Can't connect to / Can't join my friend(s): some solutions!

[Raven]

Hello!
You might read because you want to be prepared for your future games or because you're having hard time to be able to play with your friends! Don't worry we'll help!
The game is a great success, that's cool! There is a lot of players... the downside that means, there is a lot of people creating lobbies and games that might affect the connections of some of you, and we're sorry about that!

Because it's happening while there is a lot a people playing at the same time, we have investigated a little bit and we might have found a bug that prevent the created lobby to be reach when there are more than 50 lobbies created at the same time (that doesn't count of current games already in play)...
We still need to confirm that but that might be your issue if you're trying to join a private lobby of your friends and having difficulties to do so. Check below for the solution using the Steam Friend invite feature to solve that.
At the beginning of the next week we'll finish to track this case, and bring a more robust solution for the list of lobbies.

But first, some facts:

• There is no restriction to play with someone of another country / region, so you can play with your foreign friends!
  
• We are using a peer-to-peer connection for players to host the game through the Steam network API, meaning it's robust they have a lot of technology that make online games possible for thousand of people!

Secondly, let's check some basics, just to be sure that this is not another issue:
Check you are playing the same version of the game because currenty it exists:

• the freshly released version "Dark Hours Prologue"
  
• Dark Hours "demo" which is not up-to-date https://store.steampowered.com/app/2208570/Dark_Hours/

Even if you are all using Dark Hours Prologue, check your version number ingame because you also might have a different version if one of you got a patch and not the other one(s)

Now that you have check the basics:

How to create a game?

• In the game, chose "Create a lobby"
  https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3292793967
  
• When the lobby is created, it is public by default, other people should see your lobby in the lobby list using "Join a lobby" in the main menu.
  https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3292795366
  
• To play only with your friends without any unwanted guest, you can also choose to make it private by clicking the "private" checkbox on top-left of the newly created lobby.
  https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3292795908

My game is private, how can my friends join me?

When you have made the lobby private, your friends can join you either because:

• you have shared the invite code: there is button to copy it directly. You can send the code through pm, text message or orally. if you remove the hidden option, you can read it.
  https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3292796389
  https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3292796839
  
  
• you have used the Steam Friends list interface to invite your friend.
  https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3292797342
  Warning: this option is working fine but only if your friends haven't launch the game before you invite them. If they are already in game, nothing will happen. If they are in the game and they accept, their game will be launched and they will join you automatically.

In our humble opinion, the most comfortable way, is to invite your friends in game directly through your Steam friends list... if they havent launch the game.

How can I invite a friend through the Steam Friend list ?

When you have created a lobby in Dark Hours, switch back to the Steam Friends interface (alt-tab or using the Steam overlay)
Then right click on your friends names in the Steam Friend List and click "invite to play"
Here's a video showing the steps:
https://youtu.be/Y88VTF9l3O8



I hope this explanations would have help you. If you are still getting issues to connect to your friends, feel free to use the Steam forums and discussions or to join our discord server: https://discord.gg/pieceofcake and we'll try to help you through


We are again very sorry if you had hard time playing with your friends, we didn't expect so many players.
At this moment of writing, this is the weekend, so our dev team is getting some well deserved rest, but we will continue to improve the game and fix glitches and issues early next week!

Thanks a lot for your support, your kind feedbacks and to have fun on Dark Hours Prologue!

Cheers,
Raven