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Starting a two player game (TCP/IP or IPX, doesn't matter) works great, but after ~10 minutes of playing the client (and always the client even when switching roles) crashes to desktop without any logfile left. A second, possibly related problem is that on the server one cannot get back to the game from the menu after hitting escape, so loading a previous game doesn't work either :-(

Any ideas what is causing this?

Tested configurations:

  • Server: win7pro, 64bit (=:PC1), client: win xp pro 32 bit (=:PC2)
  • Server: PC2, client: PC1
  • both client and server xp pro 32bit

The game runs fine on each configuration for single player (ok, CTDs occur too but after several hours only).

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I've never tried online play myself.

The brilliant guide RTSC Startopia has a few notes on its starting page. In particular, they say:

  • That online play, different from LAN play, doesn't work well. (Yeah, you figured that out yourself.) Meaning it's probably caused by desyncs due to the higher latency, something many older games struggle with.
  • That the autosave helped them after the frequent crashes.
  • That there's a rumour that the autosave itself causes the crashes and that disabling the autosaving by write-protecting the file might help. (Could this explain why it's almost after ten minutes for you?)
  • Do not try to save. Do not pause. Do not open the menu. (More indicating that desyncing is the issue at hand.)
  • That you shouldn't get frustrated by crashing multiplayer games, because it will just happen a lot. (Probably the most helpful tip, but also much easier said than done. :))
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    +1. And it was me that originally suggested that autosaving caused crashes (almost 7 years ago now looking at the timestamps...blimey), no real official confirmation was obtained - but saving in general is "dangerous" and could cause the desyncs. I'd probably advice against blocking autosaves unless you really have to, because they're the only real way to recover from a crash, but if you can't get past the first 10 minutes, it may be worth trying.
    – DMA57361
    Commented Jan 9, 2011 at 20:20
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    +1 thanks, I'll try blocking the autosave since I can't load them anyway because of that weird behaviour when entering the menu (also @DMA, the autosave doesn't help much if I can't load it...). Although there are autosaves from the multiplayer which when loaded into singleplayer have the second player being totally idle.
    – Zommuter
    Commented Jan 9, 2011 at 21:02

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