TTDLX AND 2 PLAYER MODE

[Guest]

ok so i have a network in my house and ages ago i bought ttd becuase the original tt rocked! the ttd i bought was for DOS and worked fine over the network. then while browsing the net, i found a windows version of this groovey game. i downloaded it and im sure it worked fine in 2 player mode, im not really sure. but lately, 2 things go wrong when you wanna play against a friend:

1. the graphics colours go weird. so you cant really play it. but this only happens sometimes unless you play the game in a window

2. more importantly, if you build a vehicle (this happens when you havent built one for a long time) it crashes. on one computer it will say "ttdload has preformed an illegal operation and will be shutdown. on another, the screen will just freeze.

i thought that i could solve it by going back to the old DOS version but when you click on attempt connection, it has a box saying "blah blah blah, games connected....." and when you click on the X, the game just freezes. it never used to do this but now its getting really annoying. the only way i can think of solving it is by reformatting the hard drive and re-installing everying but i dont know what computer to do it to and i hate doing it. it is really annoying me. im wondering if anybody could help me or has the same problem.

thanks

sorry for the long post!

[spaceman-spiff]

hey there, anomynous

to your questions
this is what i found in the doc file: (at http://www.ttdpatch.com/)

2.9 Multiplayer Games
One of the more fun aspects of TTD is playing a multiplayer game against an actual human
opponent, which is a nice change from the brain-damaged computer players. Now the question is,
how does this work with TTDPatch?
For the most part, TTDPatch works well in network games if you pay attention to these issues:
Both versions of TTDPatch must be identical.
Both configurations of TTDPatch must be identical
Some options of TTDPatch are unsafe in multiplayer games
Multiplayer mode is very unstable under Windows 2000/XP
In practice, it’s easiest to set up TTDPatch on one of the computers, and then copy both the
‘ttdpatch.exe’ and ‘ttdpatch.cfg’ files to the other computer without changing them. If
both copies aren’t exactly the same, it’s very likely that the multiplayer game will become desynchronised,
and basically split into two separate games that are not linked anymore.
Note that under Windows 2000/XP, the game will crash or lock up if one of the player buys a
vehicles that is not a railroad vehicle, and if some other circumstances. This probably because of
changes in DirectPlay that makes TTD incompatible with these operating systems.
Additionally, it is impossible to use patches that require the Ctrl key, because this key cannot
be transmitted via the networking protocol TTD uses, and therefore two different things happen
on the two computers. As a result the game becomes desynchronized and may crash. The only
exception to this is using the Ctrl key for selecting the station size when placing a new station.
24 Chapter 2: Usage
Here is tentative list of what switches do or do not work in multiplayer. It is based on various
emails by a few people, and since I’ve never tried it myself I can’t vouch for the correctness. Peruse
at your own risk . . .
Switches that work well:
keepsmallairport, largestations, loadtime, longbridges, mammothtrains, moreairports,
Switches that don’t work (crashes or loss of synchronization):
nonstop, presignals, rvqueueing, selectgoods, spread
multihead, debtmax
Switches that have no effect:
enginespersist, morevehicles
Any switches not listed here either have not been tested, or I have received no reports about how
they work in multiplayer games. All feedback welcome, please submit corrections or additions if

so in some words, internet and 2-play is very tricky, even the man who wrote the patch hasn't all the answers
maybe you should look on all the forums and search for 'internet' or 'modem' or 'multiplay', it is after all an old game and it can't be compared with a modern game where multiplayer is the next best thing

[orudge]

Yes, the Transport Tycoon games have never been very good at multiplayer, and the Windows version continues this tradition. There's not a lot you can do about it.

[Guest]

I had the 'crashing when vehicles are built' problem.
It is due to the games loosing sync. To prevent this I have one computer viewing a folder on the other in the background whilst running ttdlx.
It seems to work fine now.