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AsSlowAsHell · 01-17-2014, 05:25 AM

This is a repost from my post in the PPSSPP Adhoc support thread. I figured it would get better exposure as the first post in a thread. Mods, feel free to delete my post in the PPSSPP Adhoc support thread if you like:

Gonna post this because it took us a while (6 hours) but we have figured out the perfect formula on how to make MHP3rd playable with 2 to 4 players "painlessly once set up" through fiddling around and thanks to tips scattered around on this forum and in this thread. We are extremely happy, thankful, and excited we can play through this wonderful game again with such gorgeous visuals (running 4X internal res, 4x nBRZ, 16ani, FXAA, VSync).

We played it with 3 players (actually 4, as you will find out later) -- 1 at my house and 2 at my friend's house across the country. Our pings averaged 100 and there was very little noticeable monster jitter you can probably make do with up to 200 or so. We used NeoRouter, but Hamachi and others will do. You don't need to forward any ports if you are using NeoRouter or Hamachi. Hamachi will work right out of the box but limit you to 5 per network. For NeoRouter you have have a lot more (255?) but you will either need a NeoRouter server to join or host your own which is what i do. Pretty easy, just needs one forwarded port on only the server. The details are on NeoRouter's site. I don't know about tungle and others since they are too advertisement-y and dirty feeling to me. Regardless of what VPN software you use, you must make sure THAT NOBODY IS IN "RELAYED" MODE. Highlight over people. All tunnels must be established and direct. Just because you see a direct tunnel to someone doesn't mean they have a direct tunnel back to you. Both directions need to be checked. If I remember right in Hamachi, green dot good blue dot bad. Everyone should be pingable by right clicking them in the list inside of Hamachi/NR and clicking ping. This also should be checked in both directions. If not pingable, disable firewalls or configure them properly. Of course all computers must all be in the same Hamachi network.

Run AdhocServerProOnline on the player's machine that has the best internet upload speed (use speedtest.org to figure out). In ppsspp.ini, set proAdhocServer TO THE HAMACHI IP OF THE MACHINE HOSTING AdhocServerProOnline -- even on the player's computer that AdhocServerProOnline is running on. DO NOT USE localhost or 127.0.0.1. Set MacAddress to something different on each computer. I prefer to use MAC Addresses in the Sony PSP WLAN adapter block as in 00:16:FE:__:__:__
Fill in the __ with valid hex (numbers or letters A-F).
Finally, start PPSSPP and make sure to enable WLAN in the settings.

This setup will get you "started" and working in the lobby, so verify that is the case. If at this point you do not ALL see each other in the lobby, something went wrong in the above. Verify connectivity and firewall settings. Now, for how to get into quests together and the caveats:

First of all, the emulator loves to crash at random (roughly every 3-5 min) when you are in the online lobby and particularly when you are getting into the online lobby from your house or the village. This isn't really a problem since you shouldn't have unsaved progress since you are given the opportunity to save at the end of each quest before going to this crash prone location. In quest, it is always rock solid. I recommend doing item buying, inventory management, and restocking offline, going to Home and saving, then going into lobby only for hot spring then quick quest setup followed by departure on the quest. No lollygagging. Also would be a good idea to back up your save files every few quests.

Now, for getting into quests, the most important point is that with 3 players, everyone will always or almost always crash when loading the quest. If you want 3 players, like we did, you have to set up a dummy 4th player on another machine that you take with you on all your quests as baggage. Just leave the 4th player in base camp or Quest Retire them. 2 players works and 4 players works. 3 players does not without this trick.

Once everyone is signed up for the quest, have everyone ready up but do not start the quest yet. Before you depart on the quest, everyone MUST at roughly the same time reduce their emulation speed to 25%. Coordinate over voice chat. Then the quest master hits square and immediately departs on the quest. This is because during loading for a quest, apparently the connection is very sensitive to latency. If the emulator is running at 25% speed a 200ms latency looks like 50ms to the game code itself. It also allows more time for the load itself if your computer isn't the best. Once the quest loads, everyone needs to set their speed back up to 100%. The easiest way to accomplish this is with the alternate speed hotkey. In 'Game Settings->More settings', under Graphics, set Alternative Speed to 25% on EVERYONE's machines. Then everyone hits ` once (the button to the left of the 1 key) to turn it to 25% and then ` again to turn it back up to 100%. Smooth sailing from there.

That's it. This seems complicated, but it's really not too bad once you know what to do and you spend a while getting it rolling. This will work for anyone, I guarantee it.

