Spiral Knights - Please, how do you intend to address the issue of lag?

Please, how do you intend to address the issue of lag?

64 replies [Last post]

Thu, 07/21/2011 - 17:54

caseyweederm

Legacy Username

This is a great game. I love it. I've gotten my friends to play. I play every day, I've paid for energy, and I intend to continue to do so.
But guys, this hurts.

This is less of a bug report and more of a public cry for help, so here it lies.

Over the past few days, the game has been nearly unplayable.
At least once, and often several times during a play session, my knight halts and runs in place, or inches around painfully slowly, or seems to teleport all over the map. Sometimes the monsters and other knights stop moving; this usually precedes a disconnection.
The best I can do is to hold up my shield and hope by some luck that my knight wakes up in some safe corner. More realistically, I discover that in the interim I've taken several serious blows and am perhaps dead entirely.

Just recently, I was fighting the new boss with a partner. It's very frustrating to hit a switch and see that it has no effect, more so to try to compensate for this by hitting the switch again and end up botching things. That's not the worst of it.
The server, or perhaps my well-meaning client, decided to re-balance the load in the midst of the worst of the latency and disconnected me.
I logged back in immediately to rescue my ailing mate, hoping against hope to find myself by her side, but alas, there I was in the arcade.
Here's the kicker: As she was on a boss floor, she couldn't re-invite me.

After jumping around the screen, taking damage, dying to unseen attacks, she decided to quit on the last floor before Lamplight, and now to get back there she needs to progress through the entire tier again (or pay the fine for starting at a tier she hasn't earned). 200 crowns is light, the knowledge that it's necessary due to a problem out of our hands makes it seem a lot heavier.

I'm not sure what's causing this, or how to fix it. Perhaps it's all the new players from Steam. Perhaps it can be solved by throwing money at the servers. I do hope so.

I have two questions.
The first: Have you acknowledged this problem?
The second: How do you intend to address it?

Thu, 07/21/2011 - 18:06

Madadder

so where are u from it could

so where are u from it could be the geographic distance since the servers are in America

Thu, 07/21/2011 - 18:15

Prisega

Make sure that you lower all

Make sure that you lower all of the graphics and such. Turn the graphics onto low and open the advanced options to turn compatibility mode on. Also Ironclaw Munitions Factory is the biggest lagfest in the game so thats a problem of its own. Adjust your timing to that of the lag, its not too hard to figure out timing. The fighting is still tough but switches should be more managable.

Thu, 07/21/2011 - 18:22

caseyweederm

Legacy Username

I'm in Canada, but I've seen

I'm in Canada, but I've seen similar problems with other players.
I've tried adjusting graphics settings.

You say it's not hard to figure out timing.
It's very hard to work out timing when nothing on the screen is moving, or if everything is moving far too quickly, or if my client is displaying an erroneous position.

This is a brand new computer. 8 gigs of ram, quad core AMD Phenom, gorgeous graphics card. The problem's not on my end.

Thank you for your suggestions, but I remain convinced that this is a wider problem.

Thu, 07/21/2011 - 18:23

culture

Legacy Username

I've had the same problem

I've had the same problem since the update, particularly in places like FSC. I think it is just a result of the glut of people playing due to the new release.

It is the same thing over and over, my connection bar remains full the entire time mind you. I'll be playing ok, with a slightly low FPS, then the screen will freeze for about 1-3 seconds and when it comes back everything has shifted by about 1-3 seconds worth of movement. Anything I was doing when the freeze started the game assumes I was doing the entire time. So holding shield and moving up, I still have my shield on and I'm at the top of the room (even if I'm no longer holding down shield, I have to press and release shield to unshield). If I was doing an quick sword swipe then I'll now have a charge attack ready to go when it comes out of it.

Usually though I'm sitting in lava or chilling in the corner with a Trojan.

I'm in Texas and have a 30 Mbps connection, although it could be a network issue on my side it is hard to imagine. My ping to San Francisco is 63 ms.

Thu, 07/21/2011 - 18:30

Undying

I have the same issue. I'm in

I have the same issue. I'm in massachusetts. One second I'm running down a hallway, the next I've lost half my health to fire/spikes. The bars are all there the entire time for me as well. I get far more lag in a group of 4 people than I do solo, or with 1-2 people. But sometimes I'm getting lag spikes as often as every 20 seconds. It's brutal.

