Co-op Issues & Freezing at the Start of Runs

[Conus]

I have serious problems connecting to play co-op. I can connect to and join one specific friend... sometimes. No one can join me and I can't join anyone else.

I get invites and can send invites. It seems to try to join, but whoever the host is (be it me or any one of my friends) has their game freeze up briefly and then it says "Connection to Host Lost" or some such thing. Then I get booted back to my game.

Additionally, and I don't know if this is related, I do have some other performance issues. Mainly, when I come in or out of a first person segment my game freezes for a few seconds, and at the start of a new run my game also freezes for a few seconds.

I don't have issues with other games and my computer is fairly new and powerful.

Any help with any of these issues would be greatly appreciated.

[KillScreen]

Here
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2938666780

You need to learn how to port forward and setup your firewall.

[Conus]

I know how to port forward. I have found no reference as to which port to forward and no one I know has had to forward a port. I also have no problems with other online games and have not forwarded a port in years. Pretty sure that's largely a thing of the past.

[Leave_Eye_6]

I have this same exact issue on my PC as well down to the stuttering such as entering the house and the animation to leave and enter the ship. Even on my Intel i7 10700 and RTX 3080ti I get random stuttering. I've never experienced this with another game and I frequently play online games and far more graphically demanding games. As a test I borrowed a friend's AMD 6900XT and downloaded the drivers and the stuttering was actually worse. Updated my drivers for both cards and it didn't fix the issue. I've uninstalled the game and verified the game files numerous times. I even deleted all local data and started over just to make sure I had a fresh install. I have a super stable connection to US Chicago servers, pay for fiber optic 1200 MBPS speeds and it's ridiculous that this game runs the way it does and is unable to connect online.

[C1REX]

Verifying integrity of game's files can fix corrupted files and forces the game to recompile shaders again. This one should be done after every GPU drivers update.
It may help.

[Conus]

Originally posted by KillScreen:

Here
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2938666780

You need to learn how to port forward and setup your firewall.

Okay, so yeah, I should have just done this before responding. I was at work and couldn't when I responded. I got frustrated enough that I didn't try this until just now. As I suspected, no change.

Additionally, I have now been able to join other people in co-op from another computer on my network, for which I did not forward ports.

Originally posted by C1REX-PL:

Verifying integrity of game's files can fix corrupted files and forces the game to recompile shaders again. This one should be done after every GPU drivers update.
It may help.

Thank you, but this also did not change the behavior I'm experiencing. I ended up reinstalling just in case, out of desperation. No change.



I have a friend that suggested it could be a PROBLEM WITH A CODEC, because a lot of the time, the problem seems to arise when there's a transition to a cut-scene. The game hangs briefly when loading most cut-scenes. With co-op, there's always that short cut-scene that plays when you load in. Maybe my machine is somehow taking too long to access the codec it needs, causing the game to hang. This could, in the case of co-op, cause there to be a long enough desync that it ends co-op. Maybe the problem arises from a specific hardware element interacting with some codec programming in Windows 11? I just also have none of these issues with other games. So, maybe @Housemarque can investigate the code to see if there could be an issue with a codec in Windows 11?

Originally posted by Leave_Eye_6:

I have this same exact issue on my PC as well down to the stuttering such as entering the house and the animation to leave and enter the ship. Even on my Intel i7 10700 and RTX 3080ti I get random stuttering. I've never experienced this with another game and I frequently play online games and far more graphically demanding games. As a test I borrowed a friend's AMD 6900XT and downloaded the drivers and the stuttering was actually worse. Updated my drivers for both cards and it didn't fix the issue. I've uninstalled the game and verified the game files numerous times. I even deleted all local data and started over just to make sure I had a fresh install. I have a super stable connection to US Chicago servers, pay for fiber optic 1200 MBPS speeds and it's ridiculous that this game runs the way it does and is unable to connect online.

Maybe we should start comparing systems? I'm on Windows 11. Are you? Can you provide other stats for your hardware like your memory brand, mobo model, etc.? I haven't tried running MemTest yet, but I'm thinking of giving that a shot. Have you done any other diagnostics?


Gonna try Tweeting this at @Housemarque. Really would like to play co-op after buying the game three times and an entire new, top of the line computer just to play this with my girlfriend, who has no issues on Windows 10, 6 year old components, and a growing frustration.

[KillScreen]

Originally posted by Skilf:

Originally posted by KillScreen:

Here
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2938666780

You need to learn how to port forward and setup your firewall.

Okay, so yeah, I should have just done this before responding. I was at work and couldn't when I responded. I got frustrated enough that I didn't try this until just now. As I suspected, no change.

Additionally, I have now been able to join other people in co-op from another computer on my network, for which I did not forward ports.

Sir... you portforward in both the router and the computers firewall. I'm not gonna teach you how to do that. How to setup a fixed ip, how to open ports, how to dmz or how to setup a router and firewall its something that you will need to learn by yourself. There's plenty of tutorials online.

If one of your computers works fine and the other doesn't, it means that one of the computers firewall its blocking those ports. The problem isn't in the router's firewall.

Stop blaming the devs! What good does a tesla do for you if you don't know how to drive? If you want out of box experiences stay with consoles. Stop wasting time opening thread of reddit or bothering the devs on twitter. The problem its between the chair and the keyboard.

