Before one of our regular games this week we had to wait for the last player for a while, so I did some P2P testing with other people for a change. We didn’t use it for a full game though, so I still don’t know if there are any issues with prolonged connections.
We used 3.2.6 release specifically, not the above build. Two players were on Windows, I was on Ubuntu.
We experienced similar connection issues as described before in my solo tests. At first no luck connecting, even after a short wait, and sometimes (not always) Vassal gave us “could not reach” errors. After a few attempts we somehow managed to get a working connection.
We noticed that a working P2P connection is pretty much instant, so any noticeable delay is likely an indication of failure.
Now, one of the Windows players was able to invite both me and the other Windows player. Neither me nor the other Windows player could invite him, while we were inviting each other with no problem. So, the only way for us to have a working P2P network was for him to invite both of us simultaneously by highlighting both entries in his contact list and clicking “connect”. Trying to do it any other way always resulted in at least one of us not seeing somebody else in the room.
In short:
A → B => unable to invite
C → B => unable to invite
A → C or C → A => connection
B → A & C => working three way network
As far as I know B’s connection to the internet works the same as mine (dynamic IP, behind a router and so on). He tried disabling firewall and stuff, didn’t help.
Any ideas why we weren’t able to invite B, even though it worked just fine when he invited us?
Anyway, other (minor) issues:
At one point the “remove” button in my contact list disappeared. It reappeared later (after restarting the module, I think). I wasn’t able to replicate this bug.
At some point during our failed connection attempts player B could only see me in the room. He didn’t see himself. We didn’t manage to replicate the bug.
Even after getting a working connection the active games panel sometimes shows wrong number of players in the main room. The current game panel shows the right number. It seems to automatically correct after a while. Weird behavior though.
When reporting peer connection Vassal reports 127.something.somethings rather than the proper IPs. Both under Linux and Windows. Is it trying to somehow detect IP and failing? Perhaps the solution would be to report the IP directly from the contact list?
In contact list there’s a bracket before IP:port, but not after. Like “[IP:port” rather than “[IP:port]”. Yeah, I know it’s inconsequential aesthetic issue, I’m reporting it just for the sake of it, since other players also noticed it.
Also, too many “connect” buttons that do different things made it a bit difficult to guide others through the connection process (“first connect to P2P, then click connect, then add my IP and connect… wait, where did you get confused again?”). I suggest labeling each of those differently in the future.