standard fs2_open executable for fs2net?

why dont choose a standard fs2open executable for fs2netd? an executable that not crash when playing multiplayer coop mission ... there are several problems with that different version of executable (cvs, rc and tom's build ), choose one of them that can be played both win/linux/mac

(sorry for my english )

We're very close to doing that.

3.6.9 is what everyone should be playing on (Although no doubt some people will hold on to Tom's Build). Only problem is that we haven't released it yet. One of the main reasons why FS2NetD is up is so that we can test 3.6.9 RCs in order to get it as stable as possible.

If you know of a problem with RC 6 now is the time to tell me. I'm fixing every crash and bug I can with multiplayer but just telling me it crashes with multiplayer Coop tells me nothing. I've played multiplayer coop games and it hasn't crashed.

Yea, ive been wanting to do this for a very long time. The problem is that about 60% of the people refuse to let go of the OEB. Is what they dont realize is that the OEB can cause SCP builds to crash. Ive played about 10 games so far, 3 of which have been with all OEB players, and of those 3 I have crashed on all of them. The other 7 have worked just fine...

So does that mean that if you are in a game where there is one OEB player, and you are using SCP, you are likely to crash?

I can see it happening. If people can tell me when I could fix it but to be honest once PXO is up The OEB will be walled off from the rest of us anyway.

Blue Thunder said:

So does that mean that if you are in a game where there is one OEB player, and you are using SCP, you are likely to crash?

Click to expand...

Yes, you are very likely to crash it seems.

Kara, I dont think the solution is to make them backwards compatible. They are obsolete builds anyway, with obsolete netcodes. During mission loading (especually) they have a tendancy to drop SCP players. I think I am going to remove the OEB from my FAQ soon and post messages that discourage its use. Sure, it may seem more stable, but when it screws the SCP people over, thats no fun. IMO the newer SCP builds that ive played with are just as stable as the OEB if you run it with minimal flags.

In actuality, the root of the problem of SCP instabillity: the usual multi bunch of players NEVER reports bugs here when they see them. They just go on trying to circumvent them (with the OEB and such.) Since bugs hardly ever get reported, SCP multi never gets any better. We have had a total of 3 bugs reported and fixed so far, all reported by me. They were fixed in short order. If we could somehow encourage people to use SCP and bug report, I think we would be much more sucessful.

I've got no intention of bending over backwards to be compatible with OEB. But if I know what causes the crashes it may help me uncover the cause of an SCP on SCP crash and I am interested in fixing that.

MatthewPapa said:

... what they dont realize is that the OEB can cause SCP builds to crash. Ive played about 10 games so far, 3 of which have been with all OEB players, and of those 3 I have crashed on all of them. The other 7 have worked just fine...

... During mission loading (especually) they have a tendancy to drop SCP players...

Click to expand...

You forgot the 11 people game last week which I hosted Ok it was a mix of builds, but at least the host used OEB, and you DID NOT crash. The point is that there are a lot of reasons for crashs in every game state. For example people sometimes use ALT+TAB at forming to do something else on their computer. If they don't return early enough they lose connection during mission loading.

I hosted some missions (coop, tvt and dogfight) for people with different builds. Some SCP users crashed, others did not. So if there is a significant incompatibility between SCP and OEB, then all of them should crash.

What I want to say is that multi crashs were and are a common problem which depend on many things (stability of connection, bugs regarding non-multi problems...).

BTW you still seem to see the OEB as a rival for SCP. It's simply a way for people with outdated hardware to play plain fs2 multi (like me, who cannot run SCP at all). In case of necessity we can talk about it and I'll take a look at the code again.

So far I didn't see people complaining, but having fun when playing, whether using SCP or OEB

what is OEB?

YemminatoR said:

what is OEB?

Click to expand...

