Think I located source of lagging...

[zumwalt]

I know I know, you guys are working your tail off on trying to optimize the code and fix the problem..

But might I interject a major observation...

The problem seems to stem from a server to client flood, ok here is what I mean, you have tried to originally optimize the code for low bandwidth users, aka, modem.

The checksums in place for this type of connection do not work with high speed.

In essance, the responce carrier from the client is slower at this point than the sender at the server end, so the server sends, lets say, 10 requests, but the client responds with only 2.

What happens is this, the other 8 are then queued, and resent per say, now I know this is sounding odd to some of you, but bear with me a second.

Normally, my cable modem has no problems staying online for days at a time without a CRC reset, BUT when I play Ryzom, there is a flood of inbound traffic, and not alot of outbound activity.

What does this do.. well, in essance, the data packets get truncated, and lost, so the synch between the client and server is lost, now with so much trash data on my line, my good old cable modem recycles itself.

Again, this ONLY happens while playing Ryzom, to test this yourself, watch your data connect light on your cable modem, when you have a long lag spike, see if it blinks for recycling.

This game is great on dial-up, because the sender / receiver stay closer in synch.

This is not a server side lag issue, this is a synchronization issue between the client and the server.

And yes, I do know you are using SOCKS for the transport, and your transport code was written in C++

You need to detect the bandwidth or connection type and adjust the client's upload packet size accordingly, this would probably eliminate atleast 60% of the problem.

Also, I am presuming you are using either 32k or 64k packet sizes, might want to play with this some.

[tayster]

Well I'm going to blame the lag on gremlins.

Yes, you heard me. Gremlins.

[pr0ger]

Also notes that lag trouble are per-region. exploring in some unpopular region give few lags trouble. Going back in a well-populated region gives lag (even there is no blue spot on the radar)

mmh, wait, sounds like the first server-side patch correct it. Now this is only in well-spotted area who gives trouble.

[dremvekk]

Well I'm going to blame the lag on gremlins.

Yes, you heard me. Gremlins.

This cannot be the case, as lag is almost always caused by gnomes, not gremlins.

[zumwalt]

Did some more experimenting last night, I kept loosing connection with my cable modem, now normally with cable modem my network shows

Upload avg 500 - 700
Download avg 400 - 600
Ping around 1000

I have a toshiba cable modem supplied by road runner

Last night, from like 8pm on, ping was hitting the 100k mark and lag was horrible.

My router is a Netgear router, so, I decided what the hey, I unplugged the router, plugged the cable modem straight into my computer.

No change in U/D or Ping, stayed with loosing synch and ping's in the 100k mark.

Then I thought, why not dial up to forget around the cable modem for now.

So I disconnected my network cable, plugged in the good old phone line, and dialed up, to my supprise, when I was actually connected, my restults where:

Upload avg 500 - 800
Download avg 600 - 900
Ping avg 1000

Notice a trend, cable and modem use the same formula, as I suspected, which WILL cause an ASYNCH failure do to the modem is definately slower on packet related transfers than high speed.

(I only know this because I do programming and deal with client server connections all the time)

And, to top things off, I had the same de-synch going on, lots of packet loss, and disconnects leading to avg ping coming back in the 100k mark.

This further points to my earlier supiscions that the connection has nothing to do with the type of router or the type of cable modem or the speed of the connection.

Escpecially since the problem is echoed in 3 different types of connections to the same server, one being a dial-up 56k modem, a toshiba cable modem connected to a netgear router, then the computer plugged straight into the cable modem no router, and all 3 have the exact same results on U/D and Ping.

[skaarj98]

I have a Pentium 4, 2.4ghz, 512MB Ram, ATI Radeon 9700PRO128, Creative Soundblaster Audigy 2, and dialup... the game is unplayable for me due to lag and stuttering (rubberbanding, slow loading of textures and characters in zones... FPS comes to a near standstill when it enters a new area and they client has to download/load new NPCs, creatures, landscape, etc.)


Dont tell me this game is great for Dialup, and Im also tired of developers making contracts with video card companies, and 'optimizing' the game's code for whichever graphics card company pays the most for advertising. 4 Games now, Ive played which have the Nvidia logo on the box, and all 4 of the games performed horribly on my Radeon card. It is a big mistake to alienate customers for the sake advertising money from a video card company.

Edit: Mistaken I may be for making such an assumption, my experience with games which show the Nvidia logo on the box, and in the splash screen all have performed horribly on my ATI, and Im sure there is a similar sentiment among Nvidia users who play games which feature ATI Optimization.

[spaero]

Ok, I have two main points to make.

1. I also concur with the connection issue, I have tried the very same approach by noting ping ("N" key in-game) while on my D-link router, then plugging directly to my cable company supplied Motorola Surfboard.
Gameplay, Normal:
300ave upload
300ave download
300ave Ping

Gameplay at Crash:
108
64
3000+

This is common no matter what connection configuration I have tried.

