Today's update is only to the connection code. Before certain of you go up in flames, GPG IS working on balance and other issues near and dear to your hearts. Beta 3E is focused on the connection code, however. If you got 0.95.033, make sure that you grab the second update from today as it fixes a problem with joining games. As I post this, it's not up yet but it will be soon.
I've spent a lot of time hammering at the connection code, plus being able to specify which ports you want Demigod to use greatly increases your chances of connection succeeding. You may still get stuck at the connection screen if you fail NAT because this is only an update to ImpulseReactor.dll, not the Demigod.exe.
If you're having trouble connecting to other players, you can try opening and forwarding ports. To tell ImpulseReactor which options to use, run ImpulseReactorOptions.exe (If you're on Vista, you'll need to run it as an administrator). This program does not open any ports for you so if you don't know how to do it, you will need to consult the manual for your router. If you have a firewall, you should also allow the same ports in the firewall.
1) Check the box next to Specify NAT port range to enable it.
2) You can use the default ports or specify your own. It requires a 20 port range because a 10 player game may require up to 10 ports to be opened, and some routers don't forward messages correctly if the ports are sequential (eg 6112 and 6113). Our goal is to reduce this to 1 port in the future.
3) If you are on a LAN and someone else on another computer on the LAN also enables this option, you will need to use different ports than that person.
Here are some changes:
+ Fixed very rare bug where failing NAT traversal caused a player to try to connect to themselves, causing an endless loop (yes that was a fun one)
+ Fixed some issues that could cause crash or hang if NAT failed
+ Better connectivity for players on a LAN (playing an internet game)
+ If a player fails NAT, they should now exit sooner so that they won't prevent the rest of the players trying to connect