Thu, 07/21/2011 - 19:43

caseyweederm

Legacy Username

Ouch. That hurts. I don't

Ouch. That hurts.

I don't think I mentioned, but we've been spending crystal energy to revive ourselves, because this seems to be the only way to combat the Lag Monster.
That really hurts, the fact that we're putting down a currency with a real-world value to compensate for... What? Poor service?
I don't mean to seem entitled. I have a lot of respect for Three Rings (and their awesome awesome art direction).
But the lag is so bad sometimes that the game is completely unplayable. I just want to play your awesome game, OOO!

If there was some form of press release letting us know that you are aware of the problem would alleviate my anxieties greatly.
As it is, I'm almost afraid to start a new run for fear of more punishment from the Lag Monster.

Thu, 07/21/2011 - 19:51

Klipwc

same problem here though i

same problem here though i live in South east asia so i am used to laggy servers, heres a tip from me, if you find yourself lagging too much, log off your com. then immediately log back on, you will have a temporary fix for your lag, and when i say temporary i mean temporary, 2mins at the most, but it can help you at crucial moments since all your lag is gone, the easiest way is to do it just before standing on a button, though sometimes the sheer amount of monsters that spawn will make it redundant

Thu, 07/21/2011 - 21:41

Stadsport

Legacy Username

Same problem, I'm in Arizona.

Same problem, I'm in Arizona. Sometimes the game is fine, sometimes I'll change floors and go from 3 bars to 1. Always on an arena, no less. Happens on multiple internet connections (laptop!~) and different computers. Most frequently happens during the early afternoon, which makes sense, but it happens late at night, too. It's really frustrating when you spend 10ce to go down a floor and it becomes an unplayable lagfest as soon as you set foot into an arena.

Thu, 07/21/2011 - 21:44

Thellion

Im in edmonton, linux PC, 8

Im in edmonton, linux PC, 8 gigs ram, 250 vid card 5 mb/s net, no firewalls: i lag; this is 100% on OOO. I think for some reason their using UDP, an unreliable protocol isnt the wisest thing to use for online gaming. UDP means OOO doesn't care whether you receive your info of not; they simply sent it and assume it arrived.

Thu, 07/21/2011 - 21:57

#10

caseyweederm

Legacy Username

Huh. How many of us are using

Huh. How many of us are using Linux? 64 bit Mint here, eight gigs ram as well.
Maybe it's a Unix thing and not a network thing?
Either way, I'd really like to know that someone up there knows that this exists.

I just got disconnected in the second-last room to the Jelly King. Fortunately I got dropped back where I left off. Unfortunately the entire party was dead.

Thu, 07/21/2011 - 22:13

#11

Ightex

Its been happening to me

Its been happening to me hardcore lately, and I'm on Windows. I joined during the Steam launch and I get lag time to time (where monsters just randomly keep walking in one direction and I need to wait a few seconds for everything to correct itself). Nothing unmanageable, but lately there are runs where when you move, your character is just sort of...skipping across the map (i.e very choppy movement), going extremely slow or, at the extreme wost, just end up teleporting randomly from place to place irregardless of whether you're actually pressing to move or not. Enemies also end up hitting you even when your several feet out of their attack range and/or shielding. Its gotten quite frustrating trying to get to lower tiers and you're wasting most of your energy reviving.

Thu, 07/21/2011 - 22:15

#12

Thellion

I would say its effecting to

I would say its effecting to many people to be a linux thing, im on ubuntu 11.04 64 bit here; when it happens to me, it seems to effect the whole party

also, irregardless isnt a word :P i think you mean regardless ;) Sorry just a pet peeve lol, anyway, ya, i got all that stuff happening as well on linux

Thu, 07/21/2011 - 22:18

#13

Dogrock

I'm not a Linux user, but

I'm not a Linux user, but from my experience almost all lag I see is from activity on my local network. If someone is streaming a movie I have a very predictable action delay. If they are uploading then all bets are off. The Dev team is quite aware that some people suffer from network hiccups, there's been a slow improvement in the net transfers of this game. There was a big tweak to the network performance about two months ago. This is a smaller than 10 person team, so quick fixes are not common.

