hamachi network for multiplayer games NOW

General discussion, queries, etc. about Deadlock and Deadlock II.
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TimeDilation
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hamachi network for multiplayer games NOW

Post by TimeDilation »

so Jerago and me opened a little hamachi network dedicated to Deadlock 2 v1.20.
There are still 3 available slots.

Please, join:
DL2 net
pw: deadlock

cant wait to play with you guys: the marvelous turn-based-office-suitable game.
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Re: hamachi network for multiplayer games NOW

Post by Tggtt »

Please report on successes.

Did it work? I have had several stressful attempts before and I could never create a stable multiplayer game for more than 2 players.
It can still work though.

As far as I know, the clients/slaves only need to have the host/master on their Hamachi list.
Therefore, even if a network gets filled up (the slots), the host could be part of more than one network to allow more players.
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Re: hamachi network for multiplayer games NOW

Post by TimeDilation »

of course it worked!

there was just one annoying bug issue(*), and anyways i'm going to explain it extensively over here:

so, good news that you think that 1 host present in 2 hamachi networks can bridge between them. never tried, actually never played with more than 1 human opponent. we should deepen this aspect in the future, for more elaborate games.

how does it work to settle a multiplayer game in DL2:

1- be sure you got the same version of the game (1.0 - 1.2 - GOG)
2- join the hamachi network
3- click in the menu to load/create a network game
4- pick stuff in the options. IMPORTANT: these parameters won't be anymore modifiable. therefore, setting an automatic end turn time of 300s can be useful on that rainy sunday but not exactly during your office time, when you need longer turns, like 1 whole hour, to properly work and every now and then tweak your colony when the boss isn't around.
5-give the game a name and launch it. there will be a splash window saying something like "waiting for players" IMPORTANT: here a friend of mine, using win10 and GOG version, experienced graphic bugs regarding resolution and display of hosts' hamachi ip window.
6- pick a race and start game
host picks race first, but it seems to me it picks the landing site as last.

each turn an autosaved file is created, and when someone reloads the game, the races have to be chosen all over again: this means that you have to remember your own race, in order to not to reload "impersonating" another colony.

the security system on multiplayer games is inexistent, except the in-game cheat block: therefore one can cheat heavily once the game is reloaded as a single player game. this poses a level of thrust and reputation in gaming online DL2. (anyways one can dump all the autosaves into a folder each turn and then go through them at the end of the match...boring but safe to bust cheaters)

*what was the annoying issue i was talking about in the beginning:
Jerago and me placed a turn time limit of 600 and 300 (2 different games). When you play, you look at the mini map: ABOVE IT, incorporated in the interface frame, there are seven rectangular slots. each human player lights up a slot, which takes the color of the race he is leading. when a player is done with his turn before the timer goes out, he presses ENTER (or how the hell is it named nowadays) and his colored slot turns black.
in this way you can see who is not yet finished with his turn.
a window displays up, saying that since your opponents are not done yet, you can still play with your colony. The turn will end when everyone presses end turn.

i think the bug was here, because we got stuck at the end of some random turn, in various ways: a) timer ending and end-turn procedure not starting (endless turn) - b) "silicon based opponents" window forever - c) "the computers are being syncronized" window forever.
It didnt happen when we let the turn end naturally with the timer. not once for some 50 turns.

i have to say i ran DL2 1.20 on win7 and Jerago did on winXP. if i can remember correctly from my past games (on winXP vs winXP, win7 vs win10) this didn't happen. but it was mostly on local networks.
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Re: hamachi network for multiplayer games NOW

Post by Tggtt »

Congratulations TD and Jerago.

Your feedback on problems is really useful.
each turn an autosaved file is created, and when someone reloads the game, the races have to be chosen all over again: this means that you have to remember your own race, in order to not to reload "impersonating" another colony.

the security system on multiplayer games is inexistent, except the in-game cheat block: therefore one can cheat heavily once the game is reloaded as a single player game. this poses a level of thrust and reputation in gaming online DL2. (anyways one can dump all the autosaves into a folder each turn and then go through them at the end of the match...boring but safe to bust cheaters)
I am aware of this problem, this makes the time limit useful for playing against untrustworthy people:
If the timer ends too soon, they (probably) won't have enough time to try that.

