Unable to host or join game - Connecting black screen [SOLVED]

[maudlin27]

I'm unable to host or join a game on FAF. Forged Alliance (application) will load, but all that happens is I get a black screen with a cursor and a "Connecting..." visible in the top-left, while the hosted game isn't shown in the game listings. When trying on a different computer on the same connection, I'm able to host fine (getting the game lobby appearing, and with the hosted game appearing in the list of open games).

The computers have the same version of forged alliance installed (from steam), with no mods. However, the one that works runs windows XP, while the one that doesn't runs Windows 7 (64 bit).

I've tried with firewall disabled but have the same issue. Also tried with UPnP enabled, but no difference (per the wiki the "faf.fa.relayer UDP relay port 6112 UDP relay port 6112" is not visible). Both computers (i.e. working and non-working ones) use the same router.

I've also followed the suggested solution on the wiki for forwarding ports, and checked the 6112 port is open using the suggested software, but still have the same issue (edit: for clarity I also tried the wiki suggestion of using a different port to 6112 for the affected computer; have also tried running the FAF client and the .exe in the bin folder in windows xp SP2 compatibility as administrator, and verifying the integrity of the steam game cache)

In case it's of relevance, if I go to Multiplayer LAN for both computers (i.e. outside of the FAF client) I can't see either one on the other.

Logs:
forever.log:
http://pastebin.com/V7ZJWe0r

game.log:
http://pastebin.com/NjBEv6JC

Does anyone have any suggestions on what I can do to get it working?

[Myxir]

try using different ports for one, to e.g. 6113 instead of the default 6112

[maudlin27]

Also tried but made no difference

[maudlin27]

Comparing the forever logs of the one that works to the one that doesn't, although they both have the following
Command transmitted from FA to server : {"action": "GameState", "chuncks": ["Idle"]}
Command received from server : {"commands": [0, 6112, "maudlin27", 164973, 1], "key": "CreateLobby"}
The one that doesn't work doesn't follow this up with the line:
Command transmitted from FA to server : {"action": "GameState", "chuncks": ["Lobby"]}

[SpdyGonzalez]

I don't think you have a connection

Possible causes are, Windows Firewall, Third Party Firewall, Antivirus.

The most common cause is, you did not enable UPNP or port forwarded the port 6112 on your router(you can only have 1 method of connection)

[maudlin27]

Thanks for the suggestions, I've just tried with the antivirus disabled but still not had any success.

I've tried the following, with windows firewall and antivirus disabled:
-[FAF: Game port 6112, UPnP checked], no port forwarding
-Game port 6112, UPnP unchecked, no port forwarding
-Game port 6112, UPnP checked, router set to forward game port to 6112 (and 9103 and 30350-30351) for the windows 7 computer per the port forwarding instructions
-Game port 6112, UPnP unchecked, router forwarding per above

-Game port 6113, UPnP checked, no port forwarding
-Game port 6113, UPnP unchecked, no port forwarding
-Game port 6113, UPnP checked, router set to forward from 6113 to 6113 (and 9103 and 30350-30351)
-Game port 6113, UPnP unchecked, router set to forward from 6113 to 6113 (and 9103 and 30350-30351)

-Both of the above with the router set to forward from 6112 to 6113 (and 9103 and 30350-30351) [incase I'd misunderstood how to do forwarding with a different port]

Have also tried disabling the router firewall in addition to windows firewall, but this doesn't have an impact (I also don't expect it's the cause since it works on another computer that uses the same router - I'm assuming if it was the router firewall then it wouldn't work on either computer).

Are there any other things that might be causing it/that I could try to fix it?

[SpdyGonzalez]

You can have two computers on same LAN runing FAF without issues..

If you have one computer that works, I would sugest that you use same method for bolth of them, ofc, be aware, if you are using port forward, you need to make IP reservation or have a router that allows port forward with computer names instead of IP.

If using the same method and does not work, then you can assume router is OK, but Operative System is not.

If the problem persists, grab an irc client(like AdiIRC), user server faforever.com and if I am around or other people, can help you

[maudlin27]

Thanks - asked on IRC and thoughts were it may be an issue with my game preferences (thanks to ZOB and nocaps for their help).

I tried changing my preferences, deleting my profile+recreating, and deleting my profile and replacing with the profile from the working computer, but unfortunately still got the same issue.

However, when deleting the profile per my username and creating one with a different name I get the following error message the first time when trying to start from FAF:

http://pastebin.com/r27bWtPc

Extract from the above:
warning: Error running '/lua/ui/uimain.lua:SetupUI': ...reme commander\gamedata\mohodata.scd\lua\lazyvar.lua(92): You are attempting to set a LazyVar's evaluation function to nil, don't do that!
stack traceback:
[C]: in function `error'
...reme commander\gamedata\mohodata.scd\lua\lazyvar.lua(92): in function `Set'
...ramdata\faforever\gamedata\lua.nx2\lua\ui\uiutil.lua(210): in function `SetCurrentSkin'
...supreme commander\gamedata\lua.scd\lua\ui\uimain.lua(33): in function <...supreme commander\gamedata\lua.scd\lua\ui\uimain.lua:19>


Since the UI doesn't load with the normal connecting black screen (and I have to alt-tab out to close) I'm thinking ZOB/nocaps may be right with the issue being a crash potentially related to game preferences. Unfortunately I'm still not having any success with fixing it. Does anyone have any ideas?

[maudlin27]

Found the issue! Realised going through the error message again that it was trying to load via the Supreme Commander UI rather than the Forged Alliance UI - I must've linked my FA folder to here when trying to setup my SupCom folder to do co-op on the original missions .

Thanks everyone for their help