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General discussionWe need your help: Join us for the GOG Galaxy Multiplayer Stress Test(257 posts)(257 posts)
(257 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted February 11, 2015
Help us break the GOG Galaxy servers!

Our venture into GOG Galaxy started not too long ago, so far our infrastructure supports online multiplayer for <span class="bold">Aliens vs Predator Classic 2000</span>, <span class="bold">Double Dragon Trilogy</span> and of course <span class="bold">The Witcher Adventure Game</span>. It's been pretty smooth sailing, but there is still so much ahead of us. We want to learn everything we can about our infrastructure under a lot of stress, how much we can handle before weird stuff starts to happen. That means plenty of people doing all kinds of things at once - rolling dice, beating up baddies, killing aliens.

We're going to be hanging out in-game, and we'd like you to join us in trying to break our servers.






-We want to throw everything we can at our infrastructure. We'd like you to help us break it on Thursday, February 12 starting at 4:00 PM GMT. No worries if you're late, we'll be at it for a while. You can check your local time right here!





-Simply launch your GOG.com copy of Aliens vs Predator Classic 2000, Double Dragon Trilogy, The Witcher Adventure Game, join an existing multiplayer game or create your own, and have a good time! We'll be there too.





Once you've had a chance to play, let us know how your online experience went, and what we can do to improve it (keep in mind we're not testing the games themselves, but the online infrastructure). You can vent, praise, and anything in between, right here in this forum thread. We'll be watching!


Thank you!
Post edited February 11, 2015 by Konrad
Posted February 12, 2015
I played AvP for an hour, and I wasn't able to find a single game with less than 100 ping. A ping indicator would be most appreciated.
Posted February 12, 2015
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Pheace: I find there to be little difference. Instead of having to be logged into a third party client to be able to play the game you have to be logged into a third party client to play a *part* of the game. It may not affect you as much as the other but it's no less of a DRM only because it doesn't affect the entire game but only a part of it.
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skinandbones13: Haha no I still do not see it that way. DRM was created to prevent piracy or to limit the use of a digital item, MP was developed as an added function as developers thought this would add value to their game. If GOG wasn't developing Galaxy those parts of the game would still be locked off to people. See, that part of the argument doesn't make sense to me.

However, I know they arent 100% sepereated from each other but I just see a bigger difference than the the argument that it is DRM.
One of the goals of Galaxy is to eventually integrate with Steam users on MP. Here is where there are going to be issues. It's perfectly fine if the game didn't offer MP before and Galaxy is needed to allow you to play MP. It's something entirely different if the MP component already exists and you didn't need Galaxy if the game was sold outside of GoG. In that scenario you can say it's a form of DRM since if you buy the game here you essentially have to use Galaxy to use the MP part of the game. I don't think this currently exists with the 3 titles so far but what about future titles?
Posted February 12, 2015
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skinandbones13: Haha no I still do not see it that way. DRM was created to prevent piracy or to limit the use of a digital item, MP was developed as an added function as developers thought this would add value to their game. If GOG wasn't developing Galaxy those parts of the game would still be locked off to people. See, that part of the argument doesn't make sense to me.

However, I know they arent 100% separate from each other but I just see a bigger difference than the the argument that it is DRM.
Well that's where we disagree then. You can have MP without building it around a 3rd party service, or at the very least while also allowing for LAN/Direct Connect so you're not dependent on that service. And more and more in the industry developers have been using MP as a means of DRM, which is why you're seeing less and less fully single player games. Because they can control the parts that are MP and running through their own servers (or some 3rd party clients service). Ubisoft for instance locks their pirate ship game behind it in AC3 I believe, Watchdogs skill progression required a multiplayer achievement to continue unlocking skills beyond a certain point.

Yes, MP was create as an added value to a game. But it's naive to think it can not/is not being used as a DRM. The fact that they control the MP part of the game makes it so they have the control to 'manage' your digital content.

