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bleed0range
Member Posts: 109
I recently returned for the Indiana Jones hat weekend (or whatever that was)... and I gotta say. I'm surprised. I have a pretty modern pc now to run SWG and it's still extremely laggy and annoying when I play it. I remember way back when I used to play back in the day that it would do that and I'd always assume it was my machine. But there's no way that could be the case now. Is it the servers? Do others have this problem?
Comments
Thats what happens when writing code, upon code, upon code, upon code.........
MANY others have this issue. You may not read about the problems on the official forums because it's typically met with useless and trolling replies like "upgrade your Pentium 2", "get a better computer", "I don't lag" garbage.
However...dig deeper and you find that it is indeed the game itself and the amount of traffic it feeds/reads from the server is the cause. The Devs are aware of it, but have no ability to fix it.
For a full description of WHY the lag is so bad, no matter how good your computer gets, I suggest the following link. Pwh does an excellent job describing exactly WHY it is the way it is.
link (that I cant seem to get to work...url below)
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/posts/list.m?start=80&topic_id=1118731�
I seem to remember the game requiring a tnt32 meg card to play swg....5 years on with my 4 gig of ram and a 1 meg gfx card its no different to how i experienced it back then heh! takes no bloody advantage of new kit
Pan
There's your problem. Lag solved.
What makes me laugh (at SOE's ineptitude) is that the game ran much, much better for me way back in the pre-cu days, and 3 or so computer upgrades ago, than it does now (or the last vet trial, anyway) on a quad core beast. Tell me how this should be a possibility?
Benny Hill combat speed, layered on 2 revamps of unoptimised and barely tested code, requiring a couple orders of magnitude more calculations between server and client, than the now 7 year old engine was designed to handle. This is why the game lags, this is why specials misfire, this is what the NGE conversion has brought to SWG.
No one should wonder why SWG combat is largely a slideshow with more than a few people in an area: that is the way things are now, and beyond SOE's desire or ability to fix.
That's a description of why throwing more hardware at the problem won't have an immediate effect, rather than why there is lag.
"Lag" comes in so many different flavours that it is important to find out as much information as possible from someone reporting it in order to give an accurate assessment. It could be client side, network related or server side.
bleed0range, what server are you playing on and do you get this lag in a specific area of the game?
Please turn on the "Network Status Monitor" as this gives you information about your client, network connection and current server load. The "Network Status Monitor" can be turned on via Options > Misc > "Show Network Status Window".
Evem more techincal information an be viewed by pressing CTRL+SHIFT+G.
How to turn on the "Network Status Monitor".
Example screenshot showing "Extremely Heavy" area activity caused by NPCs in Talus Invasion Combat Phase, Chimaera.
How many players are in that area to cause the extremely heavy situation?
It looks like there is nothing in the area but NPCs and one wookie.
There doesn't even look to be any combat or action going on to cause such a huge dip in performance. Everything looks to be just standing around, so why should there be some huge lag spike?
That particular example of server side lag is caused by NPC pathing and attack calculations in an Invasion where there was little or no defensive opposition, there can be crazy numbers of Troopers+AT-STs all camped in one spot depending on how many players have built.
Anytime an attackable object comes in range they lag out the entire sub-server, but the lag will be gone once the invasion is over and everything despawns.
Most server side lag is situational, these days, like this example is. More often than not, a players "Lag" is due to high ping and/or ploss or the client machine being too busy with other tasks, which is not something that SoE can control.
I dont often come across anything over "Medium" server lag, and thats usually in mass PvP.
In the begining there was a game, that was based on a 200 ms or so ping rate... .. but.. then they wanted it to be more of an 'instant' shooter, and tried to speed the command rate/response times up significantly.. and got a few benny hill effects as a side effect.. and .. lag.. rubber banding.. all pretty much dependant on distance from the server of the player, and sadly.. the activity of the players in the area and their distance from the servers.. or .. as the driver of the Car with square wheels complained.. why is the road so bumpy today...
I only returned for the free week, so I'm not in game right now, but I can tell you that I was on shadowfire and that the lag happens whenever I'm around more than a few NPCs or players... like the Galactic Moon Festival was a tip toe through hell endeavor last year for me. Sometimes there was little lag but sometimes everything in that area would slow me to a crawl. I had an older machine then so I assumed it was my machine more than server side, since there really weren't THAT many players in the area. I had to go to the one on Naboo because the one on Tatooine was so bad I couldn't play, lag central.
I have a really good machine now but I am still experiencing the same effects, essentially.
Well at least you got a free week. Heck they did not even bother sending me an email about having a free week. I checked and theres nothing on my swg account, and I play eq2 all the time.
I guess i could go log in and possibly pay some maintenance. SWG been dead for me for a long time.
Maybe you are in the same boat I am in that my toons are on a server that is closed.
The lag is directly attributed by the "FPS" cap that is in-place on the SWG client. There are numerous client hacks to uncap this to around 120, but this causes more packetflow (i forgot how fps reliant servers work tbh, been awhile) thus SOE capped it a LONG time ago to 30fps since by "scientific" definition we shouldn't notice a difference past 24, yet the lagspikes in 1-30fps range causes us to BADLY notice it.
I personally hacked my client to uncap to around 80fps and the game is remarkably smooth, and no I can't share it with you as it's a violation of this site to "distribute" hacks
.
The Theory of Conservative Conservation of Ignorant Stupidity:
Having a different opinion must mean you're a troll.
What are your ping and packetloss when the lag occurs, bleedOrange? I guess you aren't playing at the moment and can't check though? Something to look out for should you return I guess.
Also, the FPS cap was increased to 60, Fadedbomb. I don't think this would lead to the kind of lag that bleedOrange is seeing though.