Lan Problems TD and TS

[Sphynx]

Hey Guys,

 

I tried to set up an old school lan session today and like in the old times we failed epically. 

 

TD No probs with 2 people. With 3 - as soon as ingame - waiting for connection

All with win 7 and TD + 1.06c r3

 

And my PC has an strange issue with TS as well. I downloaded the TS x-mas installer here and installed it. When I click on the LAN still nothing happens. (Tried the EA version with the TS_RA_lanpatch 1.0 as well - no joy)

Any ideas?

 

pretty disappointed - managed to sync 4 adult people for a LAn and then it doesn't work... 

[Tore]

Got anything that might block connections? Firewalls for example? Try to disable those and try again. Also what do you mean nothing happens when you click the LAN button in TS? Does the LAN lobby even open or virtually nothing happens when you click it?

 

Edit: can you also tells us a bit about the LAN setup?

[Sphynx]

All Firewalls are off and as I said - nothing - except from a blinking of the whole screen, nothing happens. Lobby doesn't open.

 

Edit: For TD: We tried each combo of the 3 PCs, my HTPC, my regular desktop and a friends laptop. HTPC & Desktop = OK, HTPC & Laptop = OK,  Desktop & Laptop = OK. All 3 = "waiting for connection" 

[Tore]

Does other games work fine? Are the priorities for connections set up so that the proper connection is set as number one?

 

If TS doesn't open the LAN lobby it means that it doesn't find any network adapter or connection.

 

(I hope you are not trying to use CnCNet on LAN, that doesn't work well since it's made for online play)

[Sphynx]

As I said - e.g. TD works fine (as long as there are only 2 players)

Haven't tested any much else - 3d shooters are a NoGo since the other PC is a rather 3d-weak HTPC.

 

Are the priorities for connections set up so that the proper connection is set as number one?

 

What do you mean with priorities for connections? Where do you mean that to be set?

I only have one connection.

 

Network set up for the LAN looked like:

2 Desktops (mine, a the one from my friend) -> Switch ->WiFi-/DSL-Router

1 HTPC -> WiFi

(+ planned - but didn't got XP installed on his Macbook - 1 Laptop ->WiFi)

 

Normally the Switch is not there, my Deskop connects directly to the Router.

Any idea why TS doesn't see my Network Adapter? (Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller)

 

[Tore]

What do you mean with priorities for connections? Where do you mean that to be set?

I only have one connection.

 

Control panel -> network and sharing center -> network adapters -> press alt -> advanced -> advanced settings

 

That's how it is on Windows 7 at least.

 

Also when and where did you get C&C1? There's an old version around which has a bug that limits multiplayer to 2 players if you use another language than English. The current version doesn't have that bug. (1.06c revision 3)

 

Any idea why TS doesn't see my Network Adapter?

 

That might be because you don't use the UDP LAN patch. TS uses IPX by default and if you don't have IPX installed it simply won't work unless you use the UDP LAN patch, but that comes default with my TS installer unless you uncheck it during installation.

 

You could check ingame if it finds a network card: options -> network. 

[Sphynx]

Control panel -> network and sharing center

so far so good

-> network adapters -> press alt -> advanced -> advanced settings

You mean "Change adapter settings"? Cause I don't see "network adapters" anywhere on the network and sharing center page.

 

Also when and where did you get C&C1? There's an old version around which has a bug that limits multiplayer to 2 players if you use another language than English. The current version doesn't have that bug. (1.06c revision 3)

1.06c r3 (full) right from Nyerguds Site. Had r2 installed before.

 

That might be because you don't use the UDP LAN patch. TS uses IPX by default and if you don't have IPX installed it simply won't work unless you use the UDP LAN patch, but that comes default with my TS installer unless you uncheck it during installation.

 

You could check ingame if it finds a network card: options -> network.

Tore, as I said in the first post, before I used your Installer, I

(Tried the EA version with the TS_RA_lanpatch 1.0 as well - no joy)

 

Network in TS says 0000:000....

And of course I didn't uncheck the UDP-Lan-Patch. In fact I just downloaded your installer with the hope that it'd fix my problem.

[Tore]

You mean "Change adapter settings"? Cause I don't see "network adapters" anywhere on the network and sharing center page.

 

Yes, "change network adapters".

 

Network in TS says 0000:000....

And of course I didn't uncheck the UDP-Lan-Patch. In fact I just downloaded your installer with the hope that it'd fix my problem.

 

That's normal. Strange that it doesn't work...it works "right out of the box" on all my computers. :/

 

In C&C1 does all the maps have (2) at the end?

[Sphynx]

Yes, "change network adapters".

Somewhere deep down in the properties of the adapter there is a setting called "priorities & VLAN" - if that's what you mean, it's activated.

 

In C&C1 does all the maps have (2) at the end?

None of the multiplayer maps in TD has a (2) at the end.

Maybe the language issue is still there, cause we had TD on all 3 PCs switched to German language.

[Sphynx]

Hmm... what's the mini TD version?

 

Any idea about my TS problem?

[Nyerguds]

looks like the first one is just stripped so it has no music, and the second so it has no music or SP missions. I don't see why anyone would want that.

