Huge latency in direct connect mode. *Help*

[Night-Hawk[Qc]]

Tried to play with a friend on 1vs1 this afternoon using Direct Connect. To my surprise, even when hosting the game, my units would respond almost 3 seconds after I gave them an order. Tried putting on DMZ or opening 6xxx port. Didnt work. I tested it with 2 other peoples and they didnt have that problem. Any idea on what's causing that atrocious lag ?

Thanks for you help

(great game btw, reminds me of good ol' StarCraft :)

[mecha]

Any idea on what's causing that atrocious lag ?
Your opponent's system. What are the system specs for the two of you? Have you tried reducing the texture detail? Turning off shadows?

[ArchonXVI]

I am having the same issue. I am running a Barton 2800+ XP with an ABIT mobo, 1024Mb of pc 2700 DDR ram, a 9600xt ATI card. My network connection is the onboard lan device.

My friend is using a Barton 2600+, another ABIT board, 1024 mushkin 400, and a GeForce somethingorother.

He never has latency, I will have a 2-3 second lag from the point that I click and the little red "you are moving here" disk comes up, and the point that they actually begin to move.

I am also having this issue during LAN games.

Edit-

We set all detail settings to low and ran in 1024x860 with the same results.

[Night-Hawk[Qc]]

I'm on a Barton 3200+, 1GB Corsair XMS, Abit NF7-S and a GeForce 6800Ultra, and I tested it with my friends who has a A64 3200+, 1GB ram, and 9800pro. It lagged even when I hosted.Tried lowering gfx, still no go. :(

[ÜberJumper]

Can you guys post some more information about your routers?

Also, do you have ALL firewall software turned off (like WinXP SP2 firewall)? Virus Scanners? You've scanned for adware and viruses?

[ArchonXVI]

finding out about the routers would be difficult (I am on campus,) however, he is on the same router as I am, so ther problem should be effecting him equally. This is the only game that has been affected.

[Night-Hawk[Qc]]

Dlink DI-604 here. No software/Windows Firewall. DMZ is on.

[ÜberJumper]

Archon, if he's on the same campus, can you try a LAN game? See if that works better.

Night-hawk, what does the other guy have?

[Night-Hawk[Qc]]

Archon, if he's on the same campus, can you try a LAN game? See if that works better.

Night-hawk, what does the other guy have?

One had a LinkSys, and the other a US robotic.

Could it be related to the onboard network card of the Nforce 2 ?

[ÜberJumper]

I doubt it... there's so much bandwidth in NICs that that shouldn't be a problem.

How does it work over gamespy?

[ArchonXVI]

This problem also occors on LAN as well.

[FrozenPea]

I'm getting this exact same problem when playing over the net against my mate. He gets no lag between issuing orders and units obeying, but i get a 1-2 second lag. We both have almost identical computers (diff sound cards... that's about it), and are on the same ISP.. no mis-configured routers on either side.

[manakiin]

argh...I have the same issue... When I try to play my friend via direct connect I have this huge lag 1/2 sec even if I host the game. Can anyone help me?

[ArchonXVI]

In order to fix the problem, I reformatted my computer, however, this did not solve the problem.

[Tempest[Prime]]

When you guys are trying to get your game on, what are the ping times between you and your opponents? (open a command prompt, type ping <opponent's IP address>) - You can find your public IP address by browsing to a site such as http://myaddress.net or http://whatismyip.com - If you are on the same campus network, just issue an ipconfig command in the command prompt and use your internal IP addresses.

I'm not saying your response delays are definitely related to network lag, but it may help diagnose a potential problem if it exists for some of the people looking for answers.

A couple of interesting notes about network traffic, networks in general, and lag:

Game traffic usually does a lot of communication using a protocol called UDP. In many corporate/business and even certain ISP networks, UDP traffic is given a very low priority in relation to other types of network traffic. ICMP traffic (pings) also sit fairly low on the priority list. Lag measurement can be somewhat erratic given that you usually ping people with something like a 56-byte packet. While you may get a sensible measurement with this sized packet, your actual data transmissions may use larger packet sizes. This becomes problematic because you tested your response times with small packets, but you may be getting very poor performance with large packets.

Lag can be caused by a wide variety of issues, but the most common ones are congestion (usually caused by oversubscription) and what I'll casually refer to as "network distance". Congestion just means someone somewhere down the line is shoving a lot of traffic through some link that may be between you and your opponents. Residential network clouds are almost always heavily oversubscribed (meaning they may have... for simplicity's sake... 10 megabits of dedicated traffic, but they've sold enough customers to use up 100). If you've ever felt a regularly-occuring slowdown with your internet connection right around "when the kids come home," you probably have experienced the side-effects of oversubscription. It's a necessary factor in the business-stuff part of running an ISP and very common.

The "network distance" factor that I mentioned refers to how many different networks/clouds your date moves through. You can have two people in the same town (heck, even in the same apartment building) with two different providers and find that there may be 150ms of delay between them because the traffic has to route out to some intermediary point that might geographically be in a neighboring state... :)

As for seeing this in local LAN games... the presence of this issue highly troubling if it is indeed network-related. If you're hooked up via hubs, try setting your network cards to half-duplex to see if that sorts things out. If you have a switch, use it instead. (You can be full-duplex on a switch. It's quite nice and there's no collisions!)

