Lag and Broken Shores

[Cosmik]

Hello hello, your friendly neighbourhood Cosmik here. I want to get some information on lag issues at the moment. I still a number of posts from people saying they have really bad lag problems in places such as Broken Shores and 2HO, and there are posts from others saying they have minimal problems.

Well, I'm hoping to look right into the deep dark bowels of this lag beats and see what's up. So, to help me out, give me a yell in this thread about any lag issues you have at the moment and where you have them. To help with this, it would be great if you also posted your computer specs and type of internet connection.

We're improving the perfomance of AO each patch, and I'm aiming to kick this lag even more with your help. Thanks.

[______________DocNec]

Broken Shores and Clon**** do horrible horrible things to me - 20k is somewhat ok after I clear clientr (this normally happens when I whompa in and crash anyway.. therefor having no choice)

My machines not exactly top notch=/

1 gig Tbird - A7V
512 Meg pc133
GF2 GTS - Latest official Dets
10k RPM 160 Cheetah scsi hd
SB audigy

----------

Cox cable (roadrunner..)

[_____Poweredge|vault]

Roughly the same as the above spec machine, on the back of 512/256DSL.

Over the past month or so (since coming back from an AO break), I've avoided BS like the plague. But... prior to there being a great number of people being in BS, I used to spend alot of time travelling out there before it got as busy as it is now. The one thing that stands out about BS is that as you come from the OT Whompa to the City, you start to get hit with lag... not from people, but from graphics.

Clon**** causes me a similar problem, even though there have been times that I'm the only person I've seen on the scanner.

Perhaps it's a case of dealing with the graphics side of things, as well as deling with load-bearing on the BS server.

[Lazz]

TBird1400
GF3Ti200 64MB
512MB PC133
DSL 512/512

Home in Broken shores is terrible, it was bad some months ago when there weren't much people around and now it is worse. I _think_ the lag that people are experincing is a combination of how heavy the place is for the computer to render _and_ slowdowns due to the excessive amount of people currently there...

I get only around 10fps @ 1280x1024x32 in Home/Broken shores, it is very polygon/texture heavy and I would say that it is one of the best places in the game where the rendering engine demonstrates its inability to not render hidden polygons, or so it seems.

I think the best fix for this problem is to get people away from Home. Most everyone gathers there because it is easy to get high level missions there, it easy to travel there and there are scanners & shops nearby. Since hunting outside gives so much less xp at higher levels compared to missions, people turn to missions and Home has all the wanted conveniences. I think the key to fixing this lies in finding/making other places (mission areas) that has the above stated things or better, make some good higher level outdoor hunting places.

[_______________edict]

There is definately something wrong with Broken Shores

My system is a 1.4Ghz Athlon T-Bird, 512MB ram, Geforce 3, win2k pro sp2 and a ADSL connection. Moving around with anything but chardist 20, viewdist 30 is a nightmare!

You frequently get occurances where the game just pauses for up to 30 seconds. Whilst this is happening I get around 0.2-0.9 FPS. My harddrive is not wirring away, and no I am not out of memory.

This "pause" seems to be the single largest contributing factor to people getting kicked out of the game with "There is a problem with the server".

Related with this is that when you get kicked out in this fashion, it is often almost impossible to log back in! I have to tweak my graphics settings for 640x480x16, everything on lowest or off with chardist and viewdist @ 0.

If chardist worked as it was promised (ie, not actually loading the graphics for other players NOT in your view, until they ARE. As it is all players in your "viewable set" have there clothes graphics loaded, the only thing that chardist does is not draw them on screen increasing your FPS, which is not the problem for most people [this is another subject all of its own]), I doubt we would all have such a problem.

I've tried with and without the speedread database - absolutely no difference Infact, I would go as far as to say that I have more problems with the speedread database than without (get kicked off the server far more often).

I agree with Lazz that the rendering engine really lets it self down in BS. The renderer must be drawing all buildings even if they are not visible to the client(s). I'd be very interested to see a wireframe rendering mode for AO, that'll prove it!

Thanks for listening

[Nostra343]

1.1GHz Athlon
Asus A7V
512MB SDRAM
ATI Radeon 32MB AIW


It's usually pretty laggy in 20k; I don't go to City of Home often, but that is mostly because I'm subjected to 40 second freezes when I get there, so...

