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David Heath -> Need Your Help Now (6/10/2003 5:29:30 AM)

Hi Guys

I am considering making a update to of SPWaW.

One last question I need people to play the game online (via Internet) and let me know how the game is working for you in multiplayer mode. I need REAL information..... please no simple comments like..... its not working.... this is not helpful. Thanks in advance for your help.

David Heath



Orzel Bialy -> Wow... (6/10/2003 5:44:22 AM)

an update to good old SPWAW? :eek:

Is it some tweaking...or a new feature or two...or a combo of the two?

You aren't going to say online....are you? :D :p ;)



Supervisor -> (6/10/2003 6:39:30 AM)

The biggest problems I've had. The uncontrolable/erratic game speed problems, I've had my units move so fast it was almost immediate while other gamers complain the game is moving so slow (while the timer moves at the correct pace) they can't get all their movement before turns end no matter how the game preferences are setup. In game saving problems, where games can't seem to be restarted successfully after both players save.



Bernie -> (6/10/2003 7:15:49 AM)

[B][SIZE=6]THUD!![/SIZE][/B]

(Bernie picks himself up off the floor and wonders if he's dreaming...)

David, are we talking about changes to the mech.exe??

(Holding my breath....)

(pssssssttttt! David! Did I ever mention that my brother is a NYC cop on the SI Auto-Crime Task force? Send me your license plate numbers and I think we can "forget" about parking/speeding/other tickets until he retires. Just keep thinking about that SP revamp... ;))



stevemk1a -> (6/10/2003 9:53:20 AM)

This is very interesting ... will the changes be entirely concerned with online play? I've never tried that, but may give it a go ... how's it done ... :confused: Is it popular with many players?



Commander Klank -> glad to help with my two cents worth (6/11/2003 10:13:39 AM)

I play alot of online games and I must say the biggest frustration is if a person is dropped all the autosave files for the players don't match up to restart the game with out someone haveing to send the other players thier save files. While this dosn't happen all the time it happens enough, people who online alot know what I'm talking about.

Perhaps have the game autosave as soon as a player is detected to have been dropped or something. Or have the hosts game jump into the save game mode so he can save the game were the drop was and send his files to the other players to pick up the game were it left off at.

Another neat feature (one I think you guys should really consider) would be to have a "calculate the winner right now" button for online games. This would be great for the many small one night battles lots of us play; if it gets late you can see who won with the touch of a button. Like most others I must have a few dozen online games saved and in reality I dout I'll ever finish any of them.....LOL

One thing I've seen in online play is alot is players losing tons of time on their clocks during thier turn. I don't know if its a game thing or a lagg thing but the clock thing needs to be worked out if it can. I realize if you have 4 players playing a game and one has a slow connection this can couse havoc in a game. Maybe you can fix it, I don't know.

A "spectator" mode would be cool as well. This would allow folks to join a game and watch both sides of it. This would be cool for ladder matches or contests were a judge (and others) can watch two players/sides fight.

That would be cool



bud -> on line testing (6/12/2003 6:21:06 AM)

i have been trying to get guys to play online for a while lately , -- but they`re droping like flys ???????? --i think its one of the best things spwaw h2h ce has -- ( besides the obvious) -- if matrix would spend more time online reporting the online games , lets say ,it would perhaps be more popular ----( email is great tooooo ) ---- but i would like to help anyway i can if i could get the players to play with -- thanks bud:cool: :cool: :cool: ps -- any reporting i can do --please advise



Alby -> (6/12/2003 11:38:19 AM)

There is a problem, when trying to save a game online.
when one person hits save, the save game screen appears, then when second person chooses slot to save, the whole cycle starts over again.
meaning, everytime someone hits the save game, the screen repeatedly pops up and only hitting escape continually, gets you out of save game screen.
Hope this makes sense?? just set up a game online, then hit save when ready and youll see.:)



Warrior -> Re: glad to help with my two cents worth (6/12/2003 4:58:24 PM)

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Commander Klank
[B]...have a "calculate the winner right now" button...[/B][/QUOTE]

This would be a really great feature to have in the game.



Alby -> (6/12/2003 9:25:38 PM)

The air entry and exit never worked right either.
it always would revert back to the previous players entry and exit directions.



Supervisor -> (6/21/2003 12:44:13 AM)

A quote from Bernie in another thread.

