Our story so far...
The initial release of Demigod was marred due to us not taking into account pirates trying to get validated when we set up our network infrastructure. This resulted in the multiplayer game being basically unplayable which resulted in some pretty negative first day reviews.
48 hours later, we set up an alternative network for legitimate players, released a Demigod update and most people were able to connect - but with a big catch:
Demigod also debuted with a technology internally referred to as "Super NAT". The idea was to let people be able to connect to other people without having to mess with routers or anything. And it worked great in theory. In the beta, we noticed that the connection servers required a lot of resources to do their thing quickly. No problem, we added more servers and added still more again for the release. But that turned out to have been a vast under-estimation still as it wasn't a linear progression but an exponential one.
So over the past 2 weeks, we ditched what we had and started from scratch. Late last week, because we realized that time is of the essence, the Impulse team at Stardock got assigned to the project and we began to use Impulse tech to build something new.
The new system supports Direct Connection (which is pretty traditional - port forwarding). If that fails, it will use NAT negotiation. And if that fails it'll hook up to a series of Proxy servers to handle it.
Tonight
The proxy services will not be in tonight's build because of the lateness and we don't want to put that up and then leave for the evening only to wake up in the morning, go over to Shack News or Voodoo Extreme and see a headline "Stardock's Network becomes sentient, begins world conquest!" or something. So we'll wait until Wednesday during the daylight hours to turn that part on.
We are marking this build as a BETA still since it's so late into the evening we don't want to take any chances.
Expected Results
This update isn't the end all, be all update. This week is the week of putting this pain behind us. Tonight's update is just the first step. Without the proxy, you'll still have people who will fail on the NAT and we are sure, given the sheer quantity of changes, that there will probably be some problem in there since we've had to take out most of the licensed code and replace it with Impulse code. But based on what we're seeing it should be much better for most people.
If you are one of the people who it doesn't work for, hang in there. If you are part of the majority who is having no problem with Demigod, I realize that we keep focusing on connectivity versus game enhancements or improving the Pantheon and such it's just that my first priority is to make sure everyone can play the game online as well as single player.
The team at GPG and at Stardock are already working on v1.01 which will have the kinds of new features and such our users are used to seeing in Stardock games. But we have felt it would be in bad taste to talk about new features while there are people who couldn't play online so I hope you understand why we've not been talking about that yet.
Testing
So now we’re testing it with people on the chat channels and learning lots of things that we can now pass on to you.
Below are some suggestions for connecting faster. You don't have to do them but they will make a huge difference in how fast you connect and how widely you can connect to other people.
First if your router has an SPI “firewall” you may find you have a better experience if you turn it off. SPI firewalls provide good protection against random packets coming in but the downside is that on some consumer routers, it will prevent you from directly connecting to another player forcing the NAT servers (which are far slower) to pick up the slack.
Next: You need to make sure your router is port forwarding to ports 6100 through 6200 to whatever IP address your computer is using. Don’t assume your machine is that IP address because there’s a good chance it’s not.
If you do these things right, you’ll be able to DIRECT-Connect with the new Impulse Reactor we’re releasing tonight. If you don’t, it will fail over to the new Impulse Reactor NAT negotiation system we’ve been working on the past 2 weeks which is a thousand times better than what we already have out but it will slow everyone down.
If THAT fails, then it really gets painful because then you’re going to be sent over to one of the Proxy servers. These sound great in theory and they have the nice advantage of working basically 100% of the time but it will probably take us weeks to set up enough of these to make everyone happy because we have to locate them near you otherwise lag will be high.
If you're afraid of port forwarding go here: http://www.portforward.com/
ONCE IN GAME
The next thing we’ve discovered: There is a lot of software out there now that packet sniffs. Anti-virus programs even Google Desktop. How do you know if something is sniffing packets on your system? The game will stutter – go for a couple seconds, then pause a bit, go for a couple seconds, pause, and so on. There’s not much we can do on our end to stop that. You can try lowering your graphics settings but odds are, someone you’re playing has something that’s sniffing through your packets and slowing things down. And it only takes one person in the game to have this to make it stutter for everyone.
BTW, in the 10 person game we were playing, *I* was the one with the firewall applet I had forgotten to turn off that was monitoring packets. So it can happen to the best of us.
The update status
So they’re putting it together now. It’ll still be a couple hours because of all the uploading that has to do. Everyone’s very excited.
Again: If there are any IT people hanging around reading this, I’m not a network guy but I am being told by people that the fact that the entire backend for this game has been completely re-designed and re-implemented in 2 weeks is super insane.
Once this is up, our team will be talking at length at what was learned. What I keep being told is this: What works fine for 500 people can totally fall apart for 5,000 people and that’s what we’ve run into in a nutshell for these past 2 weeks.
Known bugs
Tonight's build does have an annoying bug in that it says Sim speed is 0 for you so you can't tell how well you're running. We've informed GPG and it'll get fixed in an upcoming update.
