Guest Croid Cog Posted November 29, 2001 Share Posted November 29, 2001 a few thngs for a patch: all gungan ships except cruisers are submersible just for emphasis: pathfinding 'the Assault mech can't aim' bug has to go heroes seem too weak mech destroyers seem too weak against troopers. i know they're not supposed to be good against non-mech units, but it should take a good sized trooper squad to take down a tank of any kind. I mean, it's a freakin' TANK, it has BIG guns and HEAVY armor don't take offense, GB is far superior to AOE2. besides, nothing man makes is perfect...on the first try Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IG88 Posted November 30, 2001 Share Posted November 30, 2001 After playing 2+ months of Return to Castle Wolfenstein MP TEST and seeing how stable and relative bug-free that test (not even a beta) was, I find it appalling how buggy this game is. I can't remember the last time a game was released that is this unplayable. What surprises me is how many people are requesting that inane features be added to the game when there are so many bugs that need to be corrected. The "wookie carbon" bug and the "shooting through walls" bug have been discussed ad nauseum. But how about the fact that on many systems out there, the game just dies spontaneously at least once every few hours? No error, no log, no clue why it happens. I have a few friends who have experienced exactly this problem, and this on systems that are configured as well as can be expected (Intel 815, Win2K, SP2, DX 8.1, no O/C, updated & DX-compliant video card drivers, etc.) so you can't really blame the hardware. For me, even these bugs aren't the deal breaker. It's gotta be this absurd ICS (NAT) bug. Witness the e-mail I sent to Lucasarts: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I had many problems running multiplayer games over the internet when I first ran this game. Clients would not be able to connect to my hosted game properly. Oftentimes, when someone clicked "ready" to begin game, my system (the host) would not recognize that they were ready, generating an error that "all clients must be ready before game can begin." The PC I'm playing the game on is running MS ICS (Win2K, SP2, DX 8.1) and provides internet connectivity to a small home LAN. The computer is directly attached to a cable modem. There is no firewall and no ports (other than netbios) are blocked. I knew that there were problems running the game from behind an ICS/NAT gateway, but this system is directly connected to the cable modem. Since the PC is directly connected to the internet, ICS/NAT should not cause any problems. After much testing, I verified that ICS is the cause of the problem. If I disable ICS on this system, internet multiplayer games work perfectly. This appears to be a significant bug in SW:GB. There are no ports blocked and port forwarding is not enabled, so there's no obvious reason ICS would affect the game. I'm wondering, is this a known bug? Will it be addressed in the upcoming patch? Thank you. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ And tech support's response: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Thank you for your message. Unfortunately, we didn't test Galactic Battlegrounds on systems that used ICS so it's hard to determine why it's interfering with the game. I can only recommend that you continue to disable ICS before playing multiplayer. We hope that you enjoy the game ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This is a novel idea. In essence they're saying, "Our programmers didn't build the product correctly. Our QA team did a horrendous job of testing. So you should just disable an integral part of your system, just to play a game." Is it only me who thinks the response "it's hard to determine why it's interfering with the game" is a bit less than satisfying? I dunno. This could be a good game. I'm a huge fan of the Star Wars universe and have bought all of the Star Wars-related PC games released over the past few years. But unless these MAJOR bugs are addressed in the immediate future, I see this lemon being returned for a refund. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Stryder Posted November 30, 2001 Share Posted November 30, 2001 A major prob... MAKE THE AI BETTER IN RANDOM MAP GAMES. Not only do they not build amny heavy mechs when attacking they never use transports. This is real bad on island maps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest iamninboy Posted November 30, 2001 Share Posted November 30, 2001 thats a wierd problem about the ICS thing, I was on a lan last weekend playing the game with some friends, when we decided to try our skills on the zone. We tried to join the same multi-player game, but that wouldnt work. So we each tried differen games (there was 4 of us) and every one of us could get into a game. The computer that was the gateway was a p2-400 running Win98 SE ICS, so i dong know why 98SE would work and Win2k wouldnt.. thats just odd. Anyways.