Hi chaps,

I can't seem to connect to the vendetta server any more. A couple of days ago I could check the updates, but not actually play the game.

Now I can't even seem to connect to the updates server. The address it's trying to get to is "update.guildsoftware.com:21024". I can ping the server, but nothing seems to happen any more when I try to update.

</DB>

P.S. Vendetta rocks!

I seem to able to update again now, (I haven't changed anything), but I still can't get past the "connecting" screen in game as it times out.

/me starts to cry

I'm going to get a nice greasy burger now to console myself.

I have now tried changing my DNS server from my old favoutite 4.2.2.1 to the one that my ISP provides.... still no joy :-(

Anybody have any suggestions? It is strange as I can see the site that the updater points to... it just works really randomly. :-\

i've had connection problems as well. in game, when it says "connecting" for an abnormal amount of time, hit cancel then try again. repeat as many times as necessary.

I tried to keep reconnecting, but even after about 50 attempts it still isn't happening for me :-(

Are the servers heavily congested?

Try tracerouting to majikthise.guildsoftware.com and/or pinging it.

Do you use a firewall?

I use IPChains and have had to modify my settings occasionally when Vendetta updates...dunno why...but it always works when I re-initialize my firewall with the same settings.

Just a thought.

I have a dedicated smoothwall firewall. I rebooted it after your suggestion, but it didn't seem to make any difference. There are some updates that I could run on it... which I'll get round to doing soon. In the meantime, the settings are:

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:48:54:1C:A2:AC
inet addr:192.168.80.254 Bcast:192.168.80.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:579 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:355 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:32 txqueuelen:100
Interrupt:11 Base address:0x1400

eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:01:02:87:3D:78
inet addr:82.34.47.197 Bcast:255.255.255.255 Mask:255.255.248.0
UP BROADCAST NOTRAILERS RUNNING PROMISC MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:50745 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:60 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:1
collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
Interrupt:11 Base address:0x1080

ipsec0 Link encap:IPIP Tunnel HWaddr
NOARP MTU:0 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:10

ipsec1 Link encap:IPIP Tunnel HWaddr
NOARP MTU:0 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:10

ipsec2 Link encap:IPIP Tunnel HWaddr
NOARP MTU:0 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:10

ipsec3 Link encap:IPIP Tunnel HWaddr
NOARP MTU:0 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:10

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:3924 Metric:1
RX packets:2 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:2 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0


When I ping majikthise.guildsoftware.com I see it perfectly with a reasonable ping of 115 (considering I'm in the UK that seems reasonable to me ;-) ). Traceroute seems to be fine too.

Would you like me to trace a particular port or is 80 the standard for this test?

Thanks for responding guys.

</DB>

OK, I upgraded my firewall, completely reinstalled vendetta, prayed, picked my nose for a while, ate a burger and finally.... wrote this post.

Still no luck connecting to the game server despite everything. Any more suggestions guys or will this be the nearest I ever get to playing Vendetta at home again?

Cheers,

DB

I don't know about a 'smoothwall' firewall, but maybe it's now blocking the udp port that Vendetta uses?

Read the faq for more info (if you haven't already).

Thanks for the reference raybondo. I have now read that part of the FAQ.

The firewall I use is unrestricted as far as outbound traffic and persisitent connections are concerned. I have had it for about 3 years now and have never had any problems with it before. I have played lots of games through it such as Counter Strike, Quake 3, Freespace 2... the list is quite long. My brother also has a smoothwall firewall (which I set up for him) and he has no trouble at all connecting from his Windows box. I have used lots of UDP style servers such as Roger Wilco, game voice, etc.

The problem, I am guessing is most likely to be my client (Linux) PC as it is constantly having stuff installed on it and I have mucked about with PPP on it in the past. This was so I could have a dial up modem to work and an internet connection over cable modem.

I do not notice any other problems when browsing the web or using any other software, but vendetta is the only internet game I play any more... so it hasn't been tested exhaustively.

