Multiplayer UT not working...very well.

[Perfuzzle]

Hey, I'm a computer idiot looking for some help. Ever since I got Unreal Tournament it has worked beautifully in the single player mode, but as soon as I want to play online, it goes all screwy. Basically, it starts off fine and then gets choppier and choppier and the sound does the same until either the game just crashes and closes itself or the computer just freezes. In both cases, there is never an error message.
I know my computer can handle the game:
800MHz AMD Athlon
640MB PC-133 SD RAM (WOOHOO!)
Video card: 32 DDR Radeon All-In-Wonder
Sound card: Soundblaster Live
...anything else I should put?
I've installed the new v436 patch to no avail (the original game was v432, Game Of The Year version)
Anyway, I'm so mad just because everyone on my floor at university has the game and they all play on a LAN server, and I can never join. It's not fair!
So anyone, someone, help please!
Thanks.

[Hollow4]

few questions for you,
1.) What os are you using?
2.) How much hard drive space do you have?
3.) What type of NIC are you using, and do you have the latest drivers for it.
4.) Have you checked to see if your network settings on your card are right, this is so you will have the highest sustained transfer rate, i had a problem like this and i had to change one of my settings.

-Ryan-

[Perfuzzle]

I'm using Windows 98, and I've got about 10 Gigs free, so I don't think that should be a problem or a lot of UT people would be complaining.
I have no idea what a NIC is, or what to check under network settings. So if you could help me there that would be great. Thanks for the reply.

[alan]

Geez back in my college days it was chasing chicks and chugging beers!! It certainly seems you have enough power to run UT. A NIC is a Network Inferface Card. It is the piece you plug your LAN wire into your PC. Sounds like you may not have the right card or the right card settings. There are several speeds of data transfer. If you have a 10Mbps NIC(megabytes per second) and the network is 10/100Mbps then your card may not be able to keep up. Most networks should be able to detect whether you are at 10 or 100 mbps automatically but sometimes there is are some that do not detect properly. I had the opposite problem on my LAN where my NICs were 10/100 but my network hub was only 10mbps and I was not able to transfer files, surf the net smoothly or it just crash. I had to match up all the NICs and HUB to 10/100.
Is UT the only game over the LAN you cannot play? Can you still surf and download files normally? When you are encountering all these problems do you crash everyone else in the UT game? You wouldn't by chance happen to connect to the LAN through USB instead of a NIC?

[Perfuzzle]

No, no, we're still chasing chicks and chugging beers, but we've just added UT now on the side. Ha!
Anyway, I'll check out some of your ideas and post back here with the results. Thanks.

[Xayd]

UnrealTournament.log should give you some pretty specific crash info if the game crashes and the OS doesn't.

Win9x can only use up to 512 megs of RAM by default. There may be a way to edit that, but if you've done nothing other than plug in that much RAM, it very well may think it's out of memory since it can't use all the ranges it has available to it.

[Perfuzzle]

Well, the problem isn't the RAM since I had 128 up until a few weeks ago and the problem has been going on now for at least 6 months (when I first got the game).
I know it's not the CD since I've given it to other people and it's worked fine for them, and I've uninstalled it and reinstalled it just in case there was some sort of installation error. In between I also clean out the registries if anything had been left over.
So far nothing's seemed to work...yet.
Anyone know anything else?

[Xayd]

What's the last line in the log file?

[Perfuzzle]

What program am I suposed to open it with?

[Hollow4]

go to control panel then system, then to device manager and see if you have hard ware conflicts. Also what type of ethernet card do you have installed in your system and what is the speed set for.

-Ryan-

[Perfuzzle]

No hardware conflicts.
I've got a "NDC 10/100 Fast Ethernet PCI Adapter(MX-A)(MX987x5)" ethernet card, or so it says in the device manager.
I'm not sure how to check the speed.

[Xayd]

Just open the log in notepad.

[Prew]

I don't know about your NIC specifically, but some older NIC's cannot share an IRQ with other hardware- I had one of these cards and had the same problem you are having- network would start up, but then become jerky and then crash. If this is the case, then changing the PCI slot the card is in might help or buying a card that can share an IRQ will fix the problem.

To see if the card is sharing an IRQ go to Start-Programs-Accessories-System Tools-System Information-Hardware Resources-IRQs. Let us know what you find.

[Perfuzzle]

Here are the last few lines of the log file. Each line starts with devnet.

DevNet: PendingLevel received: USES GUID=B7B49CA611D38BCDE0006395BE341081 PKG=FCommandoSkins FLAGS=1 SIZE=5093279 GEN=1 FNAME=FCommandoSkins.utx
DevNet: PendingLevel received: USES GUID=D4F6ABE111D385CAE0006295BE341081 PKG=SGirlSkins FLAGS=1 SIZE=7226959 GEN=1 FNAME=SGirlSkins.utx
DevNet: PendingLevel received: USES GUID=24E5A72411D321104F006B8CDE9A0349 PKG=BossSkins FLAGS=1 SIZE=1867811 GEN=1 FNAME=BossSkins.utx
DevNet: PendingLevel received: USES GUID=2DB53B0011D3E9001000D3B9F6F8975A PKG=MultiMesh FLAGS=1 SIZE=76003 GEN=1 FNAME=MultiMesh.u
DevNet:

Another thing I took notice of as I was scrolling down was this line:

Warning: Failed to load 'Texture CommandoSkins.goth5': Failed to find object 'Texture CommandoSkins.goth5'

I don't know if that has anything do to with my problem. I'm pretty sure it doesn't, but just in case I put it here.

