Well, I can imagine that mp-code is harder to debug since we are talking about things that run in parallel and then need to be synchronized. In this terms, these problems are similar to thread-programming difficulties. A lot of things is dependent on timing and other special conditions that are not so easy to find out. Well, I don't know about the architecture they use to debug these issues, but I could imagine that if they would have implemented LAN, things would be easier to check as the network part would have been es easy as possible. Ironic, isn't it? Well, anyways, I think, that the source of evil in this case is, that they introduced "extra-parallel turns" for players. If they would have it done like in the old days, when people specified what to do, but calculations would have been done between the turns, things would have been easier to implement and debug. Consider a situation where player a does something, then player b does something else, both things need to be synchronized. Yet while synchronization is done, player b might do something else that needs to be synched. This is just an easy illustration with only two participants, think about it if there are 8 players, each having an internet connection with different bandwidth. Not a trivial issue. If they would have done it so, that each player specifies what to do, but executing things would have happened between the turns in a defined order, things would be easier. Not to mention that the current system is less performant as calcs are done when the user wants to work with the ui (leading to slow ui performance for example) and that it causes stressful situations (consider there is an enemy fleet on its way to your system that you want to destroy with your fleet, then send your fleet to the enemies system - you'll now wait that the fleet arrives, which can happen in the next moment or in 5 minutes; now consider this situation is there five times at once). So, all in all, although they introduced that system in advantage of the players experience, it turned out to be a bad decision in my eyes.

Can only concur with the rest of the speakers. Fix this, otherwise this will be yet another great game vanishing into thin air and before reaching the grand public.

DMT wrote:
I think Amp should release multiplayer as a beta right now. Then we should be able to mass test the changes they make prior to release. Like Wow does with a seperate beta client. We should be able to submit reports via the client on performance bugs, sync issues etc.



I dont believe Amp can fix this quickly in an isolated environment.

Second this. Though I don´t think it will happen if it burns too much money to make such thing, though to my ignorant mind it sounds pretty much copypasta, but again, I´m not that familiar with technical side of things.

I think Amp should release multiplayer as a beta right now. Then we should be able to mass test the changes they make prior to release. Like Wow does with a seperate beta client. We should be able to submit reports via the client on performance bugs, sync issues etc.



I dont believe Amp can fix this quickly in an isolated environment.

@Waylander: I suggest you start to be less sure about things, unless you know more about the actual game code than me or most of us. Your logic about whether simultanous turns can work per-se or not and if they do in this case, does not say anything about how simple it is to fix or if there is networking involved. This is pretty much a question of perspective. If you think improper dealing with network issues are part of the system, then the system is responsible (you actually already accepted that netowrking may play some role). I for my part consider networking issues a different thing than the system, at least as long as the design does not make it impossible to handle these issues. Although I see that the simultanous turn system that is used in ES makes it more difficult to debug.



I already explained you that networking can cause difficulties and incorrect handling of those can cause problems that are absent in singleplayer. Your example about stucked ships is something that I also noticed in both, single- and multiplayer. But I don't think this is really connected with the actual synch issues. The synch issues will be rather caused by situations were player a thinks a building is already built while player b thinks it will need 3 turns more. While the cause of the stucked ships and the snych problems might be the same or at least similar (note: might be - we can't know for sure), stucked ships do not seem to cause frozen games or broken savegames, at least not for me. So, based upon that we have limited knowledge about the actual code nor about the protocol for the order of how commands are processed, I suggest we don't mix these things as all we can do here is guessing. Also, if the synch problem is part of how the game is designed, as you suggested, quite the opposite can be true: things can be hard to fix if the design flaw is burried deep in the code, thus regularly used and tightly connected with other things. In this case, a redisgn of some things more would need to be done, which again can cause new bugs once introduced - this is supported by the latest patch and its release notes. If it would be a plain networking issue, things might be easier to fix by using some error handler. Again, all we do is guessing here, so I suggest we better stop it.

The connections _aren't_ the problem. Which is the point I was making Eys, regardless of whether or not people have good connections playing a turn based game shouldn't be an issue or even a factor. You do your turn, you submit it, the turn is processed, rinse and repeat. As opposed to constant series of commands from something like an FPS, for instance, there is a single burst of code followed swiftly by another burst of code, possibly a query from one player to another midturn during a battle.



