Ping Spikes and Constant Freezing
Golafdor
Join Date: 2012-08-13 Member: 155541Members, Reinforced - Supporter
Join Date: 2012-08-13 Member: 155541Members, Reinforced - Supporter
Hi all,
I preordered NS2 a few months ago. Every couple weeks I log on to check and see if my problems persists. Sure enough, it does. I play a large variety of video games and get decent FPS and never lag spikes. Natural Selection 2, however, I consistently have a problem with.
Here it is: When I stand still, generally no problem occurs. When I start moving around (perhaps when doors open and new textures have to load? Also with players), I get about a five second freeze on average. This occurs every two to five seconds, nonstop for as long as I'm playing. I've only gotten as far as figuring out my ping spikes suddenly from ~80 to 500-999. I'm not downloading (anything!) and there is no one else logged into my router. I literally do not have this problem with any other game. I run a Radeon HD 4800 with up-to-date drivers.
Please, so I know I can play the sequel to an old favorite, someone help!
I preordered NS2 a few months ago. Every couple weeks I log on to check and see if my problems persists. Sure enough, it does. I play a large variety of video games and get decent FPS and never lag spikes. Natural Selection 2, however, I consistently have a problem with.
Here it is: When I stand still, generally no problem occurs. When I start moving around (perhaps when doors open and new textures have to load? Also with players), I get about a five second freeze on average. This occurs every two to five seconds, nonstop for as long as I'm playing. I've only gotten as far as figuring out my ping spikes suddenly from ~80 to 500-999. I'm not downloading (anything!) and there is no one else logged into my router. I literally do not have this problem with any other game. I run a Radeon HD 4800 with up-to-date drivers.
Please, so I know I can play the sequel to an old favorite, someone help!
Comments
- More hardware specs (CPU etc.)
- Driver version (Catalyst x.x?)
- Have you tried uninstalling and reinstalling NS2?
- Did you test this online, or on a local server?
I've had the same loading freeze/frame drop thing for quite a few builds. I assumed this was pretty normal since I've seen Max or another dev mention this. I've been told things kind of need to load in for the first match. Problem is, the freezes/hitches don't really go away even after I've visited parts of the map multiple times. Maybe I need to just wait it out...but by 10-15 minutes in I'm pretty frustrated and just stop playing. The problem isn't nearly as bad in a LAN (if it even happens) so I assume the problem is compounded with all the network commotion and other players/structures. The server tickrate usually seems really good/steady, too...so I think it's client side.
As far as the network latency thing -- I know I can't play NS2 with my wireless without it spiking to 999. Many other semi-demanding net games play fine with my wireless. Going wired ethernet solves the net latency issue for me. Also happens with the newer Battlefield games for me and ARMA II.
The main issue is during game my ping goes from a nice 20-30 suddenly to 999 and starts jumping all over the place. I am unsure if the pc is doing something else in the background randomly at times to cause this but looking at Task Manager seems clean.
Desktop Spec:
Intel Core i5-2400 CPU @3.1 GHz
4 Gig of RAM
Windows 7 (64bit)
GeForce GTX 460 SE: Graphics overclocked to 720MHz (standard is 648MHz) and Memory Overclocked to 1720MHz (Standard clock 1700MHz)
These overclock settings have been tested to be stable and I have tried NS2 with no overclock and the same issue occurs. I have tried different graphics quality settings but the same issue appears. I get a consistent 60-70FPS with everything on max apart from ambient occlusion which is turned off
(I know the desktop is a little bit behind the times but it runs most games pretty damn fine high graphics. But I am very well aware of NS2's special case)
I have a direct wire connection to the Modem with Virgin Media 60MB Broadband with consistent and stable connection. Other games are all running fine and online is also fine on other games as well.
I do have AVG Free but have had no issues in the past. Is there any chance its causing the background stutters?
Any ideas folks?
The easy way to do this is to setup a window doing a ping to a server.
hit windows +r type in cmd, press enter.
in the resulting window type ping -t google.com and press enter you should see something that looks like this:
Pinging google.com [74.125.228.64] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 74.125.228.64: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=56
Reply from 74.125.228.64: bytes=32 time=23ms TTL=56
It should add another line going on every few seconds. It will keep running forever, since we set -t. Leave that running and go play ns2.
Play a bit, when you get the lag alt tab and see if you see something similar in your other window.
if you see a similar increase in the number on the ping to Google, its going to be something outside ns2. Someone else on the network stealing your precious bandwidth. Someone DDOSing that minecraft server you are running. Your ISP doing something weird. Those sorts of things
If the ping to google is normal looking while you lag, its going to be something in your pc or your ns2 install. At that point, nearly anything could be a problem. I would start with antivirus, especially real time scanning of processes see if you can white list ns2.exe. From there, I would get something like process explorer, and see if you can match the spike in ns2 pings with activity by something else on the machine.
edit: removed about 50 extra lines at the end
It's like it's not saving the section of the map in memory anymore. Normally it hitched when loading for the first time, then was smooth after, but now it hitches every time I return to those areas. I hope they haven't messed with this code.
I just disabled Avast file scanner/etc, so I'll play for a bit and see.
I highly recommend disabling /bypassing routers, anti virus programs, and firewalls when diagnosing. I had this issue after installing an anti virus earlier this year.. Turns out it was inspecting every packet and ns2 just couldn't handle being interrupted like that.
Also if this this consistent enough you can type net_log 3 in the console (~ key) and it will Log what's happening in your log.txt file found in your hidden appdata/natural selection 2/ folder.
Keep it short though as the log file will get huge fast.. So reproduce the issue and then immediately exit ns2 and don't run it again or else it will over write that log file
Attach it or link it here.
Thanks!
I'll try to make a log. For others - log.txt is here - C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\Natural Selection 2
EDIT - Here is the interesting part of my log: http://pastebin.com/Y3AU54pL. See "#9000+ killed Stardog with Rifle"
It froze just before I got killed and a few times before that. I alt-f4'd right after that.
Also, please don't use the AppData folder for anything. That is maybe part of the problem. That hard drive is slow and shouldn't doing anything game-related. Move the cache somewhere else.