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest jubjubjub Posted November 30, 2001 Share Posted November 30, 2001 The ICS problem relates to the AOK engine, as you can't do it there either. The problem is that with the AOK engine in multiplayer, all PC's communicate with all the other PC's in the game. They don't just communicate with the HOST. They all talk to each other. As such, each PC in a game needs a UNIQUE EXTERNAL IP address. I have spent a lot of time with this with AOK with 2 PC's behind a LAN (router) and 2 remote PC's behind individual firewalls. I have seen the traffic flow. So, this is not an issue LucasArts can address without revamping the AOK engine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IG88 Posted November 30, 2001 Share Posted November 30, 2001 The ICS problem would be a bit more understandable if the problem was limited to machines on the LAN behind the NAT server. The problem I'm specifically referring to is a scenario where Win2K systems on which the game is being played are DIRECTLY on the internet, but are running ICS (providing internet access to computers on a small LAN.) These systems have unique, legitimate IP addresses on the internet. They are connected via broadband (cable, DSL) and are not blocking nor forwarding any ports. In this case, ICS has no effect on the system's connectivity. Since it's directly connected to the internet, it can send & receive both TCP and UDP on all ports. In this specific scenario, I can't imagine why SWBG malfunctions when ICS is enabled. Can anyone confirm whether this exact problem exists in AOK? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest jubjubjub Posted November 30, 2001 Share Posted November 30, 2001 Isn't ICS functioning as a NAT server? I looked into it a while ago and don't remember all the details since I wanted to use it with Dial Up Server, but it wouldn't support that (I had to go with the NAT32 product). Perhaps ICS is taking over the external IP and assigning the host a local IP, although invisible, to facilitate it's role as a NAT server. If you run the W2K equivalent of winipcfg with ICS running, what does it show you for an IP, the external or an internal address? I was able to get my network with a NAT server to work hosting Diablo II and Starcraft TCP/IP games, but could never get AOK to work (i.e. actually start a game after connecting to the game screen). NAT seemed to be messing up the port routing and the packets weren't coming back in on the ports I expected them. ICS may be doing that to you. If you can trace packets, see if they stick to the ones DirectPlay uses (microsoft knowledge base article Q240429 details them). AOK/SWGB uses DirectPlay for multiplayer, so if it doesn't work, it's probably a problem with DirectPlay and not something LucasArts could change. Have you tried this with any other programs that use DirectPlay for multiplayer? Update: Just found the explanation on the Microsoft Knowledge Base (article Q236429), here is the link: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q236429 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IG88 Posted December 1, 2001 Share Posted December 1, 2001 First off, thanks for responding. I appreciate you taking the time to look up that KB article. ICS is a simplified form of NAT. The functions are basically identical and they're both RFC-compliant, from what I can tell. The main differences appear to be that they have different means of handling port mapping. I've done testing with both ICS and NAT enabled and the end result is the same (ie: hosting breaks with NAT/ICS enabled.) The computer on which I'm trying to run the game has two network cards. One is connected directly to the cable modem and one is attached to a switch & my LAN. When I execute ipconfig (the Win2K equivalent of winipcfg), it shows the IP's for both my external and internal NICs. As an aside, when you first install ICS, it recommends that the internal NIC's IP be changed to 192.168.0.1 (since it's an address designated for private networks.) This is how it is configured in my environment. It appears that, when you host a game, it listens for connections on all IP's. During my tests, I've had friends connect to my internet IP (network card connected to cable modem) from other Win2K systems not running ICS. There shouldn't be any problem sending data to/from any ports on the ICS server, since one network card is directly connected to the cable modem. In fact, I've run many different services over many different TCP & UDP ports (many of which required 2-way communication) and have never had a connectivity problem. And I wouldn't expect to, since the computer has a direct connection to the net. >I was able to get my network with a NAT server to work hosting >Diablo II and Starcraft TCP/IP games, but could never get AOK >to work (i.e. actually start a game after connecting to the game >screen). NAT seemed to be messing up the port routing and the >packets weren't coming back in on the ports I expected them. >ICS may be doing that to you. If you can trace packets, see if >they stick to the ones DirectPlay uses (microsoft knowledge >base article Q240429 details them). In the above comment, were you hosting on the NAT server or on a computer behind the NAT server? Like I said, I wouldn't be surprised by problems when hosting behind the NAT server (on the LAN), but I cannot understand how hosting on the NAT server (provided that it has a direct internet connection) could pose a problem. I haven't done a packet capture yet, but I wanted to get feedback from LucasArts and the community beforehand. >AOK/SWGB uses DirectPlay for multiplayer, so if it doesn't work, >it's probably a problem with DirectPlay and not something >LucasArts could change. Have you tried this with any other >programs that use DirectPlay for multiplayer? I don't own AOK, but perhaps someone else who reads this forums could provide some insight here? >Update: Just found the explanation on the Microsoft Knowledge >Base (article Q236429), here is the link: > >http://support.microsoft.com/defaul...b;en-us;Q236429 "This behavior can occur if your computer is on a network that connects to the Internet using an Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) host or any other Network Address Translation-based (NAT) solution." This would apply to computers being serviced by a NAT server (ie: on LAN behind NAT server), but this KB article does not address the issue of games hosted on the NAT server itself. Once again, thanks for the input. Hopefully, we'll get to the bottom of this issue... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest jubjubjub Posted December 1, 2001 Share Posted December 1, 2001 "In the above comment, were you hosting on the NAT server or on a computer behind the NAT server? Like I said, I wouldn't be surprised by problems when hosting behind the NAT server (on the LAN), but I cannot understand how hosting on the NAT server (provided that it has a direct internet connection) could pose a problem. I haven't done a packet capture yet, but I wanted to get feedback from LucasArts and the community beforehand. " The outside PC dialed into the NAT Server (via Dial Up Server). The NAT Server was connected to a hub and I had another PC on the hub. Either PC connected to the hub could host the Blizzard titles, but with AOK, the outside PC would either not find the game on either of the LAN PC's (I tried both), or would bomb out when trying to load the players and start the game. I took a moment and checked around, and others have been able to run AOK from a NAT Server. Does ICS have any embedded firewall features that may block the ports DirectPlay needs? If you are hosting, and ICS is listening on incoming Internet traffic to know which PC to route it to, you may have to map the ports you want to use to the host PC, if ICS lets you map ports. See this Q&A on WinProxy-> http://ositis.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/ositis.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_sid=Kb4DSx1g&p_lva=&p_refno=991112-000015&p_created=942410184&p_sp=cF9ncmlkc29ydD0mcF9yb3dfY250PTE4JnBfc2VhcmNoX3RleHQ9Z2FtZXMmcF9zZWFyY2hfdHlwZT0zJnBfcHJvZF9sdmwxPX5hbnl_JnBfcHJvZF9sdmwyPX5hbnl_JnBfc29ydF9ieT1kZmx0JnBfcGFnZT0x&p_li= If ICS is running, won't it be intercepting any incoming traffic before any applications see it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IG88 Posted December 4, 2001 Share Posted December 4, 2001 Hmm... look like there was a problem during the forum move... My later last message disappeared. Here it is again: "I took a moment and checked around, and others have been able to run AOK from a NAT Server." Very interesting. So this means that they could play with others on the inernet and not have to disable NAT... Is this Microsoft NAT we're talking about? Or Sygate, Wingate, NAT32, etc.? "Does ICS have any embedded firewall features that may block the ports DirectPlay needs?" It doesn't have any firewall-type features as far as the computer that's running it is concerned. Hosts behind the NAT server cannot be reached unless specific ports on the NAT server are mapped to these hosts. However, by default, all ports on the NAT server are accessible from the internet. The only ports I've blocked are those associated with NetBIOS (135, 137-139). "If you are hosting, and ICS is listening on incoming Internet traffic to know which PC to route it to, you may have to map the ports you want to use to the host PC, if ICS lets you map ports. See this Q&A on WinProxy-> http://ositis.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/...fcGFnZT0x&p_li= If ICS is running, won't it be intercepting any incoming traffic before any applications see it?" ICS does intercept any incoming packets before any applications see it. But if the TCP/UDP ports corresponding to those packets don't have specific mappings to hosts behind the NAT gateway, the NAT server itself receives those packets. (i.e.: I run a web server on a host behind my NAT server, so I have ports 80 & 443 mapped to this host. Any traffic with 80 or 443 as its destination gets routed to this host. All other traffic is handled by the NAT server.) Since I know which ports DirectPlay uses, I should run a packet capture and compare results to expectations. But I would love to get some insight from LucasArts first... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Emowilli Posted December 5, 2001 Share Posted December 5, 2001 Here is something that is easy to fix and no one has suggested. You have a group of ranged units and anti air units. You select the unit group and order them to attack a building. Your anti-air units walk right up to the building. This normally gets them killed. A much better behavior would be for them to stay at their attack range away from the building. It's probably just a couple lines of code . Emo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jedi_Knight Posted December 5, 2001 Share Posted December 5, 2001 yeah,same with medics they walk right up to the buildinjg and a tower kills them before I have time to get the out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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