Well, adding one more post to this LONG one.
Uffe joined me over Alaska for another flight. This time we managed to clear Pilgrim Springs from generators, helos, and FMs. It only takes some more pounding to keep it that way until an insertions is scheduled.
Played for nearly 3 hours w/o any trouble, then all of a sudden I got a CTD
MS-reporting was disabled by putting in a goofy adress (mojes.server1.dummy and mojes.server2.dummy)

Very quiet here nowdays, am I the only one sticking on to eech-MP ??? I don't think the MP is worse that with 151D and still trying to be aviable (sp?) for some flying Tue, Wed, Thu.
If all goes well I'll be wating on ICQ tomorrow (Tue) night 21.00 BST, looking for pilots to join me in Alaska. 160w11 + 151_D.txt (don't forget your winter-textures)

Anyone going to be around tonight. 21:00 BST ICQ

I believe part of the problem is everyone is running different versions of eech with different addon/mods... just a bit too confusing... Like you mentioned... winter textures (??)

Well, the Alaska-campaign is a "new" one, from the start. Snowy, so it isn't so nice to fly around in a desert or forest camo, tents and vehicles brown/green, so some skilled guys modded the textures to be snow-camo.
You can find 'em at the Tarawa-place: http://tarawa.free.fr/
or d/l a slightly modded version (the Comanche isn't totally white as in the Tarawa-skins) from my FTP.
It's a rather large file (6 Megs) and I only have storage for 10 MB, so I won't let it stay there forever -if I need the space I'll remove it but I don't see any need for the coming 30 days or so.
Here's the link:
Alaska.zip
Back-up your textures.pal in folder \Razorworks\cohokum\3ddata
and then unpack this file to the same folder (I just renamed "textures.pal" to "org-textures.pal". When I'm switching back to the orginal I'll rename the current one to "alaska-textures.pal" and then rename back the "org-textures.pal")
This is valid for graphic-cards that uses the pal-version of textures, that is Voodoo-cards and newer (than TNT2 I think) nVidia-cards. Don't know abour Radeon-cards

Well, didn't see anyone last night. I will try again tonight. 21:00 BST ICQ

Edit : typos :rolleyes:

Well, we got an Alaska campaign up and running.
160w11+151_D.txt as WUT-profile.
Fixer and Uffe joined me tonight. We got a smooth game with everything working for an hour or so, then Fixer suddently got kicked out w/o error messages and the host continued to run. Fixer rejoined but shortly after both host and client(s) got CTDs with the ususal error messages about "default_destroy_entitiy_family" and so on.
Seems that's the first bug that appears when MP'ing, hope Schorpp and Werewolf can straighten this out this fall. Then, maybe, we could get new error messages, but it should be a step in the right direction.
I'll try to be on-line on ICQ tomorrow night at 21.00 BST

Fixer and I continued the Arctic Fortress last night, thnx for joining me. We got about 2 hrs of playing with just one problem, Fixer lost his keyboard once but alt-tab out and back in solved it.
Around 4 hours game-time and now we've lost Pilgrim Springs back to the Red side, but got a couple of FARPs nearby and Pilgrim is out of action, so it should be possible to get it back. We was down to 15% choppers for a while but at the end last night we where back to around 24% -looks like we survived that too, just have to take care of the ones we got.

It got hairy there for a bit. I think we lost a few helos to Arty down in the SW. There were T-80s and the big self propelled guns coming in along the Southern coastal road. We were so tied up with Pilgrim Springs we forgot to check the back door

I agree, kind of desperate (word?) when we got below 20%. I had a new approach this time, -don't bother about the choppers and arty, focus on the A/B and FARPs. Looks like it wasn't that clever, we have to keep one eye at those threats
Well, think we managed to survive, next time we'll turn the table and get on the offensive to the West and Port Clarence (name?). We have to clear some FARPs on our way west, and keep an eye on those choppers doing recons and insertions to avoid loosing our territory. Wouldn't hurt with a third human pilot, two on the attack and the third in defense.

