Un-Lag patch possible?

[Bruck Chun]

lets face it, Jk2 is a new game. Most games later come out with a patch that helps to speed up the game play or tweak the engine. This may bring a ray of hope to myself, and the other 56kers.

 

I know, I wont be the first to say this when I say "lets pray".

 

-Bruck-

[CaptainPOE]

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but chances are there won't be a patch, at least to make it less laggy that is The only real answer, if it is possible that is, is to get some sort of broadband. And if that isn't an option do a search on 56k tweaks and try to tweak your modem settings as good as you can to squeeze every little bit of bandwidth you can get out of it.

[Mattock]

Well, I would hope that Raven would at least consider trying to clean it up a bit.

 

Tribes 2 made adjustments and REALLY improved play for modem users. I can get on any game with my 56k in Tribes 2 and have a blast. This game however is very laggy.

 

The best connection to a game I've managed so far has still been mostly unplayable. Hopefully they'll work on improving it.

[Owen]

If Raven's last game is any indication, they will not be patching too often. They only released 2 patches for Elite Force.

[Vanor]

This game is not laggy for a 56k modem. I have one and get a 175ms ping to a deciated server I play on. And the server is in Canada.

 

There's a trick however.

 

go into the console and type /rate 3000 I did this and it dropped my ping by 200ms. It sets the transfer rate your client will accept from the server and setting it to 3kps helps keep your modem from getting packet flooded.

 

No patch needed, just change the rate.

[GRIMLOCK]

they only made 2 patches for EF cause all was fixed in the first patch.

the second one was to make it compatable with the expansion.

just addin new models and such.

as for 56k'ers

welp

first off you need a LOT of system resources to run well, secondly. AOL won't cut it, AOL just plain sux.

some other service may work okay, but.. well we all know bout the mighty AOL.

or attempt to get cable.

56k is a little out of date though with todays tech, and soon i doubt games will even support it.

[StormHammer]

Originally posted by GRIMLOCK

56k is a little out of date though with todays tech, and soon i doubt games will even support it.

 

I agree that 56k is out-of-date as far as technology goes...but there still seem to be more 56k users than those with broadband. In countries like the UK, this will unfortunately not change any time soon. DSL is still not available in most areas, and BT has now stopped it's rollout plans altogether - i.e., they will not be upgrading any more exchanges to DSL until the existing ones attract more DSL users. Cable companies in the UK (and other countries) are getting buried under massive debts due to the high cost of laying their own cables, etc., and their returns do not match their outlay.

 

So, while broadband technology is obviously better...many, many people cannot get access now, or in the near future. So, if game developers simply decide to ditch support for 56k access to play online, they will alienate a lot of gamers - and as one gamer in this position, I would have to demand that all new games came with bots to enable me to play MP maps offline and join in the fun. Otherwise, unless the SP part of the game is very, very good, I would feel that I am not getting my money's worth. For example, I have the game RUNE, and the SP is very good - but I cannot really play online, because the lag from my end is horrendous, and I kept getting booted from servers. I can't play the MP maps offline - unless I run around the levels on my own, or spawn in some SP characters...which isn't anywhere near the same as having some AI-tweaked bots to fight.

 

Broadband is the way to go, and I'd love to be able to get access to it...but unless I move house (which is pretty drastic just to be able to play online), there is no chance of me playing online effectively any time soon.

[NeoTrunks]

You guys should check out unlagged for quake 3. I don't have a URL on hand, though. Urban Terror uses it (http://www.urbanterror.net). True Combat also uses it (http://dynamic2.gamespy.com/~q3t/). I'm sure if Raven asked the coders of Unlagged, they'd be happy to contribute.

[Bruck Chun]

56kers, should really speak out about this problem. For most users the /rate 3000 doesnt work. What Stormhammer said is exactly true for most users for 56k. We should let Raven Know this.

[Jedi_WilliamKy]

I posted this in another thread on the tech forum.

