Multiplayer speed/pause features lacking?

from Sins Forums

I'm kind of annoyed with the lack of necessary multiplyer features, specifically LAN. There is absolutely no way to pause the game, such as if it's dinner time. The game cannot be saved if one player loses connection. And there is no master speed control, like in singleplayer, for those times when nothing is happening.

I'm not gonna play a game with someone (particularly on LAN) if I don't trust them to use the speed control and pause features wisely. Why is such an obvious, simple feature lacking?

multiplayer
15,345 views 11 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

Its not.

Press the Pause/break button on the keyboard to pause (if you dont have one you may need to reassign the key via the options menu).

If you turn on autosave, each player will periodically autosave at the exact same time, allowing you to easily access the last autosave and reload the game if someone gets disconnected. Also, anytime a player saves the game, it creates a save of the same name on all the other players machines.

You can adjust the speed of the games features individually when setting up the game to begin with, but not during the game. When you're setting up just go to the game options menu before you start and adjust the speed settings, tour options are slow/normal/fast and you can change this for ship speed, build speed, resource collection etc.

If none of these options are available you may need to update your game via impulse.

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Deceiver_0, reply 1
Its not.

Press the Pause/break button on the keyboard to pause (if you dont have one you may need to reassign the key via the options menu).

If you turn on autosave, each player will periodically autosave at the exact same time, allowing you to easily access the last autosave and reload the game if someone gets disconnected. Also, anytime a player saves the game, it creates a save of the same name on all the other players machines.

You can adjust the speed of the games features individually when setting up the game to begin with, but not during the game. When you're setting up just go to the game options menu before you start and adjust the speed settings, tour options are slow/normal/fast and you can change this for ship speed, build speed, resource collection etc.

If none of these options are available you may need to update your game via impulse.
End of Deceiver_0's quote

Wow, I never knew about the pause option. I'll give it a try.

However, I already play with all options on fast, and it still isn't fast enough most of the time. And why isn't it possible to change the speed in-game?

Galactic Civilizations IV
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

Well you could mod it to go faster, but everyone will have to mod their game to same way for you to play on LAN or Online.

I think the reason is to reduce lag, If you speed up the game then slow it down over and over I would think it cause some lag spikes and such. But im totaly guessing here.

Single player has the option to speed up the game, In case you didnt know.

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

Yes, I use the singlelayer speed option all the time. But I have a crossover cable between my LAN machines. Lag is not an issue. Why is adjusting the speed not an option? At the worst, have an "allow speed adjustion during game" option before the start, that all players can vote on.

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

Well I was just guessing with the lag.

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top

Yes, I use the singlelayer speed option all the time. But I have a crossover cable between my LAN machines. Lag is not an issue. Why is adjusting the speed not an option? At the worst, have an "allow speed adjustion during game" option before the start, that all players can vote on.
End of quote

The LAn Multiplayer settings are based on Ironclad Online settings for games, on ICO speeding up and slowing down the game would have disastrous lag and desync consequences, and gameplay would also suffer from people speeding up the game when not in battle and then slowing down the game while in battle, and with 10 players going at it, you can imagine how obnoxious that would be if all of them could control the game speed, or the imbalances of one person being able to control the game speed, which is why its constant based on the agreed upon settings before the match begins.

This control carries over to LAN games, in which the same gameplay problems could apply on larger networks. Set everything to fast and after awhile you'll get used to it.

Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top

The main annoying thing with pausing a multiplayer game is that in game chat messages don't send until after the game has been unpaused.  You can still talk via server chat commands to your friends, but it is pretty annoying trying to communicate to all of the people you don't know in the game, especially to the one who paused it to try and figure out wtf they are doing.

Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top

That is ebcause hte game cannot record the text from chat whiel it is not executing.  Otherwise if you paused for 5 mintues and peopel were still talking, your computer would explode if you turn the replay of that thing on.  I guess they could make the chat go via server while the game is paused and not record it. But I don't know if they feel like implementing this.

Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top

Star Wars Rebellion had this ability. You could play head to head - the game ran at the slowest requested by either party.
Now assume this happened for a 5v5 - it would always run at the slowest speed as there would always be someone somewhere in the game who didn't want it running quick as they were micro managing something...

Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top

so how do you load an autosave on the Lan? As far as I can understand I can only load saves that I have made myself when while in game it clearly displays autosave messages.

Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top

you go to the mutliplayer option as per usual and then there should be an option "host saved game" on the left and then your buddies just join the game