LAN Multiplayer Lobby Connection/Timeout Issues

from Demigod Forums

Looking for any insight into problems we are encountering with large LAN play.  We had 10 players (all either retail copy owners or playing on LAN machines at a local LAN/Internet Store with licensed copies installed) playing for over 8 hours on Saturday night.  During this time, each games would take anywhere from 2 minutes to 20 minutes to get started.  Almost everyone experienced problems with seeing the game, joining it, waiting for connection, getting the Give Up/Keep Trying message, clicking Give Up and then immediately getting in.  The waiting for connection could take 30 seconds or up to 3/4 minutes.  Not everyone had the same problem each game, some would wait forever one game then get in immediately the next time. 

We were all playing on a Gigabit network with Fiber Internet Connection, all other games played that night (Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress 2, WC3: Tower Defense) had no connection issues.  We have seen this problem at other locations (individuals homes on gigabit switches) with fewer players as well. 

Another neat problem is that sometimes everyone would get in fine, except for one or 2 people.  After 5-10 minutes of those players waiting for connection, Giving Up, and then connecting, they would connect to the game, and then immediately, anywhere from a couple to all of the other players (aside from the host) would suddenly time out and have to rejoin again.

The general consensus of all of us that have been playing this game is that it is awesome.  But, when we get together to play as a group, we don't want to spend 20 minutes of every hour trying to join each game. 

Anybody have any thoughts as to what the problem is here?  Are other players out there playing local games in a LAN environment?  Any one else having these issues?

Thanks for any help.

 

421 views 3 replies
Reply #1 from Demigod Forums Top

Out of curiousity, were you using a hub or a switch/router for all the LAN connections? I'd bet packet collisions could be an issue with that much traffic on an unswitched hub.

Siege of Centauri
Reply #3 from Demigod Forums Top

Kryo --  We were playing at a commercial LAN facility that is part of a large gaming store in Springfield, MO.  The entire network is run off of managed gigabit switches connected to the internet via a fiber connection.  It is an amazingly responsive network in all aspects.  It has only been with Demigod that we have experienced these issues.

What is most frustrating about this fact, is that aside from these issues it is the first big LAN game to come out in a long time that everyone loves to play and can handle 10 players.  It just sucked that although everyone wanted to play, it took forever to get everyone in to play.

 

Istrebitel -- Thanks for forwarding me to those posts.  I am have sent them on the the Network Admin over at the store to see if any of these apply to our situation.  The "Respond to WAN/ICMP Ping" one might create security issues for them since it is a commercial location, but maybe he can figure out a work around.

 

Hope someone at Impulse/GPG can get these annoyances resolved.  As much as this group still loves to play WC3: Tower Defense games after all the time that game has been out, I could see Demigod taking over our usual game nights.  But, that is only going to happen if it doesn't take up most of that time with connection issues.