Before you knock UDP for a poor choice in online gaming you might want to check up on how few action oriented games use TCP. A lost packet or delayed in TCP can easily create worse online behavior. It's better to state that perhaps the packet discard method for out of order UDP packets must be better examined.

Thu, 07/21/2011 - 22:18

#14

Thellion

I can assure you i know whats

I can assure you i know whats happening on my network at all times; also, any game should be using a combination of UDP and TCP packets, depending on the importance of the payload.

Thu, 07/21/2011 - 22:26

#15

Toksyuryel

Linux user here

I'm also a linux user. While I don't know what to do in the case of actual lag, a lot of perceived lag is actually frameskipping due to the game client leaking memory. This can be combated by restarting your client before you begin a run to free up the resources. To slow down the leaks, turn your graphics settings to low and turn on compatibility mode. Doing this has made it possible for me to fight Roarmulus Twins quite effectively, where before the entire game used to crash on the lift that led down to it.

Thu, 07/21/2011 - 22:35

#16

Tersakoff

Legacy Username

Lately, this happened to me

Lately, this happened to me too, but not that much. I never had lag problems before in any game, and as everybody else, I have a good computer, and internet connection so it's definitely not that.
And for some reason, if I don't have lag myself, and someone who does is in the same party, I start lagging too. This doesn't make sense. <_>

All we can do is bother them with tickets until they get enough of it and finally fix it? Or at least say something like "fine geez we'll fix it"

Thu, 07/21/2011 - 22:36

#17

Thellion

And its not a problem that i

And its not a problem that i have to set all settings to low, on hardware that drastically exceeds the requirements of the game? For the record i haven't tried it, and will next time i have issues.

Fri, 07/22/2011 - 00:03

#18

Quasirandom

If the lag problem were on

If the lag problem were on Three Rings' end, then it should affect everyone, not just you. Kind of like how when they shut down the servers to do maintenance, that affects everyone.

There can be Internet connection problems in a lot of different places. It could be that your ISP is having trouble, or filtering the game traffic for some reason. Some router off in the middle of the Internet might be having issues. Maybe you're locally on a wireless router that is dropping packets or otherwise unstable. An insufficient processor may be able to delay the processing of network packets, and increase your ping time that way. Maybe you've got something else running in the background and hogging your Internet bandwidth or CPU cycles.

Fri, 07/22/2011 - 00:29

#19

Ufana

Nope. It started with the

Nope. It started with the steam update for many many many players. Connections to other servers that are geographically near the SK servers are still fine. So are the servers en route: no change visible. It's only the game. Also it seems to be dependant on US high times, not local (=ISP) high times.

For me, it's gotten a little better though in the last couple of days. Not great, but I sometimes actually see an attack animation before it hits me. Maybe there was some sort of optimization?

Fri, 07/22/2011 - 00:30

#20

leokimah

Legacy Username

This definitely seems to be a

This definitely seems to be a connection issue and I do not see how lowering your graphic settings would help with that problem.

I have encountered this problem a few times, and it was mostly due to an issue on my part. :(

Fri, 07/22/2011 - 00:32

#21

Ignominious

Legacy Username

I haven't had any problems.

I haven't had any problems. In Virginia with a solid connection. It's either something on your end or in between, otherwise everybody would be affected. Odds are it's in between.

Fri, 07/22/2011 - 02:34

#22

Dirt

Legacy Username

I never dip under four bars

I never dip under four bars and never have any lag problems unless I am in the advance training hall.

Fri, 07/22/2011 - 03:03

#23

Repair

I sometimes experience lag,

I sometimes experience lag, but not all that often. Pretty much always 4 bars. I live in Europe...

Fri, 07/22/2011 - 06:25

#24

Afoxi

Legacy Username

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/24762

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/247623/Otherscreenshots/javaw%202011-07-21%2015-...

You guys see that bar in the top right? The one that's red? That's normal for me in Australia, and the game is very playable. I think you guys have packet loss issues between you and the servers.

