**Double post**

I can seem to connect to most people but I really want to connect and play with my friends but I cant because they cant seem to connect to one another or I cant connect to them.  I dont know why this is but for 90% of people I can connect to but those that I really want to connect to I cant.

First, Happy Anniversary Brad!  I am hitting my 18th next month so I offer congratulations, and in some cases condolences

Seriously though, I'm very new to Demigod so I have a small window of refernce.  Prior to the Monday update I was not having much difficutly getting connected it would just take a LONG time, then the Monday 'cluster' update came and blew me out of the water.  Tuesday improved things a bit but I still had connectivity problems intermittentl with the  good ole NAT failed message.

Last night's update made several improvements, connecting to the lobby now happens for me in under 10 seconds and I have not dropped out of a game but I can't for sure say the same for the folks I've played with.  I had a few RQ'ers and I am not sure if they took the rest of the group with them from a dropped HOST standpoint, that is still relevant, No?  I admit I am not sure what's present in the current net code an what's being worked on for future net code releases from a cnnectivity perspective at this point.

From the lobby standpoint, I did have a few instances where I just failed to connect to someone and it never fixed itself, I think it may have been that individual because the same thing happened when trying to connec to them in subsequent games.

So OVERALL the work this week is an improvement over what it was before Monday.  Is it perfect? No, is it better? Yes.

I'll note that since day one, I have had the required ports(6100-6200) forwarded although I may have discovered an issue with that:

Prior to Monday's patch I used the ImpulseControlOption.exe utility to scale back the open ports to 6100-6150 so that  could use the remaining 6151-6200 on another PC on my LAN.  I didn't encounter any real problems doing this until the Tuesday update.  It seemed that I had more trouble if I reduced the open ports to my IP via the utility than when I opened it up to the full recommended range of 6100-6200.  I wonder if the utility isn't working correctly or that Demigod is ignoring it's settings.  I will revert back to the scaled back range tonight and do some testing to see if has any impact.  I'd like to be able to reserve some ports for additional PC's on my LAN.

Lastly, thanks for all of the hard work, it seem to be begining to pay off, it's not over but you've made great strides this week, at least for some of us. 

Enjoy your anniversary, get to know your wife again before she gets pissed at you...

AWSOMENESS!!!

This is a little story of awsomeness. Probably spelt wrong, but then again, surely it's a made up word anyway?

Joined a game and it failed, room removed or game launched, one or the other. Tried another room, got in and there were four other people in it. Soon there are nine of us, I have to rejoin because my character vanished from its place (weird bug?). A couple minutes later, a tenth and final person joins and within five minutes of wanting to play - I am in a 5 v 5. There was a couple of 'failed to connects to the room' but nothing drastic.

That is truely how a lot of my experience has been, but it is even better with the latest patch.

Sure as a side note, one of the other team dropped after about thirty minutes and they won after nearly fifty minutes of play, but other than that, just stupidly good.

Ive got the pre-release tickbox activated since around 2 weeks.

No, the last 2 patches which broke MP for the people which had their MP working fine hadnt been available for me earlier.

Those 2 patches appear as 1 patch update for a lot of people if they login rather "seldom".

May 14th update / May 15th update ( the last small one doesnt show up in the patch notes ).

wow,very nice!today i played realy fast and connectable ,nice ,gj!

Hit and miss for me. sometimes I can connect other times I can't for love nor money.

My results today

1 game around 1pm in pantheon.  Started 3v3.  All dropped (either we all lost connectivity or it was only me) after a very quick load.  Game played fine with me v bots.  When the game ended, took minutes to actually be able to leave the game for some reason. 

1 game at 4pm ET in pantheon.  4 minutes of waiting to see connect dialog... 30 seconds after that, I see I'm connected to 4 peeps.  I get to the load screen and it appears to hang.  Waiting 4 minutes and then killed program.

Next attempt at 4:12pm.  Was at load screen by 4:15.  Game started after no more than a 30 second wait.  2v2 pantheon.  My teammate dropped and it was me n ai vs 2 humans (glad to say I won). 

Next game 4:53.  Game starts at 4:54.  Perfect connectivity.

So, its still hit and miss (but delightful when its hit).  I can live with spotty (albeit improved) connectivity, but I don't think we should be having crashes at this point in the game.  It's a hell of a lot better than it was. 

Custom games have gone totally to shit, before this patch *never* had any problem (except skirmish taking ages to find a game, and constantly trying to make retarded match ups like 1 vs 2, which has now turned into 1 vs AI), but now almost every game there is 1 single person I cant connect to, even though that person is connected to me. Half the time this person is also the host so I cant even join a lobby, even though I'm already connected to *everybody* else in the game.

Sighface..

[edit]My problems have been solved (see my post on page 7)[/edit]

I was able to play any online game after the beta patch. Before the beta patch I would connect to no players at all, after it... almost 100%. The patch after that, still worked great, now the May 14th one comes and I can always connect to the host but never to ANYONE else.

When I host a game I can connect to EVERY player but no one can connect to me.

This does not change if I am in the DMZ of my router's firewall, windows firewall on/off both public and domain levels (Windows 7.) If I plug straight into my modem (Qwest ADSL2) or if I forward a million ports, mod games files, .dll's ect...

I have re-installed demigod over 20 times, re-formatted my computer to 3 different OS's (XP 32-bit, Vista 64-bit and Windows 7 RC1 [7100]) several times now. Through all the the rebuilds nothing allowed me to connect to other players and then after my 4th OS rebuild I got the beta patch and it worked. So since I hate Vista I re-installed Windows 7 and LEFT MY FIREWALLS ON and my system and router in default configs, was still able to play fine. Then the may 14th patch came out and everything broke again.

The only thing that ever let me play online was the beta patch, the one after it and that's it. No amount of personal user config affects my ability to play games online at all. It's all Demigod software based at this point.

On a side note, VPN tools and apps such as Hamachi and Gameranger work 100% of the time for me with every and any patch. I play with other people that have purchased their copies of the game to support Stardock and Gaspowered Games as a company. However I would like the ability to play online again.

Please let me know if you need any more information such as dxdiags or what-not.

Thank you,

Shantarr Dal'rae

After connection starts (other players getting connected) It usually freezes for a few seconds then I get a message saying (Match Making Service has failed. This happens to me ALOT!!

So far, connectivity is much improved. I haven't had any problems connecting to other people and getting a game started.

However, in one game a player dropped - might have been "rage quit" and might have been a disconnect. In another game, I somehow lost connection with everyone else. After a VERY brief connection window thing, I found myself playing with three AIs, instead of three players.

So initial connections look good. I'm not sure how stable the whole thing is, though.