spacetyrantxenu
can you try connecting to me? i have a pitboss instance up at [REDACTED] (--xenu edit)
BTS, default port
NobleHelium
sorry in the middle of something
hold on
spacetyrantxenu
np, i've left myself connected and the game up.
gaspar tried connecting and was blocked, i'm not optimistic but i'm not sure if i'm a good test case since i don't know if connecting to me works normally or not
NobleHelium
well it's contacting established peer
so i got through to the first step
as in i would be able to connect to you normally
it's pretty hung though
yeah can't fully connect
i can try putting those two entries in my host file in a bit
spacetyrantxenu
i don't know if that will help on the client end or not, i had only tested launching the server. and i'm not a good test case because we don't have a baseline for knowing if you can normally connect to me or not (or if i have all my settings correct)
NobleHelium
well i'm sure i can connect to you normally because it got past the initial stage
oh
you mean as a peer
spacetyrantxenu
yeah
i'm still logged into the game
want me to log out and you try logging in?
NobleHelium
that would test the server-client case
not the peer case
spacetyrantxenu
right
NobleHelium
i'm sure it works server-client between us
spacetyrantxenu
at least we'd know if the server works ok
NobleHelium
otherwise it would say there's no pitboss server at this address
spacetyrantxenu
this is true
NobleHelium
and it found you logged in to the game, hence it found the server
ok
spacetyrantxenu
oops i hadn't logged out yet, doing that now
NobleHelium
i set the two hosts entries and it didn't work peer to peer either
spacetyrantxenu
out now
try now
i just got out
NobleHelium
works now
spacetyrantxenu
stay in, i'll see if i can join
doubt it but we'll see
NobleHelium
ok
spacetyrantxenu
nope, not going to do it
NobleHelium
i've never used wireshark before so i'm not sure how to filter it to show dns lookups
i was only filtering by the ip address of motd.gamespy.com
spacetyrantxenu
failed
NobleHelium
so how about this, can you find out what external calls it makes when you join a pitboss game?
spacetyrantxenu
i was just watching the live dump while connecting
NobleHelium
you didn't filter anything?
that's crazy lol
spacetyrantxenu
yeah i can try to track that but it's getting late tonight
haha, well i just watched the stream come in, i didn't have much activity on the network at the time
NobleHelium
ok let me try it again
with wireshark
if you're not logging off just yet
spacetyrantxenu
i can stay up a bit longer
man this just floods UDP packets like crazy
almost all the traffic is to port 2056
NobleHelium
yeah i don't know how modern game networking is done but they used to use UDP a lot in the 90s and early 00s
spacetyrantxenu
faster, who cares if the data actually arrives?
one other thing caledorn had done earlier was turn on server logging
NobleHelium
ok how about this
spacetyrantxenu
i'm guessing that setting is in an .ini file somewhere
NobleHelium
i'm logging out
you log back in
spacetyrantxenu
ok
NobleHelium
then i'm going to check the trace when it is trying to connect to peer
and see what is happening there
spacetyrantxenu
k
let me know when you're ready for me to connect
NobleHelium
you can log in now
spacetyrantxenu
i'm in
NobleHelium
hmm
nothing on the dns filter
let mer estart civ4
just in case it was cached
spacetyrantxenu
may want to flush your dns cache
NobleHelium
not sure how to do that on windows
spacetyrantxenu
to make sure it checks the host file
ipconfig /flushdns
if you're on windows 8 you may need to run cmd as administrator
NobleHelium
yeah
got it
spacetyrantxenu
i'm guessing you've begun the login?
NobleHelium
ok got something
518 39.640631000 192.168.1.150 68.237.161.12 DNS 87 Standard query 0x90a8 A civ4bts.natneg1.gamespy.com
so it's looking at that
spacetyrantxenu
oh ha
NobleHelium
then it does this
521 39.677930000 192.168.1.150 68.237.161.12 DNS 87 Standard query 0x04cd A civ4bts.natneg2.gamespy.com
and again for .natneg3.
setting those three to localhost and seeing if that works
spacetyrantxenu
i didn't see those on the server end...so i'm guessing those will need to be redirected
but...given the name of that server i wonder if we're in trouble here
looks like it had something to do with NAT negotiation
NobleHelium
hmm
good point
spacetyrantxenu
but...why couldn't that be handled between the peers???
NobleHelium
well going to try it and hope for the best
spacetyrantxenu
why would they put a server between the peers?
one of those "we'll finish the network code later" things?
NobleHelium
i dunno, the game is from like what, 2002? were the clients too dumb back then?
spacetyrantxenu
maybe
NobleHelium
ok 2005
pitboss came even later
windows 7 came out 2009
spacetyrantxenu
i think civ4 vanilla released close to the time of xp sp2, so who knows what they were thinking about with networking
NobleHelium
whelps
no more dns lookups
but it's still not working
spacetyrantxenu
so some critical NAT negotiation functionality must sit on that missing server. great.
hence, that damn VPN site that canuck soldier posted about may be required, to eliminate NAT as a peering factor? but...if the peering process goes through the missing server, and the game is set up as direct IP (not LAN where i assume the peering code would be different, like without NAT?), i wonder if it'll work
then again...caledorn should be able to take the direct IP save and run it as LAN, right? i've never tried that
NobleHelium
you would put in a local address for the server, yeah
spacetyrantxenu
yeah, you'd think you wouldn't need to pass traffic through a NAT server in that case. then again, we didn't think we'd be passing data back to gamespy at all, so..
