multiplayer lockup that affects save files

[gedanken]

Hi all,

I have been playing a ton of CMBO this week as i have a friend over from out of town. we have played many hours of CMBO with this setup with no problems, but twice now have had tcp/ip games 'corrupted' and unplayable due to the same symptoms. any help appreciated as this is a hurter. i dont mind the occasionaly CTD (which we havent had any of) as you just reload the save games, but this is getting us to a point where we cannot continue.

setup:

machine A

win2k

p3-750

192meg ram

dell laptop with decent video

versus

machine B

win98se

p3-550

640meg

geforce 3 ti200 w/ 28.32 drivers

we are connected over ethernet. both os uf are running 1.12, and have a lot of skins and sounds, but both cmbo directories are identical.

the freeze up happens at apparently random times. we can play many scenarios and never experience it and might play a given scenario until a late turn in the game before it happens.

the bug is this - after orders are exchanged and the work is computed on the machine A laptop, machine B downloads the results. the progress red bar gets too 100 percent and there is a single windows 'DING', and machine b is frozen while machine a begins playback as expected. clicking anything on machine b just gets me more DINGs, while hitting the spacebar or hitting escape quits the program (task ends) and sends me to desktop. interesting to note is that the machine a thinks all s well, and is waiting on me to send my orders, until i CTD.

we have tried a combination of having both machines start over and host with their particular

autosave versions but always with the same result - the turn is computed again, sent to machine b, and DINGs as soon as the progress bar hits 100 percent. Just to clarify, it is the results download progress bar on machine b that is causing the crash, not the computation of the turn on machine a (which completes fine)

both crashes have been in quick battles, but both times we have played those scenarios for many turns before crashing.

any ideas? i just did a long search of the archives but came up with no leads.

EDIT - I saw from other posts to look for an Errorlog.txt in cmbo root but i do not have any error logs.

[ March 31, 2002, 07:06 PM: Message edited by: gedanken ]

[Schrullenhaft]

This typically happens when a crew is captured. There is no fix right now for CMBO. CMBB does not have this problem.

You may need to do a PBEM or hotseat with the autosave on the 'client' (receiving computer that 'dings'). A full turn of this and then you can go back to the TCP/IP game. However the next captured crew may repeat the error.

If you search for "TCP/IP Bug" you may find more info on this.

[gedanken]

well damn =)

thanks for the accurrate and fast answer though! I did indeed discover last night that I could play it from either machine as hotseat, although we did one turn of it as hotseat and tried tcp/ip again and it still froze. I will keep experimenting.

thanks again all for the scoop.

ps any eta on CMBB? summer? xmas? definitely 2003?

[Schrullenhaft]

The current estimate for CMBB's release is Summer '02. Nothing set in stone, but that is probably a very likely estimate at this point.

I'd suggest a couple of turns of hotseat play and then resuming TCP/IP (from the last saved turn of the Hotseat). Starting the Hotseat session with the last autosave on the client means that the last turn of the TCP/IP is lost (the movie seen on the 'server' won't happen - in the exact details - again). If you're capturing several units in a row, then the TCP/IP game is most likley going to crash. The idea here is to 'get past' the turn where the crew (most common reason) are captured and the turns should proceed normally.

[ April 01, 2002, 02:10 PM: Message edited by: Schrullenhaft ]

[gedanken]

thanks to all for the advice! this is exactly what we did and we got back to a spot where we could play.