Multiplayer Crashing Issue

[Lord_Chris 248]

There have been many recent reports and claims of Stronghold Legends multiplayer crashing halfway through a game. I have researched this issue, and can tell you that is has been going on for several years now. There is much evidence to prove this, such as this thread from fireflyworlds in 2010. Another thread can be found here with similar issues. These, along with this recent thread and first-hand experience have led me to conduct my own investigation as to whether the issue lies on our end or in fact, is an issue with connectivity, the game or connecting to the GameSpy server.

 

It appears that the crashing issues can be caused by a variety of actions, triggered within the game itself as well as general connectivity issues, as confirmed by one of Firefly's administrators, Daz01 here.

 

There is no way to detect if and when the game will crash and it appears completely normal until this point, however, I have several suggestions that may postpone or temporarily help with the crashing situation.

 

• Make sure you have the latest patch (version 1.2). If you do not already have this, you can download it from our download central
  
• Do not use the guard command. Using the guard command will immediately 'freeze crash' the game, meaning that everyone has to leave
  
• Do not message often, depending on the distance it could take a long time for the connection to send them message which will increase the chance of crashing. There are several other software that you can use to chat with instead, a good example being TeamSpeak
  
• Peace Time does not appear to make a difference, along with random events and most of the game configuration.
  
• Using special units' powers does not affect the game
  
• Pausing the game (via escape) does not have any effect
  
• You can recruit most types of units, they do not appear to affect this
  

 

Your game itself may crash, in which case the game will freeze for all other players because it affects the information sent to the next player.

 

I have come to the conclusion that the issue does not lie within the game, but rather connectivity between the server and the players' PC. What I believe is happening is that the connection is breaking off at a node (in the middle of the GameSpy server and at least one player's PC). Because of this, the next player in the chain is unable to receive the connection and the game freezes. It does not appear to make a difference which countries the players are from, the only difference this makes is that there appears to be more lag.

 

If anybody has any other things they believe may cause crashing please post them below and I will check them out.

Edited July 21, 2014 by Lord_Chris