Was working fine until yesterday

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Scottbert
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Was working fine until yesterday

Post by Scottbert »

I've been running a D&D 3.5 campaign for over a year and a half now. Was using all text, with the only maps being in my mind, until a couple months ago. I tried gametable, which I had seen the usefulness of during a one-shot I ran years ago, for a couple of sessions, but people kept losing their connections and getting idlekicked. One of my players suggested maptool. It took a couple sessions to get the hang of it, but we quickly came to love it -- more features than gametable and people's connections were steady.

After four sessions using maptool, we took a week off, and then yesterday we were all ready for the big boss fight... But noone could connect. Version b53, everyone got a "could not load campaign" error. Yes port forwarding was set up correctly, yes I gave them the correct IP, no my firewall was not blocking it, the connection tester even said it could connect to me from the internet just fine.

After two hours of confirming and fiddling with settings, sometimes one person would get in for awhile.

We upgraded to b56 to see if that would fix it. It only lead to a longer error:
could not load campaign. java.net connectException: connection refused: connect

Eventually, we figured out that if someone else hosted as a player and I connected as a GM, that would work, although it meant I had to send them the campaign file ahead of time. Also health bars, while updating correctly for my vision, would be delayed or not update at all for players -- I don't know if this is because a player was hosting or a bug in b56.

So, people who have far more experience with this program than I, what can I do? I'd prefer to host the game myself if possible, and I don't like the idea that what has quickly become an essential tool for us will just break on any given day with no explanation (if it happened to me, it can happen to the player hosting for all we know.) What causes these errors, and how do I get it working again?

Thanks! --Scottbert

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kristof65
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Re: Was working fine until yesterday

Post by kristof65 »

May or may not be your answer, but I had a Windows update delete my my firewall exception for Maptool's port forwarding. Others have had their routers do similar things. I mention this because even though you may have set it earlier, it might have changed.

I've honestly had no connection problems with Maptools that wasn't eventually traced back to a network, Windows or other program issue.
Last edited by kristof65 on Mon May 04, 2009 6:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Phergus
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Re: Was working fine until yesterday

Post by Phergus »

Scottbert wrote:But noone could connect. Version b53, everyone got a "could not load campaign" error. Yes port forwarding was set up correctly, yes I gave them the correct IP, no my firewall was not blocking it, the connection tester even said it could connect to me from the internet just fine.

After two hours of confirming and fiddling with settings, sometimes one person would get in for awhile.
Most likely culprit is a bittorrent client or some other networking application.

Did you check the MapTool log file? That will be in your home directory under .maptool\log.txt.

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Azhrei
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Re: Was working fine until yesterday

Post by Azhrei »

You might also take a look at the Networking FAQ. It describes what the communication process normally is, so perhaps that would give you some ideas for things to check when it doesn't work for you?

Scottbert
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Re: Was working fine until yesterday

Post by Scottbert »

Looked through the faq, it didn't help unfortunately.

Checking the log file (remember that not everyone is on linux! In Windows, it's under c:\documents and settings\your username\ instead of /home) revealed that I was getting this error:

2009-05-02 23:57:30,703 [Thread-45] ERROR - Handshake failure: java.net.SocketException: Connection reset
java.net.SocketException: Connection reset
at java.net.SocketInputStream.read(Unknown Source)
at java.net.SocketInputStream.read(Unknown Source)
at com.caucho.hessian.io.HessianInput.read(HessianInput.java:1657)
at com.caucho.hessian.io.HessianInput.readObject(HessianInput.java:1083)
at net.rptools.maptool.server.Handshake.receiveHandshake(Handshake.java:50)
at net.rptools.maptool.server.MapToolServerConnection.handleConnectionHandshake(MapToolServerConnection.java:53)
at net.rptools.clientserver.simple.server.ServerConnection$ListeningThread.run(ServerConnection.java:222)

So, how do I fix this?

Phergus
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Re: Was working fine until yesterday

Post by Phergus »

If everyone could connect to you one day and then no one could the next, something changed on your end.

Was there a Java update between the last working session and the one that failed? If there was you would likely need to update the firewall settings.

What version of Windows XP?
What version of Java is installed on your system?

Start MT and then start a server. Start another instance of MT and try to connect to your server via the LAN tab. Does it work? If not try connecting via the Direct Connect tab and using an IP address of 127.0.0.1.

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Azhrei
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Re: Was working fine until yesterday

Post by Azhrei »

Phergus wrote:If everyone could connect to you one day and then no one could the next, something changed on your end.
It's obvious that something changed. But when asked, the user will usually say, "Nothing changed." See it in tech support all the time... :mrgreen:

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