AI War 2:Finalizing Multiplayer

Known Issues

• Any bugs or requests should go to our mantis bugtracker
  • If you need to submit log files, those can generally be found under your PlayerData folder in the folder your game is installed in. The most relevant one is called ArcenDebugLog.txt. You can send us the whole thing, or just strip out relevant parts.
  • In rare cases, mainly if your entire game crashes (that almost never happens), we will need your unity player log. That gets overwritten the next time you run the game after a crash, unlike the other log. These can be found here:
    • Windows: C:\Users\username\AppData\LocalLow\Arcen Games, LLC\AIWar2\Player.log
    • macOS: ~/Library/Logs/Arcen Games, LLC/AIWar2/Player.log
    • Linux: ~/.config/unity3d/Arcen Games, LLC/AIWar2/Player.log

• Multiplayer is in public beta, as noted below. There is a detailed multiplayer guide that we are working on building up.

• Feel free to join discussions on discord!

What Does Multiplayer Beta Mean?

Please see this link for details on multiplayer. This wound up taking up too much space in this document, so all of the multiplayer-relevant bits have been moved to the other page.

What's this phase all about?

Multiplayer is fully playable at this point, but still has a variety of glitches and doesn't have all of the features that we intend to have in the long term. So hence it still being in alpha status. But we greatly welcome folks to play, and hopefully give us reports on what is going wrong if something does go wrong.

We expect to be to a fully-polished non-beta status for multiplayer in May, if things continue as they have.

Our second expansion for the game, Zenith Onslaught, has a whole heck of a lot of it completed, but still needs more doing. Badger has done all of his parts for it, and has retired like Puffin before him, so at this point we are down to basically a one-person show again (me, Chris) on bugfixing, finishing multiplayer, finishing my parts of DLC2, and finishing the last of the kickstarter obligations. So if the schedule slips some, it's likely because I had trouble juggling that, or wanted extra time to make things truly shine, whichever. But at the start of this phase, things are feeling very positive.

2.802

(Not yet released -- we're still working on it!)

• Adjusted several parts of the game to use EnumerateFiles() rather than GetFiles(), and the same for directories, because these things cause less of a delay when you have a huge number of savegames or campaigns.

• Updated several aspects of the quick start window and load savegame window to make them load much faster when you have hundreds of savegames on your machine.

• added_shots_per_salvo_per_mark can now take in non-integer numbers. The result at any given mark level will be rounded down to the nearest integer.
  • The math is [mark level above 1] * [added_amount], rounded down. So if you have a value of 0.6, then at mark 2 it would be just 0.6, round down to 0. At mark 3 it would be 1.2, round down to 1. At mark 4, 1.8, round down to 1. At mark 5, 2.4, round down to 2. Mark 6, exactly 3, and at 7 it will round down to 3 also.
  • If you want an added shot at marks 3 and 5 and 7, then a good number is 0.5. That would give you +1 at mark 3, and +1 at mark 5, and then +1 at mark 7 rather than mark 6.
  • Thanks to CRCGamer for requesting.

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug where electrotoxic effects were not working because we had intentionally disabled them when looking for a certain crash, and it accidentally got left off.
  • Thanks to CRCGamer for reporting.

• Fixed icon not working in Powerful Command Stations Mod by ArnaudB.

• Updated the game to allow parsing "false" as 0 when doing xml processing.
  • This solves the problem of potential exceptions when someone has AutoBuildAssaultFrigates in the old format rather than the newer style.
  • Thanks to KingSyphilis for reporting.

• Fixed a random cross-threading exception that could happen in FindProtectingForcefieldToHitInsteadOfTarget() if the stars aligned just wrong. This could affect multiplayer or singleplayer, and is not a new bug, but is just THAT rare.

• Fixed a fairly rare bug that was causing units to not serialize properly sometimes. It seemed to be related to the incomingshots list on units, which is something that really should only be sent in fully network syncs but should not be sent to disk or as part of smaller network syncs.
  • Essentially, because of the many improvements made to multiplayer efficiency, this unfortunately had created a miniature version of Russian Roulette (some sort of fantasy chain gun with 2000 slots but only one with a bullet in it), where if you got tagged with it, it would corrupt your save.
  • Thankfully, autosaves are a thing, and in the example save that had this issue, there was an autosave from literally 20 seconds earlier that did not have the problem. And with extensive testing on the same save, we couldn't get it to replicate.
  • That said, some of the persistent intermittent errors that folks were seeing in multiplayer were a lot less rare (because multiplayer takes a lot more tries at Russian Roulette, not because the actual odds changed), and this is probably an accidental discovery of what those were.
  • Thanks to deR Zaubererer and their MP partner for discovering this.

• Fixed an oversight where the "Intra Galactic Coordinators Permadeath" option was still in the advanced settings, even though IGCs themselves have been removed.
  • Thanks to Democracy for reporting.

• Fixed an exception that could happen when completing a spire relic hack if the spire relic was not on a nearby planet.
  • Thanks to vinco for reporting.

Multiplayer Updates

• Put in some code with Steam P2P networking that should make it more likely to connect in general for more people.