OEB is often referred to as "Tom's Build." It is named after Tom (the guy who posted above) because he compiled it. The OEB is basically the original Freespace 2 sourcecode with no SCP modifications except the ones made by Kazan to enable usage of Fs2NetD. The primary motivation for using it is that it has as many bugs as original FS2 (none) and does not shoulder the "SCP inefficiencies" that give old machines lots of performance problems. It has been a great alternative for the multi gurus who are concerned about performance. However (as I mentioned above) it has become increasingly incompatible with newer builds. The OEB has different heartbeat intervals than newer SCP builds and tends send packets when the SCP build isnt expecting them. These differences can give SCP builds joining problems and loading problems.

@Tom: Sorry if i offended you in any way, but I was just trying to get a point across. I am sure you could make just a few updates to your OEB code and it would be 100% compatible with SCP again. I know the differences right now arent significant enough to cause an insta-crash for SCP users, but they are becoming more and more noticable.

I think Taylor's plan is to wall off the OEB from FS2_Open so that they can't see each other on PXO.

I can't say I blame him. I've got quite a few changes planned for post 3.6.9 and some of them are likely to break the current way multiplayer does things anyway.

MatthewPapa said:

... The primary motivation for using it is that it has as many bugs as original FS2 (none) ...

Click to expand...

Retail FS2 has a TON of bugs in it actually. Beyond numerous general code bugs and big code issues with newer computers/OSes, it has some rather bad memory leaks. And we are still finding bugs in the retail code even today. Some of the bugs we can't even fix because it would break compatibility with retail multiplayer or retail missions.

Kazan's FS2NetD code had more than a few bugs in it too, and those have been fixed in SCP, but I don't think that the OEB keeps up with those changes. The server heartbeat issue, along with several other FS2NetD specific packets, is strictly bugs in Kazan's original code. Those packet changes are only to how it communicates with the FS2NetD server though, and not how hosts/clients work together. The FS2NetD server code has also had a significant number of changes to fix bugs there and work better with SCP builds (but not exclude anyone obviously).

There is also always the question that SCP crashes could be caused by OEB and not even be SCP problems. OEB isn't just retail+FS2NetD, Tom has made numerous changes to the code beyond just that. I don't know whether OEB actually has incompatibilities, but they can exist, and I don't think that OEB has the debugging/coding forces behind it that FSO does.


And, as karajorma said, OEB will NOT work with the new PXO code. The choices will be the original retail version, FSO code version > 3.6.9, or the icculus.org version. The retail release will still have compatibility, but the other two code bases would be required at a minimum since the number of new changes to PXO require full cross-platform support.

As a tom's build user(as of now) i would give testing the scp builds a try with multiple people on the server..only using scp builds with very little friction between the builds. Count how many people drop.. all im saying is the scp builds may have advancing features but until that time when most of the bugs have been spoted i'd stay with tom's build...not all players that drop are due to friction between builds..think of it like this: Blizzard games like warcraft 3 or diablo 2 still drop people fairly often not because of different builds but instead of many variables like the host's connnection and client connections.:eek2:

MatthewPapa said:

OEB is often referred to as "Tom's Build." It is named after Tom (the guy who posted above) because he compiled it. The OEB is basically the original Freespace 2 sourcecode with no SCP modifications except the ones made by Kazan to enable usage of Fs2NetD. The primary motivation for using it is that it has as many bugs as original FS2 (none) and does not shoulder the "SCP inefficiencies" that give old machines lots of performance problems. It has been a great alternative for the multi gurus who are concerned about performance. However (as I mentioned above) it has become increasingly incompatible with newer builds. The OEB has different heartbeat intervals than newer SCP builds and tends send packets when the SCP build isnt expecting them. These differences can give SCP builds joining problems and loading problems.

@Tom: Sorry if i offended you in any way, but I was just trying to get a point across. I am sure you could make just a few updates to your OEB code and it would be 100% compatible with SCP again. I know the differences right now arent significant enough to cause an insta-crash for SCP users, but they are becoming more and more noticable.

Click to expand...

ok but tom's build sux becouse its only window executable

I thought that playing with FS2NetD was more SCPish...