I was trying to get the use of Par's server but we will have to wait for now.

Choosing maps with lots of spawn points will spread the action throughout the map resulting in less rutting, slower action and less frags. Yes, a slower game and no spawn fragging.

Enough said.

The only deformation we're suggesting removing is the nearly irrelevant deformation caused by lasers, machine gun, etc. That deformation caused by dirt balls, nukes, cms, etc would be left alone. But at least we agree on scorching.

As to your suggestion, it may help some. But with 4.6 Mb of download bandwidth, the best ping money can buy and a 3 GHz system, I dare say the reason I had phantoms last game had nothing to do with my end. :^)

Also, what you said makes me wonder: Could it be that the bandwidth setting is too low in the config file? In other words, with so much stuff going on each client needs a lot of info. Is it possible that we are in fact not using our full bandwidth potential because the server setting is too low?

666,

· Get a bigger pipe: But as Matrix has said it is only 10k. The community servers are set for 3k because of dialups. There will be no change in the 3K because you will toast the dialups. Par's server could make the difference but it is not available now.
· Reduce the amount of map deformation: Your suggestion was to reduce the amount of data by no scorching and no rutting. Your suggestion applies to the stock maps where a lot of action occurs around a limited number of spawn points. Most all these spawn points are in the middle of the battlefield, therefore increasing the rutting.
· Slow the action down: Less action is less data. Using maps with lots of spawn points will spread the action evenly about the map. This will also mean less spawn fragging. This will only apply to maps that have terrain that will slow the tanks. Flat-barren maps cannot be helped with more spawn points because the action will still be too fast.

So, let’s look at the maps to choose from.

· Stock map used for racing: These maps have some of the best terrain for clan battles but most of the spawn points are in the middle of the battlefield. The number of spawn points of these maps is in the teens or low twenties. Barely a one to one ratio of spawn points to players in a clan battle.
· DM maps: Much better for clan battles but still some problem of spawn points being in the middle of the battlefields. Some of the terrain does not lend itself to slowing the action either. The one maps that works best is Black Mesa. It has most all it weapon points out of the battlefields on the bluff’s edge allow the action to occur in the areas between the bluffs.
· Clan maps and newer maps: No spawn points in the middle of the battlefields. They are 50 to 70 spawn points for every map. Clan maps have terrain that will slow the action and therefore reduce the rutting. The clan maps were tested for lots of tanks. There are other maps beside the clan maps that would work. Within the new CM1 pack there is Forest Glenn, Donner Pass, Shifting Sands, Diamond Plate, Cygnus 6, Black Knob and some of the other newer maps of Kong’s and Sailor’s have some the same clan map feature the make them a good for clan battles.

So, folks are not happy about traveling too far for the next melee on the clan type maps. Folks are not happy because it turns out quite laggy because of the increase rutting and action from the stock and DM maps.

Well, folks need to choose which one they want to tolerate.

Yes, maps selection can make all the difference. I know. I have tested it.

I did not say eliminate rutting. I said it twice. I'll say it again. Eliminate rutting on weapons that do little to no rutting anyway. Do I need to say it a fourth time? Furthermore, I can't believe the sheer irrationality of your statement. A weapon's ability to rut or not rut has not one friggin thing to do with WHERE it ruts. Therefore, spreading the rutting out doesn't help lag. Two plus two IS four! OMG, I can't believe I'm having this conversation. Map selection is a settled issue for now. You can run the friggin things twice a month. DDMs are stock. Clans choose the war maps. Stop grinding your personal axe!

And slow down the action? Why not just double weapon reload times?? Oh, and let's triple tank armor and cut their speed down to one third! Hell, why not just play Yahoo chess and be done with it?!? That will solve the problem permanently! Woohoo!

I am so sick of this I can't see straight. There are clearly a few changes that can be made to improve lag. Maybe it won't be huge, but it will take ten minutes to implement them. So do it! So help me, I will not let this go until it gets done. I don't give a #$%# if this offends you. And I don't care if you follow up with a "boo-hoo, sniff, I'm just trying to help TM" response. I'm sick you of refusal to read, understand fully and respond to suggestions made. I'm sick of begging you to use common sense. And I'm REALLY sick of Clan Maps being promoted as the cure for game play issues, thinning hair, that bulging waistline and arthritis!!!

You have taken this dichotomy of giving and selfishness to incredible perversity. Thank you for the giving - and I mean that. But I can't take the personal agenda anymore.

BTW although the flag pack adds a temproary lag to everyone, not having the flag pack on the server when someone connects with a nonstock flag will cause the server to slow down for everyone permanently for that game, so perhaps removing it is one of those things best not to be done.

We can experiment by upping the netrate to 4k at the fun DDM this sunday to see if that solves any problems. And if further tweaking is needed move from there.

My suggestion, a DSL server and a 56k server, identical setups appart from the packetsize.