Favor points should acrue without a problem with tonight's build as well.
I have my ports forwaded and installed the normal and the beta update. But we can't get a singel game started. In the beta version there only a few 3vs3 europan games hosted. With the beta patch connections to the first three or four people are made quicker. But then when the last two or one players tries to enter a game lobby, there is always one connection between two people not working. I tried about 30-45 minutes to get a single 3vs3 started, but no luck.
Er... need clarification. Is this all that's in the latest update:
"[May 5th, 2009] Installer refreshed to prepare for proxy servers."
If I'm missing something, can someone direct me to a more comprehensive list of patch/update notes?
The NAT facilitators are on ports 6000, 6002, 6004, and 6006. The NAT facilitator on 6000 is being used by the non-beta (production) version and will return a message about incompatible version to anyone using the beta. The others are used by the beta version.
When you go to host a game, the server returns a list of NAT facilitators that are available. ImpulseReactor then pings all of those facilitators to determine which are both a compatible version and have enough available connections. The first one to respond with a compatible version and enough available connections is chosen and at that point, ImpusleReactor tries to connect to it.
What we've been seeing with people who have double NATs is that they are able to establish a connection to the server but they don't receive any messages after that, and after 30 seconds they receive the message that they've lost the connection to the server. What timezone are you in? I could use a volunteer to help me debug this and my previous volunteers have either been 3 hours behind or in Europe, so several hours ahead, which makes it difficult to find overlapping time to work together.
-- double post due laggy forum
DMZing your computer is like connecting directly to your cable/dsl modem. If your windows firewall is working correctly, you have minimum risk.
Basically, we all are double or triple firewalling our computers. That is what is causing some of our problems.
I appreciate all the hard work and all, but this is ridiculous.
I shouldn't have to forward ports to play a frickin game. I haven't had to forward ports for any other RTS I have played. I have UPNP enabled, and it has always worked fine for me. Forwarding ports is not a viable option for me, because my router only allows 5 or 6 ranges of ports to be forwarded. If I had to do that for every game I play, I'd quickly run out of ports.
Also, I shouldn't have to care if I am directly connected or connected through some facilitator or connected through some proxy. It should not matter. It should just work.
I'm very, very disappointed at how this game has turned out. It's gone from not working to requiring a level of techno-geekery that I have no interest in pursuing. I just want to play the frickin game, not become a MCSE certified network engineer. I have gone from being very excited about the game, to being very frustrated at not being able to play with friends, to almost completely losing interest because from my perspective there has been zero improvement. And the "fixed" version is still in beta.
You need to step back and think for a moment what you are requiring from your users. If you want to limit yourself to technoweenies who don't mind tinkering every time they run a piece of software, fine, that's your prerogative. Somehow I thought that wasn't what Stardock was all about.
Im in Norway so timezone is GMT +1 but Ill be happy helping out anyhow.
Actually I can now see the traffic from 6112 port now, seems I didnt had the game updated enough. With the 108(?) build the following happens:
1. I push fight button. Nothing seems to happen for about 50 seconds.
2. Suddenly I can see this from the router:
IP 10.0.0.3.6112 > 209.124.63.249.6006: UDP, length 2IP 209.124.63.249.6006 > 10.0.0.3.6112: UDP, length 33IP 10.0.0.3.6112 > 209.124.63.249.6006: UDP, length 44IP 10.0.0.3.6112 > 209.124.63.249.6006: UDP, length 44IP 10.0.0.3.6112 > 209.124.63.249.6006: UDP, length 44IP 209.124.63.249.6006 > 10.0.0.3.6112: UDP, length 11IP 209.124.63.249.6006 > 10.0.0.3.6112: UDP, length 80IP 10.0.0.3.6112 > 209.124.63.249.6006: UDP, length 11IP 209.124.63.249.6006 > 10.0.0.3.6112: UDP, length 11IP 10.0.0.3.6112 > 209.124.63.249.6006: UDP, length 1431IP 209.124.63.249.6006 > 10.0.0.3.6112: UDP, length 15IP 209.124.63.249.6006 > 10.0.0.3.6112: UDP, length 48IP 10.0.0.3.6112 > 209.124.63.249.6006: UDP, length 15IP 10.0.0.3.6112 > 209.124.63.249.6006: UDP, length 20IP 209.124.63.249.6006 > 10.0.0.3.6112: UDP, length 16IP 10.0.0.3.6112 > 209.124.63.249.6006: UDP, length 11IP 10.0.0.3.6112 > 209.124.63.249.6006: UDP, length 20IP 209.124.63.249.6006 > 10.0.0.3.6112: UDP, length 1465IP 209.124.63.249.6006 > 10.0.0.3.6112: UDP, length 11IP 209.124.63.249.6006 > 10.0.0.3.6112: UDP, length 11IP 209.124.63.249.6006 > 10.0.0.3.6112: UDP, length 1122IP 10.0.0.3.6112 > 209.124.63.249.6006: UDP, length 11IP 94.27.108.83.10002 > 10.0.0.3.6112: UDP, length 21IP 10.0.0.3.6112 > 94.27.108.83.10002: UDP, length 37
etc.