Ok, this is getting long. I dunno if any of that helped anyone, but hopefully someone will find it useful and/or interesting.

Good luck with the issue. Let us know if anything smooths it out.

[Kruldar]

Ditto to everybody's problem. I'm suspecting that it's actually an issue with direct connect itself. It's pretty idiotic if you ask me: it's the only RTS i've seen that you play online and lag is not shared. My friends are getting tired of me screaming IT'S THE LAG! MY SLUGGA BOYZ WOULD HAVE OWNED YOUR CRAPPY SM'S!

Yes, I'm running 2800+ barton core with a geforce 5900 and dual channel ram. it's NOT related to the computer speed.

[EkUmmon]

I have the same problem here with LAN games. My opponent, who has created the game, has a very slow response when he click somewhere to move its troops but not me.

- We played against the computer
- My opponent computer : Athlon 2000 + ATI 9800XT + 512Mo of RAM
- My computer : PIV 2.8 + ATI 800Pro + 1Go of RAM
- Network : 100Mbit switched

Ask me if you want more details.

[nukey]

Also, do you have ALL firewall software turned off (like WinXP SP2 firewall)? Virus Scanners? You've scanned for adware and viruses?


You should absolutely never turn off your firewall when you're on the internet unless you're behind a router with built-in firewall. A/V software can be as up to date as you like, and your windows updates can all be installed, and your pc is STILL gonna get into trouble eventually running this way. The upgraded windows firewall in service pack 2 works well enough for most people, just make sure that you set the option to unblock W40k.exe, and it will not interfere at all. I work for myself & 9 out of every 10 pc's I get in to fix have been on the internet without a firewall & been attacked in some way or other. People always say "but I have anti-virus software and I do my updates". When people don't believe how quickly these thigns can happen i show them a log i saved in a .txt file which shows me connecting to the net then being attacked within 5 seconds. Its not a matter of if you'll have problems, its when!

I'd like to add that I play online games all the time, and have never once had to turn off my firewall to get them to work properly.

Anyway, dont mean for this to be a rant :) Hopefully this problem will be patched & sorted soon.

[ÜberJumper]

nukey:

He's behind a firewall/router. So yeah, that's why I'm asking if he's shut off any additional software firewalls.

[Kruldar]

I suppose the most prudent question that can be asked now is....

Who has played with LAN or Direct Connect and NOT had at least one person experience disgusting lag?

The game seems to be arbitrarily choosing somebody to be the victim. It's NOT their firewall and NOT their computer's speed that's doing it to them. I have had every driver on my computer updated in a desparate attempt to cope with the lag but to no avail. So the fact remains that we, the unlucky chosen by the almighty to be smitten down with lag, must find common ground. After beating my head against the wall (and unjustly losing many matches) I'm twisting my brain in ways it should not be twisted to think of something. The only two ridiculous notions that come to mind are:
I have Windows w/SP1 (not SP2)
I had the demo installed in the same directory as the full-game (two subdirectory folders autonomous from one another. just in the same folder)

I know these two ideas are silly, but after talking to two other friends that I play online with, these were the only differences between my system and theirs (disregarding speed and connection of course).

Let me know if you laggers share these differences with those you play against that don't lag.

[manakiin]

Hm...Both computers(mine and friend's) are AMD 3000+ with radeon 9800/9600xt so I guess it's certanly not that... When we play other games like UT2k4 for example on direct con. he has like 20ping and I think FPS's take more bandwith than RTS's...But what is wierd is that when I host I have the 1/2sec lag and he doesn't and vice versa... This must be a bug or so imo... Connections that we tried to play on are 512kbps cable line, 1.5mb cable line, 1mb adsl, 4mb adsl and some t1,t3 lines... The same issue happens everywhere and we tried like 4 diff computers and many combinations... Nothing... It has to be a bug, sth in netcode for hosting/joining whatevah...

[mecha]

There will always be somewhere between 0.5 and 1 seconds worth of lag for at least one player in the game regardless of network conditions or system performance since the game needs to be syncronised across all machines, anything over that is definitely an issue that could be down to network conditions or system performance, one slow machine will cause lag for all other players as they wait for the other player to catch up.

[Kruldar]

manakiin,

Are you saying that you tried four different computers and there was always one that lagged in every game or are you suggesting that out of four different computers hosting, connecting to each other, etc. a specific one always showed the signs of lag?

Also, when you say 1/2 second lag do you mean like 0.5 seconds or 1 to 2 seconds of lag? If it's just 1/2 a second then it sounds like you're lucky compared to myself and apparently others posting on this thread that are reporting 2-3 second delays.

Oh yeah and my questions still stand: for the machine that lags, is SP1 or SP2 installed? Also did you install the demo or beta and not uninstall before you installed the game? Again, i realize how ridiculous these two questions sound but it will ease my mind if someone says their machine is lagging with SP2 and/or they had installed the demo or beta prior to installing the full game.

[ArchonXVI]

I just completed another test. Me and my roommate got ahold of a basic switch and tried the game using that. Unfortunatly, I still have around 1.5-2 full seconds of lag while he only has around .5.