Secondly, I guess I could add that OpenDeadlock is being planned to hide information from clients to avoid this kind of cheating. Only the host or its administrator would be able do that, since there would be dedicated servers as well, there could be games in which no one has this power.

In simpler terms: the OpenDeadlock server does not send information on settlements (and other things) that a player is not supposed to see. if a client without administration powers tries to save the game and tries to open as single player, despite the fact that the game could deny that, the settlements which they are not supposed to see would appear empty.
i think the bug was here, because we got stuck at the end of some random turn, in various ways: a) timer ending and end-turn procedure not starting (endless turn) - b) "silicon based opponents" window forever - c) "the computers are being syncronized" window forever.
It didnt happen when we let the turn end naturally with the timer. not once for some 50 turns.

i have to say i ran DL2 1.20 on win7 and Jerago did on winXP. if i can remember correctly from my past games (on winXP vs winXP, win7 vs win10) this didn't happen. but it was mostly on local networks.
I am pretty sure it's not the operating system. According to my attempts, I believe that DL2 was not coded to be "packet loss safe". What does it mean:

DL2 uses a non safe protocol for transmission. If a message between computers is lost, it may lose track of the game and gets stuck in "synchronizing" state. I have noticed this problem during my first attempt to play DL2 using wi-fi. After we decided to use wired local network, the problems have ended.

On wired local networks, the chance of losing a message is really low, which is not true for wireless and Internet.
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Re: hamachi network for multiplayer games NOW

Post by TimeDilation »

for the anti cheat system, i'd say to imitate Heroes of Might and Magic 3: the game compares the autosave from the players of the previous turn to the current one. then displays a message that someone is cheating. "someone" literally.

recently we had none of this problems of forever-hanging waitings...

why dont you join our network? i should show you some multiplayer aspect that are really user-unfriendly
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Re: hamachi network for multiplayer games NOW

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TimeDilation wrote:for the anti cheat system, i'd say to imitate Heroes of Might and Magic 3: the game compares the autosave from the players of the previous turn to the current one. then displays a message that someone is cheating. "someone" literally.
That is not foolproof and would not work well in our case.

There are 3 kinds of cheating here:
  1. Modifying the game executable;
  2. Modifying the save game outside the game;
  3. Reading the save game to learn something that should be hidden.
  1. OpenDeadlock is open and multiplatform, that means we cannot check if the executable files are the same. That also means someone could change codes of lines to present a backup of the unmodified save game to the server and use the modified to play. That also means everyone can learn how the save files are structured;
  2. In the current planned design, only the server calculates the end-turn. If some one modifies the save game, it would have no effect at all. Only the server's save game is valid.
  3. To avoid someone trying to read what they aren't supposed to, the server simply wouldn't send the complete save game to them. The data on far away territories (for instance) would be empty for a player that is not supposed to see them.
TimeDilation wrote:recently we had none of this problems of forever-hanging waitings...
This is caused by a race condition. Translating: depending on some internet connection aspect, multiplayer communitation messages between the computers may arrive out of the originally intended order. Therefore, it's basically RANDOM. It might happen or not depending on how well is the connection and how unlucky you are.
If it gets stuck for more than a few seconds, just quit and reconnect. It is clear that DL2 is not prepared to restore the game by itself.

Oh, the irony, the technical term for forever-hanging waitings is Deadlock.
TimeDilation wrote:why dont you join our network? i should show you some multiplayer aspect that are really user-unfriendly
Oh, I will try, though you should post the time and timezone...
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Re: hamachi network for multiplayer games NOW

Post by TimeDilation »

oh well, why wouldn't the server keep the autosave file also? it would be used as backup in case of crash or similar. and will contribute to the anti-cheat system. perhaps it may be on several layers of action.

anyway, we are +1:00 from greenwich...how you call it...UTC
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