This object is in archive! 

Game puts you in Spectator Mode When joining Server after Connecting to Internet From Steam Offline

WesternGamer shared this bug 3 years ago
Solved

I was messing around with how the game behaves when it is in offline mode and I found this bug when joining a server after reconnecting to the internet where you are put in spectator mode and you can't do anything else than looking at the planets. This bug can't be exploited to find bases or to look at stuff that you are not supposed to as the client does not receive any data from the server in this state.


How to Reproduce:

1. Disconnect the computer from the internet by turning off WIFI or by disconnecting the ethernet cable from the computer/disabling the ethernet adapter. You could also use steam offline mode but it is best to reproduce this issue with the internet actually disconnected from the computer.

2. Open Space Engineers while the internet is disconnected.

3. Create or open a non online world and load into it.

4. Reconnect to the internet by turning on WIFI or by connecting the ethernet cable to the computer/enabling the ethernet adapter when you are ingame.

5. Open the pause menu to force Space Engineers to check that internet connection is restored.

6. Exit the world and join a online server.

7. When you load into the world, you should not see the respawn screen show up. Instead, you should see that you are in spectator mode and you can't get out of it. Reconnecting with F5 will result in a infinite loading menu. Exiting and reconnecting from the Join Game menu will still put you in spectator mode when you load ingame. You need to close the client and reopen the client to stop the issue from presisting.


Most Possible Reason That This Issue Occurs and Possible Fix:

Space Engineers uses the 1234567891011 Steam Profile when it is offline instead of the Steam Profile named by your Steam ID. When the game reconnects, it does not switch to the Steam Profile named by your Steam ID. Because of this, when you try to join a server, the server detects a invalid Steam Profile and the server refuses to send server data to the client except the world data without voxel modification data and grid data. The server still sends you player data but from that data, the server thinks that you did not connect at all. Because the server does not think you connected, you are put into spectator mode by default.

A way to fix this issue is to make the game switch Steam Profiles when the game detects that you are online or later like when you are exiting a world, or Joining/Loading a world, so that this issue would be prevented.

Replies (2)

photo
1

Hello, WesternGamer!

Thank you very much for such clear reproduction steps and for reporting the issue. I was unable to reproduce the issue by simply putting Steam into offline mode as it forces a restart of the game switching it back to online. I successfully reproduced the issue each time by simply unplugging my ethernet cable. :) I have now reported this internally.

Kind Regards

Laura, QA Department

photo
1

Hello, Engineer!

The fix for this is in v200

Thank you.

Kind regards,

Keen Software House: QA Department

photo
1

This was never fixed for me over the years despite playing exclusively on each new version of the game and after the newest recent update (contact)

No matter what I do I can never join Steam servers or public games, it just puts me into spectator mode exactly as described above.

photo
Leave a Comment
 
Attach a file