted, we ended up with one person proxied with 200+ ping, so I decided to host. Everyone was connected, and then we alt-tabbed to join the right Vent channels. OH RIGHT, THE GAME CRASHES WHEN THE HOST ALT-TABS. Come on guys, that's been in there since day 1.

So, normally, no big deal, I'd just remake the game and try again, remembering not to alt-tab this time. Only now I CAN'T LOG BACK IN. So my friends are just sitting there on Vent, bored out of their minds, waiting for me to log in so that they can actually play the game. Twenty minutes later, they decide to just play 2v2. One of them gets a fatal error when the game starts, and then everyone rage quits for the night.

STARDOCK, GPG, LISTEN UP: IF YOUR GAME DOESN'T WORK CORRECTLY 99.999% OF THE TIME, THEN IT DOESN'T WORK. I CAN'T EVEN PLAY THIS CRAP. LET ME KNOW WHEN YOUR GAME DOESN'T CRASH AND RUIN MY NIGHT ANYMORE.

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Yeah something's hosed right now

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pacov

Join Date 02/2008

+183

the login issue has happened in the past, but appears to be more widespread tonight (see here http://forums.demigodthegame.com/355265). I totally feel your pain. It is what it is, though. If you search the forums, you will see that SD has been up front about the issues facing this game. I even bought a friend of mine a copy of the the game when the 50% off coupon went out... whom I can't play the game with due to connectivity issues. It sucks, but oh well. They are doing they are doing the best they can do to fix things. Us venting and pissing and moaning doesn't get the problems resolved (but at least you feel a little better (been there done that)).

You cannot expect 4 people to go out and buy this game, come home and be able to connect to each other. That is the sad reality... let alone 10 people. Troubleshooting will have to be done. The only thing I've had that works 100% of the time is LAN. All else is and will probably be hit or miss. GPG made the decision to go peer to peer with this game per Frogboy. They've had to develop new solutions from scratch after launch because of that decision...

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I was the "one of them gets a fatal error" guy mentioned above. I alt-tabbed again to change Ventrilo channels since we weren't playing with knardi anymore, and the host started the game while I was alt-tabbed. Around the same time, I got an Unhandled Exception popup box and my game crashed.

Other issues encountered: my own personal issue where someone can connect to me but I can't ever connect back to them (I've never seen "proxied" after my name while playing DG), and a desync error to knardi after several people had quit the 5v5.

Knardi's "I CAN'T LOG BACK IN": his hosted game stayed in the server list (with "1/6" people playing and nobody actually playing) for an indefinite period of time after Demigod crashed for him. I suspect he couldn't log into Impulse because it thought he was already logged in.

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What is your proposed scheme to avoid one person lagging a game because their machine can't run the game?

There is no solution I am aware of, either it slows down and is unplayable (current situation), or you allow people to play the game at different speeds. How on earth are you going to manage the second scenario? So when I've been playing for 10 minutes on a fast computer and my gametimes is 10:00, my ally on a shit pc has only been playing for 6:00, and is thus 4-5 levels behind everyone else?

Or do you want their demigod to sit static during the periods where their machine is lagging and prompty teleport once they catch up, like in an FPS? Yeah wouldn't that be fun...or not.

If you have an old pc don't try to play 5v5. Play 3v3, its fun.

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yeah if you have a shitty pc don't play 5v5, my pc isn't enough for 5v5 either, but 3v3 is fun too.

Also if you're aware of the fact that the game might crash if you alt+tab, then just don't do it.

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woppin: There are known solutions to the problem you are describing. QuakeWorld (John Carmack) invented the general solution more than a decade ago, which involves client-side prediction and correction.

One of the problems is allowing the speed of the computer to dictate the speed of the game, instead of simply the framerate. When you design a multiplayer game around frames instead of around real time, then you end up with this problem.

It's a result of developers being too idealistic about gameplay. They think they can make a game that will never lag and also be 100% accurate on the client side at all times. That is naive, and this is what you get when you follow that faulty assumption.

Schobbo: That's great advice. Guess what? My pc isn't shitty. Unfortunately, other players' PCs are shitty, and I have no idea how fast they are until I watch a little slideshow with them.

Also, I was aware of the alt-tab bug. And yet, I alt-tabbed out of force of habit. Because other games don't crash when you alt-tab. Is that an unreasonable expectation? That the game won't crash when you interact with it in a completely normal way?

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Also:

You cannot expect 4 people to go out and buy this game, come home and be able to connect to each other.

Really, pacov? Because you know, if I see a game advertising 5v5 Internet multiplayer, I DO ABSOLUTELY expect to be able to buy 10 copies and then play 5v5 games over the Internet.

If what you mean is instead, "This game is broken and has too many problems to expect that to work," then I absolutely agree with you. They should put that on the box. "NOTICE: BUGGY MULTIPLAYER MAY PREVENT YOU FROM EXPERIENCING THE PRODUCT AS ADVERTIZED."

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What is your proposed scheme to avoid one person lagging a game because their machine can't run the game?

The person with the crappy machine should get the slideshow by dropping frames and having a delay thrown on their actions, everyone else is fine. Not the other way around. I know it's much more complicated behind the scenes but there should be a minimum standard for normal play and if you can't meet it then YOUR performance is degraded, not everyone else's.

You cannot expect 4 people to go out and buy this game, come home and be able to connect to each other

Whaaaaa? If you can't then the game is a failure. Most people are sticking through these insane multiplayer problems only because Demigod is so fun.

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This.

Admittedly, Demigod isn't the only game to have issues alt-tabbing; Source-engine games used to crash hard (though they now simply hang for several minutes). But combine the alt-tab crash with reasons to want to alt-tab (no in-game voice chat, for one), and individually-annoying issues start combining into systemic monsters.

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pacov

Join Date 02/2008

+183

You cannot expect 4 people to go out and buy this game, come home and be able to connect to each other. That is the sad reality... let alone 10 people.

Hey - of course we all absolutely SHOULD be able to get into big games and play, but it is what it is. If you told me that 4 people were going out to buy demigod tonight, install, and try to play online, I'd say there's not a high percent chance they'd all be able to successfully play. That's all I'm saying. They'd probably end up doing tech support for 1 or 2 people... figure out how to port forward, learn about the shortcut switch for proxies, etc. It's a pretty lousy way to start out playing a game together, but oh well. Positive work is being done/has been done to improve this.

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Yeah I get tired playing this game, well trying to find a game.

I have spent at least 25% of time just waiting in lobbies, it is just soul destroying. I am a supporter of Stardock, but this lobby is really pushing the patience to the limit.

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