OFFICIAL: Multiplayer guide!

[Phunk]

With the public release of multiplayer, we've posted a guide to multiplayer features and server hosting here[www.big-robot.com].

Enjoy!

[miguelpiquet]

Great! Thanks a lot for the detailed guide

[excelatrate]

"This webpage is not available
ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED"

Fix your website before posting the guide guys?

Could've easily been avoided if you mirrored the instructions on this thread...

Seems a little cryptic to start a thread promising help then only putting up a link to some guide on your website that isn't even loading properly.

I can't think of a more frustrating Multiplayer experience in the past 5 years than trying to get this to work.

It's just a bummer to get home from work and get excited to play this with my girlfriend only to find out MP is *very* iffy and then find out the troubleshooting guide isn't even accessible. You guys really should've taken the two seconds to copy paste the text from your site to this topic.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Don't be too sad, Enriched Panda.

I saw their guide. There's no troubleshooting in it. They don't even tell you what bloody ports the game is looking for.

My advice, if you haven't had the game launched for more than 2 hours, is to get a steam refund. Take your $4 and buy your girlfriend and yourself a milkshake and some french fries at McDonald's and try the fries after dipping them in the milkshake. You'd have a better chance of having an enjoyable, memorable experience doing that than trying to play this with her.

Seriously, you're not going to have a spectacular co-op experience anyway, the MP is basically set up as an arena, where you kind-of-sort-of "can" cooperate, but it's going to declare the player who puts the last piece in the winner anyway.


[e]I'm not joking about that milkshake and french fries thing, by the way. Try it.

[excelatrate]

Originally posted by ShadowDragon8685:

Don't be too sad, Enriched Panda.

I saw their guide. There's no troubleshooting in it. They don't even tell you what bloody ports the game is looking for.

My advice, if you haven't had the game launched for more than 2 hours, is to get a steam refund. Take your $4 and buy your girlfriend and yourself a milkshake and some french fries at McDonald's and try the fries after dipping them in the milkshake. You'd have a better chance of having an enjoyable, memorable experience doing that than trying to play this with her.

Seriously, you're not going to have a spectacular co-op experience anyway, the MP is basically set up as an arena, where you kind-of-sort-of "can" cooperate, but it's going to declare the player who puts the last piece in the winner anyway.


[e]I'm not joking about that milkshake and french fries thing, by the way. Try it.

I've heard good things about the milkshake and fries thing, too bad i HATE mcdonalds. However I do know there is some weird interaction with ice cream and salt that results in yummy, bacon and ice cream go good together.
Er...Anyways, in the attempt to stay on topic...Yeah, this game is cool and it really sucks that you can't just play singleplayer (withafriend).

I mean, we got ten year old games getting STEAM Matchmaking support, I can't imagine it would be difficult to include in a "up to date" game like this one. It just seems rushed, I would've rather waited another six months for a fully working cooperative experience than whatever...This thing is. It's seriously strange that they add all these cool features to MP only but take away the singleplayer features like multiple islands...It just results in a non-optimal playthrough whether you're in singleplayer or MP since you have to play both to get all the features.

And honestly....Who thought it was a good idea to have a "winner" in MP games that have PVP turned off?! That's just stupid...

I think most people wanted a jump-in co-op experience not LITERALLY ANOTHER DAYZ GAME WITH ROBOTS INSTEAD OF ZOMBIES AND ANNOYING PEOPLE WHO HAVE NO PERSONALITY AND JUST ATTACK OTHERS ON SIGHT

[Phunk]

That webpage is working fine for me, Panda - can you let me know if you're still having issues. Despite your suggestion we did actually make sure the page was live before posting here...

If you need troubleshooting, please post on the forum. That's what I'm posting here for every day: to help those relatively few people who are having trouble. The game uses a NAT service so you shouldn't need to worry about ports except in rare circumstances, hence the lack of mention.

As a final point of note: this game does have PVP turned on by default. It's adjustable in the game options if you're the server admin. Please set it as you see fit!

[excelatrate]

Originally posted by Phunk:

That webpage is working fine for me, Panda - can you let me know if you're still having issues. Despite your suggestion we did actually make sure the page was live before posting here...

If you need troubleshooting, please post on the forum. That's what I'm posting here for every day: to help those relatively few people who are having trouble. The game uses a NAT service so you shouldn't need to worry about ports except in rare circumstances, hence the lack of mention.

As a final point of note: this game does have PVP turned on by default. It's adjustable in the game options if you're the server admin. Please set it as you see fit!

The website came back to life after my posting fortunately, went ahead and posted a thread on here and on the official forum, just some general feedback.

If you check those threads you'll see that neither me or my gf are able to make a server (apparently multiple people are having this issue as well) so our only option to play together is to join an Official server and ALL of those are set to PVP ergo, we can ONLY play PVP.

I get it if you guys want to use a server setup that isn't Steamworks but at the same time...If it doesn't function as seamlessly you're kinda just mucking up the experience for your customers :/

[Phunk]

We're not using SteamWorks because the game is also available outside of Steam. It's not some "home-grown" solution though; it's the same Unity Engine middleware that dozens of other successful games are built on. If you're having problems with it then I can only apologise and offer my help - and will gladly do both if you post here with the issues you're having!

Worth pointing out that if you join the official server and vote an admin, you can disable the PVP yourself, and continue to play the game you prefer.

[excelatrate]

Originally posted by Phunk:

We're not using SteamWorks because the game is also available outside of Steam. It's not some "home-grown" solution though; it's the same Unity Engine middleware that dozens of other successful games are built on. If you're having problems with it then I can only apologise and offer my help - and will gladly do both if you post here with the issues you're having!

Worth pointing out that if you join the official server and vote an admin, you can disable the PVP yourself, and continue to play the game you prefer.

