View Full Version : MTW and lag
Orda Khan
05-05-2002, 20:31
How will these larger units/armies affect gameplay. Some games lag some don't. What will MTW be like? Can anyone tell me how good is broadband?...........Orda
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" Send us your ambassadors and thus we shall judge whether you wish to be at peace with us or at war..if you make war on us the Everlasting God, who makes easy what was difficult and makes near what was far, knows that we know what our power is."
Well, it is enough to say that original STW is more more laggy than the never MI. So I am optimistic for M:TW. But surely enough MTW will raise the minimum specs.
Tera.
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Proud member of Clan Kenchikuka (http://www.totalwar.org/kenchikuka).
evil is within us... http://www.totalwar.org/site/emomalta.gif
CaPeFeAr
05-05-2002, 22:43
currently, WE takes a max 7kb of bandwith per player (or there abouts) the true cause of lag is ram and a few other factors. the reason we doesnt seem to lag as much as stw is because most players have upgraded their pcs in the last 2 years. currently, even with 256ram you will experence lag. i have 512rdram and in 4v4, with every1 fighting i dont get but a fraction of a second lag. my mouse works fine, the camera moves at top speed. even when the sprites on the screen are at a standstill, and the chat is delayed by 20 seconds..lol ( i can also use a higher battlefield resolution ) . With my 256ram pc ( year and 1/2 old) i would get lag.. i didnt know it then.. but i do now, now that i have upgraded.
if you play online with anything less than 512ram use the lowest battlefield resolution possible, turn off all music and soundfx, turn off smoke and the birds, use ctrl+alt+del or other similar function to shut down all programs running except systray,explorer,and your firewall. disable any virus scanner you have, deleate any temp internet files if you still experence lag.
f5 has a slight effect on bandwith and ram, but is nothing compared to most of the options above, disable this only if you start experencing personal pc lag(camera/mouse)... not sprite/chat lag. (disableing f5 does bennifit the host of the game and i reccomend that the host always disables it immediatly at start)
f6,f7 have no effect on bandwith but do effect personal pc lag... disable only if camera and mouse are lagging badly.
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Proud member of Clan Kenchikuka (http://www.totalwar.org/kenchikuka).
evil is within us... http://www.totalwar.org/site/emomalta.gif
Papewaio
05-06-2002, 04:59
Quote Originally posted by Orda Khan:
How will these larger units/armies affect gameplay. Some games lag some don't. What will MTW be like? Can anyone tell me how good is broadband?...........Orda
[/QUOTE]
I'm not sure if there are more units on the battlefield. The max that can be currently fielded is 15360 in an 8 player MP.
Now if the game allows that in SP I would be mightly impressed right up to the moment my wrist tendons snap from frantically clicking.
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Victory First, Battle Last
Kraellin
05-06-2002, 10:42
Capefear is only half right. your hardware does affect lag, but that's only half of it. read my post in the tech dojo for a more complete explanation of lag and the internet. broadband connections do, for the most part, help, but are not a cure-all for lag. upgrading to faster hardware and more ram also helps, but again, this is not a cure-all either.
CA pulled some very clever tricks to make this code work for multi. i'm quite impressed with it. their use of our machines to help reduce lag is quite efficient and took the old 'put all the graphics and sound on the individual user's machine' to a new level. it's really pretty clever and makes the amount of data that needs to be transferred over the internet just about the absolute minimum it can be. but, the internet is still the internet. 56k is still 56k. a 300 ping is still a 300 ping...or worse.
i doubt gameplay will be that much different re lag in M:TW. we're still only going to have 16 units as a player, and i forget, but arent we still only going to have 8 players max in a multi?
as for broadband, a 56k modem is about 1/10th the transfer speed of a good broadband. most arent quite that good, for various reasons, but are still quite a bit faster than 56k. they do make a difference in most gaming. when i play on a 56k i get a ping of about a 1/3 of a second...sounds fast, but guys with good broadband connects are running at about 1/20th of a second. in shogun that doesnt make that much difference, but in a shooter like quake or something, it can be a huge difference.
if you're really contemplating broadband, ask around first. do a little research. isp's can differ greatly, some good, some not so good. shop around.
K.
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The only absolute is that there are no absolutes.
