LAN CTD's normal?

[Thelamon]

Played my first (long awaited) MP game yesterday.
LAN/2 player (Russia vs. Germany 1939, 1.03b unmodded)

In the time from the beginning of the 1939 scenario till Feb1940 5 CTDs (2 times host, 3 times other PC) happened.

1. Is that normal for the current HoI version?

2. Any advice ("Voodoo" an "big no-no's") on how to keep the game stable?
(stuff like "no Alt-Tab" etc.)
and
- does frequent pausing hurt stability?
- does changing gamespeed hurt stability?
- does not having the CD in the host's drive hurt stability?

3. Is LAN affected by the same issues as Internet MP? (inspite of better bandwith?)

 

[MAC]

Hm, from my experience CTDs are pretty rare once in the game. The annoying part is to get it running

So dunno - maybe you played on very fast in boring phases?

 

[Thelamon]

hm,

we played on "below normal" and "slow" (no chance for "fast" in the 1939 scenario - as Germany you get to invade Poland right at the start and are very busy ever after...)

1. Any ideas what the tipical HoI related issues might be?
(The LAN is normaly very stable - never had problems with that)
This gets me really worried - I'm dreaming of having a 6 player HoI LAN Game eventually (if there will ever be that many copies of HoI sold in Germany...)

2. My friend was on "stony road" before - we uninstalled the whole game and reinstalled his computer from my CD and patched it to 1.03b original.
After that he still had his stony savegames listed ....
Is it possible, that there was some "interfering residue" ?
(he was not hosting though - and I have a "clean install" on the host)

edit:
3. it was no problem to get the game running on the LAN - it started nice and smooth (just crashed several times during the game - a bit to often for my taste)

 

[MAC]

Well, not sure but we had 16h straight games with 8 ppl already in VNet and in that whole time we had like 1-2 CTDs.

But one thing that causes CTDs afaik are programs like ICQ - seems there is a sound conflict. So check if no otrher applications are running except HOI...

 

[Thelamon]

Thanks for the input!
I will disable every app I can find
- no ICQ with me though - I normaly use the "dreaded" Messenger for Online Gaming etc.

Any negative experiences with Zone Alarm during LAN gaming?
I never had any probs with ZA sofar - but who knows....
(I will have to disconnect the Router from the I-net before I shut-down ZA - maybe I'm just paranoid)

Another thought
I had a MP LAN game "with myself" running today, just to check (hijacking my girlfriends computer while she was at work ) ... no CTD in 5 hours!

This leads to another question:
1. the well running systems were both XP with clean installs of HoI and no illegal stuff on them at all 100% "purely legit"

2. my HoI friends System (the one we had the multiple CTD's with as he brought it over for the session) is Win98 (plus it has possible "stony road" residue...and who knows what else he has installed there...)
a. any known conflicts between 98 and XP users playing Hoi?
b. any other 98 issues known in connection with HoI?

 

[MAC]

Hm, I already had pretty long LAN-Sessions between a Win2k and a Win98 comp - no CTDs at all.

Btw. Patch 1.04 should be out soon - maybe he'll fix some of your trouble

 

[Thelamon]

Completely erasing any trace of "stony road" seems to have helped. (and of course a new "clean" install of HoI with 1.03b on the troublemaking system of my friend).

We had a 3 player LAN-MP yesterday for 6 1/2 hours covering two ingame years without a single CTD - I'm quite happy!
(A great game 1936 Germany, France, Russia - France is to later play USA - I'm so excited about the possible outcome of this game I could hardly sleep last night... - MP really rocks)

Other things done to avoid crashes (maybe just "Voodoo" solutions)
1. Game CD inserted in the host
2. Pause only used by host
3. Gamespeed only contolled by host

 

[MAC]

I'm so excited about the possible outcome of this game I could hardly sleep last night...

Hehe, my first Vnet game was a 16 hour session with 8 nations played. We were not finished so we agreed to play on next day - and all people showed up and played another 6h straight

I did not sleep too well that night either, thinking about strategies and outcome all the time, hehe

MP rocks and with 1.04 coming out soon (Johan just announced the patch is ready and they only wait for the "go" from the publishers) it will improve even more *cheer*

Btw. about Stony Road -> I suggest installing it in a different folder (copy and rename your HOI folder and install it there) since Stony now also has a MP scenario