[Night-Hawk[Qc]]

I tried everything I could in order to reduce that abnormal 2-3 seconds lag in DC, and nothing worked. Now don't tell me it's related to my machine speed or internet connection. I'm on a AXP3200+, 1 GB of blazing fast Corsair XMS @ 2-2-2-10 and a LeadTek GeForce 6800 Ultra 256mb. (even thought the game lags like shit in single player, scrolling ect...), and I use 512k Cable connection. My friends use more than powerfull machines, and all use the same connection as I do.

This game is so full of bugs, it's not even funny. At least I manage to *reduce* the crash to desktop frequency by bumping AGP aperture size a little...still crashed sometimes thought.

[Kruldar]

Just a thought.

Is there any place we can check to see if relic even knows about this issue? It's not in master troubleshooting list and it sounds like it is a distinct flaw with direct connect. I still haven't heard anybody say "yeah I played a direct connect game and nobody had that despicable lag you guys are talking about"

If anybody knows what to look for, I can post my log file and a friend's log file during a DC game for comparing and contrasting.

[mecha]

Is there any place we can check to see if relic even knows about this issue?

You could look up 4 posts from yours....

[ArchonXVI]

The only thing that I can think of is that WHDoW isn't playing nice with the ethernet hardware/drivers. If everyone could post their drivers, their ethernet cards/onboard chipsets, and whether or not they are running off of the nVidia nForce stuff it would be greatly appreciated.

[ÜberJumper]

Are you people ignoring what Relic's saying here?

[Kruldar]

You could look up 4 posts from yours....

Sorry I'm a n00b to this forum and didn't even realize that you and Uberjumper were staff. I thought you were members.....erm.....with thousands of posts.....I blame my stupidity on too much television. :fight:

Are you people ignoring what Relic's saying here?

Which part? About the lag that we're supposed to have? If that is the case, then yes, because Mecha's explanation regarding the 0.5-1 seconds of lag is understandable but not the problem that me and several others are having. We're talking about a solid 2-3 seconds that is NOT related to firewalls nor pc performance.

For what it's worth, I'm running 4.27 nForce forceware for an nForce2 chipset and I've tried using both my Siemen's 10/100 card and onboard network controller (1gb xfer rate). Nada. Besides, someone said that it's doing the same thing for lan.

Maybe it's a problem with certain versions of DirectX's directplay? I'm running 9.0c here.

[Kruldar]

Mecha: There will always be somewhere between 0.5 and 1 seconds worth of lag for at least one player in the game regardless of network conditions or system performance since the game needs to be syncronised across all machines, anything over that is definitely an issue that could be down to network conditions or system performance, one slow machine will cause lag for all other players as they wait for the other player to catch up.

There will always be a second or so of lag for at least 1 player. Are you saying that's why it lags even on LAN games? Also, what determines whether or not you're the unlucky one that's getting the lag?

[mooney]

hi guys
I have been experience alot of problems when playing using direct connect. When playign Single player there is no problem at all however when playing with my mates at least one player will be disconnected from the games via a sync error or the game itself locking up and quiting to the desktop.
We have had one game when 6 people where playing and no one was booted from the game however the lag that appeared was so bad that we all decided to leave.
My machine is the slowest out of the 5,
XP 3200+
Geforce 3
1gb RAM
fresh xp install

I know that my geforce 3 aint a beasty card but thats why i play with all settings reduced.
We all have 1 mb lines or more with 2 of them on 3mb lines.
We have even played with 4 on a LAN and we still get loads of lag or someone with a sync error.

I have send those reports things that appear whent he games crashed out to the desktop a few times but does anyone know of anything else i can do for that may reduce the amount of times this is happening?

I am running an Assus Nforce 2 board as are 2 of the other players. I am using the onboard LAN adapter and the drivers stright of the asus website.

[Crackpot]

It got me too... :(
I have 2 PCs at home and made some tests with dow lan games. First everything was ok, then (some days ago) my first PC began to make the same problems as discussed in this thread. But the other PC was all right. :?
Yesterday I tried it again and NOW both PCs have this problem. Both PCs now have a lag of about 2-3 sec. between order and realisation. I didn't install anything new nor changed anything in the settings. I also tried to reinstall the whole game, but nothing seems to help. This makes me SICK!!! I played a lot of RTS games in the past at lan partys but never had such a problem... It's unplayable in this condition. (imho)

[Rpr]

I also have 1-2 seconds of delay on LAN when I order a unit to do something, rather annoying when trying to micro. =/
Even the computer that is hosting the game has this delay, strange. Hope it's fixable.

[manakiin]

hm. It seems to me that only host machines get the huge lag others small one.
I have:

ASUS A7N8X Deluxe MB
ALL(I mean ALL) Drivers are fresh...
Win XP Pro +SP1
never had beta or demo b4 on my computer

[meatz]

Guys, i cant acept 1-2 seconds lag on a LAN. Cause we play warcraft on battlenet, and u dont see those kind of lags like im having here im my lan. Guys, i simple cant micromanage and always lost my heroes before i can do anything...

This problem really have to be resolved, serious...

[thudmeizer]

If you get lag on a LAN setup then OUCH ! !! !

Play a 6 player game over Age Of Mythology Titans then play it over DoW with just 2 players? Which one had lag? DoW?