And the simple fact is that there are ways to not be reliant on it. And since GOG is now offering to build the multiplayer framework *for* games, if they truly want to be advocating DRM-Free, they should be requesting those games to include LAN/Direct Connect as well, or integrate it into their Galaxy client somehow (if that's possible). If they don't they're actively helping to design games that are dependent on 3rd party services, which I find very difficult to reconcile with their No-DRM stance.
Posted February 12, 2015
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Pheace: ... they should be requesting those games to include LAN/Direct Connect as well, or integrate it into their Galaxy client somehow (if that's possible). If they don't they're actively helping to design games that are dependent on 3rd party services, which I find very difficult to reconcile with their No-DRM stance.
I completely agree with all what you say, only I also want to say that I'm quite pessimistic here. Requesting something from the developers is difficult. Having a LAN/Direct Connect mode on their own doesn't work for ladders, achievements, cloud saves, ...

My impression is that GOG wants to silently drop the DRM free stance and take part in the movements towards MP/online games that inherently have DRM (in my eyes). They can still be the better alternative to Steam/Valve but the differences probably will become even less and less.

The only part that can do something really is the customer. We could not buy MP games that do not have an offline mode (Elite Dangerous would be a prime example of what not to buy). At least this is what I will do predominantly.

Witcher 3 will not be multiplayer and will not need Galaxy. Fine, perfect game for me.
Posted February 12, 2015
I'm playing AvP's stress test. It seems to run well, but I keep getting disconnected after less than a minute of play.
Posted February 12, 2015
I've been playing some matches on AvP, in many of them I get a game disconnection, and other times I find myself alone in the map.
Posted February 12, 2015
I would be on the test, but I'm still kind of at work right now.
Posted February 12, 2015
I don't know if it is derived from the multiplayer launcher or just the game itself, but it was quite a chaotic and superfast round, quite close to an epileptic seizure...even though the speed was set to 90%. But at least it worked, got connected without any problems, worked fine.
Posted February 12, 2015
Played at 7 EST and didn't experience a lag.
I was terrible, but I can't blame lag. :)
Post edited February 13, 2015 by adambiser
Posted February 12, 2015
Game: AvP Classic 2000 Multiplayer
Location: Germany
Time: around 22:00 (10pm)
Gametime: ~ 30min

When starting the game, it auto updated. If I subtract the download time, it still was quite some minutes before it finished. Maybe thats on my PC though.

The online experience was fine, didn't notice lags.

Suggestion: Part of the update process is to install dependencies. I feel like as I have had AvP 200 installed before, it didn't need to re-install this dependency (some MS redist). It would be nice if Galaxy checked if this software is already installed on the PC and skip the install if so.

If all this is invalid because the stress test was hours ago, sorry.
Posted February 12, 2015
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skinandbones13: Haha no I still do not see it that way. DRM was created to prevent piracy or to limit the use of a digital item, MP was developed as an added function as developers thought this would add value to their game. If GOG wasn't developing Galaxy those parts of the game would still be locked off to people. See, that part of the argument doesn't make sense to me.

However, I know they arent 100% separate from each other but I just see a bigger difference than the the argument that it is DRM.
avatar
Pheace: Well that's where we disagree then. You can have MP without building it around a 3rd party service, or at the very least while also allowing for LAN/Direct Connect so you're not dependent on that service. And more and more in the industry developers have been using MP as a means of DRM, which is why you're seeing less and less fully single player games. Because they can control the parts that are MP and running through their own servers (or some 3rd party clients service). Ubisoft for instance locks their pirate ship game behind it in AC3 I believe, Watchdogs skill progression required a multiplayer achievement to continue unlocking skills beyond a certain point.

Yes, MP was create as an added value to a game. But it's naive to think it can not/is not being used as a DRM. The fact that they control the MP part of the game makes it so they have the control to 'manage' your digital content.

