Lead Developer, Stardock Entertainment
Published on June 10, 2009 By CariElf In Demigod Journals

This was mainly a connectivity update, only ImpulseReactor.dll was replaced. 


+ Made data packet size smaller which should help people whose routers don’t allow such large packets. The
symptoms of this are losing connection to the NAT facilitator or the connection dialog showing that you are
connected to someone but they are not connected to you (or vice versa)

+ Changed the channels some of the messages were being sent on to try to prevent one channel from getting
too backed up

+ Added location awareness to the UDP proxy coordinator so that it can try and pick the best server to use as a
proxy

+ Fixed crash bug when players quit at the same time in the lobby

+ Fixed bug where Demigod would occasionally report that an update was available when it wasn’t

+ Added code to bind on a local IP address to prevent bugs caused by having multiple network connections (i.e.
a wireless and Ethernet connection)

You may want to try without the /serverproxy only parameter with this update to see if you can connect without the proxies now that the packet size is smaller. This was a particularly devious bug to figure out because we could see in the packet logs that packets were being received, but the packets were never being processed because they were missing data. 

We also increased the proxy timeout time, which should help with the bug where you're stuck at the map loading screen with the message "Waiting for other players".  This screen stays up until all players have loaded the map, so if a player lost their proxy connection because it didn't receive any data while the map was loading, it never got any further.  Players with slower machines will still take a long time to load the map, so you may want to give it some time before you quit out.

As far as the connection drops that occur once the game has started, there are two possibilities:

1) If the connection to the proxy server was timing out too early, this may have caused the problem and you may see a decrease

2) It may be something in the Demigod multiplayer code, which is different than the code that ImpulseReactor uses to make the connections. Even if it's the first possibility, if data is not being sent often enough to keep the proxy connection alive, it could still be something in the Demigod code.

If you are still getting connection drops once the game has started, please send in your DemigodLog.txt and ImpulseReactor.log and .csv files to support@stardock.com to help GPG and Stardock figure out this problem. You'll need to send in the files immediately after the drop occurs to make sure that the files are not overwritten by subsequent games.

Thanks!

 


Comments (Page 1)
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on Jun 10, 2009

Always good to see a new update

on Jun 10, 2009

Nice

on Jun 10, 2009

Cari,

The new patch disconnects all players when someone rage quits.
I  was not able to finish any of the game i played since I updated, not cool...

on Jun 10, 2009

The new patch disconnects all players when someone rage quits.
D'oh. Let the flames begin. Or better yet, let's find some decent players to fight.

 

on Jun 10, 2009

Doesn't the QA check users' workflow? Rage quitting is a part of the game and should've been checked. Doh...

on Jun 10, 2009

iamKira
Cari,

The new patch disconnects all players when someone rage quits.
I  was not able to finish any of the game i played since I updated, not cool...

You only played 2 games. We need more than that.

on Jun 10, 2009

Today's update with a CVP change not a Demigod change. It won't affect, one way or the other, what rage quitting does.  When you're in the game, that's all Demigod not CVP.

I should also point out that I've been in multiple games today and people quit and there was no negative side effect.

on Jun 10, 2009

any update is a good update

 

on Jun 10, 2009

Thx Cari, new update works great so far . I can finally join games and I am not losing the connection to the NAT faciliatator anymore. And getting into the lobby is super fast now!

on Jun 10, 2009

Any chance we can change the timer back to 30 secs???

 

Now with the option of endgame, people typically use this to quit a game in progress (instead of the exit to windows).  I haven't seen a single disconnect timer.  However the cable in my area has an issue where at unknown random intervals, I will disconnect for approximately 21 secs.  It happens once every 10 games, sometimes 3 games in a row and then never for 20 odd games, but before I would be fine because I would reconnect.  Now with the timer at 8 secs I am screwed.

 

P.S.  Before anyone asks, I can't switch providers and I have spent our with tech support.  They have swapped modems, sent out techs, no one knows what the probem is.

on Jun 10, 2009

I'll ask.

on Jun 10, 2009

Frogboy
I'll ask.

 

Thanks frog would really help a lot.

on Jun 10, 2009

Today's update with a CVP change not a Demigod change. It won't affect, one way or the other, what rage quitting does. When you're in the game, that's all Demigod not CVP.

Got a crash in my last game when someone disconnected. Hard to say if this is caused by the last update or if it simply triggers it and it now happens more frequently.

Log (but no dump ) sent to the right people.

on Jun 10, 2009

You guys are great.  2 dev journals and a patch that appears to have helped alot of people with the game.  Woot for you!

 

on Jun 11, 2009

Yea. I've been able to get into a lot of games tonight. 

Sadly, it took this long to get to where the game SHOULD have been on release date in terms of connectivity.

For more info on how they fixed things:

1. The Raknet MTU value was too high which caused some routers to not be able to receive from certain users.  Thanks to some users who worked with us, this was identified and changed.

2. There is no IP binding so people with multiple nics (like me) can play reliably.

3. The European and Australia proxy servers are now used so people who do use proxy end up with better connections than before.

Now that the connectivity part is about as good as it is going to get (we're still going to refine it but there's no major changes likely in that area) we'll work with GPG to figure out why people get disconnected in-game occasionally.

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