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Topic: Reducing/Avoiding Lag (Read 23 times) |
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karvon
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Last session lag was an issue for most of the party.
As I am in Japan, the ping time is likely going to be higher, hence slower speeds, than when playing on servers closer to you in the US.
Overrides are generally recognized as a potentially major cause of lag, and are banned on many PWs because of this.
The following is taken from Realms of Annakolia's website addressing this issue.
Overrides are the same materials that CAN be put into haks. They are a way to use a hak on a server that does not support that hak. The problem is, on a public server you are causing trouble by doing so.
One such rogue example: The animation override -- it is supposed to speed up and improve animation on the user's computer. The sequences send by the public server are rejected and new ones used -- positions on the client are calculated and sent to the server with animation sequence number information that does not exist on the server. The server receives trash data from that client using the animation override and cannot deal with that trash data -- Data Stacks start to have unprocessable data in them -- everyone starts to rubberband as the system tries to deal with the spurious data.
A cascade crash can occur from this or the server may just suffer lag until restarted -- sometimes it can clear when the person leaves but other times the server can be messed up until reload.
Other overrides do similar damage, some are worse than others. Overrides for heads that are in the haks being used we allow people to use at creation of the character and then remove from the override directory. We have found that even materials in the haks, such as heads, can cause a problem from load confusion.
Yes - certain SW firewalls can cause NWN lag. Multi use of the IP, such as down loading music or movies or SW while playing can cause lag. WHY? because the response is delayed at the client and that delay is going to cause lag. The server waits for responses from everyone before it will move forward. SOOO, the server is a slave to the slow responder dragging everyone with them. BTW dialup has NOT been a serious lag problem, but DSL and Cable has -- because those with it think they can multi use it while playing. A basic DSL connection should not run MSN or other communications programs while playing -- bandwidth.
Keeping ones computer clean of virus and spyware -- we had a DM get infected and until he got it fixed we suffered every time he logged on. It was a quick identify the problem and get it fixed but there you can see, it can happen and is an ongoing process.
Defrag, reorganize the hard drive, often -- weekly is not often enough. The NWN process of reading haks is critical to speed -- since we use the CEP there are haks to read but also the base Bioware stuff is in there own special haks which is perhaps not well known -- all is needed to run the game and that access can be slowed with a fragmented drive -- slowing response -- causing lag.
The PRC has overrides that WILL cause serious trouble to a server if in the folder when logging onto a server not supporting PRC. Again this causes serious lag that the server NEVER recovers from and usually crashes it sometime in its agony of lag.
The best policy is that NO overrides be used, Optimize ones HD regularly, no SW firewalls while playing, and NO other internet activity on the IP line while playing and finally, clean from virus/spyware. The free Spyware cleaners are not able to take care of the problem -- I recommend Spysweeper.
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Dave O
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Last On: 12/05/10
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Yes, I have seen this and many, many others like it -- does not change my opinion on the subject. I think we pretty much confirmed that "overides" were not the source of lag in the last session; as everyone had cleared theirs and the lag persisted unabated.
I have "tested" various commonly available overides (including critter AI overides) on many PW's and have never experienced any lag as a result of them. I also typically use improved hand/feet graphics as I do not like the "blocks", which are often standard fair. In fact, I've never had an overide affect anything in a PW that I've ever noticed ...
I have actually spent a great deal of effort trying to sort out the causes of lag on servers. Living in Sri Lanka, I generally experience "ping" times well above 350 ms (I probably connect to Japan faster than the States) and usually I am seeing 18-19 nodes.
I have become convinced that the Internet itself is largely responsible for much of the lag that gamers experience -- particularly like what we experienced last session:
On all prior sessions, even with twice as many players in the party, lag was never an issue; and then all of a sudden (without any real changes) the game is VERY laggy with a small group. On occasion, resetting the connections can improve the performance; but as often as not it doesn't -- depending on the actual source of the lag.
I was never clear on whether or not the server connection was "reset" after we all logged off -- was somewhat surprised to see it up so soon after I rebooted my machine. Also, during the last session, several of us had problems logging into the server -- getting the "timed out" message -- another indication of poor Internet connectivity.
If it was the module causing the lag -- we would see it every session. Same if it were overrides (no new players last session), or the server itself (assuming the host was not changed?). The only real "variable" in the equation was all the stuff between the server and the clients -- and there is a lot of "stuff" involved when you are sending information half way around the world ... in both directions! 
Any rate, these things happen and unless some code was added to the mod or there was a hardware swap before the last session, I think it was an "Internet" thing and not really a lot anyone can do about it.
I am always interested in learning more about this issue, as I am not very smart in the actual mechanisms the game and server/client use to port information and keep synch.
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Gulfwulf
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I use the hands and feet overrides, but nobody has complained about lag when I was on. I'm guessing last session's lag was due to how the packets were routed and not necessarily anything on anybody's computer.
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karvon
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I did reset the server, though that's not always going to be an option if I've added a bit of additional setup stuff.
I agree that lag is, more often than not, simply an Internet issue, and beyond the control of any involved. I use a couple of overrides for the GUI and never noticed any difference with those.
That being said, the anecdotal evidence, and the fact a number of long running PWs have enacted no override policies, can't be completely ignored.
I do think that a fragmented HD probably is a bigger issue myself, and have noted better game performance when I've ensured mine is regularly defragmented.
Karvon
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