It would seem that online play is not a popular activity amongst our members. I have to wonder why? Is it the save game problems outlined in a different thread? The variable rates time elapses for different players? The problems associated with dial-up accounts? Lack of servers?

Tell us, what keeps you from playing online?

For myself, it would have to be all of the above, but then, I prefer PBEM anyway.



Bernie -> (6/21/2003 11:19:29 PM)

The reason for the PBEM preference I have is simple...you get time to think. I've never enjoyed RTS games, most rely more on reflexes than on planning and tactics. Another reason is life...we all have one, right? With a PBEM when the cat hawks up a hairball on your mousepad you can take a minute to clean it up without a problem. With an RTS you either have to pause, use a precious time out, or suffer the consequences. Then there's the simple fact that there's no equal to playing against another human. The AI is good for a quick play when you're bored, but after you've played the game a bit you quickly learn how to defeat it.



Alby -> (6/22/2003 12:53:41 AM)

there are alot of people who play online, perhaps they just dont notice any problems..:)



Bernie -> (6/22/2003 1:10:12 AM)

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Alby
[B]there are alot of people who play online, perhaps they just dont notice any problems..:) [/B][/QUOTE]

Who, exactly? And why aren't they sharing their thoughts with us here? I'd love to hear from them!



Alby -> (6/22/2003 11:38:03 PM)

An online gamer on my icq list sent me this

"sometimes you get ghost or units are killed but really not killed. game locks up when fast arty is not checked. really bad with lots of arty. i like watching the arty drop but not possible due to the fact one must select fast arty in order for game to work at all."



ThomasBELL123 -> Played a few times (6/24/2003 9:44:19 AM)

Never had a problem



heintz28 -> (6/24/2003 10:28:17 AM)

Oh Boy :)
Please fix the online save problem.
Its been that way since 7.0 :eek:

i



Larry Holt -> (7/1/2003 5:06:16 AM)

Just saw this thread.

On-line play is great and exciting but who has hours to commit at one time? Its just not practicle for many people with other things to do (like my boys, wife, job, house work, etc. ...)



Capt. Pixel -> (7/5/2003 2:32:47 AM)

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Larry Holt
[B]Just saw this thread.

On-line play is great and exciting but who has hours to commit at one time? Its just not practicle for many people with other things to do (like my boys, wife, job, house work, etc. ...) [/B][/QUOTE]

This echos my problems with On-line, too. I just can't justify tying up my phone line for hours on end. Too any people in the household for me to be that inconsiderate. :(

I'm also of the opinion that this form of SP is more time restraint driven. I like time to sit, sip and think before I move my troops into harms way. :)



Alby -> (7/5/2003 2:54:19 AM)

online play is definetly more time consuming, but keep time limit per turn short 4-5 minutes 15 turns or so, it aint bad.
sometimes playing with time limit on your turn makes you think faster!! LOL no time to dilly daddle.:)


MORE ONLINE BUGS

One more online air problem, If I recall YOUR planes Show the enemy YOUR troops, I know this is the case in PBEM, but cant recall if same for online games.



DarkCloak -> Online problems (7/14/2003 4:36:01 AM)

I've been playing online with a bunch of friends at work for some time now, and we've come across some rather interesting bugs.
Here are some of the problems I've come across:

Pictures not matching up. For instance, my opponent rolls a PzIV past some of my troops, but to me it looks like a King Tiger.

Opportunity fire firing at the unit that had been previously targeted during the players turn instead of firing at the unit that triggered the opfire. Example; A russian squad emerges from the tree line. A request for opportunity fire from my GE Rifle squad pops up, I hit 'yes' and my squad opens fire on the russian mg atop the hill crest it had fired at in the previous turn.

Units seeming to jump hexes. For instance, an OpFire request comes up to shoot at a certain moving unit. The request is ignored to conserve ammo, and suddenly the unit appears back in the previous hex as though it had never moved.

Direct fire attacks not appearing and seeming to have no effect, yet when players resync at the end of the turn, the supposed untouched units are dead or suppressed. An example of this; the other night I was playing against my roommate online, I could hear the shots from his computer, but on my end the enemy unit was just standing there. After he had done his supposed shooting attack, an OpFire request comes up, I click 'yes'. But my unit fails to shoot, it doesn't even flinch. This continues until the turn ends and I begin my turn, in which my unit of 10 men suddenly jumps to 8 men with no casualty reports or anything.

One thing I've noticed with these bugs is that a lot of them tend to revolve around opportunity fire.

