Investigating Multi-player Issues

Close Combat: Gateway to Caen is the latest release in the critically-acclaimed Close Combat series and focuses on the largest, concentrated British offensive since the Normandy landings in an attempt to penetrate the German lines west of Caen and cross the Odon River to get the stalled advance moving again.
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SteveMcClaire
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Investigating Multi-player Issues

Post by SteveMcClaire »

We are in the process of investigating any possible multi-player issues with Gateway to Caen. If you are experiencing connection problems or crashes, you can help by providing the following information:

1) What problem(s) are you seeing?

2) What operating system are you running and are you and your opponent both playing with the 1.01 patch?

3) Are any mods in use by either player?

4) Where does the problem occur? At the lobby? When first exchanging data after connecting to your opponent? At the end of a battle? Other?

5) If the game crashes or loses connection after a battle, does the saved game file get updated with your last battle progress?

Thanks for any information you can provide,

Steve
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rmdesantis
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RE: Investigating Multi-player Issues

Post by rmdesantis »

We have had very bad experiences with multiplayer.

He is running Windows 7. I (typically the host) run Win 8.1

We are both running 1.01 with no mods

I have port 1944 open for direct connection as host - but I think in more than 100 attempts at connection, we've been direct perhaps three times. The program seems to default to the Lobby

When entering the lobby, we can see each other in the list on the left side of the screen. The center part of the screen takes much longer to populate

As host, I will send a host notice to him. He will accept and join. During this time, I see a 'connecting to your opponent'. What he sees is "Close Combat Error: XX has asked you to join a game".
No idea why the dialog box says "close combat error".

After he joins, we spend about 10 seconds with the 'connecting to opponent' message. I, as host see a message along the lines of 'unknown close combat error'. I don't recall what he sees.


Hope this helps

Mike
prjw73
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RE: Investigating Multi-player Issues

Post by prjw73 »

Well, finally been able to play a few rounds H2H. Here are my experiences:
Single battle:
first battle : St. Mauvieu : no errors.
Second battle: St. Mauvieu : game freeze after a few minutes and close combat executable stopped responding.
Third battle: St. Mauvieu : no errors.
Other single battles: no errors. No airstrikes used.

Tonight with the same opponent: 3 attempts to play an operation: "Frundsberg Attacks".
First try: game crash at allied airstrike
Second try: game crash at allied airstrike
Third try: game freeze at seemingly random moment. 22 Minutes into the game. No airstrikes used.
Games are not saved.
I got screenshots if you can use them.
We gave up after the 3rd time.

Technical data:
Both players using version 1.01 and Windows 7.

Fix this please.
CC hobbyist, creator of mods.
prjw73
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RE: Investigating Multi-player Issues

Post by prjw73 »

Ok, tried again tonight. First battle (Gavrus) went okay this time. We are not using the airstrikes again. Second battle at map Hill 113 we got a freeze after I hit the truce button. The freeze came only after a few minutes though. My opponent did not hit the truce button.
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prjw73
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RE: Investigating Multi-player Issues

Post by prjw73 »

That means, after 5 attempts at playing a multiplayer operation, we only managed to finish one battle.
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prjw73
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RE: Investigating Multi-player Issues

Post by prjw73 »

Another issue I experienced in the lobby. When inviting another player to host a game it froze because there came no response from the other player. Turned out that he had just started a game with another player. In those instances there should be a 'cancel' button in order to return to the lobby.
In another instance the screen froze until the other player declined. Again, a 'cancel' button would be very useful here.
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WoT
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RE: Investigating Multi-player Issues

Post by WoT »

from another forum

@Pete: Well, I had pointed out the issues 100 times. Apart from the inherent game-breaking bugs, the recent problems were due to server issues (I am assuming they should have been fixed by now.)

Even then, I don't have the motivation to test their game for them anymore. They should have hired a proper QA team for the multiplayer, back when they were developing the damn thing. This game deserves better than this.
prjw73
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RE: Investigating Multi-player Issues

Post by prjw73 »

What I think should be investigated by Matrix is why this version is so bad compared to an original version like CC4.
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prjw73
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RE: Investigating Multi-player Issues

Post by prjw73 »

Ok, another issue: Returning from a single player battle and going into the multiplayer lobby I got this message : "Unknown Command failed. Your IP address has been locked out for 10 minutes." Hitting the "Ok" button then pops up a new message, asking me for my serial number. Really?!
Does this game not come with cool features?[:@]
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prjw73
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RE: Investigating Multi-player Issues

Post by prjw73 »

New game against new opponent: gamecrash after opponent offered truce. In a previous battle this happened too. The player offering the truce is disconnected. First a game freeze occurs and after that it may take several minutes before the game actually aborts.
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prjw73
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RE: Investigating Multi-player Issues

Post by prjw73 »

Worth mentioning is that in that game (scenario Rumble) an allied airstrike didnot cause a crash. It also didnot cause damage to any vehicle, that explains why.
Second attempt at scenario "Rumble" against same opponent: game crash 30 seconds into the game. The only notable thing happening on my side is a Churchill crushing a stone fence.
Sofar , in 2 days and 8 attempts I have been able to finish just 1 battle.
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PztCrackwise
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RE: Investigating Multi-player Issues

Post by PztCrackwise »

@Pete: if you check previous multiplayer bug reports on this forum for the version 1.0, you will see several issues being mentioned repeatedly. I will list them here briefly for you:

1) The "Truce" is bugged. Offering truce increases the crash risk at the end of the battle drastically. Moreover, if you offer truce and then withdraw it, it means a 100% crash at the end of the battle.

