OT - really slow mapchanges

[Imaginos]

Hey all, thought I would table this here.. it's not UT2Vote caused/related tho.

I (and several others) have a deathball server that has been suffering from 2min+ mapchanges at times when the server is moderately full to completely full. I have no way to monitor the live cpu usage, but is there any way to log and spot the cause of the delays? I'm getting to my wits' end.

 

[ProAsm]

This problem is a typical DeathBall problem when there are more than 14 players and its not map or mod dependant.
Our opposition used to have a DeathBall server and they had to limit it to 12 players else the server takes so long to change levels that the players leave.
It has also been found that when there are around 16 players on a DeathBall server the server lags so bad some players leave.

 

[Imaginos]

I was afraid of that. Getting a lot of complaints about it and hearing from too many other admins as well.. I don't know what could cause it.. or how.. I would imagine that even if the mod code itself is shoddy, the game performance would suffer, certainly. But to slow down the mapchange too? Seems like it's not even related to the deathball coding itself, unless it's lazy in shutting some things down?

 

[ProAsm]

Epic started a whole new level change and map detection method in UT2003 already and is mainly aimed at WebAdmin.
This change has now been completed in UT2004 with the last patch or the one before that is where all these long changes started as you can remember they are even in UT2004 under windows and thats why I had to add the extra time WaitForLevel=90 in UT2Vote to cater for this so no doubt if its this bad in UT2004, then in DeathBall it must be a nightmare.
I doubt if its to do with the coding in DeathBall, as I think all "custom" games are effected, just some more than the others.
Dont use MapLists as that will worsen the effect, also avoid maps that have custom utx packages and I know DeathBall has plenty of those.

 

[Imaginos]

Sadly, deathball is nearly completly custom content. The developer team has been going out of the way to use absolutely NO epic content at all. I hope there's something that can be done to at least improve things in this situation..
I've just subscribed to the ut2004mods list to see if there's any info to see there. Hopefully something good will come from this.

 

[ProAsm]

I see in the latest Beta Patch they have done something on these lines - lets hope its an improvement.

I wonder are any of you guys still on the AdminBeta List and if so could you PLEASE make a request as a matter of urgency for Epic to supply just ONE tiny map for VCTF.
This game exists in the XGame and many many people asked for the Game to be added to UT2Vote and if players vote for this game and there is no map for it, the server will crash.

Why on earth they release a Game without a map is anyone's guess and is a rather dumb thing to do.

I believe the patch will be officially released next week sometime.

 

[Imaginos]

Nuts. Another dead end four us. I've been running that beta 3323 patch since it came out. Maps that use Epic's textures have a better chance of loading quicker?