Some other issues I have with online play are as follows:

Time limits. The problem with playing a 5 minute time limit is that most of that time is gobbled up in exchanging fire,shooting animations and opportunity fire requests.

Custom maps. An auto-download feature would be nice, instead of having to email the map file ahead of time. It would also be nice to have a custom map with custom Victory Locations. The computer always wants to randomize the victory locations on custom maps, which really takes the fun out of playing on a custom map.



Bernie -> Re: Online problems (7/14/2003 5:00:44 AM)

[QUOTE]Originally posted by DarkCloak
[B]Custom maps. An auto-download feature would be nice, instead of having to email the map file ahead of time. It would also be nice to have a custom map with custom Victory Locations. The computer always wants to randomize the victory locations on custom maps, which really takes the fun out of playing on a custom map. [/B][/QUOTE]

When setting up a custom scenario, you do have the ability to chose various VH settings, including "as designed". Try clicking on the VH settings toggle in the designer and watch how they cycle through.



Alby -> Re: Online problems (7/14/2003 5:33:57 AM)

[QUOTE]Originally posted by DarkCloak
[B]I've been playing online with a bunch of friends at work for some time now, and we've come across some rather interesting bugs.
Here are some of the problems I've come across:

Pictures not matching up. For instance, my opponent rolls a PzIV past some of my troops, but to me it looks like a King Tiger.

DONT KNOW ABOUT THIS ONE??

Opportunity fire firing at the unit that had been previously targeted during the players turn instead of firing at the unit that triggered the opfire. Example; A russian squad emerges from the tree line. A request for opportunity fire from my GE Rifle squad pops up, I hit 'yes' and my squad opens fire on the russian mg atop the hill crest it had fired at in the previous turn.

OP FIRE NEVER HAS WORKED GOOD WITH ONLINE PLAY DUE TO TIME LAGS
IT IS BEST TO TURN IT OFF FOR ONLINE GAMES IMO

Units seeming to jump hexes. For instance, an OpFire request comes up to shoot at a certain moving unit. The request is ignored to conserve ammo, and suddenly the unit appears back in the previous hex as though it had never moved.


AGAIN THE OP FIRE THING


Direct fire attacks not appearing and seeming to have no effect, yet when players resync at the end of the turn, the supposed untouched units are dead or suppressed. An example of this; the other night I was playing against my roommate online, I could hear the shots from his computer, but on my end the enemy unit was just standing there. After he had done his supposed shooting attack, an OpFire request comes up, I click 'yes'. But my unit fails to shoot, it doesn't even flinch. This continues until the turn ends and I begin my turn, in which my unit of 10 men suddenly jumps to 8 men with no casualty reports or anything.

BACK TO OP FIRE AGAIN



One thing I've noticed with these bugs is that a lot of them tend to revolve around opportunity fire.

AHA YOU HAVE SEEN THE LIGHT! LOL

Some other issues I have with online play are as follows:

Time limits. The problem with playing a 5 minute time limit is that most of that time is gobbled up in exchanging fire,shooting animations and opportunity fire requests.

OP FIRE OFF AGAIN HELPS HERE TOO



Charles2222 -> (7/14/2003 6:05:24 AM)

quote:

Pictures not matching up. For instance, my opponent rolls a PzIV past some of my troops, but to me it looks like a King Tiger.


Sounds like a new realism feature, IOW the Allied player will see all GE tanks as Tigers.:) :) :) :) :)



Ranger75 -> Fixes for Online play (7/14/2003 8:43:35 PM)

I play online once each week. I agree with the concerns raised by others in this thread. Here are a couple that have not been mentioned:

1. "Double Crews": Three times I have killed a vehicle and two crews have dimounted. They have the same designation and can move independently. I have worried that this must screw up the database, so I have always tried to "park" one out of harm's way and ignored it.

2. Voice: I assume Roger-Wilco remains the proper way to permit voice communication during the game.

3. PLEASE IGNORE THIS COMMENT _ PROBLEM SOLVED _ I HAD TO USE THE F2 KEY TO CORRECT IMPROPER PLAYER DESIGNATIONS. I built a scenario, sent it to my opponent, and it did not quite work right. Some of the units, (about 25 out of 390), would not move properly. First, the game would not find the units when I hit the "next unit" key. I could only get them by going to the unit list and highlighting them. Second, when I moved one of these units, it would not trace a path. It jumped to the destination hex. Third, If one of these units triggered op fire, the game froze. For a while I could "move" these units to the exit hex and clear them out of the way. Later, sending any unit to the exit hex also froze the game. I have this scenario if you would like me to send it to you.