• Steam networking has been split into four separate frameworks that you can choose from, rather than (recently) two or (previous to a few weeks ago) one.
  • This lets you choose between Steam P2P direct or relayed, or Steam Sockets (formerly Steam Connection-Oriented or C-O) Direct or Relayed.
  • The Steam P2P Direct method is new and doesn't require any special configuration. You just select a steam friend and hit connect like always. It may or may not work well, though.
  • The Steam Sockets Direct method is also new, and requires you to connect via IP address, which the host must provide to you. This works with both local and public IP addresses, and should be able to avoid NAT punchthrough -- but if that fails, you will still need to use Steam Sockets Relay to work around it.
    • This method is noticeably faster than any of the other Steam methods, but slightly less convenient because of the whole IP-sharing thing.

• On the networking tab, there is now enough room in the textboxes for you to read IPV6 addresses.

• The call to find your public IP address is now run asynchronously, so when you first click into the networking tab it no longer has a moment of lag while it contacts a server to find out what your IP is for you.

• When you are in the lobby as a multiplayer host, or in the escape menu as a multiplayer host once a game has started, it now specifies what your public and local IPs are if you are on the sort of networking framework that needs that.
  • In those places, it also specifies what networking framework you are using, in general.

• In the escape menu, if you are in single-player mode, it now will also show that. It looks like there were some ways for people to wind up no longer being a host without realizing it, and this will let people actually check. This is possibly what was leading to some (but definitely not all) connection issues for some folks.

• Fixed a bug where if you tried to load a savegame to host in multiplayer, but encountered an error, then it would switch you to single-player mode. That was going to be a problem if you were then expecting clients to be able to connect!

• Major networking improvement for the Steam Sockets networking style!
  • Steam sockets does not support multi-channel data, which is very limiting when it comes to sending main data quickly, but also having other large pieces of data that get there in a relatively-timely-but-not-so-urgent fashion.
  • To work around this, we basically followed Valve's suggestion and built in a multi-port solution, which uses the port you have chosen (for direct connection), or the virtual port 0 (for relayed connections), plus the next 3 numbered ports after that.
  • You can now see in your log as the client and host make and accept connections on each of those four channels/ports, and once all four are connected, then it starts sending data across them as needed.
  • If any of the four drop, then it will kill them all, but there's not really any reason to think that disconnects should be more frequent because of that. That was my original fear, but if that does happen I can potentially work around it a couple of ways. I have yet to see a disconnect, though, which is good.
  • Overall this takes the data sent from the host to clients, and makes something like 97% of it go on the secondary ports, which is a gigantic boost to the ability of the main port to send and receive timely information to keep the game going.

• The two Steam P2P network options have been commented-out for now, making them unavailable for use. The only advantage that they had over Steam Sockets was that they could send multi-channel data (and that was a huge advantage). But P2P has been very unreliable, and other game developers are recommending to avoid it. It's still there in the xml if someone needs to uncomment it and try it for some reason, but we're hoping to have fewer options to confuse people.
  • The need to have Steam Sockets Relay and Steam Sockets Direct as two separate options will pretty much always remain (because they work fundamentally differently and have very different pros and cons), but we'd definitely like to avoid having a silly amount of choices.

• Fixed up an issue where MP client machines could mess with the hack options of TSSes, ARSes, and similar. Now that is strictly handled by the host, and any changes that are made are sent to the clients post-haste. This was mostly already being caught and fixed on the client, but there was no good reason for the client to be doing this, and it just added inconsistencies to fix.

• Fixed a very funky exception that could happen in DoFactionStepLogic_Stage2 on random factions on MP clients in particular, but in MP in general.

• Fixed a variety of exceptions that could happen in HandleAutobuild() mainly in multiplayer, on the host or clients, due to cross-thread racing. Technically it could also happen in solo play, but we haven't seen any evidence of it actually doing so.
  • Thanks to Badger for reporting.

• The "BLARRRGH! Only authorized to execute through frame" error is now silenced. That... really wasn't actually a problem that was worth even complaining about. This was something that was showing up lately in at least a few multiplayer sessions, though something else seemed to be going on with them in general.
  • Thanks to Badger for reporting.

• Fixed a possible issue in multiplayer where out of order messages from the server might have potentially messed with the Network_AuthorizedToExecuteThroughFrameNumber.
  • There should not be out of order messages in the first place, but just in case.

• Fixed an issue in CheckForInternalShipDeployment_ReinforcementLocations() that could happen on MP clients, which really did not need to be running that logic anyhow.
  • Thanks to Badger for reporting.

• Fixed an exception that could happen in SpawnRaiders() on Marauders in multiplayer clients. Again not something they needed to ever do, it's left to just the host now.
  • Thanks to Badger for reporting.

• Fixed a number of possible cross-threading issues in CalculateShipsThatYouCanCapture(), which were vastly more likely to happen on MP clients.
  • Thanks to Badger for reporting.

• Fixed several more cross-threading bugs that could happen in WriteFleetTooltip(), again way more commonly on MP clients than anywhere else.
  • Thanks to Badger for reporting.

• Fixed another cross-threading bug that could happen in Hacking_GrantShipLine_DontDestroyTarget.GetCanBeHacked(), again mainly on MP clients. The obvious potential errors have been fixed, but then also it will now show in the ui an "error at debug stage x" message if it still runs into one. It will also silently log the error for us to look at more later, and to be able to further fix if need be.
  • Thanks to Badger for reporting.

Prior Release Notes

AI War 2:The Paradigm Shift