Kane's Wrath Network Troubleshooting: Resovled addon - C&C3 Kw Fanzone

NOTE: This is a troubleshooting article with an attachment together for tackling the well-known problems in Kane’s Wrath network game (i.e. desync, CTD with error message, cannot see players in lobby, message lost in game chatting, connection time out, ridiculous kicked out, etc.). This is not a game programming fix rather a technique support for players using system operations to avoid existing bugs as well as playing game smoothly. This is not a step by step with figures tutorial but indicate where the problem is and how to avoid. It can be applied generally in Kane’s Wrath if you get the understanding while the real testing is finished under:

• OS: Windows 7 Enterprise 64bit / Windows 10 Home 64bit / Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit
• Video Card: GTX960 / GTX960M / GTX 560 / GTX 650
• CPU: I7 / I5 / AMD Athlon II
• Memory: 8GB
• Games running smoothly under non-network gaming and the local network is properly set and work (test in other network games first).

Literally, we all agree that Kane’s Wrath is not handling network well. There are few points of its inappropriate behaviour which causes network gaming problems lingering players for too long and this article is trying to tackle them:

1. The game only detect your local or VPN-based networks automatically no matter what IP addresses and ports you choose or set in the ‘Game Option’. So stay away of those in-game network options as there is no benefits of setting them (or even worse).

However, there is one option – “send delay” which may help the ‘desync issue’. Users may consider un-tick it in all your networked counterpart computers or leave it intact will help game running more synchronous.

2. Since the game does not handle the connections and maintain the packages properly, you have to set your router or server strictly enforces your network IP allocation so that game can only use the intended IP when connect. When I say ‘enforce’, I mean there are settings or behaviours behind your network controllers (no matter whether it is an ethereal router or VPN server) that can ‘forcefully’ distribute your LAN address. Conversely, other LAN connections should not enforce address allocations to leave the priority of the primary network used for the game. In ordinary routers, this setting may be fuzzy (or more relate to the behaviours of the router itself). But in professional servers (such as VPN server’s control panel), there should be security rules lead to the server enforce DHCP allocation to the clients.

For example, in SoftEthern-VPN (an extremely powerful open-source VPN project), you have to enable ‘Enforce DHCP Allocated IP Addresses’ policy to force the client PC only use the addresses allocated for the game. (See picture of this article preview)

This is crucial if you are going to play Kane’s Wrath with your remote friends with multiple adapters running in your local system. This also explained why some gaming platforms can work with KW while others cannot (because some enforce and some do not). When you can only see your companions in the game lobby and chat a bit, it is just a start (but a good start). Normally, when entering and creating a new game room, the game may mishandle the connection with other adapters in any of the players, so, be cautious. Use the network controller force the client only transferring data via the desired network can avoid that mishandling after the game detect your desired network.

3. The game only recognises the lowest numeric adapter IP address if you understand what I mean. When users get multiple IP address in your system, (e.g. 192.168.0.101, 192.168.1.101, 10.0.0.255, 169.*.*.*, etc.) the game only recognise the first lowest/smallest number – (which is 10.0.0.255 in this case) – no other Ethereal adapter IP addresses, no other VPN-based addresses. So if you have multiple adapters (and want to play via 192.168.1.101 in the above case), you may never see your companions in the game lobby, neither creating shared games.

The solutions here are quite obvious and foolhardy:

1) You can disable all the adapters except the one the game should use.

OR

2) Change your networks either switch the game to the lowest IP-addressed network or set your current gateway IP address – (say 192.168.1.101) – to the lowest/smallest/earliest one among all the adapters – (say to 1.0.0.2, 1.0.0.3).Either way, this is just initialising the network game (now you can see your friends in lobby and chat a bit), after this, you have to refer back to point 2 to have the game a real run (now you can create and play the network game).

4. To avoid desync while playing (in any official version of Kane’s Wrath, I prefer 1.00 since it is the most balanced and interesting one); you have to restart the programme each time to create and play a new game. I mean, when you and your friend both firstly launch the game, connect together, create a room and play, there will be no desync issues at all and the game always running smoothly. After that, if anyone of you does not exit the game programme and continue to another battle, there is high possibility that you are running into desync interruption. This is due to the game long unchanged bugs which never fixed in any versions, and some comment it has been a common glitch in EA games. Although there are exceptions such as, transferring a new map or costumed map with your friends in-game, or switching between costumed maps and default maps can help the issue and lessen the possibility of desync, it is suggested that after each battle (whether win or lose, finished or interrupted), quit the programme and restart and you are free from desync.

5. Align your graphic settings with your counterparts. The option.ini file shared in this add-on is supposed as a minor tweak for graphics and performance (sure under the hardware listed in the NOTE), it might be helped if you change the ‘GameSpyIPAddress = 192.168.0.2’ to the value suits you or the hosting game IP, or just delete it. What has been suggested here is to change it to the hosting game IP (although may not really help in real cases).What the crucial point here for avoiding in-battle desyncs is to set the graphics the same level between players. Especially pay attention to ‘Model Detail’ and ‘Texture Quality’ as these are the major issues triggering in-battle desync. Set Texture Quality too high will cause DX errors or ‘out of memory’ and that different model detail settings in different players causes desync randomly. It is suggested all the computers playing in the same network should have the same graphic settings.

This is quite a troubleshooting which took me long time to discover and finally find the way. The principle is quite simple: avoiding the drawbacks. In sum, the tips are:

1. use the lowest numeric IP address for KW network gaming;
2. enforce LAN address allocation;
3. get rid of unused network adapters;
4. start the game each time for each battle;
5. use the same game settings in all the players.

And then, you are free to play Kane’s Wrath with any available networks or platforms you would like to choose. It has been shame for the official never fixes those inherits bugs but put lot of vain effort in game-play balance and suddenly terminates by version 1.02. To a fan like me, it was quite disappointed as the KW is losing its unique, attractive RTS way, bending the role to competitive gaming. I played 1.01, 1.02 and the online mode for a short time and decide permanently stay in 1.00. So I never go online after that and only use network to connect with players. That is why I have to track and tackle all the network glitches I experienced in many circumstances and there is still no existing patch found (or may never be such a patch). I hope this can be quite help for those who experience the same nerve like myself and ‘cure the long-term headache’.

After all, Command and Conquer 3 Kane’s Wrath is the best RTS I have ever played and I will continue to love it. I hope someday, a game like this can be really open-sourced (such as The Elder Scroll, or even like an ordinary open-sourced projects) so that players can handle ‘after-balance’ themselves rather than an official put so much effort not in maintaining software stability but in changing/assimilating balance, just like some rest of the closed or half close-sourced competitive games.

Regards,

Cilene