2) Using in-game air support has a very high chance of crashing the game. In all my instances, it happened when the airstrike had destroyed tanks, but it is fine if it doesn't kill any tanks. Can you confirm this?

3) With version 1.0 there were also occasional (but less frequent) crashes, which I again remember happening exactly the moment when a tank is destroyed (by another tank or ATG etc.). Can you also confirm this?

The patch 1.01 was supposed to fix these issues but it seems it is not the case. The funny thing is as you have mentioned, these issues were not there in the original CC5. It had random "end of battle" crashes, but the truce and airstrikes worked properly and did not crash the game. It also had very rare in-game (in the middle of the battle I mean) crashes, unlike GtC.

@Developers: You should probably check what you have changed from CC5 to GtC in this regard to be able to identify the reasons of the crashes.
prjw73
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RE: Investigating Multi-player Issues

Post by prjw73 »

I have read about the bugs before but I never fully appreciated the extent of the problems until I started playing multiplayer this game. Never played version 1.0 H2H so can not compare.
2) You'd think that destroying vehicles in an airstrikes causes the crash. HOWEVER, in both instances the game crashed before the tank actually blew up(or rather : graphically displayed in the game) on screen. I know this because I took screenshots after the image froze exactly before that moment. I wonder if the tank blew up on the screen of the other player who used the airstrike on my tank.
3) I didnot yet experience game crashes after tank vs tank combat and didnot play version 1.0 online.
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PztCrackwise
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RE: Investigating Multi-player Issues

Post by PztCrackwise »

I would assume the vehicles got destroyed with that airstrike and that's why it crashed, since it seems to be the case.

You know what, do you also have the slight delay/freeze in miliseconds just before a vehicle is about to explode?(i.e. it is probably destroyed in the code, but the animation needs to kick in). There wasn't such a delay in the older CC versions.

This tiny freeze/delay in miliseconds before the tank explodes in animation can be one of the reasons of the crashes.

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johnsilver
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RE: Investigating Multi-player Issues

Post by johnsilver »

This tiny freeze/delay in miliseconds before the tank explodes in animation can be one of the reasons of the crashes.

Hey guys,

Continuing on from discussion at other site and you both know I am only an AI player now.. Though something have found on thisfreeze/delay you mention is that when the game is REALLY starting to hang at the end, like about to crash to a CTD, or when timer runs out or a moral failure from the AI, air strike like was mentioned that took the AI down well below where a moral failure would occur and the game is hanging FAR too long? I'll click on the screen. It seems foolish, yes, though the engine will seem to go right along at that point rather than crash.

Yes, it's only on AI as not played H2H, nor any CC that way since around '04.
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prjw73
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RE: Investigating Multi-player Issues

Post by prjw73 »

@ Crackwise: I think I know what you mean about the tiny delay. I just don't remember if it is the sound that is delayed or the animation.
If it is the animation then that might be related to the airstrike crash.

@ Johnsilver: interesting observation. Have not been able to try that myself yet.


On playing multiplayer: played a number of games today and they went well because we didnot use airstrikes or truces....

A buggy lobby thing: at a certain moment, when accepting an invitation to join someone's game, it froze on the popup message 'connecting to opponent' (if that is what it said). I was still able to send messages on the chat line but in the end I had to ctrl-alt-delete and restart the game.
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SteveMcClaire
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RE: Investigating Multi-player Issues

Post by SteveMcClaire »

Hi Pete,

Thanks for your information. Are you or your opponent using any mods?

Thanks,

Steve
prjw73
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RE: Investigating Multi-player Issues

Post by prjw73 »

Hi Steve,

I do not have any GtC mods installed. I will ask my opponent the same question.

thanks,

Pete
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PztCrackwise
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RE: Investigating Multi-player Issues

Post by PztCrackwise »

I and my opponents did not have any mods etc. installed either. I, myself, have the official blood patch only. (The issues were also there before the blood patch.)
prjw73
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RE: Investigating Multi-player Issues

Post by prjw73 »

Another issue I came across last weekend: when using the 'rename' option on some of my teams I found out that this only works in single player. In multiplayer the units are shown with their original name. This is something that never used to be a problem with versions CC3-CC5 that I played online. I didnot test this with LSA and PiTF.
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