2. I Use 1GB of RAM, a Geforce FX5600 Ultra 128MB Video Card and use WHQL drivers, though I have rolled back, wiped, reloaded a few different driver sets going all the way back to the trusty 53.03 Det's.

In order to reduce the Crashes without a NeL report window (Sudden Gamecrash to desktop), I have resorted to playing in "Nintendo" mode as I call it. Turn off ALL vegetation, lower clipping to bare minimum to see maybe 10-20m and reduce all options to lowest-conservative settings.
NOTE: I am NOT an ATI user and I can play Farcry and other graphic intensive games at very high detail, 1280x1024x32bit@70hz fine.
I have signifigantly reduced sudden crashes by doing this, down to 5-10 crashes per night. I am not trying to put this game down, but throwing in my data with the intent that it will serve to help those struggling with lockups as well as provide feedback for SoR Techs reading these posts.

One other suggestion. I found that after zoning in and out of trainer rooms or entering towns that it is possible to outrun the "memory", in other words...you run into an area where the textures have not fully loaded into memory and it causes an immediate crash.

Simply stopping on the edge of town as you zone in or waiting that extra 10 seconds after zoning out stopped this form of crash.

Hope that helps....

[tetsius]

I have a Pentium 4, 2.4ghz, 512MB Ram, ATI Radeon 9700PRO128, Creative Soundblaster Audigy 2, and dialup... the game is unplayable for me due to lag and stuttering (rubberbanding, slow loading of textures and characters in zones... FPS comes to a near standstill when it enters a new area and they client has to download/load new NPCs, creatures, landscape, etc.)


Dont tell me this game is great for Dialup, and Im also tired of developers making contracts with video card companies, and 'optimizing' the game's code for whichever graphics card company pays the most for advertising. 4 Games now, Ive played which have the Nvidia logo on the box, and all 4 of the games performed horribly on my Radeon card. It is a big mistake to alienate customers for the sake advertising money from a video card company.

Edit: Mistaken I may be for making such an assumption, my experience with games which show the Nvidia logo on the box, and in the splash screen all have performed horribly on my ATI, and Im sure there is a similar sentiment among Nvidia users who play games which feature ATI Optimization.

Skaar, did you try to lower settings before complaining about that game isn't playable??? Just put settings all to normal, your rig isn't meant to run game on high settings? If you getting problems even on Normal, then throw your rig... ehhhrrmm , put settings on Low and try again. You will see that performance increases as lower you put settings as more.

My wife has Celeron 2.4, 640MB Ram, and Ati 6800XT. And game runs just fine with All settings turned to normal on 1024x768. Well we do have cable... Radeon 9700 Pro never was a good card, I think it's even slower than 6800XT, sorry pal. It's not that ATI cards are not cimpatible with Nvidia Logoed games, it's just your card isn't powerful enough. I have had ATI 9800XT before, could play ALL Nvidia logoed games without any problems whatsoever. And by the way I work in computer service and LOTS of people are complaining aboud that computer works slow, Internet sucks.. etc...

Try to download Adaware SE Personal it's free, update its definitions and then in safe mode run FULL SYSTEM SCAN. I bet it will find around 400 critical objects on your computer. After you do this your performance might increase 100%.

I haven't played the game on Dial-Up.. lol ...

But I never had ping 100K !!!! :O

My my, what kind of ISP is that???

[tetsius]

Well I'm going to blame the lag on gremlins.

Yes, you heard me. Gremlins.

Muahahaha.. Tayster that was a good one !!!

But seriously I think that gremlins have some tunnels made underneath the erth, and they sit there and chew on the Internet cables...LOL.

[zumwalt]

A few more observations:

There have been 2 server resets over the weekend that I recall, now here was my U/D Ping between resets of the shard.
Averages Only - First Reset (saturday 8pm EST)
U: 400
D: 1000
P: 350
Packet Loss, steady around 5

Sunday's Shard Reset
U: 350
D: 2100
P: 450
Packet Loss, None

But the upside for me, only City lag on loading static NPC's and buildings.
If I waiting 10 to 15 seconds before moving once I got to the city gate, I was fine.

No drops though.

Edit:

I forgot to mention, Saturdays Invasion of Matis went Very well, we were able to kill the Queen, Prince, Captain, and all the cronies they threw at us.

That was a most excelent test of the system, and I must say, I was thuroughly impressed, because I personally counted over 300 Kitins, and probably killed over 50 myself.

Very good job to all the Matis folks on cleaning house, I was however, disappointed that the greenseed patrols chickened out when the carriers landed.

All I could think was, Starship TROOPERS!!!

And absolutely NO LAG during the entire invasion, so I know the servers can handle the workload.