I'm convinced it's a programming error or bad choice of game engine perhaps. TWIs own servers suffer from this issue
So what is the cause of ridiculously high ping in this game?
- Thread starter mattlach
- Start date
Three questions:
1.) Do you find this is a server hardware limitation (CPU/RAM?) or a network bandwidth limitation?
2.) Does anything else run on this server?
3.) What is your server hardware / bandwidth like?
Thanks,
Matt
Your ping in RO2 is calculated differently then the ping in a different online game. In the server browser you may see a ping of 35 for a server very close too you; that would be a ping comparable to other games. However, when you enter the game you'll see that ping rise as it now includes the time for the server to calculate your actions while playing.
So, for example, if a server has a 35ms ping in the browser (The actual time it takes for the signal to transport too you and back) and the server takes another 50ms to calculate all your actions, they would add up too an 85ms ping in-game. I know some other unreal engine games calculate ping in a similar fashion, Section 8
rejudice & such, so it may be unique to the engine. The devs tell us high ping servers are a franchise of 3rd party dedicated servers, which makes perfect sense too me. TWI can afford to get the best quality hardware to host their servers (Those intel Xeon things with 4ghz turbo) while an average player won't have that available. When a clan or individual tries to host their own server, they often over estimate how powerful the server hardware is and give it a player slot limit that's simply too high. Heck, even I tried hosting a 16 slot server on a pentium 4 with very poor results. The server side for RO2 is simply very processor intensive. When the server fills up, the hardware starts to struggle with all the processing requirement and pings raise an exponential amount. This is why I avoid 64 player servers that aren't officially hosted or ones that I personally trust.
I hope that helps clear some things up.
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Your ping in RO2 is calculated differently then the ping in a different online game. In the server browser you may see a ping of 35 for a server very close too you; that would be a ping comparable to other games. However, when you enter the game you'll see that ping rise as it now includes the time for the server to calculate your actions while playing.
So, for example, if a server has a 35ms ping in the browser (The actual time it takes for the signal to transport too you and back) and the server takes another 50ms to calculate all your actions, they would add up too an 85ms ping in-game. I know some other unreal engine games calculate ping in a similar fashion, Section 8
This appears to be a symptom of the dedicated server code being unpotimized or it being run on inferior hardware.
I'm sure there is some of this. It's surprising the requirements for this server are so high though. I've been hosting various dedicated game servers on my own linux boxes since ~2001, and never have I come across a game that needed a more powerful server than I could build together using slightly used 1-2 year old spare parts.
This does not surprise me. Pentium 4's (Except for the very top end models) were pretty weak CPU's and one of Intel's biggest blunders in the history of the company.
It has been suggested that trying 32 play servers may be a better idea. I will try this, but it removes some of the greatness of the game to me.
I guess I wonder what the requirements truly are for the dedicated server.
Is it properly multithreaded? Is it linux/windows/both?
Are the high pings based on people running really old hardware, or is the server so hardware dependent that even fairly new hardware struggles with it?
I don't know how many times this has been explained....yet it continues to fall upon deaf ears....Your ping in RO2 is calculated differently then the ping in a different online game. In the server browser you may see a ping of 35 for a server very close too you; that would be a ping comparable to other games. However, when you enter the game you'll see that ping rise as it now includes the time for the server to calculate your actions while playing.
So, for example, if a server has a 35ms ping in the browser (The actual time it takes for the signal to transport too you and back) and the server takes another 50ms to calculate all your actions, they would add up too an 85ms ping in-game. I know some other unreal engine games calculate ping in a similar fashion, Section 8
Even with the state of the art hardware there a issues on certain maps when the server is loaded, arty is falling, tanks are battling, etc. But generally on those servers that are properly set up, while the pings rise, the gameplay is generally playable most of the map. On lessor servers, not so much. And then too, some of not-so-high-end player computers simply have problems with larger player numbers, yet they continue to play on the large capacity servers.
@krobar: I read: "Chances are..." and not a definitive "Becuase its your..."
@mattlach: the engine doesn't multi-thread well and that was a large part of the problem with servers early in the game's release. Though I'm pretty sure that most GSP's of any caliber know that by now, I wouldn't doubt that there are some that 'know' more about the game than what John has explained. And there are no Linux RO2 servers at this particular time.
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Doesn't matter, but in my opinion 80ms is fine for pretty much every game except Quake 3 insta-gib on a fairly high level, lol. Even Counterstrike is perfectly playable with 80ms. Anyway...
I have higher latency in RO (1 and 2, btw.) than in most other games as well. No idea why, but it's always been like that so I don't really expect it to change.
That's also due to bad hit registration over short distances. Last I heard TWI were aware of this and working on it.
I wouldn't call the RO2/UE3 netcode unoptimized or inferior, it just calculates ping differently. Most other games would only show you the communication time between your computer and the server, which is what most people think of when they think "Ping." RO2 actually gives you more information by telling you the server processing delay as well. If it only showed the internet delay and not the hardware, would there still be a problem or would people not notice the hardware delay on overloaded servers anymore?
The server runs on 1 large thread with a few other very small threads. This is why you could get away with a single core per server, as long as that core is very powerful.
Some better info from the beta DDE thread by Mr. President himself:
Also remember that while other games are very easy to host, not many include the positional effects and complicated ballistics system that RO2 has. I can host 2 killing floor servers easily off that same pentium 4 computer, which gives it 12 players connected at maximum, while just 4 more for RO2 is impossible. Even a 12 slot server would be impossible on the same computer. The difference is in Kf the bullets hit instantly, there is no calculation of the ballistic drop or travel time through arcs. I imagine spacial dependent features like this in RO2 are what make the server processing so intensive. If you think about it, the game actually preforms quite smoothly for what it does.
