1.10 Patch is released

[Zsar1]

Not really. It even affects me testing locally (two instances on the same machine, communicating via localhost).
The issue is this: Every time step (which is, if I recall, about once every six milliseconds) the host will poll all clients for a heartbeat. Even if the game is paused, should the heartbeat not arrive promptly, it signals a desync.

What can be fixed quickly are actions that always produce a desync. Those are of course very hard to discover.

For greatest stability two rules can be weighted in matchmaking:

• Host should be the slowest computer.
• Host should be the computer with lowest ping to all others.

As far as the network goes, it does not require a whole lot of throughput, but latency is paramount; of course that is not how the internet works.

I do not see a short term solution. It certainly does not help that dealing with wide area networks has never been a forte of mine.
... Some preliminary work on the internal timer mechanism has started, and that might eventually allow a relaxation of the rather hasty heartbeat functionality, but like so many other things it will take a while.

 

[Mr_B0narpte]

We've always given the role of host to the person with fastest download/upload speed, but I guess due to what you say above we should give it to the person with the worst spec computer? How can we check their ping to everyone else?

 

[Zsar1]

Well, both are important. If all your pings look pretty similar, selecting the slowest computer as host should help. If some people have a rather worse ping than others, they should definitely not be host, no matter the specs.

On Windows you can use the ping command to measure point-to-point speed. You should strive for a minimal Maximum and test both ways.
Host should be the one with lowest maximum from any, unless (this should not happen usually) their ping to someone is much worse.

If you are desperate enough, it is possible to make the host slowest computer by e.g. editing the energy savings settings for lower maximal processor activity or by running a program such as CPU Killer on the same thread as AoD.

 

[froglegs]

For the last 10 years I have been playing HOI2 and AOD (5 years) with 3 players on a LAN. The out of sync issue does happen but it is really never a disaster.

The real disaster is the lost tech research that happens to non-host computers now and then. We normally have to then quit the game when it is discovered (often several months later in the game), edit the save game file to give the player the lost tech, and then write a corrective event to give the player the lost attributes of that tech. I can normally do this un under 10 minutes but it is a pain. I believe that this tends to happen most at the end of a month when the host computer is saving a savegame file and the affected player replaces the researched tech with another while the host computer is locked up in the savegame mode. The affected player has gotten to a new day before the host so that the host computer does not credit the player's computer with the researched tech before the player removes his team.

 

[Pang Bingxun]

For the last 10 years I have been playing HOI2 and AOD (5 years) with 3 players on a LAN. The out of sync issue does happen but it is really never a disaster.

LANs means something like 20 meters the informations have to pass. That is near nothing.

If Information has to pass 20 million meters to the other side of the earth it is different, at vacuum speed of light that takes 67 milliseconds one way. For the information the pass 2 way that is 134 milliseconds, something that no longer is below the threshold of human perception. In practice information will pass slightly slower and some time for calculations to be done will have to be added aswell. In such extreme cases i would expect that anything below 1 second per 1 in game hour might be problematic.

For LANs however improvements in software and hardware stand a chance to eliminate desychronisations, be it a strong or weak desychronisations like the research issue.

 

[Mr_B0narpte]

I have played AoD online for 2-3 years and while I wouldn't call the online connection a disaster, in comparison to other 2010 and later games the online stability is pretty shocking.* This is especially true when you compare it with DH, a game running off the same engine. AFAIK AoD uses very little data in the first place.

Having to save and rehost the game every 3 months during peace time - after playing on below normal/normal speed - can take its toll. This worsens once war begins, sometimes it gets to the stage where the game is unplayable if you advance late enough into the war.


* That said, obviously I play online for a reason, and that is because AoD is my favourite WWII grand strategy game (and also I've found a great group to play with).

 

[MihaiROU]

"Starting from this patch, you will need this: Visual C++ 2015 Redistributable (x86) to run the game."
What happens if I have x64?

 

[Pang Bingxun]

What happens if I have x64?

It probably does not matter whether you have that one. You need the 32-bit version for a 32-bit program like AoD to run.

 

[Zsar1]

Indeed. The Microsoft installer takes care that only the proper variant will be used - having the x64 version installed (as well as not having) does not have any impact at all.

 

[Chiron]

Thanks for updating Steam guys

 

[Atreus]

Hi folks! I encountered problems when downloading a file. Dropbox displays a message that there is a problem while downloading the file. What to do?

 

[Zsar1]

I tried just now and was able to download it. Probably a temporary problem on DropBox' side. Just try again at different times of the day?

 

[Czudak X]

Hi folks! I encountered problems when downloading a file. Dropbox displays a message that there is a problem while downloading the file. What to do?

I ran into the same issue. I was able to obtain the patch by deleting this part (at the end; minus quotation marks): "?dl=0", from the link.

Here's the correct one, if you cannot do it yourself: https://www.dropbox.com/s/8shz91qbo9qjsar/AoD_Patch110.zip

 

[Zsar1]

Mmh. Does not make a difference for me. But as it is unnecessary, I removed the suffix anyway.

 

[Ancalimé]

Hello ladies and gents,

As I'm getting back into AoD after many years, here's a question that I need answered; is this a comprehensive package or do I need to install previous patches one by one first? Oh and, where can I find those previous patches if that's the case?

Thanks.

 

[Pang Bingxun]

Is this a comprehensive package?

It is.

 

[Decriser]

1.10 Fixes: "Mouseover tooltip for the "money" symbol added income from MP into "Home Produced", additionally to listing it separately."

This produces a bug, at least in my configuration. The mouseover tooltip calculation for the money symbol is shown correctly, but in the tooltip for all the other resources (energy, metal...) the "Home Produced" value ist too low now. It seems exactly the amount of MP income is subtracted. Can anybody else confirm this behavior? The 1.11 exe produces the same result.

 

[Radomir_Canaris]

>>The last entry in misc.txt/research now defines the standard deviation of a normal distribution centered on 0. A maximal deviation is not set.

What is the purpose of this value?

 

[Zsar1]

1.10 Fixes: "Mouseover tooltip for the "money" symbol added income from MP into "Home Produced", additionally to listing it separately."

This produces a bug, at least in my configuration. The mouseover tooltip calculation for the money symbol is shown correctly, but in the tooltip for all the other resources (energy, metal...) the "Home Produced" value ist too low now. It seems exactly the amount of MP income is subtracted. Can anybody else confirm this behavior? The 1.11 exe produces the same result.

Mmh, interesting. I have been hunting for a discrepancy between infrastructure bonus (IE-modified resource extraction) and globally reported ("Home Produced" mouseover) for a while but had not made this connection so far. Will investigate.

@Radomir_Canaris : Was the maximal deviance of a uniform distribution before. Now is the standard deviation of a normal distribution.
The random values are more susceptible to land close to the center now, so that extremely modified research steps are more uncommon.

Compare:

• Probability plot of a uniform distribution
• Probability plot of a normal distribution

 

[Chaim Kaufmann]

Does AoD 1.10 work with Cross of Iron (my motive is 1933 start)?