Un-Lag patch possible?

[moore+]

"peer-to-peer friendlier engine. "

 

 

That is just silly, peer to peer is godawful in every case as far as gaming goes. I'd much rather have a big strong server on a big fat pipe handling all the server duties.

[madrebel]

look 56k users can cry and flame and whine and accuse as much as they want. 56k sucks plain and simple. No amount of code wizardry will allow a lag free experience online.

 

get broadband thats your answer.

[Sithcloak]

I know how all of you 56krs feel. I was there before our familly got dsl. I played JK with 56k and it was so bad that i would be running one second and then a second later see my self being hit by a cunncussion rifle!

 

It was terrible untill i found the power of dsl.

 

I hope that raven helps all the people that have not been able to get dsl and other fast connections. But i fear that it might not be possible because of the engine, like the others said.

 

 

Sithcloak

[Lucky]

Games cost an insane ammount of money to make. And the industry as a whole grossed 9 billion dollars last year, which was 2-3 more than the film industry.

 

The problem is time more or less. If Raven took the time to rewrite the entire networking module of q3 so that Mattock could play the game @ the lvl he expected, the game would have been released in June or July, might not have recouped its money in the face of the coming adversity in the FPS market, and they would have gained *one* player online.

 

Mattock if you can't find one server then either pay an exorbitant ammount to rewire the phone lines in your house or just realize that its litterally not for you. shiz happens, lifes not fair, blah blah. Insisting that Raven jepordize their revenue so that one percent of the gaming community, a 1 percent that may or may not decide to give it a go online, can finally find the one server they can play on, is ludicrous and navaros like.

 

Here's what i suggest. Open up JK2. Organize the servers by ping. Pick one thats under 200 ms and has less than 16 people on it. Try it out. Rinse, Lather, Repeat. If this solution doesn't work after 50-60 tries, give up for a few months.

 

You might be one of the unlucky sods that doesn't have a NAP (network access point) anywhere near you. In that case yer just screwed and should whine for the rest of yer life on these forums. I suggest you fly to africa or china and commiserate with the BILLIONS OF UNLUCKY PEOPLE ALL OVER THE WORLD YOU TAKE ADVANTAGE OF EVERY DAY. Last I checked, most of them can't play JK2 either. We should blame Raven for this utter lack of foresight. How could they not think of the starving and wartorn nations of africa when developing their game. Despicable.

 

Let me also reiterate that there are six 56k users in my clan who play with me daily. I'm lucky (hah!) to have cable and thus i get stuck hosting quite a bit. Unfortuneatly, my cable blows and I'm a terrible host. I haven't seen any of them as of yet say "Damn those lazy programmers at Raven!". No, they say "geez man, you suck at hosting, we need a dedicated server". And they're right. Get a goddamn clue when yer assigning blame to a problem you don't even remotely understand.

 

 

Lucky

 

 

PS: I'm a huge proponent of p2p code, but implying laziness on the part of a stressed out team of programmers is utterly inconsiderate. I'm sure these guys worked intensely hard for the last 2-3 months while in crunch mode so that you and I could enjoy the game. Have just a *tiny* bit of understanding and intelligence.

[madrebel]

p2p doesnt work its far to easy to hack.

[Guest Obi]

Did you say 1% of the online gaming community are dial-ups? Did you say that Mattock is the only one who would gain from such an adjustment? If I read that right, then you and your spoiled, punk, elitist broadband friends are wrong. I have met many a sad and disgruntled 56k gamer who can't play JK II. I could play Elite Force just fine, and I can't play JK II. The same goes for others.

 

I think Raven has done an excellent job, but I think this game could probably be atleast somewhat optimized, and that an attempt to do this could atleast be made. There are a lot more dial-up gamers than broadband, even though the number of broadband users is increasing. It's especially important to optimize whatever can be optimized for dial-ups because a huge fan base for this game comes from the primarily dial-up predecessor to Jedi Knight II(DF2:Jedi Knight) and now hopes to get as much enjoyment out of Jedi Outcast.

 

It's simply not possible for some people to get broadband. Many people have dial-up because they are simply too far away from hugely populated areas to have it available. Another reason is cost. Not everyone is in a university with a t1 line, and not everyone has parents willing to dish out that kind of money for a connection to the internet that utilizes speed that only their children will ever need. Peer to Peer may be dead, but the spread of broadband has hit a temporary wall and dial-up is here to stay for a while longer. I think it would be a wise move to make any optimization that can be had for this game that will make it work better on a 56k.