And the simple fact is that there are ways to not be reliant on it. And since GOG is now offering to build the multiplayer framework *for* games, if they truly want to be advocating DRM-Free, they should be requesting those games to include LAN/Direct Connect as well, or integrate it into their Galaxy client somehow (if that's possible). If they don't they're actively helping to design games that are dependent on 3rd party services, which I find very difficult to reconcile with their No-DRM stance.
This is somewhat true, there are clearly times when games have used MP as a form of DRM... such as Diablo 3 and SimCity being the most strict. But locking a feature behind it being DRM? No, some features are designed for MP (meaning multiple people) and this means yes you must be online and that yes you need more than one or two people. That doesn't make it DRM. This is a design choice.

True LAN/ Direct Connect could be used, and true dev's probably should so that MP can function long after there gone. But let's be honest features like LAN have greatly fallen out of being popular today, so I really can't blame a company for not wanting to waste time/resources on such things. I feel it's far more likely that GOG will be around long after other 3rd party services companies could use for MP, so I'm glad this has been made available to them.

Anyone who has ever bought a game with a strong MP focus knows there buying into a service than they can lose access to at anytime... Besides that it's hard as hell to even find a MP session in old games now that function regardless of LAN/Direct Connect, so the ability to do that is irrelevant if you got few people or none to play with 10, 20+ years from now.
Post edited February 12, 2015 by BKGaming
Posted February 12, 2015
I've just tried to play a bit AvP. Unfortunately so far it's quite a regression compared to the first AvP test. The first game I joined was a COOP game which had no players in the game although it was listed with 7/8 players in the game list. Even worse no aliens were spawning. The 2nd try ended with a connection error. The 3rd game I tried finally had some players but felt very laggy although I'm on a good internet connection and the ping times weren't too bad. Trying to join the 4th game crashed the client ...

Edit: Hosting a game myself went much better. No problems during that game while playing for more than an hour.
Post edited February 13, 2015 by eiii
Posted February 13, 2015
I joined a game of aliens vs predator 2000 at around 4pm central and I didn't see any specific lag problems. The game I joined was a coop match and there was something odd about the aliens, though I get the feeling it was more of a game issue. They kept focusing on a specific spot and converging and attacking like something was there but there was no person, no thing, not even an angry whisper. Just attacking air. It was weird so I'm not sure if it was anything more than a bug in the game itself but hey, I'm no expert. Otherwise, smooth ride.
Posted February 13, 2015
OS: Win7 64bit
Anti-virus: ESET SmartSecurity 8
Location: Ontario, Canada
Internet: PPTP radio wireless (not cell) @ 448kbit/s avg
Start time: 10:45 AM EST

Downloaded and installed AvP 2.0.0.26 last night to be ready for the stress test ;)
GOG Launcher reported "Offline".

got an error "Failed to connect"
checked ESET firewall: GalaxyUpdater and GalaxyClient are listed, AvP_Classic is not.
manually added exception to ESET firewall for AvP_Classic.exe to fix "Failed to connect" error

at some point here the GOG Launcher downloaded an update...<sigh>

approx.11:30AM EST
played a few coop games hosted by others. very laggy. after a few minutes received error "disconnected from server"

lost internet signal twice resulting in IP address change. 11:53AM EST and 12:04PM EST

hosted a coop server "CanadaGTest". played for ten or fifteen minutes before "disconnected from server" message. repeated three or four times, each time getting disconnected.

ended approx.1:30 PM EST
Posted February 13, 2015
Two of us joined AvP sharing the same internet connection at around 11PM GMT.

Play was incredibly laggy at times but we still had fun, the lag was playable long term though on such a fast paced game.

Though we joined a server from somewhere (server called Goo), it showed our ping was 0, on both machines, which we thought was a bit strange, it did show the other players ping though, just ours that didn't work.


*edit* I just had to add what karnak1 posted after me as that's exactly the same problems we were having, we were playing in co-op as well.

"The co-op games however seemed to be broken. The AI-controlled Aliens most of the times froze or "jumped in time". "
Post edited February 13, 2015 by Moonriseovermars
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussionWe need your help: Join us for the GOG Galaxy Multiplayer Stress Test(257 posts)(257 posts)
(257 posts)