The games basic design, in the way it handles simultaneous turns, is the problem. Whether or not other games have pulled it off, in this case the most significant issue causing desyncs in the majority of cases is the way the game handles turns based on every report of desyncing that I've read so far on this entire forum and all of those that I've observed. I have never seen connection issues precipitate a desync event.



Can simultenous turns work? Yes.

Do they work in this case? No.



The basic mechanics of which are almost no different in single player than they would be in multi-player and the visually observable implementation of which (as in what you see in game) is absolutely no different. Furthering that is the fact that I've often seen cases in tech support of people who complain that the game they were playing had an error, in one case whereby a ship in a given system was stuck there unable to move, because the AI's commands weren't properly handled in an SP game. Upon a reload the state of the game changed, allowing the update, and resolving the issue. Thusly:



Is the problem in this case the way the game is designed? Yes.

Can this be fixed without a significant redesign? Yes.

same issue today.

Waylander you misunderstand me then, I protest against you claiming that its not the code but the way the game is designed. This is not correct. There are many simultanious games that have perfectly working multiplayer code. And honestly with programming experience I can tell you that it is possible to design also this game with multiplayer code that works. It is only how you code it that matters. It can be done.



"I'd argue that if the system was properly constructed then all of the issues in terms of desyncing would be mitigated to the point of irrelevance, there is nothing (or next to nothing) that can be done from the perspective of Amplitude to fix the connection of its many players, they can however deal with their own mess."



This sentance is so wrong. Yes ofcourse they can fix it.

I'd argue that if the system was properly constructed then all of the issues in terms of desyncing would be mitigated to the point of irrelevance, there is nothing (or next to nothing) that can be done from the perspective of Amplitude to fix the connection of its many players, they can however deal with their own mess.

Sure, the problem is within their code, not the connections used. But the code needs to be able to deal with poor connections as devs can hardly say "Please, little players, spend more on better connections so you can play ES". It is even part of the design of the system to be able to deal with it. Now, as I tried to explain, code, that is able to deal properly with networking, is harder to write than code for single machines. I was pretty sure that the last patch would cause more trouble than improving on the situation when reading the notes, even before the patch was released. Introducing something comprehensive like a pretty much new protocol for dealing with synchronization, tends to cause more trouble at first. Not because the devs would be idiots (they are not!), but there are oftenly unforeseen issues that cause heavy trouble. In these terms, it was unclever to release the patch before christmas, breaking mp, then leave for holidays. I mean, they certainly did it to present a kind of christmas gift to us, but it was risky after all.



Having said this, I'm pretty sure that they won't introduce an entirely new system (like removing simultanous moves) as it would require too much work, it's just too late to do that. So they will continue working on the current system, which will be hard and need some time (I'd say 1 - 3 months till it's working properly, likely less to have a game that is at least playable in mp).

I'm not discounting network problems as a factor, but as I have stated before when played with a group of people (all of whom are local to the point of being able to glare at when they spam the Ultimate Defence battle card) and still there are issues with desync affecting games. It is rarer, once again as stated, but present nonetheless.



I'd argue that if the system was properly constructed then all of the issues in terms of desyncing would be mitigated to the point of irrelevance, there is nothing (or next to nothing) that can be done from the perspective of Amplitude to fix the connection of its many players, they can however deal with their own mess.

@Waylander: I think you are not entirely correct. Without knowing the code, I would say that the network does play a role. You are right that in theory the same internal system is used simply replacing the human player with an AI. But the race condition is simplified, because things are very likely done in a certain order: in a single player game, those acts will propably calculated first who actually acted at first. Say, the AI wants to send a ship A to system A, while you want to send ship B to system B. If you order your ship faster, your ship will in fact be send before ship A. The same is true vice versa. Now, in mp things are different as network is delaying the orders. Say, player A replaces the AI and uses a slow internet connection. Player A now might order his ships before player B does, but due to the network connection, the order is delayed, so can computed only after player Bs order, who ordered later, but who's order was delivered faster. In this situation, it could happen that player A's move was actually invalid thanks to player Bs order (don't focus on the ship example here). I mean, we can't say that for sure as we don't know what information is actually sent and when exactly, not to mention that we have no overview (what is dependant on what) - which will be hard even for the devs that know their code. Based on this limited knowledge about the internals, your post shows pretty well how hard mp-code can be to debug (without offending you). People tend to oversimplify things, overlooking issues. I never had problems that I wouldn't have been able to load a singleplayer save, but I had several times in case of multiplayer, which, in my eyes, indicates, that there is a problem limited to mp and is not quite easily to be said a problem of the system. Think about it like the current system of simultanous turns is appropriate for singleplayer, but not for multiplayer. As I said earlier, the system itself is not entirely innocent, but it is not really the cause of the issue, it just makes things harder to handle.

