Masterserver forgetting about active gameservers? Timeouts?

[jashan]

Well, at the moment, I'm going at a rate of 10 seconds (or maybe even 5), but less frequent may do, too. I just had some serious trouble last weekend and thus put it to a high frequency without checking if that's really needed. Best is to simply try different settings... All I know for now is that after I increased the frequency to this level, I never had problems again. Sometimes connection is immediately there, sometimes it feels like it takes 1/2 second, but I could connect each time with no exceptions (as far as I remember).

Of course, keep in mind: There might still be some other reason why this may not work. For instance, a few times I simply was too quick so that the server hadn't really registered with the MasterServer, yet, when I tried to connect with the client. The server or your network might also behave "oddly" causing the MasterServer to drop the connection (not sure what this might be, but it could be a possible cause). Finally, I had a few cases when a client couldn't connect, but once I had restarted the client, it suddenly worked (without re-registering the server).

[Valendhar]

Hi Jashan,

I am currently developing a multiplayer game aswell, and i had similar problems.
Sometimes i started a server on one machine, and refreshed the list on my second machine which showed the created game. But after a few seconds the server disappeared from the List.

Another thing was, which is more frequent, i tested the game with a collegue of mine through the internet, and the web player files are hosted on my dedicated server.

When i start a server he can join the game without a problem, but when he creates a server and i want to join, i can click on the join button all the time but it just doesn't connect. I have based the program on the networking example. I Just don't know what this problem could be.

So can this be related to this problem aswell. I am still trying to figure it out.
Reading through the forum , i figured you seem to have a lot of experience with the unity networking, so maybe you have had some similar problems.

Any ideas or help would be appreciated.

Mike

[EducaSoft]

As far as I know, the webplayer starts the server automatically connects itself to itself.

So it makes no sense to connect to yourself if you are allready connected automatically I think

[Valendhar]

Hi,

I use the web player for easy testing purposes for multiplayer games.
Here is the a simple test i did.

http://www.valendhar.de/valendhardw.html

It just a simple testing application, to test some features and the GUI still has some problems with the text fields i still need to figure out, so don't mind it.

You can create a game with a name and description. Then it changes to a test scene , with just a simple chatting feature. Another player can then join the game through the available game list.

Testing it with a friend i could start a game and he could join. But i couldn't join his created game.

And sometimes it happened that a create game vanished from the list. So i thought that it may have something to do with the master server problems discussed in this thread.

Any help would be appreciated.

Mike

[EducaSoft]

just tried with 2 PCs and they can nicely connect and chat here

[Valendhar]

Hi EducaSoft,

thanks for your help. That is really funny. I tried it at home, using my iMac and MacBook yesterday and i could connect from both sides, but not all the time. And then when i tried it with a friend through the internet, we had those problems that i could not connect to his game.

That's really weird. Well, thanks anyways. I probably will see in further development stages if this will occur again.

I just thought that maybe the MasterServer could be the reason in some way.

thanks
Mike

[jashan]

Hi Mike,

Just one quick answer, because I'm on the way to my bed

[Valendhar]

Hi Jashan,

thanks for your answer. But it seems that my friend had NAT punchthrough capabilities as well. That's why it seems weird. I can check again tomorrow.

The thing with the bed is actually what i need to do aswell now (getting up early for work)

But at least there are some good hints i can look into. But if that is the case with the NAT , then the whole idea of my game can be in danger.

Thanks again
Mike

[robur]

I have been suffering from what appears to be this exact same problem in Mars Explorer, and it looks like it is getting worse by the day.

I just published the latest version of my game with a coroutine to reregister game servers every 4 seconds, and I am still experiencing "list server flickering" so bad that it is a pain trying to connect to a specific server in my game.

This is a major issue. The list server is dying! Unity: should I reregister my game every second - (or maybe even more frequently) - or is there some better way?

I was really hoping for this issue to resolve itself with the release of "the next version of Unity", but it looks like it didn't. What should I do?

[larus]

Yes, the disappearing host problem wasn't solved when the new Unity version was released. It appears the problems gets more apparent when as the server gets more traffic. At first, during testing, it appeared it was fixed, but it wasn't.

We are looking into this problem again, I'll keep you posted.

[jashan]

Hi Larus,

thanks for the update on this one! So it might be a good idea to host one's own Masterserver? Since it seems to be a problem related to traffic, this should not happen if one just uses a dedicated Masterserver for a single game.

Sunny regards,
Jashan

[larus]

Yes, definitely. Hosting your own master server would probably eliminate or at least minimize this problem, until this is fixed for real.

It might be best to run it externally, especially if it would run with a private IP (NAT) and have machines using it locally as well as externally (with port forwarding of course). Access to a virtual server isn't that expensive these days I think.

[robur]

Thanks Laurus!

I am glad to hear that the problem is being worked on, and wish you a speedy resolution to it!

I will see if I can get my own master server running in the mean time.

-Aubrey