PING PING---who's there?

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ragingsamster

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INF's lag seems to be linked to the person on the team with the worst ping. I have noticed tremendous lag when I am showing pings of 80 or so - but one other teamate has a ping of 400. If I am on a team and everyone has ping rates below 175 however the game will rock (especially if the other team has a few 400 pingers :D ) I think it has to due with the need to keep track of all the other players locations 'cause when you die you can look through any team-mate's view. Maybe if they disabled this switching through "team-mate" view and just use normal ghost view the ping rate would have less impact, (Chances are not likely as this would be an engine hack rather than a mod hack <DANGIT!>) :stick:
 

Tommy Atkins

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Mar 17, 2001
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It shouldn't...

But it seems to. Dunno why- something to do with the way the server is managing to tell all the clients where everyone is, in more detail to lose the window bug? Or something...

mumblemumblemumble- seen the same thing happen, normally if someone is lagging out.
 

yurch

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It shouldn't but in extreme cases (9900) i think it does, I have seen many games, not just ut, do this.
But not with something as low as 400 ping...I think those extreme cases have something to do with the server screwing up a connection anyway.
When there are less people on the server, it will go faster. That might be the speed increase you are seeing when they leave.
 

LCJr.

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Apr 14, 2001
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It was me, I did it with my evil 56k:)

Actually us slow-pokes are just the first ones to feel server load. I was playing on one of the MUF servers just a few minutes ago and when I started it was 2vs2 and I had a ping of 170 by the time we got to round 8 or 9 on the next map there were 6 or 7 people and my ping had jumped to the 300's.

I'll be so happy when 2.86 is out with the promised net tweaks cause anymore even with a decent(for me) ping the lag is horrible:(
 

yurch

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fixing the invisibility bug upped the bandwidth a tad.
I feel your pain, i was a 26ker for bout' 6 years of my "gaming career" (damn, i wish i got paid) - and a 14.4 before that.
Phone lines of stone!
 

RogueLeader

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Oct 19, 2000
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I remember playing TF for QuakeWorld for years on my 26400 connection. Thing is, I never had any problems. I was usually at the top of the pack, even when cable became common but I was still stuck on the modem. QuakeWorld simply had such a great net code it didn't hurt much. Games these seem to have terrible net code, which strikes me as funny since games these days center a lot more on multiplayer.
 

LCJr.

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Same way with Red Baron I was beating cable guys on a 28.8 modem. The net code was fantastic and would support up to 128 players. Its the same code they later used in Tribes.

Could be a basic flaw in the UT net code who knows. RB spoiled me I guess, that and all the private servers on T1's and T3's :)

I think what we're seeing RL is the typical game company "push the envelope" way of thinking. These guys assume we all have super computers on cable modems or more likely they are trying to create the market for super computers and cable.
 

poaw

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Mar 25, 2001
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But then again RL, the games themelves have become infinately more complex.

Compare for example a Rouge Spear map to a Quake 1 map. Which was more complex? And how much more complex was it?
Now factor in that most of the weapons have a much higher RoF and many more players will be using high RoF weapons.

The processing power has been able to keep up with the demands but connection speeds haven't.
Going back to the RS vs Q1 analogy. Assuming that the levels in RS are twice as large and have roughly 4 times as many animated objects (such as opening doors, breakable glass, etc). Now place 4 people on each team with weapons that average 700 RPM and now assume a worst scenario of everyone opening fire in a big room on everyone else with bullets flying everywhere, making bullethole decals for everyone. And the best news is that you have to make it work with only twice the bandwidth availble 6 years ago, as opposed to the proceesors which have increased speed 9 times is a similar time span.

Then again it could be any other of a dozen reasons. (Like the that most ISPs overbook their networks and are trying to squeeze every bit of profit out of their companyies by using the cheaps parts.)
 

LCJr.

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I don't think that holds true Poaw. The maps in RB are huge representing whole sectors of the front. On top of that you have 1000's of 3d objects, towns, aerodromes, factories, supply dumps, etc and on average 30-60 planes.

Each plane has 1 or 2 machine guns spraying more lead than our little guns which has to be tracked and damage applied. Plus the computer has to track the planes location, speed, altitude, control movement(airlerons, elevator and rudder). With all the community made addon patches the graphics and textures are just as good as any other flight sim.

edit>Forgot about the physic's and g-force calculations. Losing speed in a climb or turn, gaining speed in a dive, etc... and overstressing the airframe.

But even with all that going on the game stills runs good over a 28.8k modem. 12 people could play a good solid game hosted on a home computer with a cable modem, and up to 16-20 with lag and flakiness. Hows that possible? Whats UT doing that requires so much bandwidth?
 
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yurch

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A. I hear the UT netcode is pretty bad.
B. Most physics calculations are not done by the server. Servers are simply sent location/velocity packets instead.
 

CyanideTriscuit

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Jun 25, 2001
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It's not just UT, it's windows. I ran a 16 player UT server for a while on a 800 Mhz machine sitting on a (shared of course) dual T3. The server ate up 85-95% of the processor that way with a full load of players. I've heard from many admins who run linux servers that they are able to host 3 16 player servers on 400 MHz machines and not even take up 70% of the processing capacity. Those numbers suggest to me that if windows is sloppy as all hell with the CPU, it's doing the same quarter-assed job handling data transfers. And as we all know, the further windows "progresses", the worse it gets :rolleyes:
 

LCJr.

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I think its UT as much or more than Windows. Out of curiousity if your running a dedicated server with a MS product shouldn't you be using NT? I was under the impression NT was more of a bussiness/networking platform.

Back to the RB example a 500MHz Pentium with Win98 and a cable modem could handle about 16 people, 20 people max. And this was set up by one of us with no server admin experience and with the host playing too.

A T3 on a 486(dont ask me why they put a T3 on a 486) could handle 30+ well and up to around 40+ before getting too flaky.

Our best private was a T1 bussiness server using Unix or NT. Not sure what the computer was but it was set to a limit of 90 people and I played it quite a bit at max capacity and even though the pings were high 300-600 for most it was smooth as silk.
 

CyanideTriscuit

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I was using NT. At first, I was very shocked with the poor performance I was getting. However, asking around on various admin boards has confirmed my performance as typical with my setup. It's a shame, really, as according to a few quick calculations, with unlimited RAM and CPU speed I could host over a hundered people on my connection at the 'U'. That would be lovely.

I just got done playing Q2 against my brother on our house LAN. More fun than I ever had playing normal UT. You just can't beat a direct connection :D

Regardless of the cause, poor network performance can really break a game, especially with the current trend towards more online gaming. When I got Doom I didn't know what a modem was. I bought UT solely for the multiplayer experience. I don't know how it is elsewhere in the world, but here in the US I wouldn't even consider moving to somewhere that didn't have cable service available. Then again, I'm just spoiled. :p

Any T2 fans have anything to say about the netcode? Wasn't T2 supposed to be able to support 40+ players in a server or something?