Fri, 07/22/2011 - 07:13

#25

Sillty

This happened to everyone in

This happened to everyone in my group at the same time, during the half-price elevator weekend. Definitely 30's problem.

Fri, 07/22/2011 - 08:06

#26

caseyweederm

Legacy Username

Agreed, Silty. This has been

Agreed, Silty. This has been happening to people all over, at all different times, with all different operating systems and home network setups, and it happens just as often on powerful computers as on graphics-weak computers.

I don't know how to get the attention this problem so desperately requires. I just keep firing off bug reports (though occasionally in the worst of it the reports fail to send) and hope that somewhere someone recognizes it.

I would really appreciate it if some spokesperson from Three Rings were to step up and acknowledge this problem.
I suspect it's against company policy to respond directly to forum threads, but please, make some announcement that you're aware of the issue.

I'm not ragequitting, I'm not storming off. I'm sadly turning away from my computer, unable to play my new favorite game due to severe playability issues. I need to know that someone in OOO has heard my voice, and that a fix is on its way.

Fri, 07/22/2011 - 09:06

#27

miojoxhl2

Legacy Username

I'm playing from Brazil and

I'm playing from Brazil and the best i can get , even with 10Mbps connection is 2 yellow bars.
That's what I always get. Game is normally playable this way, I only have to dodge attacks 0,5s earlier than probably a full-bar player.
The problem is, the game memory consumption seems to increase along the game, stabilizing around 500 / 600k (used Task Manager on Windows to find out).
Whenever it gets close to 600k, my computer starts to stall, overheat and I lose connection to the servers.

I don't know how I can fix this (buying a better computer, maybe?).

Fri, 07/22/2011 - 09:19

#28

Franpa

Legacy Username

I've had a red lag indicator

I've had a red lag indicator since the lag indicator was first introduced, nothing I do resolves it and I experience everything the OP has mentioned. I experience no frame rate lag and have ADSL2 internet (400~KB/s download and 40KB/s upload). My computer is beefy with Intel i7 920 CPU, 6GB RAM, Geforce 250GTS video card etc.

I'm in Australia, other games don't show these problems like WoW, Borderlands, alien swarm, battlefield bad company 2 etc.

Fri, 07/22/2011 - 09:32

#29

supermedic1

Legacy Username

Get a better computer. I run

Get a better computer. I run the game completely maxed out, and I don't suffer from any lag (I also max out games like Metro 2033 with its odd FPS cap of 35, lololo).

Phenom II x4 955 3.2 GHz OC'd to 3.6 GHz
4gb DDR3 1600mhz G.Skill RAM
Asus M4A89GTD-PRO/USB3 Motherboard
Powercolor ATI Radeon 5770 OC'd
Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB hard drive
Cooler Master Elite 335 case
CM Hyper212+ CPU heatsink & fan

I live in the U.S, and the least I get is 3 bars. Latency isn't a problem.

Fri, 07/22/2011 - 09:36

#30

Reialgo13021

Legacy Username

........ dude thats because

........

dude thats because servers are only IN the U.S so most places outside it get bad latency, the computer isnt the problem here....

Fri, 07/22/2011 - 09:43

#31

supermedic1

Legacy Username

Wasn't that an

Wasn't that an obvious?

:facepalm:

Also, people STILL complain that the Roarmulus Twins are a massive lagfest, so I was pointing that out.

Fri, 07/22/2011 - 09:44

#32

Sillty

supermedic1, you are

supermedic1, you are completely misunderstanding the kind of lag we are talking about. I run Roarmulus twins with no framerate lag. The lag where your knight gets rubberbanded back into the position they were in 3 seconds ago is the fault of the server, when it happens to several players at once, and happens on levels that don't usually lag. My connection is fine, according to the connection meter.

Fri, 07/22/2011 - 09:47

#33

supermedic1

Legacy Username

Nope, don't get any of that

Nope, don't get any of that rubberbanding either.

Fri, 07/22/2011 - 10:23

#34

Dogrock

Alright, before this

Alright, before this dissolves into a e-peen jousting match, let's try and sort some things out here. (C'mon this is the interent guys; if your stuff is more than a few days old it's out of date and you loose anyway.)

