TatsundaJoe

Join Date 01/2009

Desync: Unable to complete a single game with friends. Frustrating....

I have been having desyncs when I play Sins of an Empire. As a matter of fact, I am pretty fet up now because I have had a desync with every single game that I have played. I have four other friends that also have Sins, and we have played at least a dozen times with different combinations of the five of us. Every single time, it is only me that desyncs. At some point during the game, there will be a conversation of "wow. you are getting hammered on this planet" or "please help me with this planet." The response will be "what are you talking about?" I guess I don't have to explain the desync problem. But at this point I am disgusted because it has happened every single time. In the end I always tell them to just go ahead and finish the game without me. Oh, and after we notice the desync, I will inevitably get a mini-dump somewhere down the road.

So, here is the only thing that I have found that might apply to us. All four of my friends have a typical intel PC. Their operating systems are mixed with Windows XP and Vista. I, on the otherhand, use Windows XP through BootCamp on an Apple iMac. I guess that's a pretty huge difference in hardware. As I mentioned, I am the only one to ever desync, so I lean towards thinking that my iMac is the issue. I have not seen anybody mention anything about Apple computers running Windows, so I am on the verge of giving up.

If there is anyone out there that can possibly offer any advice or any help, I would be ever grateful. I really like this game and enjoy what I can play with my friends, but I really would like to play a game to completion with them.

Thank you.

multiplayer

Locked Post

Advanced Search

Watch this post

Do not email me updates for this post Email me updates for this post

Successfully updated karma reason!

Unfortunately, the only advice I can offer is to contact support@ironcladgames.com and talk to them about sending in sync logs. I personally know they want to get rid of the desync bugs, but they are very hard to track - so they should be very, very interested in yours because you desync every time. They should be able to tell you what to change in your user.setting so it spits out the logs the way they need them (there is a simple setting to output a log, but there are also others for checksum tick frequencies that I think they needed changed as well at one point).

Either way, talk to them and be sure to mention that your desyncs are 100% and see if they want the logs. They'll need them from you and all your friends you play with. Also mention if you're running the Entrenchment beta (which also has some sync bugs) or 1.12. A bunch of Entrenchment stuff got reported as well, I'm not sure what their progress is.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Thanks Annatar. I will try to contact support. FYI, I do not have the Entrenchment beta and I am running the latest 1.12 update.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Let me know if they don't get back to you in a reasonable amount of time (1-2 days). They're pretty busy with all the Entrenchment stuff going on since they were off for the holidays, but there's an emergency button I might be able to push if you don't hear anything.

Successfully updated karma reason!

How do I get one of those???

Successfully updated karma reason!

Alright, I got an update from Blair:

They found one definite sync bug, but they still need logs. These are the settings you need to have in your user.setting file:

CalculateCheckSumTickFrequency 50
CalculateCheckSumDetail 3
SaveCheckSumSnapShotsInGameTickFrequency 0
SaveCheckSumSnapShotsOnSave TRUE
IsCheckSumLoggingOn FALSE

You should then play the game and when a desync happens, *all* players grab the logs out of the Checksum folder and send them in to support@ironcladgames.com

They still need to check the logs to see if it's the same bug they caught or a new one. It's very important that everyone in the game sends in the logs, not just the desynched player.

Successfully updated karma reason!

I understand completly. I do not runiMac.. but play with my brother both on win xp. We have played approximatly 12 games total with entrenchment and only 3 made it to the end with out desynch. Infact last night we played a game 4-5 hours and only when we won did it minidump. However, we chose only to play against 1 -2 computer enemies cause thus far in our experience the game loses synch faster the more players there are. Also, we both removed our routers from the equation to see if that helped and the result was 2 games desynch in 1hour to 1 an half.. and 2 games completed.

Losing synch does screw up the game experience since it happens regularly but I have another question of equal importance. I looked through the post and perhaps overlooked it but, can someone tell me what DOES work on the Tec starbases? Thus far after many attempts I only see the starbases's weapons work.. have not seen it build frigates or construction ships..... so do these funstions not work yet in multiplayer?

Successfully updated karma reason!

Try disabling Alloy for Multiplayer. It seems to be causing all the starbase issues and as far as I know they work normally with it off.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Excellent! Kliking off Alloy immediatly allowed us to use the starbase as intended Annatar11....ships, fighters, cargo.. AWESOME. Thanks for the fast reply. Also i tried the solution from your reply #5 and sure enough 2 an half hours into a 2 (me an my brother) vs 2 vs 2 the game lost sync....we were winning I believe and surprise for the first time when the desync happened it actually displayed on the screen that we had a desync and when it happened and such. Never saw that before. I wonder though, should I have my brother also change his user.settings as I have done?

Successfully updated karma reason!

I wonder though, should I have my brother also change his user.settings as I have done?

Yes, and the next time it happens both of you should email the desynched game log to IC's support addy so they can inspect them. I forget now, the message you get does show you where it saved the log, no?

Successfully updated karma reason!

Have there been any recent updates around this problem?

I witness the same behavior, and I am also running Sins on Win XP through Bootcamp (my system is a MacBook Pro). Desync is guaranteed basically every game, though I have only tried playing with a friend via LAN.