3. Then I get disconnect message because the matchmaking service has failed.
Even with this latest patch i have never been able to connect with anyone else in multi player. #MTX-886197 has been passed over to the developement team.
Connection type: home, DSLISP: QwestActiontec M1000, Firmware QA02.5-3.60.3.0.8.6-M1000McAfee SecurityCenter for firewall and anti-virus
[mod edit - Trace and Dxdiag link via pastebin]Help!
I have to admit I sort of agree. Even though I know how to do everything that is required very easily. It's still not how any sort of gaming should be. I'm sure you guys realize how many people go to the store, see the game, grab it and want to play it. But have prorblems and don't even bother with forums or port forwarding. I bet thousands have been stopped dead in their tracks and may not even turn the game on again.
Just my 2 cents. I love the game no doubt, and the steps to forward some ports are very easy and have had to be done for many games. But they should not be made this way, nor be so critical in getting the game to work as intended.
Latest update fixed my problems
That was quick, Frogboy, thanks.
ADSL user from Europe speaking here.
Port forwarding of 6100-6200 UDP and/or the latest update solved most of the connection issues it seems.
Connecting to other players only takes around 3-5 seconds per player (instead of 60) and getting in the lobby of custom games will happen in less than 1 minute (instead of over 5).
Thanx for the usefull updates and work!
The new patch is working fine, connection wise. I connect to other players in a matter of seconds, can easily get into a lobby and start a game. Of course, I could mostly do that before the patch. However, I still get massive lag spikes that makes the game unplayable. The more players there are, the more frequent. My ping spikes up to 250-350 as frequently as every second as soon as the game starts. Prior, there are no connection issues whatsoever.
I have no idea what's causing this and was really hoping the patch would finally make the game playable for me. Everything on my end is configured correctly, above and beyond the starter steps discussed here. I run with practically no background tasks whatsoever, no firewall, no anti-virus, nothing. Interestingly, it doesn't make a difference if I run the game with everything turned on with just ports forwarded - the spikes are identical.
Skeptical. it could be your ISP throttleing p2p traffic. but, i thought i've had games with you in them that were fine ... ?
I have a question about what IP address to enter when I add port forwarding for demigod on ports 6100-6200. I don't know what IP address to enter. Do I type ipconfig in MS-DOS and then take that IP address and type that in for the Demigod port forwarding 6100-6200 section?
More and more, that's what I'm leaning to. My ISP is Comcast, however - a very common ISP, especially on the east coast. I figured if I have this problem, then surely a bunch of other people must too, if Comcast is at fault. However, that just doesn't seem to be the case. Also, I can run torrents rather well, as well as some other P2P games.
Favor points ftw!
then it's probably not your isp. i have comcast too, in DC. it's fine for this many connections. they got in trouble last summer for this very issue.
when you're in game, does it look like you are the cause of the issue, or someone else?
yes, that is the IP address you want. it's your computers address on your internal "network".
*sigh* favor points still borked. had 960 one game, bought the swift anklet, next game had 0 and no items. really messed up when the opponent can buy swift anklet and you can't, can lose the game from the start because of it.
Did it at least save your swift anklet?
It's definitely me. From my end, my ping to everyone spikes up, but to everyone else, it's just my ping spiking. When I leave the game, the stuttering stops. I really don't understand it because I've gone to some pretty funny lengths trying to solve the problem, including running through DMZ, connecting my PC directly to my modem and essentially disabling any conceivable program or service that could interfere. My settings appear to have basically no effect on the game at all. One time, I even tabbed out in the middle of a game and changed my router settings around. It didn't do anything.
This update doesn't seem to have helped me. From looking at a Wireshark trace of the traffic, it still seems to be trying to use the NAT facilitator. I thought if I had ports forwarded (and I've confirmed they are forwarded and do work) I'd get direct connections?
I still can't connect to people, including trying a 1v1 game with a friend of mine who can connect to people.
Logs and such are all available on request, just tell me which files you want and where to send them.
When people say the update didn't help them, I hope they realize that only the BETA update really has any changes which could help. The non-beta update didn't really change anything.
Yes, I've got the beta update.
If I am running without a router (directly connected to a cable modem which DOES NOT double as a router) and I am not running a firewall (ie naked to the world) and I am still having occasional issues...
Are the issues becuase other players are fudging my game up with their issues?
Since my issues are only occasaional, can I again assume that the issues ARE NOT related to my ISP?
Are there any other possibilities?
Thanks in advance...
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