First of all, how is this game hosted:
It's hosed on the Amazon EC2 service. The idea of a single physical server does not apply here since this is a scalable cloud service in use. The physical location of this hosting is in the United States, and most assume it to be in the west coast broad area. When the Amazon services host stuff like Netflix, it's very unlikely that bandwidth issues can occur host side. (This does not mean I'm saying OOO's netcode is perfect)

What are all those Havens then?
Those are instances out of the same host. Even the French, German and Spanish areas are still on the same host as the English. Last time there was a discussion about the instances (Jan/Feb) it was revealed that each instance is limited to roughly 50 knights. The main reason this is assumed to be done is because having a pile of shiny moving sprites can cause some major client side graphics lag if you are not careful.

Big Causes of Rubber Band Behavior:
The most major, and usually easiest to solve, is local network activity. This game is remarkably sensitive to sharing data upload with some other application. Less so to sharing download bandwidth. If someone is doing an online data sync or torrenting on your network you are out out of luck for a good gameplay experience unless you have router admin access. A tech savvy user should be able to set up a QoS system to regulate data hogs and give bandwidth sensitive applications priority. I've done this many times, the results are extremely gratifying when done properly.

Lost or delayed packets is another big one. First step here is to make sure you're not using a wireless that is generating transmit errors. For most this is not a problem (I've almost always play on wireless with no issue). For those where it's a problem, they should see quite an improvement switching to a wired connection. Packets lost in transit is something out of the user's control. This is where something between you and the game host is not working. This is a case where you really just have to bite the bullet. These issues can manifest themselves in game with molasses to slingshot movements and monsters suddenly walking off screen (though walls even!) as the host and client "recalibrate" for a moment.

Big Causes of Action Delay:
Distance to the host. There's no real way around this, you and the host need to get closer to improve your experience. The other is if you're on the short end of the stick on a traffic shaping network, your packets are stuck in the slow lane. In both cases the game should still be very playable as this action delay tends to remain very consistent. It does not take very long to learn the patterns of attack and anticipate monster's moves.

Other Notes:
After a re-boot for a patch there's almost always poor performance for a bit. This is written off as the massive log in influx of players. Wait a half hour and it should be gone. The wiki and the forums seem to suffer in the same way.

Getting rubber-banding on top of action delays is clearly the most frustrating scenario you can be in. This makes the game totally unplayable. Before you fire up the HWFO at the latest patch, you should examine what has changed on your end recently that could affect this. It could just be a one-off program updating in the background.

I've played this game from 4 different wireless network locations with no issues other than those generated by the people I live with. In a US college town where you have to set up strict QoS with torrent-happy flatmates. In a suburb/rural hybrid US area where getting internet is like getting blood from a stone, but If I have the connection all to myself there's no issues at all. In a college library, where I had action delay issues but the game was still very playable. Lastly, up in cottage country Canada, where paved roads are an unusual luxury; consistent action delay again, but playable and fun as always

Also, when quoting how great your experience with another game is, do not forget to consider whether or not that game has local servers to you. I've seen many folk from overseas list games they have no trouble with that use local servers or local P2P connections for online play. Of course these will perform better, a shorter chain of hops greatly lowers the chance for a weak link to be used.

Lastly, The Dev team is more than aware of the plight of those users suffering from an unruly connection. They do, on occasion, step in when there is something most certainly wrong with the game's behavior. One such example can be seen here.

Fri, 07/22/2011 - 11:37

#35

caseyweederm

Legacy Username

Thanks, d0gr0ck! That was

Thanks, d0gr0ck! That was very helpful and informative.

I've got some pretty close control over what's going on over my wireless network, and I'm always sure to pause any downloads before playing.
I will try plugging directly into the router, or even the modem, to see if the problem persists.

You mention that during peak times or after update reboots are likely to have some poor performance. Aren't cloud servers elastic by design to compensate for exactly that?
Also, in each of the places you mentioned, were you logged in during peak times post Steam-runoff?

As myopic as it seems, I'm sure that the problem is not on my end.

Fri, 07/22/2011 - 12:04

#36

Mohandar

Thumbs up d0gr0ck

Sadly, what appears to be a big part of the issue is the unavoidable delay between client and host. You control the factors you can (get a wired connection, decent computer, maybe poke your ISP and optimize your modem/router settings), and then you pray.