I kind've figured thats why MP is so different from most easy online experiences nowadays. That being said, I think if you just gave people who own the game outside of Steam keys for Steam versions they wouldn't mind so much.

It just seems like the overall experience gets fragmented and marred by attempting to function for all versions of the game.

I've seen other Developers give out keys to people who can prove they own the game outside of Steam and in the (admittidely isolated) cases I've seen people almost universally understand and support the move to a more optimized and easier user experience (Steamworks).

[Phunk]

Humble and GoG both give out Steam keys; everyone who has the game (through any legal channel) has a Steam key, but we can't force people to use them. There are many, many games that don't use Steamworks; there are many frameworks besides SteamWorks that work for multiplayer, and SteamWorks integration is by no means a trivial task (especially considering restrictions around non-steam clients: we can't possibly afford the resources to support two separate network infrastructures).

I appreciate your comments, but Steamworks is not a silver bullet, nor the right solution for this game.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Originally posted by Phunk:

Humble and GoG both give out Steam keys; everyone who has the game (through any legal channel) has a Steam key, but we can't force people to use them. There are many, many games that don't use Steamworks; there are many frameworks besides SteamWorks that work for multiplayer, and SteamWorks integration is by no means a trivial task (especially considering restrictions around non-steam clients: we can't possibly afford the resources to support two separate network infrastructures).

I appreciate your comments, but Steamworks is not a silver bullet, nor the right solution for this game.

Steamworks tends to be a silver bullet for multiplayer connection issues.

Right now, you have a plethora of people, buying into the game, no doubt attracted by the sale, probably buying two or three copies so they can play multiplayer with their friends, only to discover that they cannot, because, to be frank, trying to get the multiplayer working on your own seems to be a hog's breakfast.

I don't care how many times you say "NAT should mean you won't have problems!" and "it's your firewall." those are not the right answers.

You are punishing the majority of players by trying to go it alone with your home-grown netcode. And sure, you may not be able to force people to use Steam; then don't. Just make it clear that multiplayer through non-steam channels is unsupported, as-is, and make it actually work for the majority of people who buy Sir, out-of-the-box, with no bloody "connection failed" issues.

[excelatrate]

Originally posted by ShadowDragon8685:

Originally posted by Phunk:

Humble and GoG both give out Steam keys; everyone who has the game (through any legal channel) has a Steam key, but we can't force people to use them. There are many, many games that don't use Steamworks; there are many frameworks besides SteamWorks that work for multiplayer, and SteamWorks integration is by no means a trivial task (especially considering restrictions around non-steam clients: we can't possibly afford the resources to support two separate network infrastructures).

I appreciate your comments, but Steamworks is not a silver bullet, nor the right solution for this game.

Steamworks tends to be a silver bullet for multiplayer connection issues.

Right now, you have a plethora of people, buying into the game, no doubt attracted by the sale, probably buying two or three copies so they can play multiplayer with their friends, only to discover that they cannot, because, to be frank, trying to get the multiplayer working on your own seems to be a hog's breakfast.

I don't care how many times you say "NAT should mean you won't have problems!" and "it's your firewall." those are not the right answers.

You are punishing the majority of players by trying to go it alone with your home-grown netcode. And sure, you may not be able to force people to use Steam; then don't. Just make it clear that multiplayer through non-steam channels is unsupported, as-is, and make it actually work for the majority of people who buy Sir, out-of-the-box, with no bloody "connection failed" issues.

As the Dev has said before, this is not a "homegrown" Multiplayer solution. It's a Unity asset and is used in lots of other games too. It's important you understand that so we can have a positive conversation.

That being said, this iteration of Multiplayer is causing issues for lots of people. If everyone already has a Steam key I see no reason in keeping this setup for Multiplayer aside from switching over requiring [admittedly a lot] of work. The amount of customers who are having a non-optimal Multiplayer experience outweigh those who prefer a non-DRM version of the multiplayer (99% sure on that).

[ShadowDragon8685]

By the way - it was definitely port forwarding for me.

"It must be your firewall!" Only it wasn't. NAT my arse.

That REALLY needs to be part of the official multiplayer guide - directions to open port forwarding on Port 44466.

[Phunk]

ShadowDragon: I'm glad to hear your issue is fixed.

The NAT solution we have does work, as evidenced by the number of people who *aren't* having problems running servers, and I've never said that it *must* be your firewall or that port forwarding is *never* necessary. I've stated the (true) fact that it is statistically *most likely* to be your firewall and that therefore you should check this first. I hope it's obvious to you that I can't see what your networking setup is from a forum post and therefore can't guarantee what your particular issue is, but I will do (and have done) my best to help you solve it correctly.

We're not "punishing" the majority of players, as the *majority* of players are able to play. There is a small minority of players that have had issues hosting servers and they (yourself included!) have been helped.

Steamworks integration or no, your solution would have been exactly the same: you'd have needed to forward a port. You've done so; you are now hosting a server. Steamworks' NAT would not have worked any better than any other if your network setup is such that you require port forwarding.

I appreciate your comments, and respectfully disagree with your opinion. I can also state categorically that we will not be moving this game over to Steamworks; the cost of such a rewrite would be far higher than the cost of supporting the handful of customers that have had issues.

[Lawyer Morty]

We really need a kick option for the lobby. Many players are blocking the start of a new game right now.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Originally posted by Phunk:

ShadowDragon: I'm glad to hear your issue is fixed.

Yes, it only took me like, two days and a lot of frustration to actually get the port nessessary out of you.

Really, how hard is it to just put "If you're having connection troubles connecting to a friend's server, have them double-check their firewall, and then set up port forwarding for port 44466" on the official multiplayer guide?