More Multiplayer Problems!

[Sickjin]

All ports forwarded properly and failed, multiple computers attempted and failed, Hamachi attempted and failed. I bought 4 copies of this game to play with friends and so far have been unable to connect in any way.

[Maraloudus]

try evolve thats what me and my group use, can sometimes get buggy although

[fungus]

Originally posted by Maraloudus:

try evolve thats what me and my group use, can sometimes get buggy although

Evolve is love, Evolve is life.

[Turning Wheel]

In a future update we will integrate multiplayer networking via Steamworks; we couldn't do this on release because we were too short on time, but it is coming, and it should make most of your lives (including mine, I hate port forwarding as much as anyone) a lot easier.

[Sickjin]

Awesome, good to hear. We've got 2-player working over the LAN, but for some reason 3+ players won't work? Right now the multiplayer is super weird.

[Donna]

I'm having the same issue. It doesn't work on normal ports or Hamachi, but those ports and Hamachi work fine playing other games.

[fungus]

Originally posted by Summertime Vice:

I'm having the same issue. It doesn't work on normal ports or Hamachi, but those ports and Hamachi work fine playing other games.

Like I said, Evolve is love, Evolve is life.

[Darth Yolkeo]

I found the port forwarding would freeze up and could never start a game.
Over hamachi I had much more success. Even so 1/2 the games wouldn't allow someone to join with a lockup, needing the client to recreate a character and retry.
Once joined into the lobby and game started, it seemed ok.
So I can suggest firewall off, hamachi, and retrying hosting and joining.

[Turning Wheel]

Yeah, you gotta make sure whatever port you use is open and allowed through your firewall for both TCP and UDP (bidirectional).

[Paul Debrion]

We've been using Evolve for this game and it works for us.

We've largely stopped using Hamachi for gaming as it doesn't seem to work all that consistently for games for whatever reason.

[3keyz]

I've had no problem playing multiplayer with port forwarding, make sure you are using your correct IP, and a port that is open both ways, TCP and UDP. I'm assuming it is user error if you've tried on multiple computers, because it's not that hard. As other people have mentioned, you can try Evolve as well.

[Sickjin]

I'm not new to port forwarding, and I've tried both Hamachi and Evolve which rules out that I ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up the IP/ports. The problem is with the programming. There's been 3 computers in the same room on a LAN and two can connect while the third can't.

[Sickjin]

Things we have tried before I get even more comments about it:
- Hamachi
- Evolve
- Forwarding port 25565 (standard Minecraft port I use for most games like this)
- Forwarding less common ports
- Turning firewall off completely
- Connecting over a LAN
- Yes I understand how to use ipconfig to get my real IP and my mask, and which to use
- Yes I forwarded both UDP and TCP
- Yes I've tried on multiple computers with mixed results
- Yes I've tried reinstalling

[Turning Wheel]

If there were a problem with the programming the game wouldn't work at all. Networking can be finicky. For my part, I can't even get my router to port forward properly either, hence I've never been the one to host any of our multiplayer tests over the internet (though I'm able to host LAN games and do plenty of testing on my home network; in both cases the game works fine).

Are you sure there's no firewall set up on your hub/router directly that's blocking the packets? Have you disabled any antivirus as well?

If you want to be a true detective you can always use a packet monitor like Wireshark to confirm that the packets are being sent on one computer and received by another without being blocked/dropped on either one of the machines.

Depending on the port you use too your network may have some preestablished rules that are messing with the packets so they don't arrive.

[Sickjin]

^ this is helpful advice, I'll look into it and let you know if I get something to work.

[Logan]

Okay, so I think I know what at least a portion of the problem is. The game needs both TCP and UDP forwarded, as has been covered, but opening the UDP port on the server end is not sufficient, server->client UDP packets have to be unblocked too. Catch is that, while an outgoing TCP connection automatically green-lights incoming traffic on the source port, UDP 'connections' do not. If the server has UDP unblocked, but the client does not, the player will appear in the server's list, but the client will not get the list. The trouble is that the client will connect from any random port in the outgoing port range, so you can't just unblock the same port on the client as you did on the server. Good news is the source port only changes beteen client runs, not server connects, so you only have to fiddle once per client start.

Anyway, after you try connecting to the server, unblock UDP to the client on the source port, for linux, assuming you can use uPnP, install upnpc, then run.


upnpc -a <local client ip> `lsof -p <pid of client> | grep UDP | sed 's_.*:__'` `lsof -p <pid of client> | grep UDP | sed 's_.*:__'` UDP

and it will forward the UDP port for the client.

Since it looks like the devs watch this (thanks guys for taking your time to help!), have you considered enabling uPnP support directly in the client? It would make most of these connection issues magically go away.

P.S. as an alternative, allow specifying the UDP source port on the client, or open separate UDP listen port on the client. If the server is using port 40000, have the client also listenUDP on 40000.