Re: game out of sync

[Stan Shebs <shebs at shebs dot cnchost dot com>]

Alan Kenwright wrote:
> 
> I'm fairly new to this, so apologies if this is naive....
> 
> I've been trying to play Xconq-7.3.3 over a LAN between two machines
> both running RedHat6.2 (one is a 50MHz 486 and the other is a Sparc-2,
> so they're both a bit slow).  After a relatively small number of turns
> (like 10) playing the Introductory game, I start getting error messages
> about "game is out of sync".  This does not happen if I just play on one
> machine against an AI side.
> 
> Questions:
> 
> Is this a known problem with network play - does anybody else see it?

Yes, unfortunately it happens pretty consistently.

> Is there a way to re-sync a game once it has got out of sync?  (Should
> there be?)

No way to resync, but there should be.  The "host" program has the
official accurate state, so it ought to be possible for other programs
to reload from it.

> Should I try to save the game on both machines at the point where the
> error occurs - is it possible to determine the problem from that?

I've collected some examples already, thanks.  The common cause seems
to be that one program is a step ahead of the other, as if the checksum
was sent too early - in one game a unit has completed its action, but in
the other it's scheduled to do the action, but hasn't done it yet.  But
there's a real bug somewhere, since if the checksum is disabled, the
programs eventually end up out of sync in more serious ways.

If someone has ideas for how to debug this sort of thing, I'd
love to hear them!

> Looks like a great game.....

If only for that d*mn networking... :-)

Stan