Hey,

thought id share this lil video of my forged alliance main menu



http://youtu.be/5KKfcNKvtFQ

it continues for longer but i thought a 3 minute clip was long enough..

cool huh..

Thats an awesome video. You should try redeeming the CD key in Steam. And hey, its time to do this desync testing.

Hi,

last night stuart and his friend followed the instruction in the post i pasted
and found the reason for there desyncs, it seems that his friend did not remove the
current released version of DMS from there GameData folder, which is the reason for
there desyncs, to prove this true, this morning i sent stuart the current betas i am using, and we commenced a multiplayer game..

We did not desync and the game seemed solid, were not playing for real, just testing
building things that i think would cause a desync, it never desync'd

so the reason stuart and his friend were desyncing is becuase they were both using different versions of DMS, caused by i think, the DMS scd not being removed when installing the new betas...

now referring to the actual post i pasted, it does say that if the game desyncs at beat 0 then there is a data mismatch which means, either one or more of the players has different mods to the others, this also includes scd's if you or a player has an scd in your gamedata folder that ALL other players do not have this will cause a beat 0 desync.. becuase obvioulsy the lua's do not match.. this does not include mods in scd form that only have a mods folder contianed within..

now if your game does not desync at beat zero but at some other point in the game, then i need you do as that paste described and pm the logs from you and the other from where the data is different in the logs, they should be identical, where they become different i need that log extract, i can then 100% certify i can fix the desync if there is any..

Thx

Dave.

I know this has no logs with it as our situation occurred randomly but I will give as much detail as I can.

First match - no desync's

Me - Cybran
Friend - UEF

He built all manner of T1&2 buildings and also new aircraft from the 4DC
I built all manner of T1&2 buildings and also new aircraft from the 4DC

however neither of us built transports.

Second match - 10-15 mins in desync

Me - Cybran
Friend - UEF

for the previous 10-15 seconds before desync I had finished a rapid fire arty and started building an air base. my friend just built and had queued T2 transports and had a combat enginner repair/building a mine.

We seem to remember the same thing happening last time we desynced as well.

Did 1 match with no fog of war , and the mod that allows for massive resources from the ACU.

we went straight into T2 with our ACU's I built one t1 and t2 factory of land and air started building units, he did the same, we found when he finished building a combat engineer from a t2 factory, that I immediately saw ghost units (1 t1 tank, 1 t1 land scout, 1 t1 AA, 1 t2 heavy tank, 1 t1 combat bot)

My conclusion is the t2 UEF combat engineer is to blame for desyncs

just wanted to add that its always 5 ghost units that show up, and not always the same, we did another match to repeat it and found out that if the engineer dies, the ghost units go away, and the desync only shows up if I have radar up or get close enough to the ghosts, otherwise it can be built, and I can see them, but no desync.

Seems the trend stick to always 5 ghost units, and one seems to always be a t2 heavy tank, rest seem to be random.

I hope this helps

Hi DarClan,

Out of the blue woot!

i think you may have just nailed the problem, i just tested this, i was seraphim,
i been building lots of t1,2,3 units with no desync, game time 40 mins or so in mp,

i read your post and spawn in the sparky (with holograms) 10 seconds later my game desynced, woot... i think its the hologram movement that is causing the desync.. which is weird.. surely the navigator is not broken,

anyway, i now have something to work with... HOLOGRAMS.

the "Ghost" units you are seeing are holograms pals, generated by certain uef units,
t1 recon, t2 engi ect, all UEF, no other faction has holograms or shouldnt have.

Ok its not just the holograms,
ive got a mp game running here at +10 speed ive spawned in some facs and spawned some t2 combat engies, and a t2 pgen, ive also build some t2 sparkies.

game time 1h30 mins, no desync, so its not just holograms, but im not ruling them out,
it could be a combination of some things..

back to square one.

was that a skirmish or multilayer with another human? not sure if skirmish will trigger the desync, also you need to have radar up or be close to them (dunno the distance) to trigger it as well.

