Yes finally!

By Frogboy on May 22, 2009 2:58:04 AM from

The dev team says that only people who have serious connection issues should use this (and we’ll have a smarter parameter shortly) but we now have:

/serverproxyonly which will force Demigod to have our servers host your connection. You put this as a parameter for your Demigod shortcut.

We spent the evening playing with people online who have previously been unable to play with fantastic results.

Everyone up there who has the word “(proxied)” in the above screenshot are likely people who would not have been able to connect previously.

Mr. Glass Half Empty

But not all is perfect in Demigod land.

First, this update is only for connecting people together. Developer Gas Powered Games is cooking up v1.01 that has a lot of in-game networking changes. No official ETA on that yet.

Second, there’s still some logic changes needed IMO for Pantheon games because it’s still hit or miss. We got a lot of good data tonight but I’d say Pantheon (and skirmish too) are still pretty crummy in terms of reliably getting a 6 or 8 person game going with qualified people. I’m tempted to just have all pantheon/skirmish games hosted by us but that’s a bit of a last resort.

Possibly tomorrow, we may put up a Memorial weekend update with some new parameters. And yes, we do plan to have these parameters make their way into the game itself once we finalize them and set things up with Gas Powered Games (we did some voodoo to let us get those command line parameters in the first place without having to change the game EXE).

Hope you guys like what you see. We are seeing some strange things from Version DSL and Cox Cable ISPs in terms of how they do their connections so we’re looking at that.

Goodnight/good morning. Cheers!

+912 Karma | 76 Replies

I was in a custom game last night with someone that was connected via Proxy and his ping was pretty much the same as the rest of us (under 120). It was a good game despite that I lost...again.

However, I tried to connect Pantheon and wasn't able to after 3 attempts. Also have issues with Skirmish. But custom games appear to be working fine. At least all my custom game losses don't appear to count on my player record.

That's very disappointing cos I don't see the point in concentrating on fixes for Custom games.

At least with custom, you have the choice of kicking people who you don't like the look of before you start.

It's Pantheon that's the most important cos:

a) you have no choice to whom you connect

it's what Demigod is about (ie the battle between light and dark).

But I'll see what my own experience is when I get home.

Quoting Shodan78,

reply 25

I had one week that I could play Demigod, and that was the betas a few weeks ago.

After that the following happens:

I start demigod, go into multiplayer, join a custom game and then demigod actually KILLS my ISP router. I need to reboot it to get it working again. When I log in to the router when this has happened all DSL status is listed as FAILED. This have never happened before with any game or application.

So now I have given up Demigod for a few weeks, I will be moving on to a new appartment with another ISP and hope that router can handle Demigod.

I find it very strange that a game can make a router malfunction completely and needs a hard reset....

I assume it is a combo dsl modem & router? I had the same issue with games in the past on Qwest DSL modems. It is usually a function of the low quality router boards they place in the modems. They can't handle the traffic and crash. Qwest's Level 3 Tech actually told me to but my own router if I wanted to do anything more than surf the net with that router, but after calling another Tech he upgraded me to a newer modem that actually worked.

Second consecutive Pantheon. Still a few people that I've run into whom I cannot connect with (I'm guessing they need to use /serverproxyonly as well), but this is loads better. However, am still running into game crashes when pantheon launches sometimes.

Frogboy and the Stardock team - I'd like to thank you all for your hard work. I am a professional developer, so I know exactly how hard you've been working to keep your customers happy. I just bought Demigod - in large part because of your excellent support. I'm not usually an RTS player, so we'll just have to see how it goes.

Keep up the great work!

Phazure: That's really weird. I think we'd need to know a lot more about your connection. I mean, how or why would MSN or Xfire disconnect because of loading upa game?

I'll be around tomorrow, i'll work with you personally so we can see what the deal is.

I may have a similar issue. My internet connection shuts down at times when I try to play a game. Not all the time though. I can play 3v3's and 4v4's.. but sometimes the screen just freezes and I am forced to force DG to close.. then I need to restart my computer because I have no internet connection. I have tried to repair my connection as well as /release and /renew with no help.

At first i thought it was an upload speed issue (310 kilobit connection) but it has only started happening since the 5/14 patch. Also, I can play multiple 3v3's and 4v4's with no problem.. then I try to join another game and Bam!....

Yes its a combo DSL modem/router, and probably not a very good one. But it handles P2P traffic just fine (torrents) and all other games I play. And I would assume this router is not much worse than other ISPs "standard" routers. So I guess that a large part of Norwegian users have serious problems playing demigod since this ISP is Norway´s second largest...

It's great to have some positive news.

Just to add my $0.02 I can add to the list of people having issues with pantheon. I was previously able to connect, and now I can see the number of other players in the queue before it brings up our connections but I am sitting for long periods of time before I concede defeat and play custom. I have been behind on reading all the updates so I am going to try and catch up, I am unsure what the priority for matching pantheon games is currently. Right now I am unable to connect to any pantheon games let alone ones with more players however custom is fine.

However this issue seems to be getting addressed to good luck and thanks for the effort.

(we did some voodoo to let us get those command line parameters in the first place without having to change the game EXE).

You're joking, right?

I mean, how could you...

You're joking, right??!

How is that even close to possible?!

Edit: Wait, DLL's are basicly little bundles of pre-compiled code, so I suppose you could have put it in there, but... wow, that does not seem like a great way to go about doing things!