 

 

*I've studied this problem to death over the years because I live way out in the country with no access to broadband. I have had maybe 10-12 different ISP's in the last 5 years and I have never connected faster than 28.8 even though I'm on a 56k modem. So everyone that thinks it's the ISP's problem for low connections is dead wrong. It's not the ISP. It's the quality of the phone line and distance from the nearest switching station. In an effort to cut costs, many phone companies nowadays are using shoddy or cheap copper lines when they either run new or replace old phone lines. The bad news is that these crappy phone lines aren't even able to carry a 56k connection. And the phone company could friggin care less how fast you connect to the internet. I have called BellSouth many times to complain about this and all they do is laugh in my face because thanks to their monopoly, I have no choice but to use their phone lines. Bellsouth only guarantees a 9600kbps connection which is voice quality. Be happy you can even get 28.8.

 

So the bottom line, I feel your pain guys but there's not a damn thing we can do about it and the problem will only get worse because many of the newer games coming out are optimized for broadband. Games like this with stunning graphics and a lot of information to move, just won't run on the old fashioned phone line very well.*

 

 

I've tried a lot of the tweaking programs out there to no avail. No amount of tweaking in the world will be able to save you from a ****ty phone line.

[Mattock]

The /rate 3000 thing did nothing for me.

I noticed ZERO difference and most people I've talked to have said the same.

 

 

Alot of it is phone lines, no doubt. But Raven COULD do some things to clean it up still.

 

I Play Tribes 2 and get no lag at all in that game. When it first came out it was terrible, but they did some patches and now its spectacular, and Tribes 2 is a graphics heavy game, lots of information flying around, and my modem handles it just great

 

Lets hope Raven at least makes an attempt to clean it up for modem users.

 

Its been lately where modem users just accept that they can't play these games and that's just wrong. I know its happening with this game because every server I connect to, everyone has a ping under 100ms except me, and there's no way modem users can pull those pings unless they're sitting right next to the server

[Amorpheus]

The game may be new, but the engine has been around for quite a long while - don't expect any improvements there.

[Sephiroth]

don't compare it to games like Tribes 2..

 

TOTALLY DIFFERENT GAME ENGINE

 

if you are going to compare the 'lag' you experience when playing JK2, compare it to Quake 3..

 

it's unfair to compare something based on the Q3 engine with the Tribes 2 engine.. they are nothing alike, the netcode is completely different, and everything about the two games is different..

 

if you want somebody to blame, don't blame Raven..

 

*points at id software*

 

personally i don't think you should blame anybody.. it's not their fault the lines consist of crap 10 year old copper wires to save on expenditure.. take it up with the phone companies.. or your isp, which probably sucks if you can't get at least 33.6 out of a 56k modem.. and just cause you have had 12 isps which all gave crap connection speeds, doesn't mean it's not an isp problem.. it probably is, they just all suck!

[Mattock]

Half of you people arguing against us 56kers are on broadband so you don't know what its like. Lag for you is an 80ms ping! I want to punch people in the face when the whine about that kind of connect. That's the stuff that makes 56kers wet themselves.

 

Its really dumb that these game companies can't design a game to allow 56k users to play at least MOST of the time and enjoy the game MOST of the time.

 

The box says 56k modem required for internet games. HAH. I'd like to meet someone from Raven who actually tested the game on a 56k modem and was connecting to a server halfway across the country that was hosted on someone's personal DSL line! I would gladly place ALOT of money on the fact that they did NO SUCH TESTING. They probly had someone in their office use a dialup to connect to the server that was in the same room as him, said "ya it works" and slapped it on the box.

 

There is no way they did some SERIOUS testing for dialup modems. No way in hell.

 

Even if Tribes 2 is a different game, SO WHAT? Maybe they should learn a few things from their code and try it out eh?!?

 

I would appreciate it alot more if these companies would put on the box "Well, you can connect to games with a 56k modem, but its not really playable, we suggest a broadband connection to play this game reasonably." Then I wouldn't get my hopes up.