 

Not all 56kers can find a dedicated server either. Many of us are in clans and need to play where our clan plays. If you think that we can just leave our clan and go find some other one with a dedicated server, you are dead wrong. I've been with my clan for 5 years, since the beginning of Jedi Knight, and I'm not about to leave now. We play by IP and on the zone. I play by IP mostly, like I did with EF, and I have yet to play more than 1 decently lagged game.

 

Perhaps if your 56k clanmates knew the real reason for their distress, they wouldn't blame you for being such a bad host. Unless they figured in your attitude.

[Lucky]

Optimized how? clientside detection? Thats great in theory unfortuneatly it allows for an incredible amount of haxoring.

 

Didja ever think about the complexity of JK2? Think about trying to transmit all that data. Now think about the features in lets say, wolfenstein, and ef. Neither one of those games has the kind of hit detection or melee combat that Jk2 has. Its a crapload more traffic and they aren't comparable.

 

If you'd like to take the time to re-read what I posted you'd realize that I in no way stated that dialupers represent 1% of the community at large. I said that dialupers who can't find a SINGLE server they can play on represent 1% of THIS community.

 

I sympathize with yer inability to play with yer clan. We're going thru similar things right now. A few of our members can't get a decent game on our dedicated server and its a problem we're working to fix by setting up another one.

 

Did we blame Raven for this? Nope. We resolved to fix the problem ourselves.

 

Personally, I'm hungover. And I'm insulted by someone calling a design team that output such an incredible game 'lazy'. If the gruff demeanor offends you then imagine my headache and malfunctioning bodily functions, and feel sated.

 

I also take issue with your stating that the majority of this games fans came directly from the 2nd game in the series. Since we don't have #'s on this yet, thats not necessarily true. I came from JK, u came from JK, the people I know and play with came from JK, but I bet we're in the minority. Mostly because the online component of our community was tiny and dwindled in the last couple of years. Maybe 1500 individual users on the zone in the last 2 years. Hell, i bet between the both of us we know over half of them. Compare that to CS with 54,000 people. It's stupifying. At any rate, in-house polls at lucasarts and raven will probably have answered that within a month or so. If we ask nicely enough they might even tell us the results.

 

I would indeed say that dialupers represent the majority of gamers by far. For me, this is not meant to be a debate between the 2. Asking someone who has to make a deadline to rewrite some incredibly efficient (if demanding) networking code that came straight from Carmack is just silly. It's obvious they did work around it for the melee combat, but for movement and their general collision detection and physics, Q3 is tough to beat.

 

I'm not asking you to get cable, or even to be happy with the current state of online gaming in terms of performance. I'm simply saying that there ARE solutions out there to be found and had. Most of these are not going to originate from Raven, they're going to come from within the community.

 

Right now there are about 300 servers out there and half of em are hosted on cable worse than mine. I get crappy games 1 out of every 3 tries. I'm an LPB. Certainly because of my individual connection and network issues, this shouldn't apply to everyone. But you and everyone else in this thread seem to want to apply very simplistic statements to things that are very complex.

 

That being said, if I get a crap game 1 out of every 3 tries, wouldn't you think it might have somthing to do with the servers? Its *brand* new. Wait a while, let the community get on its feet and there will be t3 hosted servers that will offer competitive play for you and yer entire clan.

 

Right now the network is hodgepodge and unpredictable. Its the users responsibility, just as it is in every other fps, to create and run dedicated servers. Give it time and things will improve.

 

Or if yer in the same boat as matlock, who sounds like he's 150 miles in either direction from a telephone company which is 1000 miles away from a NAP, you just might be in the 1% of the folks who bought this game who can't play it ANYWHERE. But then again you might be a defense attourney who consitently prosecutes witnesses to get his clients off murder wraps. You might have a neat friend named Barney too.

 

If thats true, there's not a lot to be done, and I really do sympathize with you. Rest assured, without rewriting that very well written networking module of iD's simply to suit you and yer specific needs, the programmers at Raven couldn't do a lot to help you out on that front.

 

Personally, I WOULD like to see some hit detection and some client-side code. It would be costly and possibly ineffective, it might also bring with it the possibilities of cheats. It would open the game up to a lot of folks like yerself and the dialupers in my clan.