I get .5-1sec lag when playing with 3 human vs 2 Hard AIs yet on AoM we get no lag. Must be all in the netcode. Plain and simple. DoW is like Generals/ZH: it relies too heavily on the player's hardware to synch the data WHILE ON THE OTHER HAND, AoM and Warcraft3 are NOT dependant on such things. Still, even if I play a 2player DoW with both fast systems/connections we both still get that .5-1sec lag. Grrr.... We're both behind Linksys Routers.

[manakiin]

Yes this realy is a problem and I simply can't find an explanation for it. Tried everything. :P Well either this is fixed or we'll have to wait for The Battle For Middle Earth.

[thudmeizer]

Yes this realy is a problem and I simply can't find an explanation for it. Tried everything. :P Well either this is fixed or we'll have to wait for The Battle For Middle Earth.

Battle for Middle Earth = Updated Generals/Zero Hour SAGE 2.0 engine = Once a dumba*s RTS netcoder ALWAYS A DUMBA*S NETCODER! Look at RA2, RA2: YURI, Generals, Generals: Zero Hour as an answer.. All had lackluster post-support and netcode. Pitiful! Will BfmE be different? If EA is your answer then.........

[manakiin]

No I think it will be different because they have realy high plans with it. And btw with the money they spent it for making it they can't afford to make multiplayer suck... I know EA is not something but let them surprise us. I looked at their work and saw sth new. DOW is just pretty Starcraft with lots of bugs and unbalanced races. But this is off topic...so if u can help with the prob...

[thudmeizer]

No I think it will be different because they have realy high plans with it. And btw with the money they spent it for making it they can't afford to make multiplayer suck... I know EA is not something but let them surprise us. I looked at their work and saw sth new. DOW is just pretty Starcraft with lots of bugs and unbalanced races. But this is off topic...so if u can help with the prob...

I'd so like to believe you but they had their chance with Generals and even its addon Zero Hour and they screwed up royally but dissing the community and going right into BfmE. Oh this is a track record alright since the Westwood days! The community gave them a chance when we talked with the devs about support for Generals. Boy.. we're we such dummies to think they'd change.

EA is just a massive faceless megacorp. who wants dollars incoming in the first few weeks of release then throw some carrots at the populas via patches/tournaments then after it doesn't suit their needs (usually 2-3 months) they move on and abandom the whole lot. If you haven't see this trend since RA2 and RA2:YURI then boy yer in for a shock!

I do hope Relic/THQ don't do this with DoW as too much is at stake for such a rich War40k universe, but its all about profits these days. Before it was both profits and gaming passion. Now its just about pure leeching of the public to get the max outta sales then a target abandom time is made to move to the next cash cow.

Please Relic/THQ.. be passionate about DoW and work with the community!

[manakiin]

hm...Well ur right... Untill now I think Blizzard made the best work for rts community...

[shiver]

yup... im in the same boat as all of you.
went to a 100 man LAN this weekend and "everyone" had the same issue.
2-3 second lag on every command.
i LOVE this game. i never played any other RTS this much, but I'm tired of the lousy skirmish mode.

must add this was the only game which had this issue. everything else worked.
War3, CS, CS-Source, Quake, Battlefield... everything (with no lag whatsoever)

please... are there any plans to fix this?

[Flail]

i put myself in the row together with you happy laggers.

I play on LAN 1on1 with my 2800+ desktop on the one end and a 1400 pentium M Laptop (Radeon 9700) on the other. Since i always play mp on my laptop i can only confirm severe command executing lag on my laptop. first I thought the reason was my laptop but since you guys all have the same problem with your desktops i must have been wrong.

[manakiin]

1oo man LAN... Everyone had problems. Now we at least know that something is wrong with this feature in the game, not the computer setup. :P

[Voi]

I'm too having horrible lag at LAN 1vs1. Whats strange is that developer Mecha is saying there will alwayse lag of 0.5-1sec regardless of network conditions. I remember playing homeworld 1 on lan and dont remember such big lags there... Maybe that was just too long ago to remember. Anyway i just dont see how the game, which can be playable over inet can't fit into 0.5 secs to xfer all info needed for syncing... Whats the size of gameinfo send that way? :)
I bet it's a bug somewhere in network code, something like incorrect value for control lag for low latency games or so. I think maybe routine for calculating control lag is buggy.

And if you really think that its impossible to reduce that control lag below 0.5 seconds for network play, just hire me. My programming experience is more then enough to prove otherwise ,)

And 2nd. We are not speaking 0.5secs on lan after all... its much worse, more like 2 secs of lag on lan game :(

[thudmeizer]

If a game lags in LAN no matter what the setup and you go and play another RTS over LAN and its fine then hot damn THE NETCODE IS REAL SCREWY in the game.

LAN SHOULD NEVER LAG.. period. Internet.. on occassion but hell we were playing a 3vs3 Warcraft3 and my connection was baddd that night and yet it played bloody damn fine! Was shocked how efficient the netcoding was.

Now.. Relic needs a little more a push as their budgets aren't as big *BUT* there games certainly are! Big and Good! Now they just need to get crack'n to fix network-related issues like Ensemble did to fix AoM and its Titans Addon over NATs. Worked like a charm when they released the first patch!

[shiver]

sorry for pestering... but i just want to know,
is this problem being looked at for the 1.1 patch?
or will it take longer to resolve?

[ÜberJumper]

As Mecha described, it's apparently not something that can or should be fixed.

That being said, a lot of people are playing the game without seeing any appreciable delay in executing orders.

