Zdoom Consistency failures

Ok, I'm trying to have a LAN party, and Captain Mancubus worked fine, but now using Dark 7, I'm getting consistency failures. What are they and how do I stop them?

I can't answer your question myself, but take a look at the Zdoom Networking Forum. There is at least one thread that addresses this point.

A consistency failure indicates that the "state of the game" is not identical on all machines. Usually you'll see a number associated with that message. 0 should indicate a disagreement with the host, other numbers like 1 or 2 etc. indicate disagreement with the first or second player to join, etc. If all players have the same number after their consistency failure message, take a closer look at that computer's settings.

Are you using the latest version of zdoom? Get the 36.cab file from zdoom.notgod.com/lars.

Make sure that all files being used on all machines are identical, including zdoom.exe, zdoom.wad, doom2.wad and any other wads. Make sure the zdoom command lines are identical too, except for -host and -join.

We use zdoom here on a LAN for DM and coop and consistency failures are rare but can happen with no obvious reason. If they occur with one wad only, there must be something unique about it. What's the file name? Oh - I see, dark7. I'll try to duplicate the problem here.

OK, we played dark7 coop, two players. It was fine until map04 when we finally did get a consistency failure. That wad is great for coop. :) I don't know what caused the failure.

hmm, I haven't been using -host and -join, I've been using -net # xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx...

It's probably just because of all the extra graphics and sound effects in Dark 7 - all the Doom multiplayer features are probably designed to work perfectly with just the IWADs, so wads that introduce a lot of new things probably confuse or overload them. Check that all the computers involved have the same version of Dark 7 (as far as I know there aren't any upgrades, but I'm not sure. You probably know a lot more about the wad than I do - I've only played it a couple of times).

MaTT, yes there was a dark7 upgrade, maybe October of 2002. Some things were fixed, such as allowing the player to climb back out of the water in map01.

Biffy said:

MaTT, yes there was a dark7 upgrade, maybe October of 2002. Some things were fixed, such as allowing the player to climb back out of the water in map01.

Ahh, right, I didn't know about that. I downloaded Dark 7 the week it came out I think, so I don't have the upgrade. So, Epyo, I know you probably already thought of it, and have already done it, but if not then check you have the same version on all the machines.

Heh, I had an older version. It works much better now, thanks so much!

Oh my god, I came up with a sensible answer :)