Hi,

Just got confirmation from stuart that he was able to play a full 8 player game 2 human 6 ai, when NONE of the factions were uef, the game did not desync, so it prolly is the holograms like you noticed, nice one..

next is to debug the holograms code peice by peice to see exactly what is happening,
my guess is that because of the nature of what they do, (die when out of range ect)
lots of dying and respawning ect that there sync table is not being cleaned correctly, its basicly leaving left over data after its dead which is then inherited by the next unit with the same id, so the desync is occuring here... ill test this tomorrow..

thx to everyone offering help upto now, also sorry to every one for the pain in the arse desync problems, rest assured its nothing that cant be fixed once found, i think ive already said its not a mod breaker, its a small error like all the rest

Dave.

Great discovery! Unfortunately, my friends have not been online or had the time to do a test with synclog. but i do recall that the game desync'd around t2. and there was always at least one of each faction on the game. aka. at least 1 UEF. If it was my guess, and im probably completely wrong. There is a bug when the radar picks up what it thinks is a unit, but the unit is a hologram. Do holograms register as units, or what? because that would change the player who has the radar, it would change their radar to show a lot of little blips on it.
Just a thought,
-Luck

Hi,
I like to add my two cents in here, I didn't chip in before as I play DMS with a heavyly modified compilation mod so I thought my contribution couldn't be useful due to the lot of interactions possible. But since the holograms have been discovered as being the main culprit of the desync I'd like to say that since DMS v7 and 4DC 0.81 my friend and I stopped playing UEF as we got systematic desync when one of us was playing that faction. One to one cheat test games traced the problem back to the hologram producing units (scout, sparky, Exp). Once holograms are ingame a desync occurs in minutes.

Even if my test conditions aren't ideal (me running compilation mod) the above posts added to my own tests seem to suggest there is definitely a problem with holograms since v.07.

Hope you can solve it Domino.

Hi,

Thx everyone

i did say its something trivial, what i meant was that the bug is is trivial, its just a code malfunction not a script breaker, ofcourse it can be fixed, i can fix anything
i didnt mean a desync is trivial, ofcourse thats very bad however what is causing it is just some bugeed code some where, which now we know for sure is the holograms i can disable these and start looking at what is happening with them, im 99.9% certain its just a clean up issue, ie data being left behind when one is killed and respawned.

dont worry, hopefully i can get this fixed very soon.

Not quite sure why this is happening, but my friend and I completely cleaned out our supreme commander: fa folders. Then we added the dms effects.scd and Domino Mod Support, the game we played then worked fine. After we both put in the same version of 4DC, it desync'd at beat 0. Which you said was caused by information not being the same in the lua files between players. I'm sure we both used the same 4DC files, and we had the same files in the previous game, so im not sure why it desync'd...

Got synclogs from that match. Beat 0 synclog comparison reveals that desync is caused by the holograms. Those synclogs are kind of huge though. How can i show you the comparison?
Also, first desync is caused by uel0303 (titan heavy assault bot)
edit: jumping to conclusions is not the right thing to do

just paste the releant parts to pastebon.com

The log is kind of huge... and its really hard to get the relevant parts out of it...


Thats the part of the synclog that my game loaded, and my friend's did not.

ummm i just need to see the differance in the logs,
not all of the log, just the first occurance of a differance,
you said you know its the holograms, show me them parts pal..

The differences is that my log is larger (has parts that his doesnt) and its always when loading a unit that has a mesh_unitfade on the end of it.

make sure your friend is using the exact same beta as you pal..
i know there is alot of them, just download the last one from this thread..
both of you and use those.

I was pretty sure we were using the exact same beta. But alright, when he gets back we can both redownload and try again.

im actually testing right now in mp with a buddy, were not getting a beat zero desync.


LATEST were using

http://www.mediafire.com/?i4clp9lenim4ykp

still desyncs with holograms, but not at beat zero
only once holograms are built.

Okay. we'll both use that version then. thanks.

Still desyncs at beat 0. We have the same mods...

one of you doesnt have the same scd's and mods as the other, because me and my pal, are in a game right now, were actually uef, not building anything with holograms,
48 mins in against 2 AI no desync... honestly..

were doing this to certify its the holograms, obvioulsy we now know with 100% certaintly its them

Sorry domino. but from last game, to this game, all we did was add in the 4dc that you told us to download. nothing more, and nothing less. So we do have the same files...