Are there any dev utilities for checking to see if I can see the server, or perhaps turning on debug messages for the in game connection attempt. Currently I get about a 1 in 3 chance of vendetta even going into the game itself. It usually fails in the update window.

Going by the fact the connection is UDP, I wonder if there might be a problem there. Although vendetta used to work fine, I am guessing that the protocol has been updated with the rest of the game... is this the case?

In the mean time, I shall try opening up the UDP port that the FAQ suggests and port forwarding to this PC. If it works, then it would be interesting to see how many other people have to resort to these measures to play the game.

The PC I use is dual boot, and I even (heaven forbid) resorted to installing vendetta on Windows 2000. Unfortunately it didn't work with a "Cannot open Window" error. If I don't get any luck with the linux version, is it worth starting a new dialog in the Windows board starting with this error?

/me starts to get real cold turkey from 3 week vendetta withdrawel!

Sorry for the long posts..... haven't got anything better to do :-)

If you can traceroute and ping the gameserver, it should work.
We don't have any other way of checking to see if you can see the server. As far as I know, there aren't any more verbose debugging messages available, but a1k0n may know more.

The protocol version changes a lot, but the protocol itself hasn't really changed at all. We mainly change the protocol version to force people to update the game.

Maybe Vendetta is trying to use your connection to work instead of your cablemodem?

As for the error in Windows, what video card do you have again? There should be either a directx8.log or an openglerr.log or an openglinfo.log that are created. The directx8.log should have some info in it as to why you are unable to open a window in Windows.

Im having the same problem as Donkeybandit. It can take several tries to get past the updater, then when I try to connect it doesnt pass the 'Connecting' screen.
When It stops on the Connecting screen, I can see network activity about once a second on my switch (watching the leds).

Please help!

when it says connecting, just click cancel and connect again.
it always happenes to me, first time it fails (and can sit there forever if you let it to), but once you clicked cancel and tried to connect again - viola!
another bug that annoys me is that when you get destroyed and click on buy your ship within 1-2 seconds it times out. Same thing happenes when you dock in the station and quickly try to sell something, while prices are still at 0, it actually steals you money like that.
Another connection related problem I suspect is when I get killed while docking and unable to do anything but /logoff and reconnect. It happened in 18 a lot and Ronin had the same problem there once.
All thanks to my 300+ dial up ping.
Some synchronization issues no doubt.

Hmm. This all sounds very odd. Perhaps you guys could come on IRC sometime when this is happening? irc.slashnet.org, #vendetta. I'm always "there", but usually idling (a1k0n is also there, off and on).

The only real way to solve these kinds of "mystery problems" is start looking at the network at a relatively low level. Compiling tcpdump and any necessary packet-sniffing kernel mods would be a good idea. I don't know anything about "smoothwall" products, but if you could set up a rule on your firewall, logging everything inbound and outbound, that might give you a better idea of what traffic was moving across it. If you can see if your packets are getting out of your end, and I can see if they're arriving at our end, we may be able to figure out what's going on.

Assuming you aren't filtering UDP and your ISP isn't deciding to mysteriously drop your packets.. there's no obvious reason that you would be unable to connect to the game. Clearly we have plenty of other players for whom it does work. People who use personal firewall products like "ZoneAlarm" have experienced problems, but that goes back to the "don't filter UDP" issue.

Anyway, I hope we can figure this out at some point. I wonder how many other people are experiencing similar problems.

OK, thanks incarnate I will look you up at the weekend. What time zone are you in and what time would be best for me to find you?

Right, I installed ethereal (great piece of software!!) and have made a log of a vendetta session. The results are quite interesting.... does anybody want a copy of the logs plus a description of the weird behaviour?

Sure. Post the info here if you want.

:( I completely disabled my (hardware) firewall and tried but still no joy, I can't get past the connecting screen.

Even did a total re-install