High pings spikes, Stadt

[Bouncer]

Everytime Stadt loads, and this is not modded, out of nowhwere everybodies ping goes from an avg 40-50ms to 150-200ms. I have no idea why this map does this but it has been going on as long as I can remember putting it in rotation from time to time. Whats wierd is the pings jump all together. It settles down after about 5 min then jumps up every so often, but even when it settles down it only gets down to about 70ms. I also notice that this happens on a lot of servers with this map. The Brest is also a map that has this problem but not as bad. Any ideas on why or how to fix this?

Thanks!

Sry I posted in modeling section, maybe the other one can be deleted?

[jv_map]

It may be a result of poor vis design. The more entities in your current pvs, the higher your ping.

[tltrude]

Here is how it works. The map designer put in giant vis brushes. when all the players are together in one of these brushes, parts of the map are not drawn and the fps goes up for everyone. When one player dies or runs over to another part of the map, the game has to draw that section again and the FPS goes down for everyone.

Poor design comes from not making the map entirely FPS friendly, but that limits the design to narrow streets and highwalls. So, be happy you are getting high FPS some of the time and not getting poor FPS all of the time.

[jv_map]

Uhm well each player has his own pvs.

[Alcoholic]

whats pvs stand for? i saw it in g_allclasses

[jv_map]

It's a 'potential viewable set' (or something like that), which is a list of vis leafnodes the player can currently see according to map vis data. Entities outside a player's pvs are completely ignored, i.e. they are not sent from the server to the client.

[tltrude]

Maybe I should of said "ping" instead of FPS. I know that one player's ping will effect everyone. Ping is affected the speed of the internet. So if the internet has a slow moment for one player, it will effect everyone in the game. The server's conection to the internet is always the most important.

I have ADSL and most of the time the internet runs fast, but now and then it slows down to crawl because of web traffic.

[Bouncer]

I understand how the ping works and how a players ping could affect the whole server. For instance, a player with a slower pc or just older vid card could cause high ping because he cant keep up with the instruction of the server. Therefore basically causing a traffic jam when he comes into contact with other players. The thing I really cannot understand is why EA would release these maps if they lag a server so bad. I was glad to know it just wasnt my server but anyone with a 20 player server has this effect. This isnt the only map either...the ones I have noticed to become unplayable are Stadt, Holland, and sometimes the Brest. Its really wierd too the way it happens.....the map starts and within about 30 seconds everones ping just tripled.

Unlike some of the other maps, Stadt has lines like this in the script file (the ones I refer to are in red)

$world farplane 5250
$world farplane_bias -100
$world farplane_color (.333 .333 .329)

level waittill spawn

waitframe
$world farplaneclipcolor "0.52 0.64 0.80"

Are any of these settings something to contribute to lag? Can something be put into the script or adjusted to ease the network stress? I know that adding fog usually helps and the farplainclipcolor is in a couple other maps but I cant really keep these maps in rotation the way they are. I mean, it gets bad. Thanks!

[tltrude]

The high ping at the start of a new map is caused by players with slower computers. It takes them longer to load the files. But that lag should not be there when the same map reloads because everyone already has the files loaded.

Spearhead was created by a bunch of Quake3 amateur mappers that EA hired. Most of the mappers from 2015 were hired by Acivision right after Mohaa came out.

[jv_map]

I would rather call it a quake networking error though . It's very bad when a server waits for slow clients, it should just drop the packets instead.

I would rather have seen it like this: if you don't send your move command in time, you just won't move. This way it wouldn't affect other players.

[tltrude]

Yep, but then guys with the fastest computer, videocard, and internet connection will always get the most kills--as they, pretty much, do now!

[Bouncer]

What happens though is it doesnt smooth out. Rather the high ping stays consistent all through the map. It gets to the point where sometimes you cant even here your own weapon firing. Is there anything at all that can be put into the script to smooth it out? Is precaching all the items in the map always a benifit or sometimes can a map precache too much and cause lag? Reason I say that is cause I notice that even in the default precache script, Stadt, has many other items. One of the benifits of resolving or finding a solution to this would be not only help me but any server out there that runs these maps.

[Bouncer]

Guess this one is just a dead issue then, huh?