Latency Problem In Multiplayer Games Options

[Exodust]

Well, I was playing Quake 3 multiplayer with a friend, and noticed one thing: the gun fired a few milliseconds after the trigger was pressed. But when I acted as a server, no such problem was there. So, I got a bit frustrated. Frustrated, because I thought that high ping was due to my connection. Frustration led to curiosity for finding out the solution. I got hold of this article

http://www.stratosgroup.com/features/colum...cted=200102tlnn

Then I realised that the problem is not really because of my connection. The whole gaming community is taking this latency-lag factor pretty seriously. Old games like Quake 3 didn't apply some technologies which are now being implimented in multiplayer games. This issue is taken very seriously now, and the now source engine for CS: source applies a lot of these techiques for multiplayer play, as I found out from this article:

http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/So...ayer_Networking

The techniques applied by Valve are really innovative. How they take latency into account and produce a level playing field for players with different ping times is awesome. I really found it interesting and posted it.

Anyways, those who play(or have played) CS:CZ, does that game suffer from lag? If yes, does it really affect the gameplay? I would really like to know the answers to these questions. As for now, I think playing Quake is worthless if the ping is high.

[ravi_thegreat1]

The lag times are actually due to your connection.Most of the game servers are in the US/Japan and the people over there have real good ping times(not just the bandwidth).This lag wont occur because if you are the server and the other player is from a geographically close location near you,ping times are less.

There are some softwares which 'promise' to reduce the latency but none of them actually worked for me.

Yes,there are ping correction techniques.These do somewhat compenste for high pings but not for the packet losses.About the quake 3,its useless playing multiplayer with people having low pings.

Actually in the time quake 3 was released,there used to be clear defined types of servers,those for low pings,those for medium pings and those for high pings.This worked quite well even for high ping players cause everyone else playing with them also had high pings.But now the self imposed rule has been more or less abandoned.

There are some 'BOTS' in quake 3 arena which have ping compensation techniques inbuilt among them.These work quite well.

This post has been edited by ravi_thegreat1: Jun 26 2006, 09:59 PM

[u_cant_see_me]

There are some softwares which 'promise' to reduce the latency but none of them actually worked for me.

try "cfos", although it dont give incredible results , it certainly does a praiseworthy job in reducing latency.

There are some 'BOTS' in quake 3 arena which have ping compensation techniques inbuilt among them.These work quite well.

what bots are u talkin about , never heard of em pal ....
as far as playing , im always up for it but nobdy answers the call so i too have to play on other servers...

[Exodust]

I know some part of the problem is my connection. I'm not talking about the low pings or high pings. When I played Quake 3, one of us had to be a server and the other one had to connect to him. So, this created an imbalance. The server had 0 ping(obviously). So, any amount of ping proved to be partial in favour of the server. We had quite good pings of 80 something while playing, but even at that low ping times, the conditions were heavily imbalanced in favour of the server. Imagine using a railgun even when the ping is 80, while the other person rails you all the time because he had zero ping. Now, playing on the internet compensates for this, since every player is client and they have comparable pings. But while playing through hamachi, the server side always wins. But, the problem is not that big if the pings are as low as 35-40, which was the case 2-3 days ago. The problem came into picture only when to ping rose to 80-90.

So, to sum up, at 80 ping, I won't call my connection bad. If the game can't even compensate for a ping difference of 80, it is pretty useless in India except for LAN play.

This post has been edited by Exodust: Jun 27 2006, 02:46 AM

[u_cant_see_me]

So, to sum up, at 80 ping, I won't call my connection bad. If the game can't even compensate for a ping difference of 80, it is pretty useless in India except for LAN play.

how do u want the game to compensate the ping difference , well there are games like trackmania nations where ping doesnt play a major role, u can even play on servers with 2000 pings and still set the fastest time
only because it applies the play at ur own place theory that is the track is loaded on ur pc and the only thing to be uploaded is ur time to the host server , u do download the cordinates of other players but still high pings doesnt spoil the picture , in 1 on 1 games like q3 and ut, u cant afford high pings at all coz apart from the game being loaded initially , the cordinates of other players are as important so i dont understand how do u want the game to compensate this , vaise i play on fragshack whih is in bombay and get pings below 90 , so if ur up for it tell me the time buddy when u play q3 and ill be happy to join , i havent met any1 so far in delhi who is willin to play q3 online ....

[Exodust]

how do u want the game to compensate the ping difference , well there are games like trackmania nations where ping doesnt play a major role, u can even play on servers with 2000 pings and still set the fastest time
only because it applies the play at ur own place theory that is the track is loaded on ur pc and the only thing to be uploaded is ur time to the host server , u do download the cordinates of other players but still high pings doesnt spoil the picture , in 1 on 1 games like q3 and ut, u cant afford high pings at all coz apart from the game being loaded initially , the cordinates of other players are as important so i dont understand how do u want the game to compensate this , vaise i play on fragshack whih is in bombay and get pings below 90 , so if ur up for it tell me the time buddy when u play q3 and ill be happy to join , i havent met any1 so far in delhi who is willin to play q3 online ....

Well, that was the whole point of posting my first post, to show the ways it is being compensated using some ingeneous techniques by Valve. The second link I posted shows various new technologies used in games like CS:Source; but not used in games like Quake 3 because at the time of it's making, the latency problem was considered as an exception not a norm. But as the traffic has increased since then, it has become a major hurdle in multiplayer games, especially FPS like quake and CS. And without these kind of techniques at work, the game will be pretty useless for us.

[fire_ice]

i hav played cs source on steam nd cs cz on hamachi.
in hamachi due to virtual lan we generally suffer frm lag( latency). lag causes basically two major probs.
1. ur movement is like frames
2. nd if ur movement is fine then the speed of bullets with which u hit ur opponents take a good deal of time ( if we compare it to our reflex reaction time around .05 or more ).
a few things tht i noticed tht latency depends quite a lot on connecdtion. for instance whn my frnd hell_scream used to host( he has sify) i used to get a latency of 20 to 25 in most the time but othrs who had diff connction like mtnl faced more lag nd vice versa( i m not sure of the reason behind it ).

in steam ( in every 7 days i had to update it for around 1 hr or so b4 i cud play nd this sucks)
due to high ping ( sify )whnvr i got connctd to the server after a single match i was disconnectd frm the server ( kickd actually by server nd console lol ) for the same reason. as my inclusion was bringin some latency in the other player's game. so if source has some cool antilag techniques then y the hell i was kickd for no reason. so out of frustration( several times) i deleted it nd don't play cs nemore online. now whts the use of gettin original source if we don't get to play on steam. in comparison i think cs 1.6 sabka baap hai. by the way don't play on chinky servers they r a bunch of cheat.

[Xanthous]

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