Reporting in, it isn't much activity around eech nowdays -is the game in it's final hours to die??? (as a MP-game)
Had some conversation with Schorpp and got sad news: The server-side (host) of the MP-code need a rather big rebuild and he can't manage that alone, so he's waiting to see if additional (skilled) coders will show up.
At the moment I'm not aware of any changes in the source going on.
If nothing happens in the near future I'll comment out two lines in the MP-code, similar to the one Werewolf took away a while ago for stability. Then build an exe out of it and distribute it to the pilots I usually fly with for testing (only Fixer and Uffe at the moment -we miss you VolkerB, hope pcriddle will come back one day, too ).
In addition I've hacked in the AH64-A and KA-50 to be RRR-capable.
Last night Uffe joined me for a couple of hours flying in Alaska -not a single hick-up regarding stability. We got Pilgrim Springs back and blowed some more FARPs away and a bunch of Red choppers. Now wer're around 32% choppers, pushing NE from Pilgrim and aiming West towards the last red A/B
Edit: typo's

Flew with Moje (Host, thanks Moje), Volker and Uffe last night. Didn't last very long though. We kept getting a message I've not seen before.


"ENTITY_COMMS-ZERO encountered during receive"
Click "OK" button crash to desktop.


We tried several time with different setting and saved games but still got the message.

This is sad, even with the source code there is no one to develop it if we had something like an F4 following this would be extreme eech. I'll show up for some MP tonight as well...

This error message origins from a subroutine called "en_comms.c". Looks like it handles info about the entities (helo's, FMs, veichles, ships....) in the game. It's an error indicating that there was an empty packet recived -but this is how far my knowledge goes.
Initially we had prob's with getting VolkerB in the game, that was due to different packet size settings in our eech.ini-files.
I'm not sure what version of eech.ini you have Volker, is it a eech.ini created by an earlier version of cohokum? I ask because the default value for cpds could have changed, that could be the reason you had 512 and I had 450... Different cpds makes you see the game, but hangs on "connecting" screen.
Once we've sorted that out Volker was able to join, but I think we got the error when you tried to fly a chopper.
Two - three test-possibilities as I see it tonight, either you delete your eech.ini, start cohokum to regenerate eech.ini. Change the values to your preferences and we try to MP.
2nd, I transfer my eech.ini to you over ICQ, could affect your stick-settings
3rd (maybe the best), I think thje following values are essential in the communications:
cpac=1 (maybe not critical capture enemy aircraft)
pss=hox.dhs.org I was running host with dummy-values here -could be the fault
sss=eech.dhs.org I was running host with dummy-values here -could be the fault
cpds=450 packet size -critical
cgs=1 communication method eech's own = 0 Directplay = 1
cvc=1 validate connection (maybe not critical)

This is a copy of my "communication" part of eech.ini (remember blanks are truncated in this forum):
maxplayers=6 # maximum number of players in a multiplayer game, def = 4
ipa= # ip address = TCPIP address to connect to. A HOST can leave out the value.
pss=hox.dhs.org # primary server setting (server internet address)
sss=eech.dhs.org # secondary server setting (server internet address)
ccrs=204800 # connection receive size, initial guess of campaign data size (default = 200k)
cdrs=204800 # data record size, similar to above…
cpbs=204800 # pack buffer size, similar to above…
cpds=450 # packet data size (edf = 512)
cgs=1 # force the comms to use DirectPlay guaranteed send instead of its own (def=0).
crls=1000 # packet history list size, increase if client keeps getting kicked out by server (default = 1000)
crl=100 # number of times a client can re-request the same packet, increase for poor connections (def=10)
cpt=1000 # time delay in seconds the comms will wait for a packet before re-requesting it. (default = 5s)
crto=2 # time comms will wait before assuming re-requested packets was lost (default = 2s)
mur=5 # max update framerate for a server, na for a client (default = 5fps for TCPIP, 15fps for IPX)
cig=1 # interpolate helicopter position for smoother visuals
cvc=1 # validate connection, removes dead player husks when client crashes
cptl=10 # packet throttle limit, mainly for modems, governs the flow rate of packets
cto=5 # timeout, the amount of time to wait before removing dead player husks
eufr=2 # client server entity update framerate, no. of iterations
css=0 # show communication stats (def = 0)
cist=500 # comms initial sleep time

