Mystery of the vanishing vehicles

[Derfel]

OK, so we're finally starting to create Byte Battles for CMSF (see separate announcement in the main forum) and of course testing them is a major part of that. Usually we do it by LAN play.

Now, running the game single player on one of the computers works fine, but in LAN play the vehicles disappear the moment the game starts. This computer runs an ATI Radeon 1600X card with the latest drivers, it's got plenty of RAM (2 gigs at least) and a decent processor. The LAN is gigabit cards through a gigabit switch so we shouldn't be having problems with lag.

This is driving us nuts, we've tried every single variation of graphic settings we could think of on several scenarios and the damn things keep disappearing!

Any and all suggestions are extremely welcome.

-Derfel

[Cougar_DK]

Hi Derfel, why not attach your save game/scenario so BF has a chance to check it out?

[Derfel]

Hi Cugar,

Yeah, I'll see if I can dig up a save game, I dont know how much info about this sort of stuff is contained in there though. Also we had the same problem with all scenarios, not just our home-made ones.

There isn't any sort of log file in CMSF is there? That would probably more helpful, but I haven't seen anything like it.

[Cougar_DK]

I'm in no way affiliated with BF, so I can't send it any further. Just to let you know.

I think I saw that turning shadows off would make the vehicles visible again. Have you tried this?

[Derfel]

Hi, again!

Yeah, I realize you're not with the BFC, so of course I don't expect you to rush about forwarding my problems. I'm really grateful for all help and suggestions. As it happens it turned out that we did at complete reinstall on the machine in question (the entire system, not just the game) so any save games files are lost, however I do seem to recall trying the "shadows" tip without any success.

We'll try again to-nite or tomorrow with a new install and see how it goes.

Thanks again.

[Cougar_DK]

Great, I hope it will fix it!

[Fat Dave]

Hi guys,

Keep us posted on how this goes, i am curious to see if you can get this LAN head to head battle up and running. I have had no success...and the lag and other strange crashes drove me to madness...1.10 is meant to improve this.

Cheers

[saudade]

All players encounter the same problems

this game for the moment it's only playable in PBEM so we must waiting the new patch

[Madmatt]

Hey guys, I would very much like to see your battle so I can run some tests with it in TCP with the 1.10 version. Can you please zip it up and email it to me at support@battlefront.com?

If you could explain everything odd your seeing in that same email, it would help me to focus the testing.

Thanks!

Madmatt

[Derfel]

Hi!

Well here's the result of a good few hours of testing.

1. The problem occurs with *every* scenario; prefabricated or home-made, however, it manifests itself a little differently. In the pre-fab scens the vehicles seem to scatter all over the map once the joining player leaves the setup phase. Sometimes they return to their original positions when given orders.

2. The vanishing/dispersing vehicles *always* belong to the player joining the game (i.e not the Host). We tried hosting from both machines. Which I suppose means that the problem is not with the graphics card (as we have different cards in our machines)

3. Toggling shadows on or off has *no* effect whatsoever on this problem

4. Graphic settings has *no* effect on the problem (we've tried every combination we could think of)

5. Some vehicles *occasionally* re-appear during play

6. Vehicles are visible during the setup phase.

7. The vehicles are invisible to the joining player, but they are there and functioning, you can see the outgoing fire for instance.

8. The floating icon also vanishes.

Oh, and;

9. The game cannot be paused. How annoying is THAT!

Since TCP games can't be saved I can't send any sample. (see above about annoying)

Really, really hope this can be solved soon. I mean I started an entire site for tcp play dammit!

[Fat Dave]

Hi Derfel,

Good work. I think you have highlighted some issues which need to be addressed. The more this is tested and brought to BFC's attention the quicker this will be solved. Agree completely about the non-save aspect, a crash during live play means you have nothing but frustration as a result. Again, fingers crossed for 1.10

[Derfel]

Thanks, Dave.

A thing that just struck me was that the behaviour of the game in TCP play was not unlike the bugs we saw early in CMBB multi-player... or was it even back in CMBO? Units suddenly appearing wildly out of place on the map (sometimes even in the midst of your opponents units) etc. I don't know if this has any significance but it really seemed similar, now that I come to think of it.

(Edit) I just realized that I didn't explain that the vanishing vehicles are always visible to the "Host" player.

Oh, and Matt; if you want to test the home-made scenarios we used they're available at www.kretsen.nu/bytebattler/cmsf

[Derfel]

OK, troops. Here's the stuff on "Marines" and multiplayer:

I'll start with the bad stuff:

STILL NO SAVE OR PAUSE IN TCP GAMES!!!

WTF doesn't even begin to cover it. Why, why why... BF get a grip!

Good stuff (and it is good): Vanishing vehicles have vanished, i.e for us at least this particular problem is solved. Vehicles now work as they are supposed to. Huzza!

Many and improved Byte Battles will now be appearing shortly!