 

I'm just a realist. Realistically to solve the *worst* case scenarios thats a bad idea. To bring more folks into the community it *might* be a good idea. However, you have to understand what yer asking and what it might cost you and the rest of us. And not declare the game 'unplayable' based upon yer own individual results. Thats simply navaros like.

 

 

Lucky

[Emon]

Actually, it's sort of possible.

 

There is a Quake III server-side only mod (only the server needs it) called Unlagged. Basically it makes it so there's "no lag" on instand hit weapons like the machine gun, shot gun, and the lightning gun. It does this by warping the target back towards your hit point from your weapon, then warping them back. So basically on your PC, you see them get hit, but they'll die a few moments later. The target PC will see a shot that missed, but he still gets damaged.

 

I don't know how useful this would be, since I think the only instant hit weapon is the Disruptor, and I don't even think it's true instant hit.

 

Client-side hit detection and other things such as that not only open the game to lots of cheats, but they require recoding the netcode, a huge job I don't think Raven wants to mess with.

 

The very simple solution is this: GET BROADBAND! If your a kid and your parents won't pay for it, go get a job! It's only about $50 a month, and if you get Adelphia cable internet you can get their basic cable with it for free. That's what I have, and my pings are hardly ever over 100ms on fast servers, the lag is pretty much gone.

[Guest PissedJedi]

As someone who used a modem since the days of Quake1 shareware up till 4 months ago. I know all the problems that 56k'ers have had. The absolute best site to go for all ideas ,fixes tips ,firmware updates, how-to's, where's and why's is

http://808hi.com/56k/index.asp

 

 

Trust me if you can find out the manufacturer for your modem I bet this site has the info on it.

 

The best modem I used for a long while and it's dirt cheap was a lucent based winmodem pci. Now before you scream about how winmodem's suck and blah blah.

 

With the latest firmware and while using Earthlink.. I routinely averaged pings of 125-140ms while playing online.

 

From Unreal tournament, to Q3 and on. Folks would swear I Was using Isdn.

 

The key with lucent's winmodem's is that they updated their firmware alot. And because of this stability of the modem's connection was excellent.

 

I swear by that site. As far as Q3 netcode goes. It was really optimized for broadband because the Q3 game really was aimed at the hardcore gamer .. and most hardcore gamers had access to broadband of some form.

 

Now Raven while being fantastic designers are not really the experts of Netcode. I mean they are not better then John Carmack.

 

My suggestion follow the tips of that site. Make sure you don't run any extra apps in the background that can sap some juice from your connection like AIm,ICq or Trillian.

 

Also make sure you use an excellent isp. PRoviders like Aol or MSn are not one's I recommend or juno or Netzero.

 

Look for someone like Earthlink or look for the best regional provider you can find. The closer they are to you the better.

 

Also do some tests on your current connection.

 

this app is my favorite for doing this and bonus is its free.

 

http://www.blackcastlesoft.com/uotrace/download.asp

 

Good luck and if you can get some better pings ,then I have done my job.

[Guest PissedJedi]

Now as to the subject matter of Broadband versus Dial-up and wether or not there are more.

 

It all depends on where you live. In florida for example. In the pinellas county ,pasco and hernando counties..

 

CAble modem is Available everywhere. And there is dsl.

 

BRoad band is spreading everywhere.

 

Now that's the us. But in other countries unfortunately there are monopolies in place that are preventing the spread of broadband at a fast rate.

 

It depends on the country. It's amazing that most of europe has little access to broadband.

 

While a tiny country like Korea 99.9% of the country is wired.

 

Telling someone to go out and get a job doesn't fix the problem if where they live There is nothing available.

 

In jersey city,nj... 2 1/2 years ago.. There was no broadband available at all. Other then business t-1 and t3s.

 

BRoadband is spreading but it's taking a long time.

 

But I guarantee you one thing at this moment online gaming population is majority broadband. I noticed the difference in games like UT and others.

 

When UT first came out.. it was 80% dial-up and 20% broadband.

 

Now it's totally flip-flopped. And that's only going to increase in broadband's favor.

 

I can't blame Raven for the reality of the situation. And neither should you.

[Mattock]

Listen. Half of these flames towards me make no sense.