 

The language issue was incorrect identification of the number of players in MP maps. Tore described it incorrectly though, the number is put in brackets BEFORE the map, like this:

[5] Tiberium Garden

If you're on r3, this should be correct, but on r2, in German (or French, for the maps which didn't contain a translated map name), this would give [2] for all maps.

 

Still, from what you describe it doesn't look like that issue. I think it simply crashed the game if you managed to start a 3-player game.

[Sphynx]

Oh, the master himself...

 

We didn't play RA at all. Only TD and TS.

 

Still, from what you describe it doesn't look like that issue. I think it simply crashed the game if you managed to start a 3-player game.

Nyerguds, any idea why? Or can I somehow help to fix that issue?

 

You got an idea about my TS issue?

 

On a sidenote I'd like to personally thank you for your TD patch. You brought me a great blast from the past.  :beer:

[Nyerguds]

Nyerguds, any idea why? Or can I somehow help to fix that issue?

Uh, I already fixed it. That bug was in r2. I fixed it in r3, which is released right now. As for what caused it, well, short version is, it was related to reading translated map names from the ini file, and malfunctioned for all languages which didn't have translated map names in the map's ini file but just used the normal English ones instead.

 

 

The full explanation, if you want it: when it doesn't find a map name for your selected language in the map's ini file, it tries to find the name in the mission briefings file (mission.ini, or, its replacement for that language). The ability to translate Covert Ops and multiplayer map names from the briefings file is a feature of the language pack system I added to the game.

 

However, the game can only have one ini file loaded into memory. So when it opens the briefings file, it no longer has the map file loaded.

 

The bug: the counting of the number of start positions was only done AFTER trying to read the name. Of course, with the wrong ini loaded, it couldn't find any start position information, and returned zero, which made it default to the minimum of "2".

 

To compare... the French Covert Ops multiplayer maps DO have translated names (a filled in NameFre= line in the ini), meaning that, even with this bug, they still worked correctly. The system found the specific French names in these inis, and never switched to mission.fre (the French briefing file).

 

In r3 I changed it so it does the counting routine BEFORE the name reading, so that problem is fixed.

 

(Originally, this name reading routine was made for the Covert Ops list, and it didn't matter there since I didn't need any other info from those. So I didn't realize it could cause problems.)

[Sphynx]

Hmm.. if it's fixed and I''m on r3 (and all others where too) then why does it still crash?

[FunkyFr3sh]

did you try minitd or play it in english yet?

[Nyerguds]

Shouldn't make any difference, FunkyFresh. Don't see the use of playing C&C without music anyway, bandwidth is cheap these days.

 

 

Sphynx: Crash? You never mentioned any crashes, just "waiting for connection". If you get a crash, it could help if you give me the address on the error message you get.

 

 

To get this revision 2 bug nonsense completely over with, I'll make this perfectly clear: if all players used the same language, the ONLY thing the rev2 bug did was limit all multiplayer maps (and thus, all games using those maps) to 2 players for non-English languages (except for the Covert Ops maps when playing in French). It didn't cause any crashes or connection problems.

 

You can only get the rev2 crash I mentioned (starting a 3-player game with at least one rev2-malfunctioning German/French player in it) if the host has his language set on English anyway, since I made sure the host can't start a game if there are more joined players than the map allows. A rev2-malfunctioning German/French player would have it locked on 2 for all maps, meaning he could never even launch a 3-player game.

 

[Sphynx]

Sorry, you're right. It didn't crash, it was just hanging.

 

Language might have been indeed the issue. 2 PCs were on german, mine was on english.

I can't really confirm if a change to all english would work, since I only have my 2 PCs here and it's working fine with 2 ppl anyway.

Maybe I get a laptop from my parents this week and see if I could set up a working 3 player game.

 

Still there is my strange TS issue. Do you have any idea why TS won't find my network adapter?

[Nyerguds]

Still, if you all used rev3, you can't have had the problem I described... rev3 was specifically released to fix that issue. And it's detectable anyway; clients would see the map being prefixed with [2].

[Sphynx]

Hmm... most of the map are prefixed with [6], Tiberium Garden ist [5] and Monkey in the Middle has [4].

[FunkyFr3sh]

Sorry, you're right. It didn't crash, it was just hanging.

 

Language might have been indeed the issue. 2 PCs were on german, mine was on english.

I can't really confirm if a change to all english would work, since I only have my 2 PCs here and it's working fine with 2 ppl anyway.

Maybe I get a laptop from my parents this week and see if I could set up a working 3 player game.

 

Still there is my strange TS issue. Do you have any idea why TS won't find my network adapter?

 

have no clue about ts

 

Hmm... most of the map are prefixed with [6], Tiberium Garden ist [5] and Monkey in the Middle has [4].

 

did you check that on all 3 computers?

[Nyerguds]

Hmm... most of the map are prefixed with [6], Tiberium Garden ist [5] and Monkey in the Middle has [4].

Yeah. That means it works correctly

[pichorra]

try using the default TCP/IP patches: http://www.understorm.net/downloads

 

check if all computers are in the same workgroup.

 

What Anti-virus are you using? This seemss to be some kind of firewall stuff.

 

[Sphynx]

Sorry to dig that up, but it was indeed the IPX wsock32.dll - I tried another one and it worked. At least I don't have the lobby issue with TS any more.

Haven't tried TD in LAN so far.

I used the ipxwrapper (I needed it for Diablo I Lan play)