 

Don't feed me this "your phone lines suck" excuse, because 90% of the people on dialup have crappy phone lines, maybe they should take that into consideration eh? Oh no that's too much trouble.

 

bah

 

sorry I'm just real frustrated now with these high speed users making excuses for Raven when they have no clue what its like.

[Prox Kolari]

I have decent DSL, and I've noticed considerable lag on most servers with more than 8 people... it just gets really choppy. I can't imagine what having dial-up would be like (P.S. I'm pretty new to broadband, so dial-up users, I feel your pain). I thought Q3 was supposed to be the God of Netcode. EF was even better than this.

[arctic_series]

Originally posted by Prox Kolari

I have decent DSL, and I've noticed considerable lag on most servers with more than 8 people... it just gets really choppy. I can't imagine what having dial-up would be like (P.S. I'm pretty new to broadband, so dial-up users, I feel your pain). I thought Q3 was supposed to be the God of Netcode. EF was even better than this.

 

that's because all the graphics and all the action that's happening tend to lag alot.

 

especially with like half the players in the server spamming with the heavy repeater on secondary fire.

[Brandon]

I feel your pain, dial-up users. I've tried the /rate 3000 command and while it does seem to make a difference for Return to Castle Wolfenstein, there's no noticable change for JK2. At the risk of sounding like an idiot, I'm really beginning to think that the original Jedi Knight's engine was better suited for online balance than Quake 3 based games. Allow me to explain. In the original Jedi Knight, sure you would lag to heck and back on a dial-up, but you wouldn't freeze, you wouldn't have a shot-delay, and you would have a "lag ghost" effect to compensate. For those of you wondering what a "lag ghost" is; it's an effect created by a higher pinged player that causes his position on the map to be falsely reported. By falsely reported, I mean that the player's real-time position is invisible, and what the opponent sees is a slightly delayed status of your position. (The amount of delay depends on the amount of lag) However, this also works against you (the high ping player) because you perceive enemies as having the same lag ghost effect that the enemies perceive you as having. Thus, it's harder for enemies like low pingers to hit you, but it's also hard for you to hit low pingers. In Quake 3 based games, it's easy for low pingers to hit you, but harder for you to hit low pingers. Does that make any sense? I hope it does. Anyway, probably the best aspect of the old Jedi Knight engine was that it was peer to peer--I believe that's what it's called. I realize that servers are around to prevent people from cheating and so forth, and that's highly sensible, but sometimes I miss the ol' Jedi Knight way.

[Mattock]

I know what you mean about the ghosts.

 

It was an old thing in Xwing VS Tie Fighter.

 

You would always have to shoot ahead of your opponent if it was someone on a high speed connect. If you shot where the actual ship was you would never hit.

[MechDeus]

Mattock: Out of curiousity, do you normally play games with only the minimum requirements? Do you know what that means? It means it runs at that speed, nothing more. It doesn't mean it runs well, it doesn't mean you won't have a slide show, all it means is that it works. This goes hand-in-hand with the connection, it works on 56k, and they told you that. They didn't say you'd have a ping of 50 with one.

 

Next, how would they try out anything from the Tribes 2 code? Q3 is written completely differently, any info learned from Tribes 2 wouldn't help at all, as it uses different methods of transferring data, how much data, which data needs to go, and so on. They could look at it all they like, and you know what? They could probably figure out a way to get Tribes 2 to run better.

 

Plenty of games are just fine for 56k users, but any recent large-scale game isn't going to be. New games are made for the newer systems and newer connections. I'm willing to bet JK runs pretty damned good on 56k, especially with some tweaking, this is a fact (not a rant, not an insult, not a wild guess) that you're going to have to live with. Companies design new games, though there are ways to help speed up connection (force player models, use the lowest settings, clear up resources so nothing else is being sent or recieved, use a good ISP).

 

And if 90% of dialup have crappy phone lines, they have crappy phone lines, right? Why is that a bad excuse if it's true? And certainly, it helps show that complaining to the company who made the game can't do dick about that.