Also, the IRQ list is as follows:

0 System Timer
1 Standard 101/102-Key or Microsoft Natural Keyboard
2 Programmable interrupt controller
3 Communications Port (COM2)
4 Communications Port (COM1)
5 (free)
6 Standard Floppy Disk Controller
7 ECP Printer Port (LPT1)
8 System CMOS/real time clock
9 Creative SB Live! Value
9 NDC 10/100 Fast Ethernet PCI Adapter(MX-A)(MX987x5)
9 Via Tech PCI to USB Universal Host Controller
9 Via Tech PCI to USB Universal Host Controller
9 ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering
9 ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering
9 SCI IRQ used by ACPI bus
10 ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering
11 All-In-Wonder Radeon
11 ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering
12 PS/2 Compatible Mouse Port
13 Numeric Data Processor
14 Primary IDE controller (dual fifo)
14 VIA Bus Master PCI IDE Controller
15 Secondary IDE controller (dual fifo)
15 VIA Bus Master PCI IDE Controller

Hope this helps.

A few last words. If it was the ethernet card that's the problem, would using web browsers also not function properly? Because downloading, uploading, etc. all work fine. It's just UT that' athe problem. I'm going to download some demo game I can play online today to see if it's just UT or if it happens for all online gaming.

Thanks again, and keep me posted.

Edit: one more thing. Every time it freezes I end up restarting my computer, and when I went back in to C:\UnrealTournament after the reboot to check out the log, there was a "cache0001.tmp" there in the main folder that was not there before. No idea what this may mean, but it was suggested at one point that it may be a cache problem? No idea.

[Xayd]

Anything you download from a server that's required to play is first stored in those cache.tmp files and then unzipped to the cache directory in the program directory after the download is successful.

CommandoSkins is part of one of the bonus packs that was released for UT about 6 months ago. If whoever is hosting has the bonus pack and you don't, that could be why it fails.

Go download the Bonus Pack, Innox Pack, and Bonus Pack 4 packages from unrealtournament.com, and install them all.

As long as you have v4.32 or above you should be fine. The minimum to connect to a 4.36 server is 4.32.

Also, if you installed the textures from the second CD and you *don't* have an S3 video card, you likely have corrupted your rendering drivers, sorry . If you did install them without an S3 vid card you'll need to wipe and reinstall the game from scratch.

[Perfuzzle]

I never installed the second CD, and I'm not sure what an S3 vid card is, but I *did* uninstall and reinstall the game a few days ago, just in case something went wrong with the first installation. And no results...

I'm also downloading the bonus packs now. Thanks.

[Prew]

Yes, let us know if other online games have the same problem- that'll help clarify if the NIC is the problem- I see that your NIC shares an IRQ with the SB Live, this can be a problem for some NIC's (i.e., the NIC I received when I signed up for Roadrunner crashed when it shared an IRQ with SB Live).

Also, now that I've thought about it, I used to have a UT crash problem (a year or so ago) and a UT support person said to turn off the Directsound within the UT console. I did this and the crashing stopped. However, this was before the latest patch so I'm not sure if this is still an issue, however, it would be worth a try. Turning off the direct sound doesn't affect much the sound quality.

[Perfuzzle]

Okay, the sound thing didn't work (thanks anyway for the idea), and I got another demo of a game that can be played online and it worked fine...relatively smooth, until kernel32.dll decided to be a dick and "performed an illegal operation."
But all that aside, I'm thinking it's just a UT-related problem, and not an online thing.
Not that that really helps...

[Lord Prism]

The memory might not be the problem, but running more than 512MB on Win98 isn't the optimal situation.

Good Luck,

[Perfuzzle]

I just added 512Mb about one or two weeks ago (I splurged) and this problem has been ongoing since I got UT, when I had 128Mb.
But thanks anyway.
I had this guy here who was a friend of someone else's staying for the weekend and he couldn't do anything later. We tried to change the sound card to a different IRQ so it doesn't share the same one with the ethernet card to see what might happen, but it wouldn't let us. Anyone know how to do it?

[glc]

With ACPI controlling things, I doubt that you will be able to force an IRQ change, but you can *try* moving the sound card to a different slot. If you can find a place to turn ACPI off in the bios, Windows should install a "fail safe" bios and split the IRQ's up again. Turn off the com ports in bios if you aren't using them, also turn off the second USB in bios if you aren't using the extra ports.

[Perfuzzle]

Would moving the sound card automatically change the IRQ?

[glc]

Not if ACPI is still controlling things.

[Perfuzzle]

I still have yet to try that, but as an unrelated question, does anyone know how to change the default program that opens jpegs, gifs, etc?
Microsoft Photo Editor keeps opening them and I need to get internet explorer to do so.
I've got windows 98.
Thanks.

[glc]

Hold the shift key down, right click on the file, select OPEN WITH, scroll to IEXPLORE, select it, check the box for "Always use..." and click OK.

[BeardedClem]

Originally posted by Perfuzzle We tried to change the sound card to a different IRQ so it doesn't share the same one with the ethernet card to see what might happen, but it wouldn't let us. Anyone know how to do it?

Perfuzzle, the easiest way to change your soundcard's IRQ is to go into the device manager and look under the Creative Miscellaneous Devices section. Double click the Creative SB16 emulation and put a check in the box that says "Disable in this hardware profile". When you reboot, I'm willing to bet your SBLive will be on IRQ 5 all by itself where it should be.

SB16 emulation takes up an IRQ and is there only for ancient DOS games which no one in their right minds plays any more so don't worry about losing it.

[Perfuzzle]

Thanks!
I'll try that as soon as I get my computer back...the motherboard broke. On my birthday...
Does life get any better? Come on, someone tell me.

Thanks again, though.