Speed / Performance like frustrating problem..

ayumbre

Well its gonna be a bit hard for me to explain this i hope i will do it ok ( not so good english :D ! )

since the begining of NS ( for me 1.0 ) i remember i had no problem with this game.. im talking about speed , latency n performance...i could kill any fade , skulk or anything lightning-speed-like moving alien.. ( with lmg , at that time i wass a good player )..my reflexes were ok it doesnt matter how they were leaping or blinking... but with the time a new n more patches.. things started to change.... i wass feeling my self like a clumsy-turtle.... cause i wass shooting well to the aliens or biting n striking well the marines ( yes hiting fire button when the target wass inside my crosshair )
for example:

a fade going straight to me with blink... i spoted him first... start shooting... he wass on top of me striking me in like 0.5 secs... at 1.5 ( some tiems just at 1 second ) i wass already dead....and when i die he is at 280 / 140 hp... like wtf i unloaded 50 lmg bullets probably 40 landed on him..n of course some pistol shots lets say 5... but still a good number... and almost nothing of damage..

me as fade going straight to him with blink.. i spoted him first... but took me 1.5 second just to get close to him ( with celerity )!!! ... and when i start to strike him i already lose almost half of hp !!!... and in the middle of the fight like another 20% its like wow wtf !?

the point its this makes me feel like ALL my enemies see me in SLOW MOTION..! ! !11....

.i see aliens moving at super-hyper-mega-ultra-lightning speed..(n i now isnt true cause i played as alien n they dont move like that... as well when i play as alien.... i die in 1 second of lmg fire... me as skulk. ( with damage lvl zero lmg )..

.... its very very frustrating to me .. it almost doesnt matter how much latency i have it happend with 40 avg.. or 150 avg or 250 avg... and like average of 30 fps.... theres no download ... no porn... etc..

like im a slow children n they are fast animals ( like family guy tv-show lol )

now everyone make me look like a common nooblet.. =( !!!!!!!

its my connection ? virus ? spyware ? malware ? voodoo curse ? alienz hacking my pc !? or some hidden problem .. in this game ?? just happend to me in this game...

i hope someone can halp me :D ! bye

blackpiranha

Probably wrong configured rates. Adjusting them correctly to your connection can help.

YorVeX

my background is similar to yours - playing NS already for quite a long time (although with longer breaks and also not like every day). and i sometimes just got the same feelings. these fades just don't want to die even after the 8th shotgun hit. so i am angry and join aliens and go fade. but what the hell? suddenly i seem to be dying from only a single shotgun hit? what happened?
also it wasn't like this with earlier versions for me.

as i know pretty much about rate optimization i rather see that as a psychological effect. even if your rates are perfect, the net code isn't. due to physical limitations it's just not possible that always when you're hitting an enemy (according to your own client-side visuals) the server also calculates that you are hitting it. there will always be a discrepancy and it is getting bigger when players have a better movement.

now what has happened over the past years was that the overall player base heavily decreased. when earlier you got a big base that also included many new players nowadays most players are people that were playing this for years. they have unconsciously brought their movement to perfection in terms of using the above mentioned discrepancy to their advantage. especially for very good players it seems like you just can't hit them, see them running around as fade with 40:2 kill/death ratio and be astonished. they jump into 5 marines, hit one of them, jump out. and instead of staying hidden somewhere to regen health, as you would expect, they just come back a second later to attack again. and again.
of course that those players usually know how to optimize their rates is a factor in that as well, especially when some of the marines are trying to hit it with their pathetic 20ish cmdrates/updaterates...

well, that is the explanation i always have given to myself. but i am open to other ideas as well. it's supported by the fact (that is at least valid to me) that the effect is especially strong with players better than me (which are many, i am lower average at maximum). when i play against players that are worse they die very fast while on the other hand they complain i am like invincible to them. which then sounds quite familiar to me ;)

ayumbre

thanks both of u , nice replys .. but how i can fix , my rates ? its some kind of command in game ???

Pipi

Enable console in advanced options.

Then type in console

rate 25000
cl_updaterate 75
cl_cmdrate 115
fps_max 116

And everytime you start the game type in console

developer 1


This should help a bit.

ayumbre

wow ty !! im gonna try that right now...

btw ive heard people talking about..

loss
chocke
registry
net code....

what does mean... it has something to do with the online speed ??'

YorVeX

you can see most of these values by enabling the net_graph.

<b><u>loss:</u></b>
your client and the server are sending network packets via UDP to each other. UDP is a connectionless protocol that for itself doesn't ensure a package is received by the other side (as opposed to TCP). so it might happen that packets get lost. as packets are numbered the client and server can determine whether a packet was lost, e.g. when packet 1204 was received and then afterwards 1206 you can tell that packet 1205 was probably lost.
as package loss is absolutely normal on the internet NS defaults to sending a packet several times to increase the chance that it reaches its destination.

well, ofc it's more complex but i guess that simplified explanation will do for now.
as you can guess best is when you have loss 0, so no packets are being lost. if you notice you got loss on a server you can try to fix that by increasing the number of duplicated packets sent by increasing the value of cl_cmdbackup. if you can't fix it then you probably just have a bad connection to the server and you should find another one. if its on every server your internet connection might have problems or you overloaded it with other things (e.g. p2p).

