So, about a month back I concluded a conversation with Uber's tech support about my problems with PA: Titans, then left the matter alone basically because the solution scares me. Some background: My problem is that the game won't recognise my PlayFab ID. Whenever I try to log in, all that happens is the game shows a split-second popup saying "Connecting to PlayFab" before aborting and returning to the normal menu as if nothing had happened. This has understandable problems; TITANS won't connect to the 'net, which means the Galactic Conquest strategic map loads fine, but any attempt to load an actual battle stalls during setup, states 'Unable to access world simulation' and boots me back to the main menu. Uber's tech support eventually narrowed the problem down to something to do with my ports. Upon reviewing the attached logfile, they narrowed the error down to the host name not resolving, and suggested fiddling with that. This is about where I threw up my hands, tamped down on my internal screaming and left it for the intervening month, because port forwarding and everything to do with it is a terrifying and impenetrable black smog to me, I don't even know why. I've recently worked up the nerve to poke about in my default gateway, but this is still well outside anything I'm comfortable with. The upshot is that basically, what I need is somebody who can walk me through opening ports on a technicolor router. Possibly with baby talk.
So you need to make sure that pa that comes in on your modem goes straight to your pc. There should be some good manuals on the internet for that modem. Don't know which version or type of technicolour you have but most of the time the User interfaces are the same. Found this one https://support.zen.co.uk/kb/Knowledgebase/Broadband-Technicolor-TG-582-Configure-Port-Forwarding Check what kinda modem you got and google along with the tags port forwarding. The only thing I don't know is what port numbers need to get forwarded for PA. I hope someone can help you with that. Just take it easy and check the manual and go through the steps. You can't really screw up and if you did in some amazing way then you can always reset (there is always a reset button on the device and try again). Though you can also undo your steps if you want. So what to do? Check what kinda technicolour it is? (type and ID is on the thing itself) Search for a good manual. Wait for someone to respond who knows which ports pa uses. Forward those by using the manual. Done. Update. Even better a technicolour manual with forwarding for PA http://portforward.com/english/applications/port_forwarding/Planetary_Annihilation/Technicolor.htm You only need to figure out the type of technicolour. Looks like portwarding is starting 9000 and ends at 9100. Let me know if you got any questions. Good luck
Well, it took me a few days to get the nerve, and life's been hectic anyway. Still, ports are now forwarded, and checked as such with tool you helpfully provided. Unfortunately, nothing's changed. PlayFab ID still won't log in, the game is still offline, and it still won't load any battles because world simulation fails. I've attached another log, in the hope that it helps.
It shouldn't actually have anything to do with your router actually. There is a line in your log that says: Code: [02:49:14.094] INFO Could not resolve server hostname "localhost" That "localhost" is your own computer. So it doesn't need to connect to the Internet through your router to play AI Skirmish or Galactic War. In fact, you can completely disconnect the Ethernet cable or Wi-Fi and that should still work. The not being able to resolve "localhost" is rather odd. That either means you have an overzealous firewall or your hosts file is broken. So can you try completely turning off your firewall as a test and see if that help? If you have a virus scanner or ad blocker, try turning those off as well. Another thing you can try is a clean boot of Windows. That will disable any software that could possible interfere with PA. Instructions are here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929135/ Finally, can you post the contents of the file "C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts"? It should look like this: Code: # Copyright (c) 1993-2009 Microsoft Corp. # # This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows. # # This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each # entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should # be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name. # The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one # space. # # Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual # lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol. # # For example: # # 102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com # source server # 38.25.63.10 x.acme.com # x client host # localhost name resolution is handled within DNS itself. # 127.0.0.1 localhost # ::1 localhost
I suspect it's the latter. I've tried disabling firewalls and antivirus before to no effect, but I don't see how it would make any difference in my case anyway. My internet security can best be summed up as regular system scans and being careful where I walk; I find that any firewall rigorous enough to be useful is both expensive and not worth the hassle its paranoia causes. I've attached the hosts file as a zip, and I think we have a winner. Now, I've got no frame of reference here, but I see no particular reason the darn thing should be 270+ pages of junk. A quick bit of googling tells me that taking a slash-and-burn stance to any lines not preceded by a # will do for a manual reset, so that seems like the best way forward. However, I'm wholly aware of my own inexperience in this area, so before I do I thought I'd just check with you folks that taking a flamethrower to it won't set anything important on fire as well.
Wow, yeah, it seems Spybot went a bit nuts in the ad blocking department there. You should back up the hosts file before you make changes so you can undo it, eh? And I was helping another player that had this same problem here. In that case doing a scan with Malwarebytes fixed their problem. So you might want to try that too if this doesn't help.
No, that doesn't seem to have done the job either. It does seem to have added half a page to the error log though, so... Progress? I guess?
Well, there are a bunch of network related things that can be reset, so maybe that will help. For that you need command prompt with Administrator rights, so press Start, type cmd, then right-click on "Command Prompt" and choose "Run as Administrator". Then type the following commands: Code: ipconfig /flushdns ipconfig /registerdns net stop dnscache net start dnscache netsh winsock reset catalog netsh int ip reset reset.log Then try pinging localhost and 4.uberent.com again.
Alright, so this has lain fallow for over a month. Sorry about that, I got worried at the sight of command prompt and focused on other things for a while. As it turns out this was extraordinarily silly of me, because you'd given me instructions that were extremely easy and, crucially, solved my problem. The game's a bit cantankerous and has the occasional blip-freeze in the loading stage, but it connects and it loads the battlescape. In point of fact you've helped me more than you know, because I was having similar problems with Obsidian's tank game, Armored Warfare, that had also been going on for a while and, just today, War for the Overworld as well. They all work fine now. So thank you, you beautiful denim-clad omnicidal bastard, you've done me a three-for-one on miraculous solutions!