You can either make excuses or start researching how to setup your router and firewall. That or pay someone to do it for you. Simple.

[Conus]

Originally posted by KillScreen:

Originally posted by Skilf:

Okay, so yeah, I should have just done this before responding. I was at work and couldn't when I responded. I got frustrated enough that I didn't try this until just now. As I suspected, no change.

Additionally, I have now been able to join other people in co-op from another computer on my network, for which I did not forward ports.

Sir... you portforward in both the router and the computers firewall. I'm not gonna teach you how to do that. How to setup a fixed ip, how to open ports, how to dmz or how to setup a router and firewall its something that you will need to learn by yourself. There's plenty of tutorials online.

If one of your computers works fine and the other doesn't, it means that one of the computers firewall its blocking those ports. The problem isn't in the router's firewall.

Stop blaming the devs! What good does a tesla do for you if you don't know how to drive? If you want out of box experiences stay with consoles. Stop wasting time opening thread of reddit or bothering the devs on twitter. The problem its between the chair and the keyboard.

You can either make excuses or start researching how to setup your router and firewall. That or pay someone to do it for you. Simple.

Clearly you are looking for an argument. Please stop. You're not being helpful.

[Volonur]

There is no fix and the devs never acknowledged anything. You might find some info that could be useful for you here:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1649240/discussions/0/3772364315536565915/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Returnal/comments/117s5ts/freezing_during_scenetransition/

I doubt they will fix it. Possibly has something to do with how the VP9 Codec that they use interacts with specific hardware through the game engine. It's just a wild guess thou. As far as I understand, this codec is mainly used for web-based streaming of videos (YouTube etc) so not sure why would someone use it in a local app such as a video game.

This port is in general horrible. I don't think Climax has enough proficiency to port such projects and Sony should avoid their services in the future. But then again, Returnal is a small project and Sony most likely chose price over quality for this port hence Climax was selected.

[Conus]

Originally posted by Ubiwan:

There is no fix and the devs never acknowledged anything. You might find some info that could be useful for you here:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1649240/discussions/0/3772364315536565915/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Returnal/comments/117s5ts/freezing_during_scenetransition/

I doubt they will fix it. Possibly has something to do with how the VP9 Codec that they use interacts with specific hardware through the game engine. It's just a wild guess thou. As far as I understand, this codec is mainly used for web-based streaming of videos (YouTube etc) so not sure why would someone use it in a local app such as a video game.

This port is in general horrible. I don't think Climax has enough proficiency to port such projects and Sony should avoid their services in the future. But then again, Returnal is a small project and Sony most likely chose price over quality for this port hence Climax was selected.

Thanks. It's at the very least good to know I'm not alone. I was starting to worry it was a problem with some hardware component in my new computer.

I submitted a bug report on Housemarque's site. I guess you may be right if they are not working on support themselves.

You independently thought up the codec issue too? I have to commend my friend. Seems like he might have been right about that.

[Volonur]

Originally posted by Skilf:

You independently thought up the codec issue too? I have to commend my friend. Seems like he might have been right about that.

All cutscenes even the ones that seem to be "in-engine" are pre-recorded videos, you can literally find their respective video files in the game directory and watch them in your preferred video player(I don't remember the exact path as I uninstalled the game, but you can easily find the dir if you want to). The freeze happens on transition, meaning the moment that the video is done playing. Something happens when the engine tries to return back to the game after finishing video playback. Since the game does not stop responding as per Task Manager and you can hear the game sound playing fine in the background - one can assume that there is a problem activating the GPU after transitioning back into the game since GPU drops to 0%.
You can kind of see the flow of the thought here.

I doubt Climax cares enough to bother since this issue is not widely experienced and their only concern would be taking care of Fatal Crash in the next patch and be done with Returnal.

[Punks_is_hippies]

Originally posted by KillScreen:

Here
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2938666780

You need to learn how to port forward and setup your firewall.

Oh boy, someone is still kickin' it in 2005...
Lots of PC games today use centralized servers to establish connections between different users. This means that the players in the games only need to be able to establish outbound connections. This is no problem, even when NAT is involved, so there's no need to open ports.

EDIT:Unless you are HOSTING a server where players connect to YOUR PC.

[KillScreen]

Originally posted by Skilf:

Clearly you are looking for an argument. Please stop. You're not being helpful.

Because it has nothing to do with this game.

Alright... (deep breath)... again.

You mentioned that one of your computers under that network works fine. That means the problem its not in your router but that pc in particular. What anti-virus/firewall do you use? Can you turn off the firewall and try again? If so, does the problem persists?

[Conus]

Originally posted by KillScreen:

Originally posted by Skilf:

Clearly you are looking for an argument. Please stop. You're not being helpful.

Because it has nothing to do with this game.

Alright... (deep breath)... again.

You mentioned that one of your computers under that network works fine. That means the problem its not in your router but that pc in particular. What anti-virus/firewall do you use? Can you turn off the firewall and try again? If so, does the problem persists?

Take some time to read the rest of this thread before responding again.

[Qwarrock]

maybe your network is public on your computer? that would explain it...

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1649240/discussions/0/3772364315545873758/

[Conus]

Originally posted by 🤘 Qwarrock 🤘:

maybe your network is public on your computer? that would explain it...

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1649240/discussions/0/3772364315545873758/

Thanks for the link. You found my friend's post on this issue, which did solve the issue for her, but not me.