Online Multiplayer VERY laggy and buggy.

[danskmacabre]

I've had this game a couple of days now and love the single player and the stand alone multiplayer (where you takes turns playing character on the same PC).

But the Online multiplayer is terrible. So much lagging, disconnects and errors.
IS this being addressed at all? Because as it stands online multiplaer is unuseable.

[Fulgur14]

From what I've heard here, it's the main complaint (well, this and the DLC model). I think the developers work on that, it should be a priority...

[danskmacabre]

I have absolutely no problem with the DLC model myself.
It's inline with the original physical boardgame expansions.
Well apart from that new exorciost character and the runestones you can earn anyway.

But yes, fixing online play should be considered a matter of urgency.

[NomadRob]

@danskmacabre - are you playing public games or are you inviting friends to private games? Do you know if the people you are playing are located near you or not? We are aware that some people are having problems, even when their machine spec is way above the minimum, whereas other people however experience no issues at all. We are doing our best to find and fix the problems, and so any information that you can give us might be useful.
thanks
bins

[danskmacabre]

Hi, it's public games and no invited friends.
As to locations. I'm not sure. I did ask in some games about locations, but got no answers.
I'm playing from Australia.
It seems to mostly be in games with more like 4 players) players.
I'm playing a game right now. a Public game with 1 other player and no lag at all.
So perhaps the number of players has an impact.
I suspect if someone has a bad connection to the internet it may have an impact sometimes.
Still I played a 4 player game earlier where it seemed to be lagging on random players, sometimes me.
However I have a highly specced PC (only a few months old, windows 7 , 64 bit, SSD Drive, 6 core AMD 3.5 ghz RAM, 8gb RAM, Geoforce GTX660 etc).
The PC is clean and well maintained, virus free etc.
I'm a computer programmer by trade actually, although I don't write games. I work with Mainframes. I have built many gaming PCs over the years though.

I've noticed a few strange crashes about a a player making an "invalid online selection" or something like that.
That completely kills the session and the game has to be restarted.

I'd be happy to send logs if there are any logs files I can copy and send.

[NomadRob]

thanks for getting back - we can turn logging on but it's only really useful when we can get the log files from every player, which is difficult if you're not playing with people that you know. Your spec is pretty similar to mine so I think we can rule that out ;). When you get a laggy game are you the host or is it someone else ?

[danskmacabre]

I've tried hosting and joining a hosted game.
It didn't make much of a difference either way.
It was pretty consistently an issue with 3 + players.

A 2 player game I just hosted went fine.

Strange though, as yesterday It was playing very well online multiplayer.
It was the first game I joined. I did notice ONE player took ages to respond and I assumed at the time he was just taking ages to reply rather than a network issue.
I wasn't aware of ther actually being network issues with the game at the time.

How dependent on the Steam servers is the network play?
Is all game interaction handled by Steam servers or something?
Perhaps if it is and the Steam servers are under heavy load, this game is particularly vulnerable to heavy traffic.
I don't see why though, seeing as this is a turn based game I wouldn't have though it would need lots of data being passed around.

[danskmacabre]

Currently playing a 3 player game with players in the following countries:
UK
Czech Republic
and myself in Australia and no lag at all.

Again, public game, not friend invite etc.

[NomadRob]

Once all players are authenticated the connections between them are p2p. One player (the one who set up the game) is also the server - there is no dependency on the steam servers, or any dedicated servers once the game is up and running. As you say there is not much data being passed around. Each machine sends a keep-alive to the server once a second, + any game specific data (eg. which choice a player has made) when necessary.

[danskmacabre]

So all the traffic is handled by the host then?
Interesting I don't get any requests for permission to allow access to ports from windows firewall.
What ports do the game use?
I wonder if there's porting issues OR for some people the port you're using is already configured in a bad way.

[danskmacabre]

just an FYI, I'm still playing that same 3 player game.

I'm running a system monitor and noticed during a big lag spike in the game the CPU monitor picked up the Talisman EXE hitting the CPU usage really hard.
It basically spiked on one core to the top of the CPU usage chart.
When it went down again about 30 seconds later, the lag disappeared.

Is there some process that loops really fast if it fails for some reason? Like something that polls the client PCs?

[danskmacabre]

just had a smaller lag spike and noticed the CPU usage over 3 cores shot up , although not as dramatiocally as the last time, where just 1 core went right up to the top.

[Jenxstar]

Been playing all through early access, not played for a couple of weeks and decided to come and have a look how things were going now the game has been officially released. I tried to get a couple of public games going (No Invites) but both failed from the off due to very bad lag. I am worried that if this isnt addressed soon it may kill the game altogether, I can't see new people who are just taking a casual interest in the game hanging around for long with this kind of problem. I would hate for this to happen as I absolutely love Talisman and would really enjoy a complete digital version supported by a healthy community. I know the guys at Nomad are working hard but they really need to nail this problem fast. It may have made more sense to delay an official release.

[Ghostlight]

Originally posted by danskmacabre:

I'm playing from Australia

No offence but isn't that your problem? I've been plaing all sorts of multiplayer games online over the years and the Aussies always seem to have a hard time of it, connection wise.

You have my sympathy btw, I'm in the wilds of Scotland and it can be crap here too.

[eliotno3]

If you want to sympathize with that country for anything, pity them for that spackle Vegemite tar crud they spread on their toast mate

[danskmacabre]

Originally posted by Ghostlight:

Originally posted by danskmacabre:

I'm playing from Australia

No offence but isn't that your problem? I've been plaing all sorts of multiplayer games online over the years and the Aussies always seem to have a hard time of it, connection wise.

You have my sympathy btw, I'm in the wilds of Scotland and it can be crap here too.

No offense but I was asked specific questions by the DEVs, so I'm just taking the trouble to help them out.
It's not like this is a bandwidth heaving game (as already discussed), it might be some issue with the game itself rather than distance.
So just throwing your hands up in the air and saying "Bummer too far away, nothing to be done" is kind of unconstructive.
FWIW I play games regularly with people from all over the world with different games (such as bordelands and various RPGs) and the majority of the time it's fine and they're way more sensitive to internet connections as games go than Talisman.