<b><u>choke:</u></b>
choke occurs when NS wants to send a data packet but can't. the rate of data that can be sent to a server is limited by several factors:
- your "rate" and "cl_rate" settings
- your rate settings as they might be enforced by a server using sv_maxrate
- the available bandwidth of your connection (nowadays usually not the problem)

so if you set cl_updaterate higher than your connection bandwidth or the rate limits allow choke will occur, as NS would e.g. like to send 100 packets when it actually can only get 80 out.

again, it is good to have a value of 0 here. BUT, also a constant value of 1-5 doesn't hurt that much while on the other hand it means you have maxed out your update capacity, which is good. just don't let it go over 5. if it's too high lower your cl_updaterate in steps of 5 or 10 until the choke is low enough. also make sure your rate is maxed out ("cl_rate 9999" and "rate 25000" are the maximum values).


<b><u>registry:</u></b>
you can tweak some network values using the windows registry, that is probably what you refer to. however, you shouldn't do this when you're a novice with that.
i'd also not recommend to use one of these optimizer tools when it's about gaming. most of these tools increase the buffers for sending an receiving, which speeds up downloads but is actually bad for gaming, where you rather need short buffers and send cycles.
of course you could optimize the registry also for gaming, just that most of the tools do the opposite and if you don't know the background you will in 99% of the cases make it worse instead of better.

<b><u>net code:</u></b>
actually "net code" is rather the colloquial expression for it, it's not technically correct in any way. what i was talking about is the simple fact that a game consists of packets being lost, packets being received in a wrong order (yep, this can happen on UDP - while TCP compensates for that itself), packets being received in asynchronous intervals, packets being received with wrong data...

e.g. when you have loss or choke it might just happen that the bullet you just shot never reaches the server. either the data packet carrying it was lost or it couldn't even be sent because your client "choked" on it.

also think of lag. one player might have ping 100. the pings there are usually round-trip-times so it shows how many milliseconds the packet took to be sent to the server and back to the client. so with a ping of 100 it will take approx. 50 milliseconds until your packet reaches the server. so when the server learns where you're shooting at this information is already 50 milliseconds old!
now imagine the fade you were shooting at also has a lag of 50 milliseconds. so the information the server has about the fade is 50 milliseconds old. now the server forwads the information to you, which again takes 50 milliseconds. so the information about the position of the fade you got is already 100 milliseconds old when you get it, then you shoot and it takes another 50 milliseconds until the server finally can calculate whether you hit the fade or not. then it will send the data back to you and the fade, which takes another 50 milliseconds for both of you.

maybe you already got the point. people are constantly "missing" each others, because they are aiming at outdated positions and the bullet impact will also be outdated when it arrives.
so, the "net code" tries to compensate for that a bit. e.g. the server knows your data are 50 milliseconds old, so to judge whether you hit the fade or not it takes the position the fade had 50 milliseconds ago instead of the current one. ofc also taking the ping of the target into account is important.
well, and the client can compensate by making predictions on where a movement will go, doing extrapolations. this is what ex_interp or ex_extrapmax control, but i am really too tired to explain these now as well x_0
in the end such compensations are never perfect, so this is why you may be shooting a fade, hitting it to what you see but as to what the server knows you are just constantly missing. the fade runs away with 100% HP and you wonder what the hell is going on, because you just emptied 8 shotgun rounds on him and you were sure you hit.



well, hope that helped a bit. don't forget that i was simplifying much stuff here, because a correct explanation isn't worth anything when noone understands it. so you got the simplified one and i hope some things are more clear now.
e.g. it's not NS but the underlying half-life engine that implements the "net code" and thus handles sending and receiving of packets. NS, CS, TS...you name them...all use that protocol.
if you really want to know more about that you could e.g. read the documentation for Source engine games <a href="http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Source_Multiplayer_Networking" target="_blank">here</a>.

i hope my english was understandable, i am no native speaker and i've typed this text really fast and don't have the time to check everything again.

Pipi

You mean when people say "reg !!"


It's the registration process speed of the server for hitboxes. Although, NS has one of the best reliable system. I've seen ridiculous registration process games like Left 4 Dead or Battlefield 2142 that makes the gameplay extremely random.

ayumbre

AMAZING EXPLANIATION yorvex

n Pipi atm the worst reg iv ever seen is in BAttlefield 2 ......... for me its almost impossible to kill someone with when its running..jumping. ....or to me being killed when im running or jumping....

but at least i can do it lol...

1 day ago i wass jumping in front of a guy at 1 meter away... he unloaded 30 rounds on me of his m4... i just jumping like crazy in zig zag... dodged like 29 bullets... n sprayed in hes face my PKM n he died ... was so LOL.....

i wass like... wtf how i survived !?. n how is he dead...