- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
omfg, I can't even believe I'm having to say this.
There are SO many factors involved in internet connections that the bit rates dont define how much lag you have. It's just that 56k is so bad in nearly all these factors.
Before a lot of you guys came around, I made a very specific guide on the difference between lag as a whole and latency. My dialup is low latency - hence why I usually hover just below 300ms total latency in HPC.
Get ISDN.
Give me another $60 a month and I'd be happy to. I've got a wife, a kid, and graduate school, so $60 a month for me - like $720 a year - I could buy a lot of stuff with that.
heres a problem though. some people can spoof their pings. I have seen it before in starcraft. they would appear have a very "low" ping but in all truth, they have a ping of over 1000. Im sure that there are ways to do the same on halo.
I say kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out.
Heres another thing. I have been in games where I have an awsoem connection, very minimal warping, then suddenly some one joins and I can't even move. What I think is a problem is that they lie on their connection speed. I would like to do an experement in which everyone in a server sets their connection to a 56k. then when all of them have the same setting, see what kind of pings and lag they get. I hypothisise that there will be either no noticable lag, or everyone lags ass.
Never happened to me in all the time I've played on 56k. Most people just think I'm playing in the UK on US servers and don't even realize I'm on 56k until I tell them. Then they get embarassed that they're losing a no-sheilds sniper match to a guy on 56k.
a third problem is that the 56k connections are being degraded. I am supposed to be getting a 50k or so connection. In reality Im only getting a 35.5 or so.
Yeah, I forgot to mention, my 56k connects at 25.8 kbps. Still have no problems.
And as i said, if they can't get ADSL or Cable internet, then settle for something like ISDN, even that can manage speeds of 256kbps and it's available anywhere there's a phone line, and any increase is an improvement on 56k.
And you said wrong. ISDN connects at 144k. Also, communications lines are taking months to get installed out here - . I'll give you a reference:Here
Basically, what i'm saying is, upgrade to something faster or you shouldn't be playing FPSs online, 56k has never really been able to cut it for anything other than basic RTS games and text-based stuff.
Obviously for me, 56k cuts it on HPC and you don't know what you're talking about. I pwn guys on DSL everyday. And nobody warps, lags out, etc.
Actually, CS:S on average uses 128kbit download if it's running optimally, and around 64kbit upload, so even on download, 56k doesn't cut it and i suspect H2 PC will use something similar due to the similarites in the engine.
So you know what engine they're using to do the port? Would you mind telling the rest of us?
That's because they're RTSs, and not graphically intensive FPSs.
That doesn't make any sense at all. Graphics are processed locally. They're not uploaded and downloaded from the server. All of your graphics are handled client-side. I've already explained the kind of information an HPC DS needs to keep up with for each player - graphics has nothing to do with it.
that last statement isnt entirely true, if the server were to let you lag and just ignore you, you could run into their base, grab the flag, run back and score, no one would be able to stop you because once they see you, you have already moved.
If the server ignored me, how would it know that I captured the flag? Yeah, it works on H2 on $box live, but not really on PC. If I lose contact with the server for more than a few seconds, I lose my connection to the server altogether. The way HPC handles warping is not to let you run around like some ghost. Everyone else sees you as running in place. More often than not, you'll wind up dead by the time you warp back in.
but if my calculations are correct i should still have 156killabits of bandwidth left,
close -106 kilobits.
so it would seem that i am reaching my upload ceiling (which is higher than bother you download and upload put together), before i would reach my download ceiling,
Yeah, except you're ignoring a few things - I'll get to them in a minute. I don't think you caught what I was saying. When you play games, you're not simply uploading data, you're downloading as well. In fact, the same data that you upload for yourself, you have to download from the server for all of the other players so that their movements and actions can be resolved locally on your machine. See - you only have to upload your info, but you have to download everybody else's (and, in most instances, your own again, as well). So my point was that you're downloading far more than you're uploading - unless you're playing by yourself (which carries all sorts of connotations I won't discuss because you're a likeable guy).
Back to what I started on about, I think I can still see where you're coming from. You've got a 3mbit/s cable connection and you boot up limewire (or something) and let somebody download a large file at 150kb/s. You figure, "ah, hell I've got like 10 times as much upload bandwidth as Inspire does total, so I should be able to play UT2004 or HPC just fine." What you didn't realize is that cable connections frequently become "saturated" and you get less than optimal bandwidth. Also, limewire and other P2P programs are rez whores and they eat your memory and processing power alive. Another thing you may not realize is that you may not have capped the maximum upload speed in limewire, so the guy downloading this insanely huge file is actually sapping every available kb of upload cpacity you have.
That's a whole lot of 'if's, though. Other than that - the sheer fact that it has happened to you carries the most weight. I appreciate you taking the time to respond to my questions. What doesn't make sense, though, is that I still play without having or causing much trouble. Like I said, once the game gets about seven players, I lose my network connection and get kicked from the server. So how do we make sense of it all?
I believe what you say. And I believe what I've seen. But, taken together, they don't make much sense - I shouldn't be able to play at all if what you're saying is correct.
Or much difference for that matter. I don't care one way or the other whether dialup support is included in H2PC. I just can't see why you guys are coming down so hard on 56k players. I mean, it's ridiculous - this is almost as bad as the TKer discussions we have here. Flaming and such.
Most of you, I would expect have not used both dialup and broadband to play HPC. I say this because it doesn't seem to me that a whole lot of you know how exactly HPC works on dialup.
My point is, I've contributed a whole hell of a lot to this game, and I don't appreciate the flames or pithy quips some of you guys use to describe 56k players. It's childish and it tears down the community.
If you have a point, then make it and substantiate and do it politely. Imposing a half-baked and half-cocked opinion on something you've could've known better about if you'd taken the time to do a five minute google search, read the threads, and think of someone besides yourself, doesn't seem to do much to promote you around here.
So, before everybody gets all pissy and sends me a Flame War III response. Chill out. Be nice to 56k players - not all of them can upgrade. Rest assured that Microsoft will do whatever it wants as far as including 56k support whether we like it or not. And realize, I truly could not care less what they did. I won't live out in BFE forever.