Help with Internet Direct Play

[HugoHillbilly]

Hey, im trying to get a game of SMAC running with a friend using the direct TCP/IP option.

(this happens to both of us when trying to host)

as soon as the second player connects in I get a message saying "cannot send message to (player name) do you want to
- try again for 20 sec
-drop session and play solo
-exit game
-ignore messsage (probably fatal)

I hit ignore than he can join the launch screen no problem, and we can chat there no problem, but when I launch the game it keeps sending that message then gets stuck trying to syncronize world map then the game freezes/not responds.

I couldnt find help in the readme or at firaxis.com, has anyone had similar problems and/or knows how to fix it?

Thanks in advance

[buster]

Your problkem is either latency or dsome sort of NAT router or firewall on the connection.

To check latency try to ping (start an command prompt and write ping xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (the ip address). If response time is larger than 300 ms that is probably your problem. Many DSL connections have poor latency. Often this can be adjusted (at the price of slightly slower streaming speed). As SMAC multiplaying (like many ip games) does a lot of very small packet transfers latency is far more important than line speed. Many users actually report that it slowed down a lot going from ISDN to ADSL.

Also if one of you have a firewall it is probably that one blocking some of the ports directplay uses - try disabling it while playing.

The last possibility is that one of you are running from behind a nat (network address translation) router - for instance from a work or college network. Many such router only forward traffic running on a specific set of ports (directx uses one port (4000-5000 range IIRC) for initial connection and another for game data (30000 - 40000).

Finally Microsoft changed the prots directplay uses going from directx 7 to directx 8. Best you both get directx 8.1.

[HugoHillbilly]

Thanks for your help, I never thought about the latency. Were both using Cable internet, so that might be it. Ill check it out.

Im also using a free Esafe firewall, never had any problems with it on other internet games so it didnt even cross my mind! Ill try disabling that as well.