Yes, it does say that I'm logged in as public. Like I said, EVERYTHING ELSE works except for game connectivity. And this problem happened before I downloaded the latest update (around the start of January), if I recall correctly.

...And now the problem seems to have fixed itself again. ô_o Seriously, what the hell? I know I should be glad about this, but I still want to know what in blazes is happening. Any ideas?

...I'm either not understanding what you said, or I didn't describe the problem well enough.

When I log into the pager with my account, it DOES NOT CONNECT ME AS A GUEST, I connect as MYSELF; I was talking about when I WASN'T using the pager and went in as a guest, and that it worked perfectly. It's when I use my NORMAL account that it spontaneously fails.

Regardless, I do suppose the problem could be the same. But I would still like a solution.

There's really no indication of when I'm going to disconnect; sometimes I connect to the game fine for a while and lost the connection later, sometimes it's just a couple of minutes AFTER I connect, or sometimes it doesn't work at all (i.e. stuck at the "connecting to" window, but with no "failed" notification).

And yes, my internet does last throughout. I would know if it wasn't.

Though strangely, the link you gave me to Chatters doesn't seem to be failing in tandem with my other games (they usually all die at once if I have multiple games running). One person says it's because Chatters doesn't check for key authentication... could my problem possibly have something to do with this?

I don't use it often, usually just to play Mitadake High or if I need to get on some other key-not-required game in a hurry. But when I do, it's usually for the duration of a few games (maybe... 3 hours before trying the key again?).

But I think a bottleneck could very well be possible; I do have multiple people in my home that could be (and usually are) using the internet at the same time. Could BYOND be throwing a fit because of this?

JRG wrote:

While the possibility of a bottleneck is very likely, it is far too common and happens far too much to just state, "Your internet sucks, lern2better internet." Not saying that you did, but this is basically how BYOND is coming off with this.

I think you either misunderstood what I said, or how the internet works. When I mention a bottleneck, by no means did I say that the cause of trouble has to be your ISP and/or your connection to this provider. As the data is passed on from router to router (computers on the internet who are responsible of sending your data to the correct recipient) one of these routers might struggle due to high traffic. You can have a T1 direct connection to the internet, yet you could see worse results than somebody on dial up (which you can see best when somebody from Europe tries to connect to an American server and vice versa).
As for my estimated guess on the subject, the original poster clearly stated that the disconnects are seemingly random. If this is the case, there is only little space left for the application layer (BYOND and the Win API it bases on) to fail. Since there is no further data, as I said, I'd have to guess.


JRG wrote:

Regardless of how horrible a connection is, it is BYOND's fault for not staying connected when many, many, MANY other programs can. I've had an easier time playing large-scale MMOs on dial-up than BYOND games. I may disconnect from a BYOND game as many as ten times an hour, yet never have a problem with MSN, AIM, Hamachi, Yahoo, or the pager itself in that hour. I also have not encountered another game that disconnects me near as crazily as this.

You forget some important facts here. The applications you mentioned are optimized by their developers with one specific scenario in mind. BYOND however is an authoring tool that should ease the burden of writing your own network protocol. While this means creating multi player games becomes far easier, a non-optimised networking protocol can never rival its opponents in matter of speed.
This is no shameless plug, since I have myself often enough begged BYOND to implement a simple UDP/TCP socket for the more advanced customers, but it has (understandably) low priority even to only consider this change.
Another very important point that you seem to forget is the server. All the services you mentioned invest thousands of dollar per month on servers and network alone (a 1 Gbps port would leave you with such cost without any additional hardware already). A lot of BYOND games are hosted on home computers on personal connections. That is one of the reasons I tend to ask those seeking help to join Chatters, since this is hosted on a semi decent line (a considerably lousy VPS, but at least a server on a somewhat decent network, instead of somebody's home computer).
I fear that the saying of 'you get what you pay for' is true in this one case. And honestly, do you expect the hobby developers using BYOND to create their games then offering them free of charge to dish out a lot of money?
Special companies like ATP Host try to provide decent enough VPS for hosting BYOND games at rather cheap deals, but there are few willing to invest even this sparse money and I can hardly blame them.

In other words. You are comparing a Suzuki Alto with a Ferrari Enzo and then complain that the Ferrari is the faster car.