I usually run in 1024x768 Full Screen. I run absolutelly fine in that mode in 90% of the places. Experimenting with windows mode or 640x480 mode and experiencing the same lag leads me to believe that it's not the graphics that are iffy in 20k, but rather people.
Consider: In busy times, there are just as many people in 20k city as there are in Newland city; However, Newland city gets its own zone, while 20k shares it with the surrounding area. Not sure if that matters or not, I haven't a clue how the game operates, but just brainstorming here...

At any rate, most of the 20k area is *more or less* ok for me, but 20k "city" itself is horror. If I crash (happens more often then in other places) or log-out there, I'm in for some fun time as I try to log back in - usually takes several tries. I also freeze while coming into 20k, either from whompa or sometimes just exiting one of the stores.

Approaching it from outside or from whompa usually leads to 15-60 second delays (screen freezes) as I near the most populated area by the save point / bank. It doesn't really matter if I do it in Yalm (fast entrance) or crawling. I've learned not to enter it in auto-run mode, but rather slowly approach and myself stop my char every few meters, to let things update nicely. Still get long freezes, but at least they're not permanent that way


Since you guys know how things work, if you have any specific questions, they may help us give you the right answers - I'm spending a lot of time in 20k these days so I don't mind experimenting if it can help you guys a bit

Cheers

[_______________Tiran]

Continuing since beta reminder, since you're looking at Broken Shores....

There is *no map* available for Broken Shores (and some other zones).

How about FIXING that?

[______________Wahoo.]

1.4Ghz Athlon
1 gig of DDR Ram
ATI 64 DDR video card
PCI 128 sound card

Windows ME

i also have:

800 p3
624 Ram
ATI 64 DDR video card
Sound blaster live

Windows ME

-------------------------------------------------------
We use both systems to play AO. Although the "800 P3" has less lag than "1.4Ghz".

[Nullifax]

Well, I've experienced insane lag in a number of zones. Some I have firgued out a way around though:

Pleasent Meadows: This is a problem with the number of players. When I enter from Harry's instead of whompa to 20K, I have no problems.

Broken Shores: Same problems as PM. Once away from people, I have considerably less lag.

Clon****: This is a strange one but I've verified it, SOUND. Yep, the Notum Cannons over in the OP in Clon**** are actually the cause of the incredible lag there. Aparently, the effect which causes my screen to shake from the cannons is also turned off when I turn the sound off. I fly through Clon**** with absolutely 0 lag whatsoever now that I mute the sound.

Those are the 3 zones which are actually lag caused by either players or client-side problems. Elsewhere however, I have noticed that I get very erratic pings lately. This is only somewhat recently as I did not have this problem in 13.8 even. My ping will many times sit at 20 for several minutes, then spontaneously jump to as much as 16000. It will then stay that way for a few minutes and go back down again. It jumps around all over the place like a mad bull. I have reduced this effect by muting sound and lowering graphical detail. This has led me to believe it is in many cases an IRQ issue. That is because my video card, my sound card, my USB bus, my serial bus, my PC card bus, AND my network card all use IRQ 9. Darned Windows 2000 *mumbles something obscene*.

The funny thing is, as clogged as my IRQ 9 may sound, I have no problems whatsoever with any other games, including online ones, and as I said before, I didn't have this problem before 13.9. That means that although there is a way for me to reduce the rubberbandlike ping, it may actually be more of an issue with the way AO is sending data through my network card.

[________senatorjesse]

My worst lag comes in 20K, but the few times I have gone to Broken Shores it's been just as bad, with severe framerate decline. Another bad place is Newland.

Last night, 20K was so horrible that when I zoned out of the whompa my system completely froze. Then later, when I died and came to reclaim I tried to run to the reclaim terminal from the recreation pad (further from the crowd), and my system froze completely again. I'm not talking about 1 frame per minute or something like that, I'm talking about hard drive locked and the entire system was completely unresponsive, requiring a hard reboot.

My system is: 1.1 Ghz Athillon, 512MB ram, Geforce 1. I have texture compression turned off and run at 1152x864 with Zbuffer I believe.