One complaint I do have is the massive upload spikes. Did those get fixed, or do they still happen? Since most residential high speed internet is asymmetric (much higher DL than UL), anything that shares your upload bandwidth can potentially kill SK. I am curious what part of SK's design causes it to hog so much UL bandwidth though- or is this a more general thing? I don't play other MMOs, so I can't say.

Fri, 07/22/2011 - 13:41

#37

Dogrock

Yes, the Cloud system is

Yes, the Cloud system is elastic, but only to a point. Amazon sells "Compute Units" (Amazon's details here if you enjoy that kind of reading) that most certainly have an upper bound in performance. There is a certain point where you're going to have to shell out more cash for more upwards scalability. As for how the log in is handled and how many requests it takes to bog down the software, I do not know. That would take knowledge of and access to that specific system, both of which I simply do not have.

As for peak times, there was only two times when I can clearly remember a crushing influx of players that seemed to cause host slowdown. That was the Game's official launch and the Steam Launch. Other events, like the Steam Summer Camp achievement, I simply wasn't online enough to take note of things. I do have a very good connection at 4am, but everyone at home has stopped using the internet by then too, so I've got no idea which end the change is measurable on. It's currently very difficult for me to estimate peak time behavior since summer means there's a lot of people home using the net all the time. (Watching HD video streams is like sucking chunky stew though a straw.)

Those huge upload spike were supposed to have been fixed, though there's still the occasional anecdote about unusual upload going around.

It's also been noted that sometimes when you have a person with a poor connection in the party it can make other people suffer too. Almost as if the host is waiting for that last person before syncing everyone. Though I'm unaware of any proof on this, just theory.

Fri, 07/22/2011 - 14:22

#38

SpacePiranha

Legacy Username

Local Multiplayer

So Spiral Knights does not play well with other heavy bandwidth programs... how does it fair with other computers also running Spiral Knights on the same network? The majority of the time that CaseyWeederm and I are playing SK, it is on separate computers all hooked up to the same wireless network - could it be multiple instances of the game itself that's slowing down the game?

This doesn't seem likely, since as a multiplayer game SK must be designed for such situations, but it's a thought anyway.

Fri, 07/22/2011 - 14:26

#39

Dogrock

Usually it plays quite well

Usually it plays quite well with itself (ugh... terrible wording).

I've played with three people on the same wireless access point sharing a 768Kbit/s upload plan. While I can normally get 5 bars, I'm reduced to 4 during these times. There's no funny behavior and any action lag is no different from normal.

Fri, 07/22/2011 - 14:30

#40

MirathInas

Legacy Username

Overheat

seems like the game only lags when my computer is overheated i think thats pretty much true for all games and for all computers/laptops, systems just stop working when it overheats kinda annoying, i think the best way to stop things from over heating is to open up the area that has the fan but this also means your computer is unprotected from physical contact and its really annoying to handle.

Fri, 07/22/2011 - 14:41

#41

caseyweederm

Legacy Username

Sorry, Mirathlnas. This is a

Sorry, Mirathlnas. This is a separate issue.
Also, opening your computer and removing the fan is a bad idea. An open hole allows dust and cruft buildup everywhere in the computer. Nudging or removing the fan would eliminate nearly all the airflow to the parts of your computer that need to be cooled. Opening a hole elsewhere would cause your fan to pull and push air directly from there, instead of pulling it along your processor and video card.
Try adding another fan (one for intake, one for exhaust) or putting your laptop onto a table instead of your lap/fabric.

So, d0gr0ck, to propose a hypothetical extreme... If Three Rings doubled their Amazon Compute Units, would the problem go away?

Also: Hi Spacey!

Fri, 07/22/2011 - 15:11

#42

Dogrock

I don't think so. I'm not

I don't think so. I'm not fully convinced (in my theoretical ramblings) that the host is totally overloaded during reboots.