Did the problems that you guys were experiencing also happen during Online games? Has a solution been found? Its very frustrating, especially as there is not much single player content, I feel cut off from 90% of the game's value.

Please help

Successfully updated karma reason!

Two sync bugs have been fixed since the last reply of this thread. One I believe is in Sins 1.13/Entrenchment 2.5 and another was nabbed just this weekend and will be in an upcoming patch.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Quoting Annatar11,

reply 11

Two sync bugs have been fixed since the last reply of this thread. One I believe is in Sins 1.13/Entrenchment 2.5 and another was nabbed just this weekend and will be in an upcoming patch.

Thanks for the quick reply. I'm running 1.13 and still experiencing this. I have not, however, downloaded entrenchment.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Well, the new one that was found sounds like it could actually take care of at least a big portion of the still-existing ones. You can check out Blair's latest dev blog that describes it, but in a nutshell: abilities also have "firing points" and there was a problem in the code that could make things go out of sync for abilities that have more than one (for example Marza's Missile Barrage randomly picks which missile racks to fire from with each missile). So two computers could pick different random firing points, but these are then used in other damage calculations and such so there's the potential to desync if the same firing points weren't picked.

He describes it better of course, so if you're curious take a peek

Successfully updated karma reason!

I actually was not aware of the development blog, I'm new to the game and to Ironclad in general. I must say I have been impressed with the level of service, and the quality of Sins. Kudos.

One last question, do you know if these problems are evident in both LAN and Online games (my guess is that if its random calculations that could be desync'ing then it would affect both)?

Successfully updated karma reason!

As far as I'm aware, it would affect both unfortunately.

Successfully updated karma reason!

One last question, do you know if these problems are evident in both LAN and Online games (my guess is that if its random calculations that could be desync'ing then it would affect both)?

The desync occurs anytime a random number is generated on one machine that makes something different to another machine. So yes, any game with more then one CPU running the calcs can have the issue.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Quoting Hack78,

reply 16

The desync occurs anytime a random number is generated on one machine that makes something different to another machine. So yes, any game with more then one CPU running the calcs can have the issue.

My guess is that they are seeding the random number generators in the same way, as to elicit the same sequence of random numbers on each client. Going out on a limb here, but I wonder if its not due to some difference in behavior of the pseudo-random number generation algorithm on apple hardware. Would have to dig through their code to be sure. By the way, the developer blog - I haven't been able to find it - may have already shed some light on the type of bugs they've found/fixed.

Successfully updated karma reason!

By the way, the developer blog - I haven't been able to find it

Here you go:

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/331090

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/339031

They're in order, so read the top one first

Successfully updated karma reason!

Well what I find compelling is the fact that the OP is having the same problem also running on a Mac. If it were as simple as poor use of a random number generator (from a code perspective) this behavior would likely be seen by many, many people playing multiplayer.

My guess is that they are seeding the random number generators in the same way, as to elicit the same sequence of random numbers on each client. Going out on a limb here, but I wonder if its not due to some difference in behavior of the pseudo-random number generation algorithm on apple hardware. Would have to dig through their code to be sure. By the way, the developer blog - I haven't been able to find it - may have already shed some light on the type of bugs they've found/fixed.

Actually, the issue IS the poor use of random number generators - the issue is due to having TWO random number generators - a deterministic one and a non-deterministic one. The bugs come from using the non-deterministric one for something that must be in sync on all computers. The reason this is not more prevalent is that the more common times where a mistake was made and the wrong one was used have been fixed, so its the very rare ones that are hard to track down that are still in the mix...

Successfully updated karma reason!

Dude ironclad will not help u much from what I have seen. I hope u can play but if not get a refund on the game because the support is crap.

Successfully updated karma reason!

RonLugge

Join Date 05/2004

+50

Quoting Fleet101,

reply 20

Dude ironclad will not help u much from what I have seen. I hope u can play but if not get a refund on the game because the support is crap.

Strange, because I've only had positive experiance with them -- and most people would agree! What problem are you having with them?

Successfully updated karma reason!

Dude ironclad will not help u much from what I have seen. I hope u can play but if not get a refund on the game because the support is crap.

What support have you requested that has not been resovled quickly and professionally???

Successfully updated karma reason!

Don't feed the troll, guys.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Blair Fraser

Join Date 10/2006

+292

We've looked into this. It is pretty much guaranteed that virtualized operating systems and non-standard pc hardware will cause sync problems unless they are playing against people with the exact same setup. Peer to peer games that require dead-on accurate determinism are completely different ball-game than client/server type games. I doubt you will find any rts game that stays in sync across those boundries.

Successfully updated karma reason!

I'm not sure if this will help but my brother and I have been playing with pretty close to the exact same hardware (two iMacs and a MacBook Pro running Win XP on Boot Camp) and we still get the sync error every time. I understand that the Laptop is going to have a different chipset but I would think it should still handle everything the same. Are you saying that it's guaranteed that we will have issues as we are not using "standard PC" hardware?

Also, it seems to me that something must have changed with an update because we used to be able to play games without loosing sync. Granted, we updated because the game would crash after a couple hours but at least we weren't wasting our time thinking we were still playing together.

Successfully updated karma reason!