[Voi]

Well. Alot of players = those who use gamespy. So if directplay, directhost and LAN are broken, then why to include em in the first place? Bugged options harm overall opinion about game. Also if its possible using gamespy, then it should be possible with direct connect.
Its like saying that buttons wont work, but you can still use the mouse, so no biggies, its ok. Or like saying that if 3 races are unbalanced (just for example, i dont think they are) its ok, you can play with 4th, so it sohuldnt be fixed ,)
As a programmer i see a situation as a bug, fixable one. And its inconsistency to provide several ways, of which only one works correctly :)

[thudmeizer]

Programmers.. they know stuff! :bandit:

Anyway, give Relic time to resolve it. The NAT issue is one of the most outstanding ones. The latency one with unit commands taking .5-1sec delay is a little unknown at present (although it was claimed changing your IP address will fix it..odd fix, btw).

[Voi]

By the way. I'll just test it tomorrow. Will unplug all external cables or just shut down routing from my comp and try it. Will post the results.

[manakiin]

1.As Mecha described, it's apparently not something that can or should be fixed.

2.That being said, a lot of people are playing the game without seeing any appreciable delay in executing orders.

1.It can and must be fixed...

2.Someone who can't see 2-3sec lag can't play real time games too...

[shiver]

uber, i understand that this isn't considered the highest priority right now, but it definately is a problem.

just think of it this way. people that don't actively go out and look for new games like DoW will see it at LAN's or something equivilant. if you've got buggy net code (and yes... 2-3sec lag for a LAN game is extremely buggy!) you aren't going to be finding much in the way of "word of mouth" advertising.

i live in a country where online play is non-existent. due to a crappy telecom (thats a whole different rant :D), so LAN is all we have.

i even have friends who play almost nothing but war3 and would be more than willing to switch over to DoW but will not do so unless the net code is sorted.

just thought you'd like to know.... :)

/rant

[shiver]

ok... just wondering
when i check on my firewall, how come is there no persistent connection.

any other game (like war3) there is constantly a port open
DoW seems to only connect when it needs something? could this be something that causes LAN traffic to be lagged?

or am i smoking something....

[shiver]

any one have any idea about the post above?

[Voi]

wasnt unable to check. unplugged all the external cables and still in 2man lan there is abit of lag. but bearable. its like halfsecond or abit more. the most noticeble when playing with fleet on foot during "dances"

[shiver]

Voi... thats where this issue causes the most damage.
Which is also why I am so desperate for a fix for this.

Seems like the guys at relic don't want to believe us?
Cause I haven't really had any response at all....

[Vajper]

I get the same problem online (gamespy) too. It really, really, really sucks.

[Trenchus Ratus]

Same problem on my 100mbit LAN at home and I recently tried this on the gigabit network at work. Used a couple of very high end workstations to test ... this is definately a coding bug - not PC or network performance. I really hope this is fixed in the 1.3 patch :|

[Prowler]

Any fix for this yet? Anyone else still experiencing this problem? Like many people, I get a .5 to 1 second delay for online games.

[jonnybEg00d]

yea theres still a problem with the Direct connect play or LAN. havent found a fix yet. Any of the regular posters out there care to elaborate.. or provide a quick fix ,just a word maybe. Relic drop us a line on whats going on .. plans to fix?
Or a link to a fix already on this forum that i missed.

[Voi]

No official fix.

For me physically or programmatically disconnetcing from outside network (internet) worked fine... lag remained but game is very playable.

[thudmeizer]

Yeaa the game is still laggy with a 0.5sec delay even with 2 players direct-connect. And yes the Router/NAT issue is still unresolved hence the workaround mentioned in this forum somewhere.. Old old news.. heheh

[jonnybEg00d]

Yea the NAT issue sounds bad.. and worse this netcode is scary lag.. some guys on the forum told me even in gamespy it lags that bad. like .5 to 1.5 sec delay. Also when i was testing a direct connect game with a friend, there was as usual the 1 sec delay, but after one of us left.. went down to like almost nothing. Netcode needs some serious work :smash: .. Or i might be forced to play games with a quality netcode( most others out there).. But im hoping the devs are working on a fix :D

[Prowler]

There will always be somewhere between 0.5 and 1 seconds worth of lag for at least one player in the game regardless of network conditions or system performance since the game needs to be syncronised across all machines, anything over that is definitely an issue that could be down to network conditions or system performance, one slow machine will cause lag for all other players as they wait for the other player to catch up.It seems like a lot of people notice this latency for all types of connections. The fact that it happens on a LAN (no firewalls, no slow machines, essentially 0ms latency for LAN traffic) is evidence that the net code is flawed. I'm not sure I even had a half second of latency playing Quake 1 with a 28.8k dial-up connection.

I suspect the problem is the decision was made to make this game use P2P networking. Why not use a client-server model that has been proven to work ever since Quake 1 came out? If the P2P code can't be fixed, then I say it's time to write some client-server net code to finally kill this latency issue.

As I understand it, a client-server system would also avoid the NAT problem... the server/host machine would simply need to open/forward the game port (6112) to accept connections (just like all other games that use a server to host games).

