Red Light/Green Light effect in ZDOOM

My friend and I keep trying to run a co-op game with ZDoom, but we can only play for about ten seconds before everything suddenly freezes in place, sometimes after a brief episode of choppiness. We can still look around and access the menus, but we can't move or shoot, and neither can any of the monsters, nor airborne projectiles. When one of us exits the game, everything suddenly returns to normal for the remaining player.

I've searched the forums here and at zdoom.org and couldn't find anything relating to this, just stuff related to kdizd and total freezes requiring reboots. I'm not sure what computer/doom/zdoom specs I'd need to post here for this, either, apart from the basics. We both run Windows XP, the same versions of Doom (whatever comes with Collector's Edition), and the same version of zdoom -- 2.1.7 (R366). We tried running the game with -extratic tacked on, but it did nuthin'. I've seen vague mentions of Doom 95 bugs here and there, but we only use the wad with zdoom and ignore the Doom95.exe altogether.

Any suggestions are welcome. We're going crazy over here.

Situation updated a tad: we tried adding "-dup 1" and so forth to our command prompt when we run a co-op game, I think 1-4 so far. Half the time there was no difference, and one number froze everything outright, but "-dup 3" almost seemed the magic number because we actually managed to complete a level or two before we finally froze in place.

We tried all these with Doom 2 and Hexen, and this was always the case.

1. Check your ports, are they forwarded? Are his?
2. Check your firewall, is it set to allow all traffic for ZDoom.exe (or GZDoom respectively)? Is his?
3. Do you run Norton? Does he?

Now if only someone would even ATTEMPT to answer my question of just about the same situation...

1. Check your ports, are they forwarded? Are his?

He knows more about this stuff than I do, actually. Can you define "forwarded" for me?

2. Check your firewall, is it set to allow all traffic for ZDoom.exe (or GZDoom respectively)? Is his?

Yeah, we made sure o' that on both ends.

3. Do you run Norton? Does he?

I think I'm the only one that runs Norton, but the problem persists when I've got it set to allow everything Doom related, and even when it's totally deactivated.

Now if only someone would even ATTEMPT to answer my question of just about the same situation...

lol Well, that doesn't bode well at all....

EDIT: We also took turns being the host, and the only difference there was he experienced more lag when I was hosting. He suspects it's related to zdoom or the server, I think, but he couldn't give me anything less vague than that at the time. I just blamed it on his Hewlett-Packard.

Hell, maybe it's that we're running a game on a desktop and a laptop, but he's never had problems with it before; just with me.

I think Zdoom's and GZDoom's netcodes need a ton of work...

Im just waiting for Skulltag to be compatible with everything GZDoom so the coolest maps will finally work in the most functional (netwise) port!

About the Forwarding:

Are you plugged directly into the net or are you on a shared network?

If you are connected via router you need to forward your ports, if not, then you need not worry about it...maybe...

It may depend on the model...

Anyway, heres how to forward your ports.

1. First you want to find out which ports you want to use for ZDoom. You can set the port which ZDoom broadcasts through using the -port command. When you're connecting you tell it to search that port using the <ip here>:<port number here> format. (example: 192.168.1.101:2455)
2. Figure out what your default gateway is. Do this by clicking on the Network Icon in the System tray and going to Support. Your default gateway should be something like 192.168.1.1 or in some cases 128.0.0.1.
3. Type the default gateway into a web browser like Firefox or IE. If you are successful a password prompt should pop up.
4. Input the username and password, if unchanged the username should be the account name of the network host computer (ie John), and the password would be admin. But if it is changed, you're on your own.
5. Once in, browse through the menus until you find Port Forwarding. Then fill out a line of the form which should be Forward name, beginning and end of forward range, A selection to choose whether or not it UDP or TCP or Both. (Generally you want it set to both. If there is no Both option, make another entry and set it to the other option). And the final space in the line should be what IP to forward to, put in your network IP (found in the same place as the Default Gateway).
6. Then hit Save Changes and you should be good to go!


Hope that helps!


EDIT: Finished post