To my knowledge, the minimum CPU hardware required for a good quality 64 slot server is
The server runs on 1 large thread with a few other very small threads. This is why you could get away with a single core per server, as long as that core is very powerful.
Some better info from the beta DDE thread by Mr. President himself:
http://forums.tripwireinteractive.com/showthread.php?t=57434http://forums.tripwireinteractive.com/showthread.php?t=57434
Also remember that while other games are very easy to host, not many include the positional effects and complicated ballistics system that RO2 has. I can host 2 killing floor servers easily off that same pentium 4 computer, which gives it 12 players connected at maximum, while just 4 more for RO2 is impossible. Even a 12 slot server would be impossible on the same computer. The difference is in Kf the bullets hit instantly, there is no calculation of the ballistic drop or travel time through arcs. I imagine spacial dependent features like this in RO2 are what make the server processing so intensive. If you think about it, the game actually preforms quite smoothly for what it does.
To my knowledge, the minimum CPU hardware required for a good quality 64 slot server is
If you have a server with that cpu, or one of equivalent or greater power, it should be able to run a 64 slot server pretty seamlessly. I trust TWI to do this properly, though kentucky fried goulash seems to do exceptionally well also.
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Here is the original thread posted by a member of the SWEET clan.
[url]http://forums.tripwireinteractive.com/showthread.php?t=68693&highlight=tickrate[/URL]
and no....there is no detriment to having those settings changed as they apply to "maximums" and if the current connection or server can't handle said settings it will simply fallback to lower settings.
Trust me. I thought so too, but in servers with less overall players (ie 24-32) you get to hear more of the environmental audio (which is fantastic for immersion) and the intensity is ramped way up. Playing "whack-a-mole" in a 64-person server actually seems less "great" by comparision. Try it, you'll see what I mean.
While I appreciate the detailed answer, in my personal experience this is completely wrong. On average I find the TWI servers running 64 players are just as bad as everyone else. Same high server browser pings, same lag spikes. Other players in game report the same thing. The issue is not limited to poorly configured hardware, unless TWI's qualifies.
I've not experienced that with the 64 slot TWI servers. When full, or very nearly full, my ping rarely goes past 120 on the official servers & on kentucky fried goulash I usually manage to stay around the 100 range. On virtually any clan hosted 64 player server my ping will surpass 200.
How I read this.
Even the Xeon E-1270 (fastest server processor money can buy for single threaded applications) is marginal for a 64 player server.
This seems to suggest that what they are trying to do can not be effectively done with current server hardware without a complete rewrite of the server engine for multithreading.
It would - however - be interesting to see how it would run on one of those watercooled overclocked core i5-2500K's at 5Ghz. It will have fewer threads and less cache than the Xeon, but it should beat it in raw single threaded performance.
Seeing that TWI did not write their own engine, but rather based the game on an existing Unreal 3 engine, the chances of seeing a multithreaded server and thus good playable 64 player servers are close to nil.
This is sad.
Actually, this article is interesting.
Makes you wonder why the multithreading tools were not used in the development of RO2, especially since it was known it would be CPU intensive.
I wonder what it would take to implement them retroactively. A relatively simple recompile, or a complete rewrite...
That should not be a concern to anyone who plays this game. As long as someone on your team gets the kill, it furthers the team goal. This game is not about individual performance. K/D ratio, number of kills, etc. don't matter. It's all about the team meeting its objectives.
I actually ment that I could clearly see the bullets from my SVT-40 hit Germans in the left side of their chest and they keep running without any hit being detected by the game.
God damn fascists must have super powers.
I'm assuming you don't have any experience in programming, but decently multi-threaded code isn't easy to do. In fact it's a pain in the arse. There is a reason we've had multi-core machines commonly in machines for many years without a matching increase in software utilisation.
As for the high ping thing. As mentioned, it's overloaded servers. A depressingly high number of servers are running too many slots, often a great deal too many. It's best to ignore the ping in the server browser, and check F1 the moment you join. If everyone has a 150ish ping... don't play. Change server immediately.
Very few of the 50-64 player servers seem able to actually cope with it. Similar situation as in RO1 when the player count was increased to 64 in that. And I imagine the problem will ease a little as more efficient and faster cpu's come out.
I'm not a programmer, but I have some laymans knowledge and I am aware of the difficulties of writing good multithreaded code.
What I am not familiar with is how much actual coding developers who use existing engines actually do, or if most of itisscripting, model making and texturing and other artistic work.
If the unreal engine already included provisions for multithreading, were they used? Are those Unreal provisions any good? How much do they rely on the game developer to implement them, and how much of it is inherent to the engine. If so what percentage of the code in the game is unreal code vs RO2 specific code.
Can you flip a switch in the engine to enable those already existing unreal provisions (of they aren't already used) without significantly modifying the portion of the code that is RO2 specific, or do you have to have these Unreal provided multithreading provisions in mind from day one when starting a new game?
Do you see where I am going with this?
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Finally some recognition. I still cant belive every server is not running these settings by now. And as far as the results. Yes that was pretty much what we found. also smaller pingtimes are possible due to the new server updaterate.
All in all it makes the game run alot better "netcode" wise. You shoot and he dies. Not you shoot and 0.3-1 sec later he dies like it used to be.
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I made a post about how to do it a while back:
http://forums.tripwireinteractive.com/showthread.php?p=928701#post928701
The settings are there and what it does and what to look out for. GLHF
Also changeing CLIENT ConfiguredInternetSpeed to 20000. Its fine when you enter a server with a lower maxsetting then what you have since your rates will be as high as the server allows so they get lowered to whatever the server allows. Like in source engine and so on
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