Right now is arguably a peak time with the giveaways happening. Rough math tells me that there's currently a bit over over 6000 people online right now. People are likely logging in and out in droves as the hour marks go by. There's no one else using the internet connection at home and I have no connectivity problems running around and hitting things in the Advanced Training Hall outside of the normal mini-corrections that my wireless tends to generate. I think what needs to be examined it not the raw compute resources but how the client/host interacts. Again, only the Dev team is privy to that information.

Fri, 07/22/2011 - 18:11

#43

travisty22

Legacy Username

lag when picking up items

My experience with lag randomly happens when my character receives items, this pertains to both materials and elemental pods. I do not have issues with internet connectivity and changing the graphics to low has not made a difference.

This has resulted in solo play where I dodge materials in arenas like land mines and randomly die when playing in a party because I obtain a material my teammate has picked up. Have others experienced this as well? I'm open to any suggestions

Fri, 07/22/2011 - 19:13

#44

Richy

I have been lagging

I have been lagging ridiculously since the past update. Before the update I could run anything without lagging. Now I can barely move around Haven without jumping. It is so not fun, haven't been able to use my mist in days.

Fri, 07/22/2011 - 23:23

#45

Bonburnr

Legacy Username

Very Laggy

Managed to die three times today!
Haven't seen that happen in 5 days.
Each time was beautiful lag.
Lags bad enough to cut off music entirely.

Fri, 07/22/2011 - 23:52

#46

memanme

Legacy Username

I have a 250+ ping and the

I have a 250+ ping and the lag feels fine, i just goto play as if everything will happen with a slight delay. The only thing that really sucks is the throwing things which give a very short animation and warning too little to compensate with lag prediction. though i have not played t3, if it requires really fast shielding then it will effect the game.

However i would like to see AUS servers, i'm sure internode would host them for free, they have done it before with lots of games.
Have the hub located in america but when you go into a game it connects to an AUS server if your within the ip range or have selected an option?

Sat, 07/23/2011 - 01:49

#47

Ufana

250+ is my usual ping. Well,

250+ is my usual ping. Well, actually it's more like 300-400, but I manage just fine with that. While that has been what ping the server nearest to SK-server (that does answer to ping requests) gave the whole time and that I get from other / not related servers in that region, my ingame ping seemed to be a lot higher since the steam update. Judging by devilites and the delay between smashing boxes & boxes actually shattering (or picking up hearts & stuff), I'd guess it has been in the range 800-1600ms most of the time. Also, because it varies a lot (often seems to go up / down by a good 400ms), it's hardly possible to adjust. I kept running into spikes too soon or too late, same goes for dodging trojans / bullets and I never knew when exactly it was safe to lower the shield when there were devilites around. Good timing just doesn't do the job here.

During the last couple of days though, my ping has been a LOT better. No idea what changed, but I hope it stays that way. Maybe there were some changes to the SK-Servers / client that now need to be stress tested by means of this strange lottery event? Dunno... would be nice to see an official statement somewhere though. Just so I can stop searching for faulty network configurations on my / my ISP's side that don't exist.

Sat, 07/23/2011 - 02:17

#48

supermedic1

Legacy Username

"open up the area that has

"open up the area that has the fan but this also means your computer is unprotected from physical contact and its really annoying to handle."

Don't listen to this guy's advice, he's obviously pulling a load of bull- whatever he meant...

Sat, 07/23/2011 - 07:35

#49

Trouser

@Bonburnr

Lags bad enough to cut off music entirely.

That sounds like the problem I have, where the game will occasionally freeze for upwards of 15-20 seconds, usually at the height of action. I can go from full health and mobile to 1/4 health and surrounded in a corner. It's very frustrating. I wonder what it gets so busy with... Anyway, if the music is cutting off, I'm confident your problem (and mine) has nothing to do with the server. It's the client getting too hung up on something to keep up with even its background tasks.

Sat, 07/23/2011 - 13:42

#50

caseyweederm

Legacy Username

That sounds right. Have a

That sounds right. Have a look at the memory leak issues.

You can check for this the next time you're having trouble by quitting the game (not on a boss floor) and get somebody to re-invite you. If the problem clears up, you've probably got a memory leak issue.

So what's the consensus? Is it worth trying to run gates on this traffic-heavy event weekend?

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Please, how do you intend to address the issue of lag?