:::...::: TBML Season Seven :::...:::

[supratank]

Well the fact is that it was presented to the captains and no one really saw it helping anything... since someone would always be on a server that didnt give them the performance that they wanted. The other thing that happened in season 5 & 6 is that servers that were scheduled wouldnt show up, for one reason or another, leaving teams to scramble for a place to play. This year we have PLENTY of servers and backups for any team to hop in and play on, or switch to because of lag. However, I will admit that it is unfortunate that dash's server isnt available...

Also, I think at this point guys, you should take this conflict to email. I dont see the purpose of unrolling all of this here. I think if you want to continue to discuss it, you have each others email address. Thanks!

[Blind Cide]

There should be negligible difference between the MI: server and dash's. They are both physically located in in the same data center thanks to dash's generousity. TT uses about 10% of a server's processor, so there shouldn't be any issue there.

As far as ping goes, the IA: servers should be no more than 10 ms slower than MI: or dash's. Network performance on the IA: servers is normally good, so it should be hard to tell the difference between IA:, MI: or dash's. The PSL league used those three exclusively with the jacked up network settings and I can't remember anyone complaining about lag.

Perhaps we should require use of the jacked up settings next season.

[NUTS!]

As for severs you also have to take into account what OS is serving. If its Mac or Linux that has the dsleep function and usses very little of the cpu were windows does not, it usses much more. Maybe 100% if its a small cpu, which could make it more "laggy" feeling.

As for the jacked up settings I am all for it. For servers and players. I can always tell which server has it because the dowload bar just flies. I can tell players have there settings open there the firsts ones in. I always laugh at the people that have pings under 100 and are the last ones in. You got something wrong there people. Think, if you have the same ping and I am dropping into the server a good 3 to 5 seconds earlier that means my data is is getting there that much quicker and better. So the server then has to adjust to you. These seem to be the people that have inviso bullets or seem take a few more clips/bullets to kill.

[PLAYER36-SA-]

^ What about for people like jedirieb though? He's on dialup. Wouldn't increasing the packet rate and size just make it worse for him and others with slow connections?

[fleabiscuit]

Ohmygosh, nothing causes more hard feelings in TT (both BM and Scrum) than the the player Laggy. He can be a real pain.

There are issues that "can" cause your ping lag but, IMHO look at your ISP first. My battle with Charter Cable has been the subject of many postings. For awhile they had gotten sorta decent but looks like I have a new fight brewing with them.

Lag (latency) really shouldn't be a big deal even if the host plays on the same machine unless his puter is being maxed. Don't have ALL your apps running along with TT please.

A couple of seasons ago I hosted and played a scrum league game. Most of the opposing team were west coast based (as I am) while my team were east coast. Long story short, we got creamed. We might have gotten beat anyway but ol'Laggy didn't help.

Hops and your ISP are the first place to look. Here is yesterdays test I did with my line. Notice what happens at my ISP (charter at bottom) when connecting to east coast. Bastids. Made my first snivel telephone call last week and will continue. Their initial response, "There's a known outage in your area." Duh. My civility with them starts to deteriorate as my call volume increases.

I suggest you do a line quality test to see how you measure up to others using your ISP.
Also, all TT servers should be West Coast!

[NUTS!]

^Good points. Your ping doesn't mean jack if your connection sucks. You can run a traceroute to a server to check, but it still doesn't take into account your settings.

As for dialup users, in theory TT should work fine. However, dialup connections are not that good. Increasing the allowed packets size may benefit them. If I remember correctly the max is 32 bits per second.

[LONEWOLF]

A quote from Nuts in PSL 10 about settings.

Synopsis:
Some simple changes to drastically increase mission load time on datablock and object heavy missions with stock TGE. This actually works for majority of the released Torque Game Engine games also.

Keywords:
Network Speed Optimization Loadtime

Article:
There are a couple very important and very old and unchanged prefs in Torque and Torque 2D. I also assume Torque Shader Engine has this "problem" as I'm sure if it had been changed there, it would have changed for the others also.

There are 3 Net prefs in TGE that do not get set by default (outside of C++). The names and values are as follows:
$pref::Net::PacketRateToServer = 32 (per second)
$pref::Net::PacketRateToClient = 10 (per second)
$pref::Net::PacketSize = 200 (bytes)

The rate to server is not terribly important as this normally only includes movemanager updates 95% of the time. I also assume client messages are sent at this interval. 32 packets per second works out to roughly a packet every 32 ms, which goes along with the tick rate that TGE maintains (incase anyone was curious as to why the particular number)

Rate to client along with the low packet size limit both LOCAL and non-local connections. This means single player games are effected by these values. 10x200 bits is only 2kbytes a second. Depending on your game, this is not enough for actual gameplay. A DH: Lore server with 32 players, will start showing problems due to this. Projectiles will stop appearing as there is simply too much information that is more important being sent over the line.

The hardcoded rate and packetsize you can set are 32 and a packet size of 450 (which works out to a nice 14.4kbyte). Having done this for Lore, our mission load times have drastically increased, and although I haven't played in a 32 player server, I did get 30 bots into a tight area on a dedicated server to see if the problems would re-occur and they did not.

As these are simple prefs, there are no real script or code changes involved in this process. I have actually used it to speed up the load times for Rocketbowl, which is purely single player. Lighting times are uneffected of course, but if you have alot of objects (some of the Lore maps hit 500+ objects) or alot of datablocks, then your loadtime has been most likely capped by the network bandwidth being "used".

Daniel Eden (Nov 16, 2005 at 21:54)
I've got some GUI code floating around that adds the ability to customize your network performance using the three script values listed above. My favoured presets are:

14.4K Modem (Minimums)
$Pref::Net::PacketRateToClient = 10;
$Pref::Net::PacketRateToServer = 8;
$Pref::Net::PacketSize = 100;

28.8K Modem
$Pref::Net::PacketRateToClient = 12;
$Pref::Net::PacketRateToServer = 16;
$Pref::Net::PacketSize = 200;

56.6K Modem
$Pref::Net::PacketRateToClient = 16;
$Pref::Net::PacketRateToServer = 20;
$Pref::Net::PacketSize = 240;

DSL/ ADSL Connection
$Pref::Net::PacketRateToClient = 20;
$Pref::Net::PacketRateToServer = 24;
$Pref::Net::PacketSize = 350;

Cable Connection
$Pref::Net::PacketRateToClient = 24;
$Pref::Net::PacketRateToServer = 24;
$Pref::Net::PacketSize = 400;

T1/ LAN Connection (Maximums)
$Pref::Net::PacketRateToClient = 32;
$Pref::Net::PacketRateToServer = 32;
$Pref::Net::PacketSize = 450;

[/quote]

[NUTS!]

^ ah yes, got that from a GG forum. Don't forget that those settings are for a server, individually (as the client) we should have them opened all the way BABY.

[get some]

which would be the 32, 32, 450 configuration correct?

[NUTS!]

correct