Edit. Maybe I should add: don't worrie about the cpt-value. It looks like there shouldn't be any re-requests, but this value is only valid if cgs=0. If cgs=1 the game sets cpt=1000 to avoid clash between eech's own comms prog and directplay

I'll re-check my EECH.INI with yours, got Fixer's last night already.
Btw, there's no eech.dhs.org (setting for second server), at least I can't ping it, so I changed that to the same value as the primary.

See you later...

Edit: Apart from the second server (sss) our communication sections are identical now.

Well, we finally got it going for a couple of hours. We got some kick-outs and CTDs but managed to advance quite a bit in the campaign, should be pretty simple form now on.
Couldn't get the failures sorted out in a way that cold help the coders but I enjoyed the flight anyway.
If you intend to play eech on-line I think you have to prepare for some CTDs and reboots. We got it flying for a couple of hours, enough to get fried a couple of times, and a bit of fun.
Thnx to Fixer, VolkerB and Uffe who all joined me in the snowy landscape of Alaska

Despite the few forced breaks I enjoyed it a lot after months of not playing any computer game at all. And I’m happy to report that I didn’t crash a single chopper , not even the one time when I landed a Comanche with the gear up :rolleyes:

The down wash effect looks awesome especially at night (10 pm) over the snowy landscape of Alaska. When you watch other choppers flying low over the ground you can see a light white cloud surrounding them, even if they are a bit away – very nicely done! I took a few pics but I don’t think they do the effect justice.

That downwash effect is good. I followed 4 Havocs all the way to their FARP by MK1 eyeball or was it the MKII. I could see 4 white "lights" moving across the snow , so, I followed. After about 15k they landed at a FARP. I switch on me FLIR, arm HFs, 4 dead Havocs.

Might have to be careful about that if against human enemy.

Good to fly with you again Volker and thanks to Moje for hosting.

Last night VolkerB joined me (thnx Volker) over Alaska for a final session. It wasn't much action left, Volker took a tour way up to the Northwest searching for the last few red choppers while I was visiting the FARPs in SW. We got a bunch of FM-diggers, both at Solomon and Pilgrim Springs, so our Fighters were grounded. I wish someone coould look into that bug.
It looks a bit like the helo's FARP bug, I watched some jet come in for landing and almost every time half of the aircraft was below ground at the final approach before pulling up the nose and land. Something is wrong with the wat they are approaching their final WP(s) before touch-down.
Anyway Volker finally found the last remaining Hokums and Havocs at a red FARP not far from Solomon and the campaign was over.

We were discussing starting up Sentinel's version of the Yemen campagin next -the one witht threee FARPs on each location and three times as many SAMs

Thnx to Uffe and VolkerB who both joined me in Sentinel's Yemen campaign. think I never lost so many choppers in 1.5 hours as this time.
We used an experimental exe I made, with RRR-capable Apache (AH64-A) and Hokum (KA-50) besides Blackhawk & Hind.
All went smooth for 1.5 hours, host got the usual CTD when one of the clients left.
If schorpp just could get a helping hand in fixing the host MP-code, but the source-code seems to be more or less dead nowdays.

Anyway, I'll try to be in the air next week too. Anyone who wants to join is welcome -you'll ahve to contact me first to get the experimental exe. ICQ# is in my profile.
Remember it's experimental, not any kind of release, although I "only" hacked in the AH64-A and KA-50 and commented out to unnecesasry "traps" in the MP-code (according to werewolf) upon 160w11