Quote Originally posted by CaPeFeAr:
currently, WE takes a max 7kb of bandwith per player (or there abouts) the true cause of lag is ram and a few other factors. the reason we doesnt seem to lag as much as stw is because most players have upgraded their pcs in the last 2 years. currently, even with 256ram you will experence lag. i have 512rdram and in 4v4, with every1 fighting i dont get but a fraction of a second lag. my mouse works fine, the camera moves at top speed. even when the sprites on the screen are at a standstill, and the chat is delayed by 20 seconds..lol ( i can also use a higher battlefield resolution ) . With my 256ram pc ( year and 1/2 old) i would get lag.. i didnt know it then.. but i do now, now that i have upgraded.
if you play online with anything less than 512ram use the lowest battlefield resolution possible, turn off all music and soundfx, turn off smoke and the birds, use ctrl+alt+del or other similar function to shut down all programs running except systray,explorer,and your firewall. disable any virus scanner you have, deleate any temp internet files if you still experence lag.
f5 has a slight effect on bandwith and ram, but is nothing compared to most of the options above, disable this only if you start experencing personal pc lag(camera/mouse)... not sprite/chat lag. (disableing f5 does bennifit the host of the game and i reccomend that the host always disables it immediatly at start)
f6,f7 have no effect on bandwith but do effect personal pc lag... disable only if camera and mouse are lagging badly.
[/QUOTE]
GAH! I did not know that! Thanks!
What effect does CPU speed have? If you are below say... 200 MHz, but have 512k RAM... is that good or bad? What would be your min CPU speed for negligible lag on 4v4s?
Kraellin
05-06-2002, 21:53
vanya,
if you have a 200 mhz machine i'm surprised you can run the game at all. the way intel chips (and the clones) work is sort of like a pace car at the indy 500. nothing can go faster than the pace car. motorola chips (macintosh) work a bit differently. they say, i'm the pace car, but i'm holding you up...here, go race on another track and get back to me when yer done. thus, the pc world requires a much faster cpu to handle things.
but that doesnt really answer your question. frankly, i dont have an exact answer, but when i went from playing shogun on a 333 mhz machine with 128 M ram, to a 1.2 ghz machine with 512M ram, the biggest improvement wasnt in fixing lag, it was in processing the graphics and sound. this gave the 'appearance' of fixing lag, since things now ran much smoother. graphics looked better, scrolling was MUCH better, mouse lag reduced to not noticeable and so on. it prolly did also help to remove real lag, since processing tasks is faster and the machine can then tell the host machine that it's ready for more data, but my own perception on this is that it wont reduce real lag by that much. again, 56k is 56k. a 300 or 400 ping is still a 300 or 400 ping and having a 2 ghz machine with 1024M ram and a 64M DDR vid card arent going to change that 300 ping to a 200 ping.
having more ram can help, particularly on a slower machine. if you can stay away from thrashing your hd with virtual memory calls you're going to save a lot of processing time, even if your machine wont page 512M ram as fast as it would page 128M ram, ram is still faster than virt memory, by a long shot.
if you had a 200 mhz machine with 128M ram and were contemplating whether to get a better cpu or add more ram, i'd get the better cpu. if you had a 500 mhz machine with 64M ram, i'd get more ram first. if you had a 333-350 mhz machine and 128M ram, i'd increase the cpu first. if i had a 200 mhz machine, regardless of ram, i'd have a new doorstop :)
and if i had a minimal machine with a 56k modem and could either upgrade my machine or get cable/dsl, i'd get the cable/dsl first. dropping that 300 ping to 50 will do more for any lag problems than upgrading hardware. you might have to run in low res with a bit of mouse drag and not so smooth scrolling, but it wouldnt lag everyone in the game down as much.
K.
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The only absolute is that there are no absolutes.
You forgot one...
If you have a 486 or less, and cannot afford a new PC, then the only way you'll play Shogun is to wear cardboard "armor", refer to your old broomstick as "katana" and chase the neighbor's kids around the neighborhood threatenning to "introduce them honor-less gun monkeys" to Buddha... http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/tongue.gif
RageMonsta
05-07-2002, 00:36
lol.....cheeky gun monkey!
Hirosito
05-07-2002, 23:44
oh shit i need ram
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Hirosito Mori
Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.
Quote Originally posted by Hirosito:
oh shit i need ram
[/QUOTE]
I went out and 'acquired' 2 Rams. I hope they will breed soon so I can have more. http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/tongue.gif Now, I just need to reinforce my rotting fence so they won't burst out and smash my neighbors crap.
Soon, I'll get the 512 you say I need. Although I cannot fathom where I will store them... my back yard ain't that big... I don't live on a ranch, ya know.
But if it reduces lag, I'm all for having these beasts! http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/biggrin.gif
Hirosito
05-10-2002, 00:50
yipeee i've been quoted by vanya
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Hirosito Mori
Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.
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