[jonnybEg00d]

Yeah i have to agree with Prowler.. if this is true they are in fact using that type of netcode, well that explains the mediocre net performance lol. Laggin on LAN :argh: .. We can only hope they
either will fix it or change the netcode to something playable.
the people out there gettin by with the 1 sec delay. Seriously i dunno how they do it. :rolleyes:

[thudmeizer]

Yep! We got used to it even though we didn't like it. Damn Peer-to-Peer rather than Client-Server. If only they hired the netcoders from Ensemble (Age Of Empires, AoM) or Blizzard this would have been a non-issue. I don't think this situation will change with WA. Its just not in the nature of the business to drastically change code like that. I wish but the net architecture of DoW is inheritently flawed from the ground up. How do you so fundamentally change a foundation when its a 5 storey building?

[Vertigo]

Sorry guys, totally wrong. Pretty much all RTSes are peer-to-peer. That includes all Blizzard games, all EA games, and pretty much everything else you may have heard of. I think GC1 is the only game I know that had Client-Server.

You can't realistically do Client-Server (C-S) for most RTSes, for a variety of technical reasons.

The biggest is bandwidth: FPSes typically handle a few hundred game objects, max. RTSes must manage several thousand. C-S setups require you send information about every single game object at regular intervals. This is because only the server knows the definitive game state, and must regularly tell the clients what it is.

So, while a dialup line can handle FPSes in a C-S design, they can't handle RTSes. C-S requires too much bandwidth to be viable at this point.

Second problem is warping. Warping occurs in a C-S setup when a update message arrives late from the Server. The Client, lacking info, makes a "guess" where the missing object will be, until a message gets through to give it the real location. Warping can't be avoided for a C-S setup. Warping is infinitely more distracting and annoying for RTSes. Since there are more units in more crowded space, the effect is much more noticable. And, due to the higher bandwidth required, it would occur more often in a RTS.

Peer-to-Peer (P2P), by contrast, only sends the user's input data across the network, meaning much less bandwidth is required. Each peer keeps an exact copy of the game state, enforced by sync code. Instead of warping, the game pauses when data is lost on the wire. Once everyone has synced back up, the game resumes. This design also requires that there be a delay in user inputs, although it is typically less than .5 seconds.

To sum up, C-S is not really feasible for an RTS with a lot of units per side.

Could the netcode for this game be better? Sure. But try to keep the opinions better-informed, OK?

[thudmeizer]

I would agree Vertigo if it weren't for the competition.. play games like AoM which can have 10x more detail on the screen at once vs. DoW and yet.. smooth. Whose laughing at who now? Someone needs a better network coder to write and implement it into WA. Lagging in a LAN setting is quite honestly, BEYOND PATHETIC so the community is hoping Relic can update the netcode so it does. I mean, the amount of packets being sent in DoW over a LAN "DOESN'T EVEN REMOTELY JUSTIFY" the 0.5/1sec delay. I do hope they overhaul it.

[jonnybEg00d]

Well i wasnt sure on what they were using.. i said IF they were using that type. Vertigo says thats what games run on, and if games are using this type, how come so many others can get it running smoothly and not this one. The netcode could be alot better,big time. No flame intended, coding like this will scar the game quality for awhile. Like many others,were hoping they will overhaul it.I dont remember the last time a game lagged that hard on Direct connect or LAN for that matter. :argh:

[kasimmorathi]

I've read over this post and I'm trying to gather up all the information at once to help the relic folks and those more technically inclined to give me a few cents about what could help fix this problem.

I've had the same issues as a few others have had, not the typical half second to full second latency, rather entire jittering pauses in the game, lasting from five to ten seconds through direct connect.

My system specs are an AMD 2600, ATI Radeon 9600 and 512 RAM. My drivers are all up to date. I use high speed cable internet, the firewall ports have been opened, zonealarm is configured to allow Dawn of War and also the IP address of my friend. Anti-virus autoprotection has been turned off. XP Firewall has been disabled. All of our graphics have been turned down to the absolute minimum. I'm not sure his specific system configuration, but we are practically even, his system likely has a slight edge upon mine.

We've tested it at different times, usually late at night when the typical network congestion is low. We're, geographically, only a few miles apart from one another. I've scanned for spyware and viruses, both turned up negative and I've turned off all unnecessary processes.

So, with that all said... anything you can think of to improve the performance, or find the culprit of this massive slow down?

[ÜberJumper]

Kasim:

Those are two seperate issues you're experiencing by the sounds of it. The jittering pauses are unrelated to the command input lag that this thread is about.

[Prowler]

Sorry guys, totally wrong. Pretty much all RTSes are peer-to-peer.Fine. The fact still remains then that the net code in DoW is flawed (what I said in the first paragraph in my previous post). I don't want to re-iterate comparing how DoW plays vs other RTS games that have no delay in the game play when issuing commands to units, even though I feel compelled to do so.

This design also requires that there be a delay in user inputs, although it is typically less than .5 seconds.

To sum up, C-S is not really feasible for an RTS with a lot of units per side.

Could the net code for this game be better? Sure. But try to keep the opinions better-informed, OK?OK... question for you (since you seem to know more about this subject than I do)... what is the difference between the net code in DoW and other RTS games (say WC3, or any P2P RTS game where there is virtually zero delay when issuing commands to units)? If there is always latency in the P2P code, do these other games simply hide it so the player perceives virtually zero delay when issuing commands?

