Desync in Beta 3

I'm sorry to report that I've had 2 desynced games out of about 15 games that I've played in Beta 3!  The first one resulted in a minidump, thus no saved file or replay.  But I do have a replay & save of the second occurrance.  What is interesting is:  if you watch the entire replay from different player's prespective - you can actually see different end games occur! (From 1 replay file)!  Very weird.  Anyway, if it helps, I can upload the files somewhere if someone tells me how to do it.

You mean the same file will let you view 2 different games depending on whose eyes you are looking through?  That is odd.  Yeah, if you can, post it up.  Just find a file hosting site (I use fileden.com) and then type the http:... link into the forum post.

Just letting you know I'm trying to get our version to go out of sync. Once it happens we can fix it. 

Thanks.

Hey, I have seen some desyncs too.  It seems like people who don't restart their clients between games, or have played a couple games already without restarting, are more likely to go out of sync with those of us who do.  Not sure if that helps.  The desync eventually leads to a crash.

When everyone has just logged on or restarted their clients, I haven't seen a desync.  A lot of us are in the habit of restarting, because this 95% protected against crashes in earlier versions.

I had one of my opponents send me their saved game...I was going to look at it, but it is kind of a drag without speed controls.  Would it help to send someone my version and their version of the same game?

Otherwise, to try and capture the error,  have one person never restart his client and the other person restart between each game.  And play larger games with multiple players and maybe an AI thrown in.  It seems more common on bigger games.

Ok, I finally got around to uploading the replay to Fileden.  But I've had a third desync since then, so I am including it too (In about 20 games on 1.096):
http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/10/27/2162126/My%20Documents/AutoRecord-10191455.record http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/10/27/2162126/My%20Documents/AutoRecord-10271042.record

Cykur, the desynced replay that I was referring to, where I actually saw different endings from 1 file, was our teamed game (a 2v2 on 10/19).  Note: you can currently speed up the replay by: hitting Ctrl-Shft-X to toggle the 'unseen' underground window off, and then use the speed up butttons. 

If you watch the entire game from yellow's perspective, orange gets wiped out!  But if you watch from orange's pespective, blue gets wiped out!  I believe the desync happened sometime before the 50 minute mark.  Because that is when I noticed Blue's ships no longer responding.  (As an aside, the other team's ally chat is hilarious.)

Finally, I am not certain about the third desync, because it must have occured before he even colonized his first asteroid!  But he claims that he colonized all of them.  My map never showed any colonies beyond his homeworld.  I don't know whether to believe him or not.

The only commonality between the 3 desyncs that I know of was: that they were against people with much slower computers.

Here are the file saves:
http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/10/27/2162126/desync%202.save http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/10/27/2162126/desync%202.stats

http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/10/27/2162126/3rd%20Desync.save http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/10/27/2162126/3rd%20Desync.stats

Blair, do you [or anyone] have any insights as to what causes desync?  Is there something I can do to minimize the possibility of it occurring again?  It is frustrating to play a 2 hour game, only to find out that the last hour wasn't 'real'. 

I sure hope my desync problems aren't something that is specific to my system/version?  I see enuf people mentioning it, to make me believe that it is not!

PS. I have reduced all my video setting set to the minimums, altho I've never noted my system lagging.

SageWon,

well..if I can weigh in here...

I've always thought (since retail version) that some of the desync being experienced had to be related to "vast differences" between systems.  I still believe that.

I've also believed that some desync issues (the network-related kind) might actually be aggravated by using the new netcode (Alloy).  One job network hardware has (besides blocking things) is to ensure the right traffic gets to the right spot at the right moment.  When you "tunnel" past all of those devices you tend to circumvent the benefits they provide.

Of course.....this is just supposition on my part, loosely based on my own in-house testing.

the Monk

Right now, the best way to minimize desyncs, is to make sure everyone has completely exited the game before starting a new multiplayer game. We know its a variable not being reset properly but it takes an extrordinary amount of effort to track it down. We'll get it though!

woot!.  Excellent.  Yeah, if v1.1 comes out with the desync bug, some people are going to be pretty disappointed (yes, I am talking to you conte).