4. PLEASE IGNORE THIS ONE, TOO. THE F2 KEY FIXED THE PROBLEM. The latest scenario I created will not work online. The system only recognizes one player. (The screen that lets us pick sides only has one option instead of two.) The computer takes control of the other side. When I investigate the sides in editor mode, (under Deploy - HQ), The scenario reports that both sides are called player 1. If I load the scenario for local play, I can choose human and computer sides.

5. Ammo vanished: I was playing "Steel Shield" online. On about turn five or six, all of the mortars on the US side went to zero ammo. They could replenish when I moved them to an ammo dump. It was almost as if the depletion of one mortar unit got copied to all. On-board and off-board howitzers had no problem. There was no impact on the German side.

6. There was an earlier thread in the forum that mentioned a TCPIP problem. I don't remember the details, but I seem to remember that errors accumulate during the synching of sides leading to serious difficulties for large or long scenarios.

7. Adjacent fire sound: This is not a big deal, but when firing at an adjacent unit, the sound effects are (frequently?, always?)off. The fire effects seem just fine. We don't mind, but it might represent some sort of path error in the program.

This is a great game. On-line is the best way for me to reach a live opponent. Thanks for looking at improvements.

John Van Vliet



MacCready -> question (7/15/2003 3:56:35 AM)

Does SPWAW work on a LAN network?



Antonius -> A few suggestions (7/17/2003 10:31:42 PM)

I haven't played spwaw on-line for a while, mostly because it's very hard to fight 2vs2 battle without any of the players getting busted out before the end and it's very tedious to resume the game afterwards.

I would like the game to pause and a display a message whenever one of the players gets outs of synch temporarily.

To resume interrupted battles it would be great to avoid sending save files by email and be able to start from the a save on the host's PC

I have often wondered if it would help if all players shared the same timing preferences (movement delay, message display, etc) and thus if it wouldn't be better if the host's preferences were imposed on the guests, much like realism options.



Alby -> Re: A few suggestions (7/18/2003 6:14:44 AM)

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Antonius
[B]I haven't played spwaw on-line for a while, mostly because it's very hard to fight 2vs2 battle without any of the players getting busted out before the end and it's very tedious to resume the game afterwards.

I would like the game to pause and a display a message whenever one of the players gets outs of synch temporarily.

To resume interrupted battles it would be great to avoid sending save files by email and be able to start from the a save on the host's PC

I have often wondered if it would help if all players shared the same timing preferences (movement delay, message display, etc) and thus if it wouldn't be better if the host's preferences were imposed on the guests, much like realism options. [/B][/QUOTE]


As I played alot of multi player games, I experienced your pain!!
the Save game problem only makes it worse!
Does evryone know what im talking about with the save game screen??? how it repeatedly pops back up..

as for sending your files, do you have icq or another messenger??
thats how we used to send the save file when a player disconnected.



Antonius -> Re: Re: A few suggestions (7/18/2003 5:30:27 PM)

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Alby
[B]As I played alot of multi player games, I experienced your pain!!
the Save game problem only makes it worse!
Does evryone know what im talking about with the save game screen??? how it repeatedly pops back up..

as for sending your files, do you have icq or another messenger??
thats how we used to send the save file when a player disconnected. [/B][/QUOTE]

Here is how it goes for me:
First we spend 15 to 30 minutes finding each other on icq. Even with a scheduled game, somebody is late or temporarliy busy with something else and anyway there's always some chat before the game goes under way. Sometimes we need more time if somebody does not turn up and we need to find another available player among our contacts.
Then we start playing and after a variable amount of time someone gets disconnected (if it is me my screen freezes), the game is interrupted and we all go back to icq and the host starts sending his autosave files, either by icq or by mail. After that we go back to the game, having lost at least 15 minutes which may not sound very much but easily counts double when it's 1 AM and the need for sleeps gets much more felt once the excitement of the battle has faded because of the disconnection.
If after resuming the battle someone is disconnected again then we stop playing altogether since there will always be one player who will have had enough.

The end result is that we often chose to play some other game where we experience less disconnections or can be much more easily resumed...



Alby -> (7/19/2003 5:06:59 AM)

yes I know, its tuff
especially if someone is using a dial up internet service.



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