Note that I'm using the term delay now since all I want is to get the game to play so there is no perceived latency when issuing commands to units. In other words, perhaps the net code architecture will induce some latency, but the code can somehow compensate and hide the latency from the player to provide a smooth virtually lag free gaming experience.

[thudmeizer]

We had a 3vs3 HARDER AI game last nite over DirectConnect using my Advanced Skirmish AI Project v1.0 release build (not the current v1.1 build our team is tweaking) and yes there is that 0.5-1sec delay sometimes but you get used to it. I do hate a delay when I issue commands as it can really make a major difference if my squads win or lose.

I'd love to ask the netcoders of the original DoW why their code is laggy (even in LAN) vs. the competition but who knows the answer really? Even if we could ask - a predicatable answer likely? "Our game runs different than WC3 or AoM!" You know you'll get a canned response. Devs don't want to admit the netcode was inheritently bloated and could have been optimized although would have delayed the mid-Sept launch.

Its unclear if they can optimize it for the WA expansion. Who knows... we need an FAQ or IRC chat log to see if the expansion devs have this as any sort of priority.

[Vertigo]

WARNING, LONG POST!


Fine. The fact still remains then that the net code in DoW is flawed (what I said in the first paragraph in my previous post). I don't want to re-iterate comparing how DoW plays vs other RTS games that have no delay in the game play when issuing commands to units, even though I feel compelled to do so.


I'm not arguing that at all. I just didn't want people to think that P2P itself was the problem. It's always good to know the facts, no?


OK... question for you (since you seem to know more about this subject than I do)... what is the difference between the net code in DoW and other RTS games (say WC3, or any P2P RTS game where there is virtually zero delay when issuing commands to units)? If there is always latency in the P2P code, do these other games simply hide it so the player perceives virtually zero delay when issuing commands?


The delay is there for all games, actually, it's just not very noticable. As a matter of fact, I recall there was an article in Gamasutra (a game designer website) where the author tested varying delays to see how big it had to be before gamers noticed it. IIRC, no one ever noticed the delay if it was less than .25 seconds, and it was considered tolerable for most gamers up to about .5 seconds. Above that people started to get mad. Unfortunately, I've lost the link to the article.

I can't really state the differences because I don't have DoW's netcode (nor SC's netcode) in front of me, although I wish I did. I'd LOVE to see SC's netcode. But I can make conjectures, see below.


Note that I'm using the term delay now since all I want is to get the game to play so there is no perceived latency when issuing commands to units. In other words, perhaps the net code architecture will induce some latency, but the code can somehow compensate and hide the latency from the player to provide a smooth virtually lag free gaming experience.


You really can't hide it, because you can't "think ahead" to hide latency. I'll try to explain why without writing a 20 page essay. This stuff is VERY tricky, very detailed, and takes a lot of money to do properly, so I'm sorry if it sounds incoherent.

Let's first explain what is happening when you play a game. First, imagine that one machine is running DoW alone. The machine runs the game, starting at Frame 1. A Frame is one "tick" of the game engine. For instance, SC runs internally at 25 frames per second, and War3 at 30, IIRC. I have no idea what Dow runs at. The frames per second is fixed and unchanging, it has nothing to do with video framerate. It's the speed at which the "real" game runs, not the speed of the presentation. I don't know what Dow's internal frame rate is.

So, DoW is now processing frames happily. When a user inputs a command (e.g. move Slugga squad A to location X,Y), this command is seen by DoW, handled by the internal logic, units do things, and the game continues. Each command obviously takes effect in the proper frame. So, say the game was currently crunching frame 3097, and the user clicks a mouse, the game could try and insert that command in frame 3098, in theory. In reality, due to the work involved processing the input, it might be a few frames later.

This concept of "binding" commands to frame numbers is important, as it's how replays (and multiplay) work. When you play DoW, it's recording all your input in the form of "X command given by player, takes effect on Frame Y." To replay a game, it just starts as before, and reads this "input log." In effect, it's playing the WHOLE game over again, and using a "recorded" version of you! That's why replays are so small, and why you can't rewind them.

(Every time a replay is run, it must run exactly the same way every time. This is also why you can't "think ahead" to hide delay. In order for the games to stay in sync, there has to be a "no guessing" policy.)

Now, extend this to multiplay. From DoW's view, in a multiplay game, everyone is a replay. Only instead of reading input from a replay file, it gets it over the network. Every time a player inputs a command, it's recorded in the form "command, player, frame" mentioned above, and sent to every other machine involved in the game.

But there's the catch. Imagine we have a 1v1. Imagine both machines are at Frame 1000. I click the mouse. To what frame should the command be bound? We could bind it as early as possible, say frame 1001. But what happens on the other machine? By the time we bundle up the command and send it to the other machine, it will likely be WAY past frame 1001. It can't back up, so the game is hosed.

Because of this, games constantly send messages to each other declaring what the highest legal frame is; I call that the Limit Frame. If a machine hits this limit, it pauses the game on that system until the other machine catches up. This is why a RTS can only run at the speed of the slowest machine, unlike an FPS that uses client/server.

So, back to our example. Say our limit is always 15 frames ahead of the current frame. Since we are on frame 1000, we know the other machine could be as far ahead as frame 1015, right? So we can safely bind my mouse click to frame 1016, but no earlier. As the game continues, this limit always stays 15 frames ahead. A limit is a kind of "safety time buffer" to allow for input to travel over the internet/LAN.

