Capybaraaa
Greenhorn
Alright, I have to admit that I'm feeling a bit irritated right now but I think it's worth typing this out while it's still fresh. But basically I and a friend of mine tried to play *2 player* Stardew Valley over the internet and (over the course of about 5 hours) experienced the issue non-stop and didn't get to play at the end.
Disclaimer: We did have mods (SMAPI says 88 mods loaded). However, we mainly played content mods (Ridgeside, East Scarpe, SVE, Juliet & Jessie, etc), and we have played before, with exactly the same set of mods. So I doubt it's a mod issue, unless mod issues include sporadic multiplayer issues that happen when nothing's been changed. If someone believes that mod issues might be causing this, here's the smapi log: https://smapi.io/log/a1e0058f9e364486adcc7418acf898d7.
What would happen is they would invite me, I would take some time to get into the game, and I wouldn't be able to: pick-up anything, open chests, or leave the farm [be stuck in a loading screen]. Additionally, while they would be somewhere else, I would see their "ghost" doing the actions they were doing at the time I saw, trying to catch up to what they were doing now. I realized that this was a time desync issue after searching it up and seeing people describe the exact same problems I'm experiencing. In a somewhat more frustrating turn of events, people back in 2018 experience the exact same problems we're facing.
One thing I saw online that might have helped (in some other situation) was the /pause command. Didn't do anything for us, but the idea was that they would /pause until I could come up to their time and they could unpause. We tried this a number of time, admittedly "failing" some attempts when I would absentmindedly try to leave the farm and be stuck in an "infinite" loading screen (might not be infinite but it was damn long) OR have them invite me too late (like 2 PM), take a while to load into the game (cause of the weak rig), and be stuck in a situation where they would be forced to pass out (by passing 2 AM) OR they would try to pause (in 1 instance), we would successfully be able to reach the same time, then try to sleep and have the game tell us that its waiting for the other person. At some random point the 'waiting for the other person' screen disappeared (for me), but at that point while I could hover over things and switch tools, I couldn't move anymore and I couldn't even click escape. This was 2 AM also, so we both passed out too. This was the closest we got to working it out because we would see each other moving around, although they were paused and our time was still desynced. *NOTE*: After I exited my game, their game continued to load into the next day, no problems whatsoever.
We also tried changing the invite option from 'friend only' to 'invite only' and clicking the invite to join the game. This didn't do anything.
I tried hosting the game too, but after needing to make a new save what would happen instead is they would need to make a new character, only for the day to end in a non-stop pause forcing us to exit the game and for their character to be deleted. I read somewhere that in order for the character to be saved this could be solved by leaving the game before the day ends and having the host sleep alone, however we didn't do this because it seemed pointless when the other save already had a saved character.
We have played once before and there was no issue at the time. Doing speed tests online showed that both our internet speeds were deemed to be 'fast'. Admittedly both our setups are subpar (cheap laptops), however in all instances the host experienced no issues (no desync problem).
Anyways, I ended up writing so much. Needless to say I effectively wasted a solid few hours of my life, but hopefully a solution can be found (or if anyone else already found it be shared). I can upload some pictures if anyone requests it, although it's pretty much just the stuff that I'm describing for the most part. I saw some people online suggesting Hamachi, does that work? Maybe an independent server can do the job but I don't want to pay for that just to play with 1 other person.
Also, I restarted my laptop twice, and them once.
Disclaimer: We did have mods (SMAPI says 88 mods loaded). However, we mainly played content mods (Ridgeside, East Scarpe, SVE, Juliet & Jessie, etc), and we have played before, with exactly the same set of mods. So I doubt it's a mod issue, unless mod issues include sporadic multiplayer issues that happen when nothing's been changed. If someone believes that mod issues might be causing this, here's the smapi log: https://smapi.io/log/a1e0058f9e364486adcc7418acf898d7.
What would happen is they would invite me, I would take some time to get into the game, and I wouldn't be able to: pick-up anything, open chests, or leave the farm [be stuck in a loading screen]. Additionally, while they would be somewhere else, I would see their "ghost" doing the actions they were doing at the time I saw, trying to catch up to what they were doing now. I realized that this was a time desync issue after searching it up and seeing people describe the exact same problems I'm experiencing. In a somewhat more frustrating turn of events, people back in 2018 experience the exact same problems we're facing.
One thing I saw online that might have helped (in some other situation) was the /pause command. Didn't do anything for us, but the idea was that they would /pause until I could come up to their time and they could unpause. We tried this a number of time, admittedly "failing" some attempts when I would absentmindedly try to leave the farm and be stuck in an "infinite" loading screen (might not be infinite but it was damn long) OR have them invite me too late (like 2 PM), take a while to load into the game (cause of the weak rig), and be stuck in a situation where they would be forced to pass out (by passing 2 AM) OR they would try to pause (in 1 instance), we would successfully be able to reach the same time, then try to sleep and have the game tell us that its waiting for the other person. At some random point the 'waiting for the other person' screen disappeared (for me), but at that point while I could hover over things and switch tools, I couldn't move anymore and I couldn't even click escape. This was 2 AM also, so we both passed out too. This was the closest we got to working it out because we would see each other moving around, although they were paused and our time was still desynced. *NOTE*: After I exited my game, their game continued to load into the next day, no problems whatsoever.
We also tried changing the invite option from 'friend only' to 'invite only' and clicking the invite to join the game. This didn't do anything.
I tried hosting the game too, but after needing to make a new save what would happen instead is they would need to make a new character, only for the day to end in a non-stop pause forcing us to exit the game and for their character to be deleted. I read somewhere that in order for the character to be saved this could be solved by leaving the game before the day ends and having the host sleep alone, however we didn't do this because it seemed pointless when the other save already had a saved character.
We have played once before and there was no issue at the time. Doing speed tests online showed that both our internet speeds were deemed to be 'fast'. Admittedly both our setups are subpar (cheap laptops), however in all instances the host experienced no issues (no desync problem).
Anyways, I ended up writing so much. Needless to say I effectively wasted a solid few hours of my life, but hopefully a solution can be found (or if anyone else already found it be shared). I can upload some pictures if anyone requests it, although it's pretty much just the stuff that I'm describing for the most part. I saw some people online suggesting Hamachi, does that work? Maybe an independent server can do the job but I don't want to pay for that just to play with 1 other person.
Also, I restarted my laptop twice, and them once.