 

I have NEVER said that I CANNOT AT ALL PLAY THIS GAME.

NEVER.

 

I get in maybe 1 or 2 at most decent games a night. Decent = a ping under 400ms while I'm ingame. I consider that for the most part playable.

 

I have never stated that Raven purposely designed the game for broadband users only! I simply said they did not do any realistic testing with the game running a 56k modem. I don't think anyone will argue with that. I know Raven for the most part did not even write this netcode!

 

The Tribes 2 comparison I'm using is not that they are the same game. I am simply saying this, please READ CAREFULLY:

 

Tribes 2 sucked on a 56k modem when it first came out.

The team put the effort in and came out with a patch and made it better.

 

THAT'S IT!

 

Different game or not, I am simply pointing out that they made an effort to improve their gameplay for 56k modem users.

 

I am not blaming Raven for my lack of broadband access, crappy phone lines, where I live, who my mother is, OR the war in the middle east.

 

All I am asking, is Raven make AN ATTEMPT, to improve the game for 56k users.

 

I AM NOT asking they REWRITE the entire netcode as some have assumed I am asking. I am speaking along the lines of a patch that could possibly, POSSIBLY improve the performance.

 

I understand these things cost money. I don't need an economics lesson. If Raven did however manage to improve the game performance, I do believe I would tell everyone I know to buy it so I could shove a saber up their [explitive removed]!! and thus the company would make more money! woohoo.

 

I don't understand why some people feel this is asking too much?

 

 

BTW, if I was a broadband user, I would probably be an elitist too lol. just kiddin fellas, I know everyone here means well. BTW I appreciate all the new 56k modem site links n stuff. Its good reading, I'm trying new stuff everyday!

 

eesh my posts always ending up going long

[Essobie]

Originally posted by Mattock

I have been to EVERY tweak site you can imagine. I have had 3 different dialup modems. I have tried EVERY local ISP in my town. I live in a SMALL town where we don't have rich mommy and daddy's to buy us ISDN as if it were even available in our town. I'm NOT asking Raven to fix the internet or my crappy phone lines. I'm asking them to clean up the net code A LITTLE BIT which they are perfectly capable of doing but were too lazy to do the first time around.

 

People can tell me to not make this comparison all they want but I will just keep on.

 

Tribes 2 was HORRIBLE on 56k modems when it first came out. But they released a patch and now its fantastic. If they can, so can anyone else.

 

Tribes 2 is probably fantastic for 56kers now because people with broadband aren't playing it anymore. They are playing CS, Q3A, MoH, RTCW and now JK2.

 

Peer to peer is the illusion of a flawless connection, and for the most part the most successful players in peer to peer games were the people who had pretty poor internet connections and pretty accurate imaginations about where to shoot next.

 

This whole thread was started asking for an "Unlagged" version of JK2, which as far as I can tell, is a direct reference to server history calculations for accurate shots for hitscan weapons. As far as I know, there's no way to do it with projectile weapons in the Q3A Engine... and since all but one weapon in JK2 is projectile, well... no Unlagged.

 

No matter what tweak sites you go to, modem connections will never be competitive in this game. If you just want to play for fun, play with bots, or find a local LAN group (when I was living in a small backwoods town in Texas there was a LAN every weekend... if you don't have one where you are, START ONE... LAN equipement for small networks is practically FREE now).

 

Essobie

[Lucky]

Mattock,

 

 

phone lines. I'm asking them to clean up the net code A LITTLE BIT which they are perfectly capable of doing but were too lazy to do the first time around.

 

notice u said 'lazy'.

 

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

 

also 'unplayable'

 

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

 

Do you have even the slightest idea how play testing works at a game company? They have an entire staff of people that play the game constantly, and get paid to do it, looking for bugs and problems. This is the same in *every* design house, and Raven would be criminally negligent with regards to lucasarts/activision if they hadn't tested each and every aspect of the game. Obviously you can't catch them all, but the stress they were putting on the netcode *had* to have gotten a more than anal go over. Most likely multiple times on multiple systems under multiple spoofed conditions to simmulate what you yerself are now having trouble with. They prolly didn't completely rewrite the networking module, but im sure they optimized it as best they could for their specific needs as well as controlled what they were sending thru it to reduce traffic.

 

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?