Eysteinh wrote:
I am not normaly this blunt, but are you kidding me, do you have any real experience with programming? The game system is fine the way it is and it is perfectly possible to make a game without synch issues if the mp code is written well. Let me be clear in that this is a great game and I just wish the MP would be great too. Because it really is not.

I am not normally this blunt, but are you kidding me? The origin of the MP problem is the way the game attempts to handle "simultaneous turns", something that it can even cock up in single player but becomes even more problematic in MP. That is the origin of the sync issues, not some supposed issue with peoples connection, although that is doubtless also a factor.

Hello Amplitude, I have been and still am an avid player in this community.



However, since latest "addon" 99% of my friends will not play any more due to all the new bugs, lag and sync issues.



Today my first game ended at turn 15, a player left and the autobattle dialogue was permanently counting. Would not go away. Reload, 3/6 rejoin, game dead.



People complain about a lot of new lag, I have experienced this myself. It can take >10 seconds for an action to register. I often built 3 or 4x a planet improvement in queue if I click more than once when this is normally impossible.



All the old "out of sync" issues are still present and if anything its gotten worse.



Amplitude, you really need to find solutions to all the existing problems before you spend time on and introduce new game breaking features.



Since patch I never had so many crash to desktops (in fact it was non existent before, now its prominent)

Waylander1982 wrote:
Myself and the group of people I play with rarely encounter desync issues, and we've clocked up around 2000 hours of MP between us at this point, which is the crux of the issue here.



Desyncs are inconsistent and, as far as I can tell, are the result of the basic mechanics of how the game handles turns/input. Any fix wouldn't so much be an MP rewrite as an overhaul of the the entire games system.

I am not normaly this blunt, but are you kidding me, do you have any real experience with programming? The game system is fine the way it is and it is perfectly possible to make a game without synch issues if the mp code is written well. Let me be clear in that this is a great game and I just wish the MP would be great too. Because it really is not.

Myself and the group of people I play with rarely encounter desync issues, and we've clocked up around 2000 hours of MP between us at this point, which is the crux of the issue here.



Desyncs are inconsistent and, as far as I can tell, are the result of the basic mechanics of how the game handles turns/input. Any fix wouldn't so much be an MP rewrite as an overhaul of the the entire games system.

PathosesNorms wrote:
Is it only me and my friend that never have experienced any "out of sync" issues?

Sure, we haven't played that many games but around 5-6 at least and so far no problems at all.

dude, either you are just casually playing this game with your friends for few 20mins and havent yet gotten to 20-50th round, or then you are really special case. since few days ago, when i bought this game to my friend and we´ve tried to play three games together, everytime desync causing match to get stuck or crash, and fourth time including another of my friend, three of us playing together. So it has happened about 4 times to me, killing the game, in 2 days. It´s highly common. You are really really lucky. Or then, again, you haven´t really played the game at all or then just one lucky match.

PathosesNorms wrote:
Is it only me and my friend that never have experienced any "out of sync" issues?

Sure, we haven't played that many games but around 5-6 at least and so far no problems at all.

I could choose a player from my friends list where I could get 6 games sync free, though at some stage it will desync. 99% of my friends list will cause desync regularly. I have also played 800 hours in this game and 750 of those experienced a desync.



You have played this game almost nothing. I could play 6 games in one day!

Is it only me and my friend that never have experienced any "out of sync" issues?

Sure, we haven't played that many games but around 5-6 at least and so far no problems at all.

The game is unplayable at curent state =( A rehost now is not an opion, since cripling desyng just mess all kinds of tings >_> Last time i played with DMT the game just crushed with error and refused to load until i ve made a clean install >_>

The entire community deserves a refund after this long of 0 improvements.



We know its 0 improvements because they just hired someone to fix everything and the first thing he did was reset the way mp processes orders. Thus, back to square 1.



Yea, i give up. Something better will be out by the time this is corrected.