My connection is ADSL, 4000 feet from the C/O, min 128Mbps up and 384 Mbps down.

The reason I have texture compression off and Zbuffer is because in an earlier patch I could not stay in the game for more than 10 minutes before I got a complete system lock. Now with those off the game runs completely smooth in most areas except for those highly populated ones.
The Bronto Burger in Ent is also laggy sometimes but nothing of the magnitude experienced in 20K.

[Nullifax]

Yes, Newland is also bad. But once again, it's just because there are a lot of people there. The only thing the folks at Funcom could do to fix that would be give people a really good reason to go elsewhere.

As it is, if Omnis go to Newland to get missions at mid to high level, they get missions in places like clon**** and Galway. This is very handy for people without Yalms. Hence, Newland mission terms are so immensely busy.

Broken Shores is where seemingly 90% of all missions are for me at this point. I imagine it's the same for many other players. Once again, Broken Shores is accessible without a Yalm, so this makes it a feasable mission location for many people.

20K is the only town in Pleasent Meadows. PM has numerous camps which have rather good spawn rates of non-aggroing social mobs. Those camps are the perfect hunting ground for people from as low as 50 to as high as 100. Hence, you'll find hundreds of people in 20K looking for groups.

I think the way to fix the lag there is give people viable alternatives to these places. Stop making every darned mission send you to Broken Shores; there should be more variety in where mission terminals send you. We also need fast transportation to other zones such as Eastern Foul Plain and Southern Foul Hills. A lot of missions send me there as well, but they are very far away, even in a Yalm. As for fixing the problems with 20K, make either more zones with great hunting spots like there are in PM, or just make another big town in PM. Making another town would only split the lag in half. Making other zones have great hunting spots with NON-aggroing mobs, would be a lot better.

[___________xenomorph]

I have:

1.4 ghz ath
512 DDR
64DDR ATI Radeon Vi/Vo
20 gig 7400 rpm HD
sound blaster live 5.1 SS
cable modem
Win ME

I have my settings at 1024-768, 32 bit and view distance set at %80 music turned off, and main sound down to %75.

My processer is actually underclocked to 1.05 ghz, which is 133/133 underclocked to 100/133 becuase I will get runtime errors everytime I zone and/or run into other players, I have been meaning to increase my RAM to 1 gig to try out and see if I can reclock back to 133/133 (when i do and if it helps I will post it).

I have notice that if I ether log on in BS, 2HO, 20K and walk around I have no issues, but if I zone, grid, wompa into them is when I start getting the lag issuse's, A simple little quick fix I do is alt tabb out and back into AO 1 or 2 times and it helps (sometimes alot and others none) I beleave that it's not really Lag but the video card trying to catch up loading the graphics, so by alt tabbing it is helping the video card load all graphics around me.

Also I have had the lag issues (or graphic load issues) even if I zone into BS,20K, or 2HO even if there is no one there, so some of it has nothing to do with players. Those zones are bad even when empty. example you can goto tir empty and have no issues walking around until you get close to the middle then it gets alittle bad, but if there is alot of players it gets pretty bad but clears up in a matter of secs, I can go to BS empty and have lag issues, and it gets worse if it is crowded.

EDIT:
I'm on my 2nd Hard drive playing this game, my last one locked alot when I zoned back to back, so I replaced it and i can feel this one is geting ready to go also.

[___________xenomorph]

How did you get out of my basement?

/me looks in basement and notices elvis is missiing to

opps

/me gets ready to leave town before the cops get here.

[Lazz]

In BS/Home I have also noticed periodical freezes of the screen that I haven't seen anywhere else. It like the game freezes for 1-2sec, then run smooth (~10-14fps) then freeze... See specs in my other post above...

[Fistgoddess]

The problems with the lag and the droppage is not just in BS and 20k, it's everywhere. I can't stay in game for more than 2-3 minutes at a time without lagging or crashing. What gives??? I know the population has grown, but can't something be done about moving people to another server? If RK1 is overpopulated, then don't give it as a choice for new players starting the game.

My config is: 950mhz Athlon w/ Epox MB
256mb SDRAM pc 133
15gb HDD
GF2 MX400 graphics card
10/100 mbps lan card
Cable modem (AT&T)

[Breaku]

Broken Shores is what is making me play less, and actually making all my friends leave the game. Shure there are other places to go, but 20ks is just as laggy and other locations has their cons.

