Netherby Posted March 22, 2006 Share Posted March 22, 2006 Just a few things I wanted to mention about the game which are network/latency related.. I'm also only playing this on a 1.25 G4 withe basic Radeon 9000, so it's a little under powered and could be exaggerating these effects or even causing some.. I generally ping between 150-250 to the servers. Joining When joining a server it seems that the client possibly stores up all the data about the game from the moment it's connected, long before it finishes loading and caching.. Or it gets sent all that data as soon as it finishes.. Because you get hit with a massive lag period as you enter with stacks of messages scrolling up the screen and units all zapping around until it all catches up to "now".. If you join at the start of a round you will see the deployment clock jump a minute or two in time for what it displays as you first enter.. This isn't terrible, but if it could be avoided it would feel much nicer Smoke Smoke clouds seem to cause network latency.. I think I can generally tell the difference between an fps hit and network lag, so are these being broadcast from the server or something? Because things like the Fire Mission cause me to lag even when I can't see them (so shouldn't be losing fps trying to render them). Round Start/Bot Messages Rounds starting also give me a hugh lag spike, perhaps this is because a whole bunch of bots all deployed simultaneously or the sudden spam of bot voice messages saying they are doing something.. Bot voice messages do actually seem to effect my latency some what, though I suppose I could be mistaken and it just seemed like it.. Hit Prediction Is really good, it seems TOO good.. Which worries me that it could be all client side and eventually be open to exploitation by naughty people who like to cheat and make other people unhappy instead of play games to enjoy them.. Chat It doesn't wrap long messages.. So you just see text trailing off the edge of the screen and wonder what they were saying On the subject of a chat, a history would be nice too, so if you miss something in the heat of battle you can scroll back and see what was said or what killed you etc.. Anyway I think that was all the things I wanted to mention.. Oh yeah also the Drop menu coming up lags me too, shouldn't that be cached and come up pretty smoothly? Does anyone with faster computers and better graphics cards notice any of these things too? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bernhardt Posted March 22, 2006 Share Posted March 22, 2006 Yeah, I love to use smoke cos it works great but it causes huge lag spikes. Usually you can still play but sometimes you have freezes of 2-5 seconds. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ClaytoniousRex Posted March 22, 2006 Share Posted March 22, 2006 Netherby, that all sounds like client-side slow downs. Yes, we're cleaning up the chat interface. And don't worry, hit tests are not done on the client side at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yllamana Posted March 23, 2006 Share Posted March 23, 2006 Drop Team seems to handle latency superbly, HUGE kudos for that. Maybe you could mention it in the manual somewhere, about whether or not you need to lead shots for latency or if you can just fire at what you see on your screen. That was one of my big questions coming into the game. Also, please please please could we have a ping display on the player list? Or at least show my own ping somewhere. Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Netherby Posted March 23, 2006 Author Share Posted March 23, 2006 Originally posted by ClaytoniousRex: Netherby, that all sounds like client-side slow downs. Yes, we're cleaning up the chat interface. And don't worry, hit tests are not done on the client side at all. It's quite possibly mostly because of my terrible graphics card.. But should I really be getting lagged from Fire/Smoke/EMP missions even when I can't see them? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
weasello Posted March 23, 2006 Share Posted March 23, 2006 Depending on the coding used, it is sometimes faster to calculate everything on the map as opposed to writing an algorithm to find out what you should render, which could significantly slow things down. Obviously the more things to render, the more pronounced the effect, so it's really a balancing act. As there is usually not a whole lot going on in a map, I'm going to wager a guess that DropTeam uses the former method. If so, this would result in better performance in MOST situations. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ClaytoniousRex Posted March 25, 2006 Share Posted March 25, 2006 Also, please please please could we have a ping display on the player list?That would be really nice. I've added it to our flyspray list but it's at low priority (behind bug fixes and some new features such as infantry) so it will be a while. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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