It's this limit that creates the "delay' you are talking about. If we had a 15 frame limit and the game ran at 30 frames per second, that's a .5 second delay. As long as every input gets to every machine within .5 seconds, everything works fine. Any longer, and machines start to stutter.

The size of the Limit is a tunable value. If all machines are on super fast LAN connections, the limit can safely be quite low, maybe 5 frames or less. If the connection is bad, you can either increase the limit to a high value or just suffer with game stutter. Experience shows that the latter is preferable.

I hope this explains why delay can't be eliminated, only minimized.

When I've played DoW on a LAN, the input delay is really bad at game start, but evaporates in a few minutes. So I'm guessing that DoW does try to tune the limit mid-game to be optimal.

Whew! So, to answer your question at last: I think it's the Limit tuning code that's broken for Direct Connect, although I have no idea why this would be. There's nothing special about Direct Connect that should cause problems, AFAIK.

[Prowler]

The delay is there for all games, actually, it's just not very noticable. As a matter of fact, I recall there was an article in Gamasutra (a game designer website) where the author tested varying delays to see how big it had to be before gamers noticed it. IIRC, no one ever noticed the delay if it was less than .25 seconds, and it was considered tolerable for most gamers up to about .5 seconds. Above that people started to get mad. Unfortunately, I've lost the link to the article.This has very little value without knowing the game being tested... I'll assume you meant those values apply to a RTS game as back in the days where I was playing the original Quake on 28.8k dial-up, I found I could play on servers where I got no more than a 300-320ms ping. Anything above that started to become unplayable very quickly. Now with the state of broadband and the Internet today, I try and avoid servers where I ping anything above 100ms (for playing first person shooters) because that feels laggy to me now... anyway enough on that, I'll go back to assuming those values are from testing a RTS game. I can actually believe that perhaps the test was valid... if DoW had a maximum of a half second delay instead of a minimum half second delay, it'd play so much better. If it averaged even 250-300ms it would play quite well... I still argue that I have less delay than that when playing WC3, so I question how nobody noticed delays below .25 seconds... perhaps the test wasn't quite valid because of the sampling of test subjects used.

The size of the Limit is a tunable value. If all machines are on super fast LAN connections, the limit can safely be quite low, maybe 5 frames or less. If the connection is bad, you can either increase the limit to a high value or just suffer with game stutter. Experience shows that the latter is preferable.I suppose I need to dig up the post where someone said they tried DoW on a gigabit LAN, with fast PCs, and there was still a minimum .5 second delay. Should be virtually no delay (which I'll define as < 10ms) from the network in that setup.

Whew! So, to answer your question at last: I think it's the Limit tuning code that's broken for Direct Connect, although I have no idea why this would be. There's nothing special about Direct Connect that should cause problems, AFAIK.You mean broken for all the networking code... I don't see why there should ever be noticable latency when playing on a LAN... even an old 10mbit setup with a hub will provide more than enough bandwidth and have virtually no latency... again WC3 has no noticable lag when playing on the Internet, yet DoW has a half second when played on a gigabit LAN... If the problem really is a matter of tuning some values, I would have thought the problem would be fixed by now.

[Vertigo]

I'll assume you meant those values apply to a RTS...


That is correct. Requirements are different for an FPS. And the tests just established the maximum playable delays. When creating a game, you'd obviously always try to make the delay as small as reasonably possible.


I suppose I need to dig up the post where someone said they tried DoW on a gigabit LAN, with fast PCs, and there was still a minimum .5 second delay. Should be virtually no delay (which I'll define as < 10ms) from the network in that setup.


Quick note on terminology: I distinguish between the play mode (i.e. LAN, D-C, ONLINE) and the physical media. If physically connected to a LAN, you can chose either LAN or D-C mode.

I know D-C mode is busted, even on a physical LAN, but in my experience LAN mode works just fine. I've played on a LAN many times, and the delay becomes invisible after a few minutes. So, from my anecdotal experience, tuning does work when using LAN mode. It's Direct-Connect that seems to have problems.

If the problem really is a matter of tuning some values, I would have thought the problem would be fixed by now.

DoW has a several major bugs that haven't been fixed yet, actually. This one is relatively minor in the bigger picture, so it's no suprise it hasn't yet been fixed.

And, as I mentioned, this is all just conjecture anyway. I neither have access to source code nor do I have the resources to performs tests. I'm just posing theories based on the network programming I have done.

[Spectre01]

Sorry to resurrect this old thread... I keep getting the annoying "giving order to unit performing the order" latency, sometimes going into the 4 second range. It's impossible to play early on where micromanagement really counts. I love this game and I can take an insane computer, so now I want to play online and can't because of this. I've treid turning down my graphics, still no cigar. I've read all the posts in this thread but didm't really find any answers to fix this problem. It's really killing online play for me.:(

[TBS]

are you connecting through a router?

[HFX]

I find this is most often cause by someone who has a lot of spyware or other software such as seti@home running while playing DOW. We used to have this problem in lans and tracked it down to one persons computer. Now if we could only get some of the others to turn down their graphics. :-(

[Spectre01]

Yes I'm connecting through a router. I think I also experienced a similar problem in Empire Earth 2 as well. I opened the needed ports for dawn of war so is there anything else that my router could be doing to make the problem?