Thats besides the point. Let give a few actual scenarios of what happens when are in broken shores

1. You see people standing in a certain spot for a long time, and then eventually they move.
>>> thats because they waiting for the graphics to load up on their machine, or else if they take another step its *Crash* time.

2. People not running, but using "backspace" to move around
>>> because if u run your going to crash

3. Rarely anyone entering stores near the save point/steps in broken shores
>>> because once u zone out, your going to crash

4. Teams making everyone hurry up and give the cords to the mission
>>> cause any second they are/you are going to crash

5. Teams not wanting to do missions near the save area/steps area
>>> cause once u zone out your going to crash

6. Teammates *always* leaving cause of crashes, and never being able to log back on
>>> cause of Lag Loops, can't log back in

7. Getting tells from teamates who crashed about an hour ago saying "hey, a gm just got me back out after i logged on my alt. You still have a spot for me or is taken"
>>> cause of crash loop once again

8. Teamates not wanting to save nor enter the save area, so they grid and save in omni Trade (omni) Tir (clan).
>>> Because they trying to avoid crashing

9. Constantly seeing people half invisible apearing and then disapearing... then reapearing then disapearing...
>>> because they trying hard to log in, and waisting their friday night by doing so.

--------------------------------------------------------
ideas:

1. Get rid of the all the graphic effects of the wheater, ie/ storm, rain, darkness... its eating up a lot of space = causing lots of lag

2. make more save terminals outside the main area of broken shores. ie/ east gate, beside grid.

3. cut down on lots of the buildings... make more flat areas... "jumping" causes lots of LD's. probably cause u loading graphics fast. Also too many buildings to load up.

4. Make Broken shores BIGger... up north im not shure why there is a big circle we can't zone in to.. make that part combine wiht broken shores town and spread things out... don't make everyone sandwiched on a "ant hill". Also more buildings on the water further out...

5. Change the name of Broken shores.... your jinxing it with "broken" thing

Well I know i'll have more ideas, but that should help.

FYI
At home:
P3 550, 384 ram. cable / Geforce2 32 mB AGP

at work
p4 1.6ghz 640 ram. T1 / Matrox millinium G400

BOTH EXPERIENCE SAME RESULTS

[____________Tempered]

This board is as laggy as the game. Takes forever to load a forum. Also have the usual BS, newland lag.

1.4g athlon
512 ddr mem
windows xp
64m ddr geforce 3 ti
latest and greatest drivers all around
soundblaster audigy
DSL connection

[Supersoly]

BS lag is bad, 20k is just as bad for me...and yea forums are bad recently....


900mhz AMD
64mb GeForce2
graphics settigns on: 800x600x32 with low Texture Resolution, Medium Ground Resolution, High - Other Resolution. No Speedread(cause it screws up bad..dunno why)

DSL 1314/211 according to: this site

on GOOD servers (not FC's) I max out at around 350k or so for downloading....

[_____________Flyhard]

I can only confirm what was said earlier. It is not the zones that are laggy, but it's the number of ppl that make an area laggy. I usually Enter PM via Harrys cause of the Lag (and the Loop-LD's I often get when using the Whompa to 20K). The moment I see the crowd of 20K appearing on my map, all goes REALLY laggy. I heard my hard disk crunching data for a moment, then I can move nicely thru 20K (at low Framerates, but I can move). Seems like the client has a problem handeling loads of ppl in the vincinity. Same goes for BS

I have a Athlon 1.1 GHz, 378 MB RAM, ATA 133 Harddisk, GForce 2MX, Win2K, running at 1280x1024x16, textures all on minimum, /chardist 20 or so....

[______________Vasion]

Lag sucks! Everywhere its crowded, not just the before mentioned zones.

800 mhz duron
754 mbs pc133 ram
GF2 MX400 32mb vram
20 gig hdd udma 100 mbs 7200 rpm
SB 128 pci sound
win98 se
Cable modem
lag on all graphic settings
no speed read it blows
all latest udated drivers
Zoning blows. it should'nt. takes forever.
Bleh..
All your base are belong to F.C.
My credit card may lag up and disconnect.