Matchmaking connection Errors

In case you cannot connect to the matchmaking service (masterserver or/and gameserver).
This is a common error that exist even in later instalments of the chromeengine from techland such as xpand rally.
As far as I know the following games are affected by this engine bug. Chrome,Chrome Specforce,Xpand Rally

The problem:

You cannot connect to any gameserver not ingame or by IP (direct connect) always timeout
If you access the ingame serverlist you recieve a list of server ip's but all have a red dot and no serverinfo (players,current map..)

The Cause:

The problem lies how the engine tries to determy the current active ip adress for the client if more then one network interface card is installed/enabled. It usually always chooses the wrong one.

The fix:

Determy the correct ip address for your network that allows outbound connections. If your behind a router it should be a private assinged adress such as 192.168.40.10 .
If you are directly plugged into the internet modem and dial into it with ppoe/pptp it should be a public ip like 123.234.567.333 .
Open a file called PathtoChrome/Data/Network.scr and edit the line ForceNetworkInterface("") to look like this ForceNetworkInterface("111.111.111.111") offcourse with your own valid IP.

Dedicated Server Administration

There exist a base guide for how to use aviable server commands allready see ch-console-commands.txt . So I only cover other aspects of administration that I collected by running a server for more then 2 years.

Zombie Players

A zombie player is a player who did not disconnect properly eg killed the chromenet process, minimized the game, or timeout. This players can cause heavy lag on the server for all connected players.

Identify:

You can identify such players by looking at the PING on the playerlist tab. The ping is not changing at all for this players. Sometimes a crashed player may reconnect during the gamesession but his original stays on the server causing great lag. You can identify such players by a number added to it's name eg PlayerName and Playername2 and a non changing ping.
You should remove (kick) such a player to eliminate lag caused by the engine bug.

Implants Lag

Certain implants namenly Speed and Armor create significant lag on the server. You should consider limiting the implants strenght or disabling them completly.

UDP read packet failed

Still unknown under which circumstances this message appears. But I believe I have seen this message appear alot during the appearence of zombie players. Aswell as when players are stuck during the connection process because of bugged connect code eg if they try to connect shortly before the maptrans.

Chrome and Gnu Linux

It is possible to play Chrome under Gnu Linux, despite the lack of native binarys for the client and server.
Please check the latest test results for the game in the wineappdb.
Note these test results are only for the client, and not for the dedicated server. The working percentage for applications who do not make heavy use of the direct3d api and other microsoft tm specific classes are usualy very high. I have found no drawbacks running the chrome decicated server over wine, aswell as chromeed over wine worked flawlessy

Creating a unique Nickname

A unique nickname nobody else has

Creating a unique nickname is not only cool and leed, but also helps protecting your name against namefackers and the like. Because the ingame method wont work for this as it only allows ASCII letters, we have to edit your personal profile file by hand.

Let's go startup your favorite text editor and open the following file.

\Data\Profiles\YourProfile\Profile.scr and edit this line to your liking Nick("PlayerName") .

please note,to only use conform letters and symbols and no exotic stuff like japanese or kirilic as these are filtered out by the engine.
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_characters_in_Unicode
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unicode_characters

Play the game in widescreen resolution

If you hate the black borders on your monitor

The engine does not natively support higher resolutions then 1024x768 so if the game goes mad you should rewert the changes you made.
This is yust like the battlefield 2 workaround that had many bad sideeffects. Mainly by stretched menus and small font size

First you should find out the resolution you want to force and if your monitor support it, aswell as the refresh rate. Crts usually go way behyond 60 hz while lcd's are usually locked at 60.

Now open the file \Data\VideoSettings.scr and edit Resolution(xxxx,xxxx) and MaxRefresh(60) to your setting.

Save the file and start the game. You will notice the font is way to small to fix this go to \Data\Menu\Button.def and edit FontScale(0.5) to a bigger value until you are satisfied with the result.

Note theres a guy working on a conversion for widescreen resolutions fixing menus and such but it's not released yet
aeronextedit.wordpress.com/chro...