Wierd Lag.
 

I went out and bought a gig of RAM for my computer, I usually average 100-200ms in lag check. I havea a cable connection, and I have Don't use UDP checked. yet when I play graal, people on my screen skip around with some wierd lag. it gets annoying after awhile especially when I'm a GC or when I'm trying to spar someone. I don't have anymore cash because I wasted it on the RAM, but I was wondering if you have ANY suggestions that could get rid of this annoyance?


-Dom MidNight

Hi, starwarsdude, I think I know your problem--as (very close to) everyone is affected by it.

It's most likely the server. In fact, it IS the server. When you turn UDP off (unchecked), the data seems to get sent through the server (usually 125 ms just to do that), then to the player (another 125 ms). I'm trying to get ahold of an admin (so far it's been 3 months without a response) on this, but apparentely they aren't replying. I know some people who live close to Graal's main server, and they don't seem to delay as much as, say, someone who lives in the US who is closer to me. It should be the very opposite!

When I play games online with that person who lives near me, our ping is as low as 16 ms, but average, it's mostly 32 ms. Now with that in mind, I know the same person can't suddenly have a 250+ ms ping with me on Graal (when he has UDP off; otherwise with UDP on, it's still good ol' 16-32 ms). What I'm getting at is the server isn't keeping up with sending and recieving the data in real time.

Unholy Nation recently (in the past half-year) switched from a very nice server (ev1servers(read: vgmusic.com is hosted on it as well, it's very fast)) to the server hosted by one of Graal's admins (I think Unixmad hosts the server; I haven't confirmed it yet), and now everyone is wondering why people are lagging suddenly. The answer, like I said, is because somebody switched Unholy Nation's fast server to Graal's "slow" server.

All this affects sparring, it affects how long you have to wait until your levels load (if they aren't already cached), it affects anything that isn't clientside. Seeing how every playerworld uses about the same domain (I must say it's been improved - everything used to be on "europa3" - but still about as slow), one would only think he's the one lagging until he finds another person with UDP to play around with.

edit - 30 seconds after posting, I forgot to mention I can make a couple video examples of this problem. Let me know if you'd like to see some.

edit2 - Haha, go figure, three Graal playerworlds "lagged out" right after I replied. Oh, and to anyone curious, me and starwarsdude met on a playerworld and confirmed the lag was from not using UDP.

Victim #99999 to experience lag when not using UDP. Any admins care to change to a faster server (or if the contrary, explain why not)? ev1servers was a danged good host for Unholy Nation. I don't see why it had to be replaced/not used for the rest of the playerworlds.

Many people complained about lag before. It was good for some people but not good for other people. Now we can provide a good ping for everyone and use quite high-end servers so that Unholy Nation is not having big problems of slow server or npcserver anymore.
Servers should use server-side hit detection, it's fair for everyone and much better than clientside check which is only good for people that lag a lot. Also, like you said, it's only requiring the data sent in one direction (client to server) before it can do the hit check.

I once remember Stefan talked about making basic systems (scripted) which all playerworlds could use, maybe that could solve a problem?

While I do see your point on how it's fair, it also isn't. Say if someone lives by the server with a fast connection, their ping is 20-30ms, but I live far away, so mine is 110-130ms - they have the advantage, because if the hit detection is serverside, they can see me "perfectly" in sync with what the server is sending them, but I still see them 250ms later! What happens is they are able to hit me as if I'm actually right there on my screen, but I'm not there. When that happens, I'll see the guy slash where I was about a quarter of a second ago and I'll get hit from however far away I am from him. I've experienced similar things on Classic, and while it does help me hit people who are extremely laggy (250ms compared to, say, 1,400ms?), it doesn't make people stop lagging, as they'll still have that 250ms delay.

Either way, like I said, ev1servers was the best host I've ever seen on Graal as it didn't have problems with delaying and lagging (it was so fast that it was almost like everyone had UDP on!). Why not just switch back and use it for all playerworlds? Serverside hit detection isn't going to fix something that the server can't send/receive quick enough to people who don't live by it - it'll still be the same delay (and the whole point is to NOT have delay), just people who lag won't have any more of an advantage than not lagging.

yeah but how do i get rid of this lag! I turned UDP on and some people don't skip anymore, but what about the ones who do!

Hm, sounds 'ok'.

Just want to point out the mistake in my earlier post since I can't edit it some reason (hope I didn't confuse anybody):

I meant to say "When you turn UDP off (checked)." Checked would make UDP off. I probably confused a good bunch of you, as most people think UDP unchecked means it's off ("DON'T use UDP for data packages").

Again, starwarsdude, there is really nothing you can do about the lag except hope Graal switches to a USA server. Not sure if that'd make people in the UK have the same problem people in the US are having. Oh, and try to keep UDP unchecked as much as possible and hope the other people also have it unchecked.

While I talked to you through Graal, you said I (and everyone else who had UDP unchecked) wasn't skipping around, right? Everyone else who has it checked skips? Sounds like the server is the only thing getting your data too slow/late.

May be we should change that option to be 'Enable UDP' although that could confuse some more people when people have different versions