[Rabid Duck]

When I first bought Alpha Centauri, I spent a good number of weeks trying to make a multiplayer game work on gameranger. Eventually I came across this little ditty on Aspyr's site:

"...This is a known bug in Alpha Centauri TCP/IP games. Apparently, there is a problem with Netsprocket handshaking. When the packets start coming either out of order, or late, the program tends to freak, the guest usually being the "crashee". There should be an update available in the near future..."

Fast-forward 2+ years. No update, same message on Aspyr's site, TCP/IP support still lauded in the game's feature list, Gameranger still allows hapless players to try in vain to get a game working. Hmpf.

I don't really blame SMAC's mac programmer, Brad Oliver, as from what I've heard Aspyr basically cut his cash flow after the game was first released-- he pretty much worked on the updates (and the OS X port) on his free time. Aspyr, when I contacted them earlier about this issue, kept promising a patch. Now they give me a form letter about legacy products.

Anyway, a short time ago I came across a few people on Gameranger unfortunate enough to have seen the words "TCP/IP support" among the features available to Alpha Centauri and taken it at face value. Apparently there's still a good number of Alpha Centauri fans out there more than a little irked about buying a game with an important advertised feature missing.

So my interest in fixing this problem has been rekindled. I've done my fair share of coding, but am largely unfamiliar with older network protocols. Alpha Centauri Appletalk games apparently work fine, but of course that requires all players to be connected to a local Appletalk network. Does anyone know if it's possible to tunnel Appletalk through TCP/IP? I realize this is going to require all players to boot in OS 9, but it's the only method I can see internet games working. Any help/suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

-RD

[Brad Oliver]

Originally posted by Rabid Duck:
Fast-forward 2+ years. No update, same message on Aspyr's site, TCP/IP support still lauded in the game's feature list, Gameranger still allows hapless players to try in vain to get a game working.

Actually, the issue had to do with "reliable/guaranteed" packet delivery in OS9 NetSprocket. The gist of it is that under high-latency setups, guaranteed packet delivery was busted in NetSprocket, and had been since its inception.

As it turns out, when we did the Age of Empires 2 and Galactic Battlegrounds ports, we used the OpenPlay derivative of NetSprocket and once again ran into the same issue in high latency conditions. Luckily, since NetSprocket was now open-source, we were able to fix it once and for all.

So the best solution for SMAC will be to transition to the new OpenPlay-based NetSprocket if/when I get enough time to update the Carbon version. I don't think you'll have any success with AppleTalk tunneling, since you'll still have the same fundamental problem with "classic" NetSprocket.

[Brad Oliver]

Originally posted by Rabid Duck:
Fast-forward 2+ years. No update, same message on Aspyr's site, TCP/IP support still lauded in the game's feature list, Gameranger still allows hapless players to try in vain to get a game working.

BTW, drop me an e-mail at [email protected]. I can't send you one through this forum.