Also, things like ICQ do hinder the game since they send out "im alive" signals out to the master server, this may not be a bigtime deal to a broadbander, but its a big deal for a 56k'er. Also, if some1 sends u a message at the instand u decide to fire, then dont cos of "lag" thats your fault, turn off the IM. Anything could happen, a file transfer request.... a crashed tm, which laggs tm ... again, a bit of consideration for other players will go a long way.

Say ur email client is open and some1 decides to send u a nice 5 meg file. Great, nice n smooth FOR YOU maybe still, but that 56ker who needs a packet of data telling him where u are doesnt get it because ur getting a massive email.

A Gallon will not fit into a Pint dear Sir, but the Pint is doing the best it can

ps: on trillian IM, remember it can log into about 5 IM's... assuming u have 5 accounts, thats 5x the requests, alive calls, checks to see whos on, and info to them saying youre on. Add to that messages, file requesters, blah blah blah and u get LAG. Teamspeak works great with these games... but try running it with a big download in operation and you will soon see what i mean - despite having a 512k line and only using half ur bandwidth at that point.

Remember, broadband is NOT a diect line soley for your use and its NOT a constant speed. For most BB suppliers, they will have sumthin like "in a worst case scanrio the speed may drop to 56k" in their "small print".. worth checking, even with broadband, the web can crawl to a grind - so for the love of pete, anticipate such things and minimise the use of data in and out when playing games; itll make a happier world, here anyway.

One thing i cant abide is broadband users trying to justify keeping everything running while complaining about lag in games; its so .... duplistic.

For the most part my FTP and Forum use around 4% of my bandwidth - BUT if i get about 10 ppl on the forum and some1 in the FTP i can wave bye bye to anything like a smooth game - even though they arent really chewing up more than 70% of my BW; with 30% left you would imagine thats plenty, its more than a 56k user right ? WRONG.

What about streaming media - another good example, 56k streaming radio, not a massive bandwidth hogger, but it soon stutters burps n farts when other data connections are made.

If computer connections are pure math and dependable we wouldnt have an issue; but thyre not, and 512k just like 56k is a theoretical maximum - it varies according to use and users requests on the network.

The data is structured by frag#/player count

Aug 99/21, 99/23, 88/20 using clan maps.
Sept 70/16, 70/14, 76/14 using clan maps.
Oct 77/14, 75/16, 78,16 using clan maps
Nov 89/22, 84/20, 77/19 using Caldera, clan Pinnacle, The Moon
Dec was fun DDM
Jan 57/12, 61/12, 59/12 using clan maps
Feb 97/18, 89/18, 61/15 using Black Mesa, Brimstone, The Moon

Do folks see the correlations?

Using the clan maps had a proportional effect depending on the number of players attending the battle. I personally do not remember much lag in previous months using the clan maps. Aug is excellent proof that with more player attending and lag is not much of a problem with the clan maps and the frag count hit 99 frags.

Which months did folks complain about lag? How about November and February
Which months did folks complain about driving too far? The months of the clan maps

Stock and DM maps = more lag from concentrated action and rutting
Clan maps = less lag from less action and rutting from evenly spaced play

Map selection will make the difference in the lag of a clan battles.

Matrix,
As I said to 666, educate me. I'm sure he had no clue what 10k meant. I obviously didn't either. How do you translate a 10k packet into the actual bandwidth per client? And just so you know, I run virtually nothing in the background on my computer. I've always been a minimalist that way.

666,
You are a piece of work to say the least. Your training makes you perfectly capable of analyzing data logically. Yet when your little pet project is on the line, you throw logic to the wind. You APPEAR to be making an attempt to correlate clan maps with less frags and therefore less action and less lag, yes? Or, simply your memory says to you that there was less lag during clan maps. Please correct me if I'm wrong, because I have a hard time following your twists and convulsions of logic. Anyway, do you want a REAL correlation and not some fabrication of your imagination? HERE:

clan maps
Aug: 4.5 frags per player / 21 players = LAG!
Sep: 4.9 / 15
Oct: 5.0 / 16
Jan: 4.9 / 12
average = 4.8 frags per player

stock maps
Nov: 4.1 frags per player (low) / 20 players = lag
Feb: 4.8 / 18 players = lag
average = 4.5 frags per player

Shazaam! Clan maps INCREASE frag count! OMG, we must not use clan maps because we want to slow down the action! Stock it is! And of you believe that, I've got a bridge for you. There are considerably more factors that both of our analysis fails to account for, one of which is your memory. August most certainly did have mucho lag. As you don't recall, the lag and the fact that the mystery clan T3 showed up prompted a discussion about private server addresses.

The bottom line is that frag count, and therefore the action, shows not one bit of correlation to clan maps with your limited sampling. In fact, using your flimsy logic it shows quite the opposite. The REAL correlation is player turnout. Duh! Lots of players equals lag. The last three clan map DDMs averaged 14 players. The two stock maps averaged 19. If you've paid any attention at all, you've noticed that somewhere between those two numbers lies the maximum number of players we can have before lag kicks in. But, since 3 of the last five clan wars were clan map and since those exact three had less lag, you can be forgiven (I guess) for failing to notice that it was also those exact three that had low turnout. Heck, if I'm to be as irrational as you I could say that the clan maps CAUSED the low turnout. There's more correlation there than in your theory.