 

You just can't squeeze enough packets thru crappy lines/connections to allow the game to do what it does. Otherwise iD, any of the other techdeveloping firms would have done it and we'd be making use of it. Yer essentially requesting that they reinvent the wheel and make it a perpetual motion machine.

 

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.

 

Yes, it is completely different. Tribes2 actually makes use of client/side detection as well as p2p code in places to improve efficiency. At the same time, other parts of the tribes engine aren't up to what Raven needed to complete THIS game. It's a trade off, license the tribes2 engine to get the networking tech, with which they have 0 experience, or use an engine they already have licensed and have lots of experience with. Companies tend not to license individual parts of seperate engines. Integrating the code alone would be an impressive feat. It can cost a good chunk of a million dollars to license a top name engine like q3.

 

Lastly, I didn't mean to single you out man. But calling Raven 'lazy' irritates me. Even if it was a flippant remark, it still shows that you don't really understand what goes into making a game.

 

Also the giddiness of folks blaming Raven for their own shortcomings without first trying to figure them out, which it sounds like you've done and i commend you for it, is just ridiculous.

 

And lastly, making broad declarations like "this game is unplayable" make me want to shiz my pants and sit in it for a week. Its not personal anger, its just anger at the words you chose to use. I realize it wasn't just you saying these things, I tried to be generic with my first post but it followed right after yours =P

 

Seriously folks, buy a book on networking and study the problem. There's no easy way to do it yet, but people are still trying. Raven's job in this case was adding their own individual code elements and actual content, not solving the hardest puzzle to get around in the FPS genre.

 

The q3 engine is a relatively reasonable solution to the problem. I can show you guys how to map yer connection so you *know* exactly where yer connecting to. It might be that yer nearest NAP is in a terrible spot. Most people blame it on the copper wires in their house, but thats too simplistic. The problem can have much more complex originations.

 

 

 

Lucky

[Mattock]

I don't mind being singled out Lucky. Especially when people aren't insulting me

 

 

and note: before I said unplayable, I also said "mostly".

 

as I said in my last post, I have found a couple of games here and there I can play on.

 

oh btw.

 

I actually didn't even know the original poster was referring to an actual.. company? program? whatever, called "unlagged". I just thought he meant a patch to remove lag some. My fault on that aspect.

[Guest PissedJedi]

Tribes2 has folks with corporate connections using oc3's as the server connection.

 

That's why many get great pings with tribes2.

 

I guarantee any game would be alot smoother if it was hosted on an oc3.

[brosser_1999]

I don't want to start any humongous arguments or anything, but as I read through a number of the posts I saw that a few people said something to the effect of

 

Get broadband now or die, or you are stupid for having 56k

(I'm obviously exagerrating)

 

And a lot of 56kers say

broadband users are devil elitists

(still clearly exagerating)

 

The thing is a lot of broadband users are neglecting to see that a faster connection is simply out of reach for some of us 56kers (regionaly or financially). Ill admit finding an above average game on 56k is hard and I end up dropping out of about 3 or 4 games to find one good gaming experience. But once I find that one good game I play for hours and totally forget about the 3 horrible ones. I even had a good 6 man CTF game today on the zone with very little lag on my Netzero connection(go figure)

 

On the technical side of things...

Us gamers are solving nothing by arguing and flaming each other.

We could probably get our points across a lot better with nice little comments and suggestions directed towards developers, phone companies, ISPs or whoever.

[Essobie]

Originally posted by brosser_1999

The thing is a lot of broadband users are neglecting to see that a faster connection is simply out of reach for some of us 56kers (regionaly or financially). Ill admit finding an above average game on 56k is hard and I end up dropping out of about 3 or 4 games to find one good gaming experience. But once I find that one good game I play for hours and totally forget about the 3 horrible ones. I even had a good 6 man CTF game today on the zone with very little lag on my Netzero connection(go figure)

 

I don't think I'm neglecting that fact (and you may not even be talking about my posts). I am simply pointing out that the technology has given a large rise to broadband, so games will now use network models to allow users that have that technology to get a much more accurate gameplay experience (accurate as in seeing what's actually happening, not nessesarily being able to SHOOT accurately).

 

My suggestion to those that cannot REACH broadband connections is to play against bots or play on LAN's if they want a seamless network experience with JK2. The fact that it's mostly projectile weapons and melee combat (sabers) means that something like what Urban Terror or Counter-Strike has would be useless.

 

Essobie