 

I had 28.8 for years, and only within the last year have had DSL. Basically, you're going to have lag, and lots of it. My only suggestion is to try and find some people for a LAN, it's your best bet. Many of us do know what it's like, and there are some of us who know what it's like from the companies perspective. It's all fine and good to complain from the end where you don't have to deal with recieving complaints about things not in your control, but perhaps you should stand back and take a wider look at things.

[Mattock]

What I mean by the phone line stuff is this.

 

If 90% of people on dialup have crappy phone lines, and the game company KNOWS this. Why can't they try build the game to be somewhat possible even on these crappy lines? It would only make sense wouldn't it?

 

The vast majority of people on the internet are still on dialup modems. Why cater to the few? Its completely possible to do a little more work and cater to the masses isn't it? Or is that really an unreasonable thing to ask of gaming companies these days?

 

Like I said in my previous long post, I can almost guarantee they did no "real world" testing on a 56k modem.

 

BTW, while I'm thinking about it:

 

Has anyone tried the U.S. Robotics performance Pro modem? I've seen it around and it advertises the fact that is has a "gaming mode" that great increases the performance while you're in online games. Was just wonder if anyone has seen it in action.

Thanks

[Prox Kolari]

I wonder if I totally lower the graphics and strip everything down, how it'll run in MP. I'll try it.

[MechDeus]

Well, the problem isn't always in the games net code (which JKII does admittedly have a couple problems in), but sometimes in the amount of code which must be sent (which can become a real problem when you've got fifteen people on a server). Some things can't be streamlined any more then they already are, but I'm willing to bet that there is some extraneous stuff that could be done to JKII, but probably not much.

 

The following paragraph is a example, the sizes I just made up for reference:

 

One could streamline the newer games to run on 56k, and you'd lose a lot. Think about how long it takes to even download a 25k text document. Fairly quick, but is it instanteous? Now imagine you're sending the text that represents the location for five people from their puters, to a server, to you, and each collection of their data (location, what weapon they're firing, how they're moving, what health they're at, etc.) is 5k. That right there is 25k. Now imagine how long it would take you to recieve that every second.

 

Q3 was designed as an online-only deathmatch game. Know what that means? Tournies, and lots of them. Q3 has no use for the lag-ghosts, as its main target audience are those with the high-speed connections and powerful puters. Part of this will transfer into the other games it runs, for better or worse.

 

Can JKII be speeded up? Certainly. By any reasonable margin? Who knows.

 

I realize there are some problems that exist, as my roomie actually recieved a "Connection Broken" message for a moment when he was running a duel server with a single bot. How does one lose the connection to a server on their puter?

[Mattock]

LoL that is pretty rough.

 

Listen, all I'm really saying is, I HOPE Raven makes an attempt.

Even if they attempt and fail, its alright because at least they're trying. When some people come right out on this board and say its a waste of time for Raven to even try that's wrong and I really hope Raven doesn't feel this way.

 

I understand all the stuff about sending the info. Xwing VS Tie Fighter was a great game, when Xwing Alliance came out I was stoked, but multiplayer sucked because everyone wanted to fly the Millenium Falcon, but its info packet was so huge you couldn't even try on a modem hehe.

 

If you think about it, Tribes 2 isn't COMPLETELY different in the way it sends the information. The main difference is, the game's focus is on its multiplayer aspect as opposed to JK which is I think more focused on its single player. You win some you lose some I guess.

[Wicket the Ewok]

dreams of the good old days of QuakeWorld where you could get 120-130 pings on a 33.6 modem.

 

I think programmers are just getting lazy. Now (some) people have decent connections they don't feel the need to improve and optimise their netcode.

 

There's no real excuse for this kind of laziness. Let's hope it gets fixed in one of the numberous patches I'm sure that will get released for this game.

[Mattock]

Even if it doesn't get "fixed", cleaned up a bit would be spectacular