(when using direct IP)
NobleHelium
well it was working for those dudes but i didn't quite understand what game mode they were using
since i've never tried those other civ mp modes
so i'm not sure if that's going to be the same as pitboss
spacetyrantxenu
it sounds like they were trying the internet multiplayer sort of game, like gamespy lobby used to be
but i could have read it wrong, i didn't pay close attention to it
(because i don't want to use a VPN to play!)
NobleHelium
ok
well this test is not conclusive
because we don't know whether i can normally connect to you as a peer
i'm quite certain that my network normally works ok though
spacetyrantxenu
i'd be more concerned about mine
NobleHelium
about 90% of people can connect to me ok
let me ask gaspar
spacetyrantxenu
i'm in fios. bandwidth is good, but verizon is known for traffic fuckery
oh, gaspar wasn't able to log into me when i was logged in either
NobleHelium
well that doesn't mean anything since he hadn't modified his hosts file or anything
spacetyrantxenu
i didn't try him logging in with me out
ah that's true. i had only made that change on the server end
NobleHelium
ok, you need to log out
spacetyrantxenu
out now
NobleHelium
ok i'm pretty sure both gaspar and my connection are good ones
even though we've never tried to log in at the same time
since we play together
but people can connect to him and people can connect to me
so it shouldn't be a problem
spacetyrantxenu
yeah, and before in pb18 i'd get interrupted 2 or 3 times per turn i played with people joining me, and it rarely failed. so i think i was ok
but i was just a client in those cases, so i'm not certain
gaspar is in
NobleHelium
well we're just testing the client to client
unless you think your server can handle 1 person connected but not 2 people
spacetyrantxenu
are you going to try logging in while he's in?
NobleHelium
which i've never seen happen before
yes, i'm already trying that
spacetyrantxenu
i know at one point last summer i tried the pitboss weekend thing, the first three or four guys got in ok
so the connection can handle more. if verizon isn't doing bad things and blocking ports anyway
NobleHelium
ok
well i obviously can't connect while gaspar is in
but i didn't see any packets sent back to myself either
spacetyrantxenu
you can clearly see someone disconnect
NobleHelium
so it wasn't trying to communicate to that redirected nat server from what i can tell
unless wireshark doesn't pick that up
which might be the case
it's monitoring the lan connection
which might not pick up the loopback packets
i don't know
ok
log back in
spacetyrantxenu
hadn't thought of that. i guess you could have a loopback assigned to any adapter
NobleHelium
i'm going to redirect everything to 2k games's server
then filter for that address
spacetyrantxenu
i had disabled my other adapters before starting my testing
NobleHelium
and see what packets it sends
yo
can you log back into the pitboss
spacetyrantxenu
sure
i'm in
failed
NobleHelium
ok
i tried something else
i set each of those five domains
to different ip addresses
then i filtered for all five of them
and it's sending UDP packets to civ4bts.available.gamespy.com
but nothing else
spacetyrantxenu
what port? any indication of what kind of packets?
NobleHelium
Source port: 49928 Destination port: 27900
spacetyrantxenu
ah, yeah. that's what i saw. civ4bts.available.gamespy.com:27900 (Master Server UDP Heartbeat)
i've no idea what the use of a heartbeat server would be between peers....the pitboss server should be keeping track of who's connected
and if the game option is direct IP, there shouldn't be reporting back to gamespy because it isn't necessary. i think pindicator is right about the stat tracking....that'll be a fucked up reason to finally break the game.
NobleHelium
hmmmm
well
i'm confused
not sure why it makes dns requests to those natneg servers
but never actually makes any real requests
maybe like
they had a function
and the variables were declared at the top
so it resolves those ip addresses
spacetyrantxenu
and depending on what game mode it may never call the function
NobleHelium
even if it doesn't go into the code branch that uses them
spacetyrantxenu
could be
NobleHelium
well if it's just this heartbeat (not sure where you get that heartbeat text btw, i don't see it in wireshark), and it's on UDP...seems odd that it would break the game too
i would expect it to be a fire and forget
and not something that needs a response
spacetyrantxenu
i googled that URL
ort, that's what came back. the search results seem to indicate that was a gamespy thing
NobleHelium
ah
ok
spacetyrantxenu
URL: port
NobleHelium
did it say anything about what kind of heartbeat it actually does
it actually is*
spacetyrantxenu
i didn't dig that deep
maybe it would come into play if you were using the gamespy lobby, i can see the utility of the client checking in with the server to let it know the client is still connected
it's listed as one of the ports you're supposed to have forwarded for civ4. but i think a lot of those lists had gamespy multiplayer in mind
not so much pitboss
NobleHelium
well
i don't see any heartbeats if i'm not trying to connect
i guess it thinks i could be trying to connect to gamespy
and thus issue the heartbeats
spacetyrantxenu
yeah
or taht's for the marketing dpet
dept
NobleHelium
well
can you summarize everything and post
lol
spacetyrantxenu
what, the things we tested?
NobleHelium
yeah
i don't know if this is fixable if it's actually waiting for responses for the UDP packets
because we have nfc what the responses should be
spacetyrantxenu
haha, not sure. i'm not sure i can summarize what all you tested. i'm beyond exhausted
NobleHelium
i'm exhausted too which is why you should post :P
spacetyrantxenu
haha. this trouble shooting session never happened.
NobleHelium
whatever i'm just posting the chat
spacetyrantxenu
we can post the chat and dare anyone to read through ti
there ya go
Um, btw....I need a reload 
