A Potential Evolution for EB Online

[vartan]

Hey guys,

Sorry for jumping directly into your thread here. I'm one of the developers behind Evolve and we noticed you guys were trying us out, so I just wanted to let you know that we'd love to hear any feedback you might have while trying out the party system (and Evolve in general). We're very interested in improving Evolve so it "just works" for as many people as possible.

With that said, I'm a little unclear on two things I've seen in posts above:

1) Why do you need to move the virtual network adapter around on the Windows priority list? That was a thing Hamachi often required, but I'm not sure why you need to with Evolve since we make sure to hijack broadcast traffic properly? If this really is a problem, I'd love to figure out why so we can fix it.

2) "NB: If and when you Vista/Win7 users get a network security pop-up every time you connect to a party, please choose Public option for max security. Home/Work isn't "unsafe", it just means other Home/Work set-up users can see any shared files/folders you may have.". I'd highly recommend selecting Work rather than Public since the Windows Firewall might block broadcast traffic (or other things) that your game needs. Evolve has a built-in firewall that should protect you against most common "dangerous" ports.

Again, I hope you don't mind me jumping in here. :)

Happy gaming!

1) Our game requires that the VPN network adapter be prioritized after the network adapter with which the user is connected to the Internet. Therefore, to be safe universally, I have all my players make certain the VPN we use is placed after both the LAN adapter as well as the WiFi adapter (if applicable). The latest version of Hamachi thankfully does this by default and so we do not have the issue of reprioritizing today. Unfortunately (for our particular game), Evolve by default gets top priority. As such, testing confirmed that indeed we cannot make multiplayer gameplay with that default setting. After reprioritizing we were able to play as usual. For the record, this is an issue with Rome: Total War.

2) The issue is not with outsiders, but from within the community itself. I recommend our players require a password for networked computer access as well as to turn off public folder and file sharing. This does not hinder our gameplay as we have been doing this for a while now. This is only so that we make certain the only way players are using our system is for the game and not for sneaking into other people's shared folders and files.

Thank you for your concern and I hope our feedback is of some help to you developers. And thank you for the wonderful software. Now I don't have to worry about writing a custom VPN for this community.

[Lazy O]

OMG THIS THING HAS VOICE I WAS HEARING LMT PLAYING GUITAR WITHOUT EVEN REALIZING IT


Epic historical battles here we come.

[Arjos]

Joined ^^

Just to be on the safe side I think we should still stick with hamachi until we test this out fully, yes this means 2v2 and 3v3.

Just one way to sort it out: evolve people! :P

[The Celtic Viking]

Joined.

[antisocialmunky]

OMG THIS THING HAS VOICE I WAS HEARING LMT PLAYING GUITAR WITHOUT EVEN REALIZING IT

Epic historical battles here we come.

Ban storm, I don't want to hear him fapping.

[-Stormrage-]

Ban storm, I don't want to hear him fapping.

lol, good one, clever jokes are always appreciated.

[dreijer]

1) Our game requires that the VPN network adapter be prioritized after the network adapter with which the user is connected to the Internet. Therefore, to be safe universally, I have all my players make certain the VPN we use is placed after both the LAN adapter as well as the WiFi adapter (if applicable). The latest version of Hamachi thankfully does this by default and so we do not have the issue of reprioritizing today. Unfortunately (for our particular game), Evolve by default gets top priority. As such, testing confirmed that indeed we cannot make multiplayer gameplay with that default setting. After reprioritizing we were able to play as usual. For the record, this is an issue with Rome: Total War.

I'm very curious to find out why that's the case. Hamachi had broken broadcast traffic support, but Evolve doesn't. Do you know if there's a demo of Rome: Total War I can get my hands on to try this out?

2) The issue is not with outsiders, but from within the community itself. I recommend our players require a password for networked computer access as well as to turn off public folder and file sharing. This does not hinder our gameplay as we have been doing this for a while now. This is only so that we make certain the only way players are using our system is for the game and not for sneaking into other people's shared folders and files.

Correct, which is also why we also added the party firewall to prevent the most common protocols in case you're playing with complete strangers that you don't trust.

[-Stormrage-]

You mentioned the guy who told you about the discovery but not the discoverer ?

Hellhound1 Add his name somewhere in there

[Arjos]

So far with more than 1v1s, some weird partial connection appear :S

And with the same people nonetheless, a minute you can play and then it's all "connecting"...

[dreijer]

Alright, I got my hands on a retail copy of the game and I figured out why you need to move the adapters around. Some games bind themselves to only a single network adapter when they start up, so when you have multiple adapters installed (like Evolve, Hamachi, VMware, etc.) then the game just picks whatever adapter the OS decides is the default.

Fortunately, Evolve knows how to fix this automatically, but it needs to be told to apply the fix (since we don't want to just blindly apply it to all games). I've updated the Evolve games database with support for Rome: Total war, which means you shouldn't have to change the adapter priorities anymore. Evolve will now also track the time you spend playing the game (and list it on your profile) as well as let you use the in-game overlay while you play. The updated games database should sync within 4 hours, but you can force it by restarting the Evolve Service in Windows (Start -> Run and type "services.msc" then hit OK and find Evolve Service in the list).

So far with more than 1v1s, some weird partial connection appear :S

And with the same people nonetheless, a minute you can play and then it's all "connecting"...

If you're up for it, can you invite me to the party so I can take a closer look? You can find me in the #evolve group chat.

[vartan]

Alright, I got my hands on a retail copy of the game and I figured out why you need to move the adapters around. Some games bind themselves to only a single network adapter when they start up, so when you have multiple adapters installed (like Evolve, Hamachi, VMware, etc.) then the game just picks whatever adapter the OS decides is the default.

Fortunately, Evolve knows how to fix this automatically, but it needs to be told to apply the fix (since we don't want to just blindly apply it to all games). I've updated the Evolve games database with support for Rome: Total war, which means you shouldn't have to change the adapter priorities anymore. Evolve will now also track the time you spend playing the game (and list it on your profile) as well as let you use the in-game overlay while you play. The updated games database should sync within 4 hours, but you can force it by restarting the Evolve Service in Windows (Start -> Run and type "services.msc" then hit OK and find Evolve Service in the list).



If you're up for it, can you invite me to the party so I can take a closer look? You can find me in the #evolve group chat.

Thank you. I should have told you about the way RTW binds itself to the adapters, but y'all figured that one out. I'm glad to hear it. We meet at the group chat under the group name 'EB Online' (w/o the quotes) so if you may, please try the party system with over 2 players. Battles larger than 1v1 are, to put it lightly, crucial :)

[Brave Brave Sir Robin]

I joined but how do I join the group?

[Ludens]

I'm very curious to find out why that's the case. Hamachi had broken broadcast traffic support, but Evolve doesn't. Do you know if there's a demo of Rome: Total War I can get my hands on to try this out?

The demo has been removed from the official site, but you can still find it on FilePlanet. However, IIRC it did not allow for MP battles, so I am not sure how much use it is.

[antisocialmunky]

The demo has been removed from the official site, but you can still find it on FilePlanet. However, IIRC it did not allow for MP battles, so I am not sure how much use it is.

It bounced through other players IIRC, which was okay unless bounced through someone outside the western world at which point it just became just as bad.