Friend and I cannot find each other's lobbies

[SilverlightPony]

The server is running on my comp. We can both connect to the server, and create lobbies, but neither of us can find each other's lobbies through "quick match".

Any ideas?

[Mgamerz]

Erik JS should pop in sometime soon. He's pretty busy these days. This post hasn't gone unnoticed

[Dalken Starbyne]

Hey, aforementioned friend here. Thanks for the heads-up.

I thought it might also be prudent to mention that we're running on LAN (over ethernet, to be specific), and I've quintuple-checked versions and hosts files and just about everything else I could find in the step-by-step guide. Everything matches up, so far as I can tell.

It's oddly similar to a problem I've experienced on multiple occasions with live multiplayer and was likewise unable to solve, though without the ability to send direct invites, it's impossible to match up every symptom. Although, given that the recommended solution for that particular problem involved port-forwarding, I'm not sure how much help it would be in this case, anyway.

[Mgamerz]

I'm not the dev, so I can't talk like I know anything, but I'd first turn windows firewall off to see if there's something being blocked there. You say you get this on public games, is it finding but hanging? If one of you uses the in game chat can the other hear even if its not looking like its joining?

[SilverlightPony]

I'm not the dev, so I can't talk like I know anything, but I'd first turn windows firewall off to see if there's something being blocked there. You say you get this on public games, is it finding but hanging? If one of you uses the in game chat can the other hear even if its not looking like its joining?

Server's on my machine, and my firewall is turned off entirely.

Neither of us can even find the other's lobby, let alone join it. The one trying to join just gets a perpetual "searching for games" screen.

[Dalken Starbyne]

I've had the problem trying to join friends' games in several instances, and just could never join a game. It would try to join and time out, but we could never get into the same lobby. I've tried turning off Windows firewall, setting up port-forwarding, and half a dozen other things. I could join random games, just not games I was specifically looking for. I can't speak for Silverlight's experience online on the whole; that's just my experience trying to join online games. I have no idea if it's even related to this issue, tbh. Like I said, kinda hard to see if the symptoms are identical given the feature limitations of the PSE, which is fine.

Thanks for replying and trying to help, anyway. I mostly just included that info so Erik JS could see it whenever he gets the time to see this. Thought it'd be better than wasting time on waiting for a bunch of predictable questions and instead just start on the same page..

[Erik JS]

It's not like I don't want to help, it's that I know this is one of those situations where I'll tell you to do things you already did, and then you'll tell me you already did twice what I asked you to do.

I'd like to see the packet log files from both players, where one creates a match, and the other tries to join through quick match, just to check the data that is being passed through PSE.

I still don't know the *exact* cause of this issue, no one does AFAIK, I can say that I tweaked the code here and there in order to fix PSE; it seems the code changes have worked in the past, but now I see it was not enough.

Unfortunately, I can only test things in my own LAN and my own VM, so what works here I assume it'll work for everyone else.

Speaking of getting stuck in "quick match", here's something for those who don't know yet: you can force disconnection to get out of an stuck search, or if you want to exit a lobby or a match as fast as possible, by using the console command disconnect. Works under Origin and PSE.
When you're are stuck in the loading screen (where you only hear the announcer and some sound effects, but never actually see the battlefield): press Tab, type 'disconnect', then Enter. The loading tip should change (indicating that a new map is loading, in this case the main MP menu).

[Mgamerz]

Note you won't see the console st the loading screen but it will work.

[SilverlightPony]

I'd like to see the packet log files from both players, where one creates a match, and the other tries to join through quick match, just to check the data that is being passed through PSE.

Okay, how do I find packet logs?

[EDIT]
Nevermind, found 'em. Once Dalken wakes up, we'll run a test to generate some fresh logs (which will hopefully be more concise than the ones that are already there).

Speaking of getting stuck in "quick match", here's something for those who don't know yet: you can force disconnection to get out of an stuck search, or if you want to exit a lobby or a match as fast as possible, by using the console command disconnect. Works under Origin and PSE.
When you're are stuck in the loading screen (where you only hear the announcer and some sound effects, but never actually see the battlefield): press Tab, type 'disconnect', then Enter. The loading tip should change (indicating that a new map is loading, in this case the main MP menu).

Good to know, but I don't think this is related to our problem. The game isn't hanging in a "getting stuck processing a bit of code and becoming unresponsive" sense, it's just not finding the lobby/game. We can still cancel the search normally.

Also, we're working on getting it set up on another roommate's computer for an additional data point in tracking down this problem; should have that ready later today.

[Mgamerz]

We mean that it hangs in the fact that its searching for a game, found one, but isn't connecting. So for example, it would find the gmae, but not connect, so it wouldn't find other games (obviously there are no more in this instance). So the connection to the host is hanging.