Quoting Ron Lugge,

reply 9

Edit: Wait, DLL's are basicly little bundles of pre-compiled code, so I suppose you could have put it in there, but... wow, that does not seem like a great way to go about doing things!

What's wrong with abstracting a system into a collection of libraries, each with it's own DLL, so that when there is an update for the library like a bug fix or new functionality one only needs to update one DLL rather than the whole program?

I suppose hindsight is 20/20, but its clear that many people just dont have the upload bandwidth to play this game.

Unfortunately theres no way of telling who the offender are, so you just get a run of laggy games.

Probably wont be so much of a problem in europe or USA, but so many piss poor connections here in .au

ftth wont be in for several years yet, so I suppose were out of luck.

Big props for the improvements!!! This is how it should have functioned on release and I hope people are very pleased with it now for the most part. Only major multiplayer function now missing is friend join. Love the overlay telling me how many people are actively queueing in pantheon. Would like it to also include total in games and online.

Yes Finally!....nothing

I still have the same issues I have had before. I can't get into a lobby, and if I do end up in a lobby, I have 0 ping to everyone except the host so the game cannot start. I can't get into pantheon as well. I also have the problem of having my internet connection reset, which is pretty annoying.

(we did some voodoo to let us get those command line parameters in the first place without having to change the game EXE).

A loaded dll can access the commandline parameters of the current process with one line of code. So no Voodoo needed there. It becomes much more interesting if you want the parameters of another process....

ROAR!!!

I just had a 3v3 in Pantheon! Human players!!!

First time in ages!!!

Only took 30 mins to get a game. And no, I'm not being facetious cos 30 mins for a full game is helluva lot better than an hour with nothing.

Thanks... for getting this game to release state now.

Hard to know how grateful I should be for having to wait 5 weeks to get a game to this level but I thank you anyway.

I'll try a few more games tonight and report back!

After the patches, it takes me and my two friends on the same router less then 5 minutes to get a custom 3v3 going and work all the way through. 6 games last night.

Woot niceone Stardock!

Really impressive work!

I'm looking forward to playing a bunch this weekend as I'll finally have the time to do so.

-Jara

Quoting garchiver,

reply 13

Yes Finally!....nothing

I still have the same issues I have had before. I can't get into a lobby, and if I do end up in a lobby, I have 0 ping to everyone except the host so the game cannot start. I can't get into pantheon as well. I also have the problem of having my internet connection reset, which is pretty annoying.

Some information about your router, ISP, and what specifically you see would be helpful.

Helpful in what way? You're going to tell me to change my ISP and router so I can play the one game that doesn't work? Doing anything on my end isn't really going to get the game working. But if you really want the information, here it is. Let's see you "help" me.

Router: Netgear WGR614

ISP: SBC

What I see specifically: Not hard to imagine what I see from my previous description and from the posts of other people before me, with pictures included. I can't get into lobbies. I either see nothing on the connection info box or see myself connecting to some of the people there but not others or any combination of possibilities. If I do get into a lobby I have zero pings to everyone besides the host and the game cannot start. I guess I can take pictures if you have trouble reading.

They are trying to directly help you, I would be grateful if I were you - not act like a Douche towards him.

Have you even tried using the proxyonly parameter???

Nothing. Except I don't think that's what they did with DG

I know of exactly one way to access command line arguments (in C++, anyway...), and thats using a combination of argc and argv and then parsing the strings inside argv. Trying to do that from inside the DLL code seems... ugly. I don't use DLLs much (not at the level where it's necessary or practical) but I understand just enough to go 'wow'. An incredibly complicated way of working some real magic.

Helpful in what way?

Helpful in that they have no clue what's wrong with you, so more information might help them fix it... or admit you're just plain screwed.

Quoting Ron Lugge,

reply 9

(we did some voodoo to let us get those command line parameters in the first place without having to change the game EXE).

You're joking, right?

I mean, how could you...

You're joking, right??!

How is that even close to possible?!

Edit: Wait, DLL's are basicly little bundles of pre-compiled code, so I suppose you could have put it in there, but... wow, that does not seem like a great way to go about doing things!

They did it so they didn't have to go through GPG to change the EXE. It's faster that way. I imagine they'll be integrated into the game's interface once GPG can get around to putting them in there.

Yay i got in a 3V3 without bots!!!

but yeah i was lagging everybody to around 1K+ pings so i quit. Lets try this again

While this is not a problem per-se with the match making, it is something that happened last night.

4 people who looked to me, based on pings and such that they were on a lan, reasonable pings, and then the game starts, and it's pretty much confirmed all 4 of the other team shoot to 3-4sec (yes, you read that right, 3000-4000+)

While in this case, it was people with insufficient connection, but I'm wondering if in the case of multiple players from the same IP, if a speed test in the lobby can't be performed.

Later on in I think 1.1 (or maybe it's 1.01) whatever, proxy all of them through.

Additionally, this hasn't happened yet in Demigod but I'd like some option to NOT boot someone who drops from a LAN game. I know the engine can handle a lot, provided they aren't auto-booted. The reason being hitting a sleep button on the computer, and it sleeping. In SC/FA if you don't kick, you can turn it back to normal, and the game will resume like nothing happened.

Also, the proxies are kind of silly in some cases.

Example, last night I and a friend were playing on the Internet, sitting next to each other. I was hosting, and there was one person who wasn't proxied to me, but was proxied to my friend. No difference in network settings, so I just found it funny.

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Yes finally!