Another trick we do to combat crashing pain in the online lobby is save stating in the lobby and load stating after a crash. This is especially useful on the 4th baggage player we had to lug around to play it 3 player.

Also, we are using ppsspp-v0.9.6-411-gc7dbb69-windows-amd64, but other recent versions worked with the same caveats. Also mixed in a 32 bit version with no issues as well.

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If you're having issues with people dropping in the quest:

There is probably high packet loss or intermittent high latency on one of the Internet connections. Or a bad Hamachi tunnel. You must verify three things:

1) The pings of all Internet connections of everyone to the general Internet.
2) The pings both ways through all of the VPN tunnels established by Hamachi
3) The performance of all Internet connections involved at the time of the drop.

#1:

You must verify the pings to the general Internet of everyone involved. My favorite way to verify an Internet connection is to open up a Command Prompt on any computer on the LAN and running the command

Code:

ping -t www.google.com

You will see something like the following:

Code:

Pinging www.google.com [74.125.225.112] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 74.125.225.112: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=54

Reply from 74.125.225.112: bytes=32 time=28ms TTL=54

Reply from 74.125.225.112: bytes=32 time=28ms TTL=54

Reply from 74.125.225.112: bytes=32 time=28ms TTL=54

Reply from 74.125.225.112: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=54

Reply from 74.125.225.112: bytes=32 time=27ms TTL=54

Reply from 74.125.225.112: bytes=32 time=27ms TTL=54

Reply from 74.125.225.112: bytes=32 time=27ms TTL=54

The only number you care about is the number after time=. You want to see a result similar to the above -- a mostly steady stream of similar pings. For example 145, 150, 137, 155, 144 is OK but 145, 150, 2355, 2513, 133, 143 is unacceptable. It's OK to get small spikes from time to time where small is double your average ping. So if you get ~120 average, 240 spikes are OK. "Request timed out" is very bad. An occasional one is OK, but 2 or more in a row = fail. If your pings are bad but you have a Cable or DSL connection (note that satelite Internet is garbage and won't work), it is almost always uploading that causes it. Downloading rarely causes huge ping degradation. Turn off all Torrent applications, turn off Dropbox, turn off Google Drive, turn off LiveSync, turn off anything that sends bulk data to the Internet. You have to do this on your brother's/sister's/parent's/son's/daughter's/friend's/pet dog's computers. All of them.

Also, in the past in other games I have experienced bad network pings and occasional dropouts due to using wireless networking. If you are getting lots of bad pings and can't find the cause, try plugging in to the router and disabling your wireless. Generally, this is caused by crappy wireless drivers or poor signal. If you find this is the problem try updating your wireless drivers or in some cases downdating. I had a shitty Gateway tablet 6 years ago where the only stable wireless driver was the oldest version they had on the site.

#2:

Now that you have confirmed everyone's Internet is solid, you have to verify that the traffic through the Hamachi tunnels has good performance. It should if you have green lights everywhere but I have had unexpected performance problems in the past. Hamachi is another layer of complexity on top of normal connections, you can have good performing Internet but if the Hamachi tunnels aren't working right you can have bad performance through the Hamachi tunnels.

On your Hamachi, right click on each of the 3 other machines in the Hamachi network click Ping. Observe the pings. The pings to the machine that is on your LAN should be tiny <1ms to 10ms. The pings to people across the Internet will be higher than what you get to Google -- I get 30ms on average to google but 100ms average to the machines on my hunting buddy's network. Have the other 3 people/machines do the same. All in all you should have 12 ping measurements -- 4 machines times 3. There will be more variation in these pings vs the ones to Google, but overall they should be somewhat smooth.

If you have good Google pings but crap Hamachi pings, try power cycling Hamachi or restarting the computer. If this doesn't resolve the issue try looking into Antivirus or firewall software getting in the way of Hamachi properly establishing its tunnels.

#3 :

Now that you have verified all this, on the machine(s) that are dropping out leave the pings to Google and pings to the other 3 players in Hamachi running. When you drop inside the quest alt-tab to the pings and see if there was a sudden increase in pings or a string of "Request timed out". If so, the drop was due to Internet performing badly at the time.

Also, verify that everyone's emulators running at full speed. The system requirements aren't extremely high for this emulator, but if some people's emulators aren't running at near or at 100% speed this may cause problems. I cannot confirm this since all of ours run at 100%. Turn on the FPS/speed display in the settings.