Multiplayer on Mac OS

[Bruce]

Hi guys,

So I spent the last hour with my class attempting to reliably get multiplayer working but it was really inconsistent. One group connected 3 players with absolutely no problem and were able to play for the whole time - others couldn't even establish a connection!

Every computer (Mac) is configured identically (all built from the same image), so I've got no idea why this problem is occurring. Anyone got any ideas? The other thing that tends to happen a lot is that the models etc don't load - the player is "in" the game, but they get a black screen and that's about it.

Are these problems typical of old version of Glest (perhaps the source for the Mac version is an old build?) or are these unique?

[ultifd]

A black screen?
Hmm... I got that while I was trying to play Glest with my friend. I was using Windows though.
The host was my friend and that he had no problem. Only I had a black screen... for a few minutes... then everything started loading. After that I got a error. This is probably different from what you experienced though.  

One thing I know is that for multiplayer games to be successful, is that all the computers have to be configured the same... same files. same everything.  

Now the weird thing is that one of the games worked for you.

Too bad, megaglest is only for linux and windows... Megaglest improves multiplayer games a lot...or so I hear.  

Oh, and yes, the Mac port is based on Glest 3.21, and I think the reason Glest 3.22 was released is that it fixed some multiplayer issues...  
EDIT: Yep, I was correct. See here and here...: https://forum.megaglest.org/index.php?topic=4252.0
https://forum.megaglest.org/index.php?topic=4241.0

Sorry If my post did not help you at all...  
Good luck.  

I guess you could try to contact KaSek... He's been "active". Not in glest, but in other stuff.

[titi]

and finally even glest 3.2.2 had problems with 4 players in linux ( and I think by this in MacOS too ).
The latest megaglest beta is focussing exactly on this problem. But I think crossplatform/crosscompileversion gaming is still not possible yet.

[softcoder]

Ok the Black screen (and sometimes 0 resources bug) was fixed in glest 3.2.2 (I beleive). I remember posting a bug patch in the forums related to this for multiplayer scenarios.

Did you try compiling the latest mega-glest? I say mega-glest because I know it is quite stable and that the multi-player is quite solid (and it is quite close to the original glest code base).

Thanks

[Bruce]

I'll have to take a look at megaglest and see if I can drop the codebase into the one I have here.

I've taken the glest 3.2.2 source and dropped it into the XCode project in place of 3.2.1 - I've just packaged that up and have pushed it out to the Macs again. I've got some of the kids coming back at lunch to try a few things out so I'll see how that goes. However, the Glest main menu screen still says it is version 3.2.1, not 3.2.2 (although I made sure the codebase was updated).

I'm at the point now where I'm ready to package 3.2.2 and release it as a Mac Application Bundle with the data included - the download is 70MB and the files are in locations that are a bit more Mac-like. If it turns out my Multiplayer test works this time around, I'll let people know and we'll have a Mac App that is at 3.2.2 like the other platforms.

Then I'll try the same with MegaGlest and see if we get a performance improvement.

[softcoder]

Ok for SURE 3.2.2 has the bug fixes I am talking about. 3.2.1 had multi-player issues (sometimes black screen and sometimes 0 resources ofr multiplayer).

So I won't be surprised if your 3.2.2 version corrects these issues.

Thanks

[Bruce]

Ok for SURE 3.2.2 has the bug fixes I am talking about. 3.2.1 had multi-player issues (sometimes black screen and sometimes 0 resources ofr multiplayer).

So I won't be surprised if your 3.2.2 version corrects these issues.

Thanks

These are the EXACT problems we're having... For whatever reason I had thought my 3.2.2 compilation has worked, but it appears it didn't. I may need to check that I replaced all of the old source with the new stuff.

[rastawar]

Hmmm, I'm new to glest, but excited.  My roommate and I are having similar but not identical problems.  We are trying to play multiplayer and it seems that we manage to get connected (by typing in the IP), but as soon as the host clicks PLAY both games crash.  Synchronised crashes are sort of funny, but not desirable.  Any ideas what's up?  One thing that sort of bothers me is that when I go into my system preferences to figure out the IP, the number I find is incredibly basic, like 10.0.1.3  Isn't that unusual?  Shouldnt the number be huge and irregular?  Anyway, thanks for the help,
R

[Bruce]

Hmmm, I'm new to glest, but excited.  My roommate and I are having similar but not identical problems.  We are trying to play multiplayer and it seems that we manage to get connected (by typing in the IP), but as soon as the host clicks PLAY both games crash.  Synchronised crashes are sort of funny, but not desirable.  Any ideas what's up?  One thing that sort of bothers me is that when I go into my system preferences to figure out the IP, the number I find is incredibly basic, like 10.0.1.3  Isn't that unusual?  Shouldnt the number be huge and irregular?  Anyway, thanks for the help,
R

G'day Rastawar, and welcome,

First of all - your IP is fine. If you're behind a router, you'll probably find that the world visible IP of your router is something a little larger/irregular, but your router issues 10.0.1.X IPs to machines on your side of it. This is perfectly natural.

As for the multiplayer issues - I've solved them by compiling the next version of Glest from Source, but it isn't perfect yet. The issues appears to be with the Source Code for 3.2.1 - 3.2.2 corrects most of them (although there are still some anomalies with >3 players occasionally).

I'll try to get 3.2.2 working a little more reliably once things calm down at work - if I can, I'll make a pre-compiled dmg available that includes all of the data and is a little more "Mac-like" in the way it installs.

[softcoder]

Dude.. if you're interested in multi-player.. i highly recommend mega-glest. I'm the guy who made the fix for network play in 3.2.2 and we made large improvements to network performance and stability in mega-glest.

Anyway, thats just me 2 cents.

[-Archmage-]

I add a cent to Softcoders pile:

I've never actually played multiplayer, but I did follow the multiplayer improvements very closely, and they've really done a lot of good work for multiplayer, in terms of multiplayer, MegaGlest would be my recommendation. 

[Bruce]

The only thing is, I don't believe there is a MegaGlest Mac Binary available... would that be correct?

SoftCoder - I may get in touch with you at some point to build a Mac Binary of MegaGlest using the Linux source. You up for that?

[softcoder]

Absolutely, that's what Open Source is all about, we would love to help. Worst case scenario we could use VNC or something to remotely work on the MAC system together and get things to compile.

[softcoder]

Actually Mega-Glest is on the road to multi-player multi-platform. Most of the win32 specific code in MG has been replaced with cross platform code (SDL, OpenGL, OpenAL, etc). So if we have a Mac developer we will work with them to get MG compiled for Mac.