Screw the tweaks. They had the potential to help things just a bit at no cost to anyone, but whatever. Your ego and selfishness prevents you from seeing anything other than what you want. So leave things as they are. Whatever you do, let go of crazy for at least this thread. If you're incapable of seeing that your sampling proves ONLY that turnout in the high teens and higher causes lag, then you're beyond reason.

Which months did folks complain about lag? How about August, November and February. Those were the months that we approaced or exceeded 20 players.

Which months did we NOT have much lag? The months where we averaged near or less than 15 players.

BUT, Ras, you are right, to get the most out of tm, you have to be a data pipe minimalist. Video lag on the other hand is a totally different thing to positional lag - buy a better graphics card or lower the res and settings u play with. whatever ur setup, its best to play TM without putting everything to maximum "because i can".

And for the record.... b4 anyone asks, i do prefer 666's clan maps, for me stock maps are no more than a mosh pit and killing folks in there has no more skill than throwing in a nuke.

http://206.222.78.140/ubb/Forum2/HTML/002939.html

DMF continuation of thread:

I suggested a couple of EASY server end optimizations. Rex and you agreed with one of them. And 666 gives me magnificently absurd argument that clan maps reduce lag. By his very own numbers, the OBVIOUS relationship between lag and his statistics is the number of players that play. Period. End of story.

Believe it or not, I read nearly all of it but still don't quite get it. Bottom line it for me, is 3k enough?

I have to believe it's not for the simple reason that my server's upload is only about 350k. Yet my server handles 6 players just fine. That's with the stock setting of 10k and whatever else and yes, that includes dial-up people (Melon specifically, who in general has NO problems with my server). LDA's server has WAY more bandwidth than mine, yet it couldn't handle 8 players when we tried 85 on it. I mean it was real bad.

Rex also proves my point. Concentrated spawn points and spawn points put in the middle of the battlefield will increase the rutting thus the lag.

And most important, Matrix points a critical factor that is very important for the winning fragger. If the folks one needs to frag don’t show because the experience is unpleasant, then there is will be less and less players showing.

Ras, you need players to frag. If the players does not showing up, then there is no game.

-You gave me numbers that tried to suggest less lag with clan maps. The only thing I proved with your own numbers was that lag is caused by having lots of players. A spawn frag does not cause lag!!!

-10 ruts spread out or 10 ruts piled on top of each other is numerically no different. Network traffic is the SAME. My God man, can't you do basic math!

-LESS people showed up to clan maps than to stock maps, by YOUR own numbers!!! I can't believe this crap. If stock is so friggin unpleasant, why did numbers drop with clan maps!!! Mind you, I attempt to suggest no relationship between turnout and maps. But you do. And if so, clan maps have been losers by your own damn numbers!

Folks clan maps and stock maps set aside( since they really are irrelevant to a discussion on lag), if we eliminate the craters created from the tread marks and the scorches from the tread marks I'm almost positive it'll alleviate the lag issue.

------------------
Tread Marks Ladders

You can do the same experament that I have, sit and stare at the cps in/out and bytes in/out textboxes in the server window while people are on. You'll see that not matter what how high you set the netrate, it won't make a difference. If you set it too low, then you cause teleportation. If you set it too high it will overload your bandwidth and cause teleportation in that extream as well.

increasing the FPS reduces teleportation and lag on busy servers that have a lot of action going on. But setting it too high with too large a netrate will cause more problems than solve them.

The goal is to find a balance between netrate and fps that won't max out you connection. Thats what the computation does for you. But why can you put 200k as a netrate? Read the first sentence of my post again. On Armageddon with 3 people playing, TM sent about 3-4k of real data per second. When the 4th person joined in, it maxed out at the 10k netrate enforced limit for several seconds, then it settled back to around 4-6k per second. Dunno what version of Armageddon it was, but thats what my notes say.

So why is there a netrate? The netrate is used so that TM knows when to throttle back on the data before sending out packets. If you max out your connection bandwidth, you will suffer lost packets and retransmits which will make a bad situation even worse.

higher FPS -> sends more data, improves play

higher NETRATE -> raises the cut off limit, cannot exceed the maximum bandwidth PER CONNECTION (per player, if you prefer), but will improve play if your below your maximum bandwidth

too high NETRATE and FPS -> maxed out bandwidth: dropped packets and retransmits

So is 3k enough? Bottom line: depends on how busy the server is, how often people join and quit and join and quit, and it depends on the quality of the connections.

but changing the netrate does nothing to IMPROVE things. Up the FPS from 10 to 12 WILL improve things so long as you don't max out the bandwidth, modem players (judging from TeamCTF, a 56k modem player does well up to 14, but your milage may vary).