Nexuiz startup vs network stability

[alpha]

Let's say you're apparently the first to notice it since Nexuiz 1.0.

No not really, see sev's post. And also keep in mind that only a small part of community is active on forum/irc.

[esteel]

(That's the lazy way, but since this started with the OS update, I knew that I was the one who needs to resolve this, not Nexuiz)

Not really a agrument for your point of view

[divVerent]

Well, the simplest solution should be the DNS resolve timeout... so someone who knows how to do that on Windows please do it.

Just demanding will get you nowhere, though.

[ihsan]

cl_netport 445 is the best solution, What I would recommend is an automatic GUI popup explaining the freeze and offering a switch to "offline mode" if Nexuiz cannot connect to the master server. At least a "connecting to master server..." prompt would solve the problem.
I rebooted the PC (hit the power button) the first time this happened to me, I saw the GUI appear just before windows switched to the logging off screen.
It is DISASTROUS if your user thinks that your software is broken when it is working perfectly.

P.S. The context of this incident is probably worth mentioning: I was showing a friend that Nexuiz has both Mac and Windows binaries in the same folder, required no installation and we could play across OSes. This LONG freeze occured on both OSes and had I not launched Nexuiz on the PC first I may have come to the conclusion that Nexuiz just freezes on macs. In the end my friend and I had a 2 hour fragfest. My friend was very impressed.

[divVerent]

Yes, but this is a problem from the BSD sockets API providing no way to even set a timeout for name server queries.

Now, if there were a platform independent way to create a thread, this would be so easy...

[mand1nga]

Yes, but this is a problem from the BSD sockets API providing no way to even set a timeout for name server queries.

Now, if there were a platform independent way to create a thread, this would be so easy...

I wonder if we can use a stripped version of APR for this (just guessing)

[ihsan]

Ok, but surely a "connecting to master server" prompt and a button to set cl_netport 445 is not too difficult.

[alpha]

Ok, but surely a "connecting to master server" prompt and a button to set cl_netport 445 is not too difficult.

Well I gave up. Apparently the solution to this MAJOR issue could not be found on this forum.

[divVerent]

Yes, it can't be found due to lack of knowledge to do it RIGHT.

Maybe when we have more developers. At the current state of the project, it's out of scope (unless LordHavoc knows a better way).

A prompt can't be displayed at that point, as a redraw of the menu can't be forced at a specific point.

For now, just configure your computer so this problem does not happen (by simply not entering a DNS server if you can't reach any, or by setting the master server cvars not to host names but to IP addresses). In the next release, you'll be able to add these lines to autoexec.cfg to get rid of ALL name resolving:

menu_updatecheck 0
sv_masterextra1 69.59.212.88
sv_masterextra2 64.22.107.125
sv_masterextra3 92.62.40.6

Alternatively, enter these lines into your "hosts" file (/etc/hosts on Linux, on Windows it's somewhere inside system32) - this will work even in 2.4.2:

69.59.212.88 ghdigital.com
64.22.107.125 dpmaster.deathmask.net
92.62.40.6 dpmaster.tchr.no
64.22.107.122 update.alientrap.org

In both cases, note that these IPs may be subject to change, so if your server list no longer fills, try to find the current IPs of these hosts using the "nslookup" command.

[xeros]

I think that if not the separate thread to download server list then"warsow style" "Download server list" button would be the best thing to do. There are situations where I have few minutes waiting for something which I could spent playing Nexuiz and I don't have Internet connection (or the connection is flooded by other traffic) at this time and sometimes I have only local connection to few other computers and I want to make quick LAN game. I don't want to clear my resolve.conf or use any autoexec/config/console commands for that. This button would be an improvement.