Lag Advice

great idea gunny, i suggest ALL players follow suit and try reducing thier details to try and improve the conditions on the server.

Gunny

Excuse me but this is from a newbie sight not the only prob.

If you never play Crossfire before and want to have a look at it like me for example you will install it and start playing.

You will find this multiplayer problem and if this mod isn´t your first mp game you will be angry about not having a chance against the easiest npc´s because of the lag. With this problem you will normaly uninstall it (in my opinion) because you explain it for you as a server sided problem.

My Installation of crossfire was over a normal, fully patched (included the unoffical 1.4 patch) FL installation. In SP i had no problems. After I´ve got the MP probs and OP writes something about a not deleted file from the save dir because of an other problem to me, i´ve uninstalled my complete FL Installations include Mod Manager, saved Games and cleaned up the registry by hand. After it i reinstalled it without the 1.4 patch.

The thing now is, Crossfire appears in a complete other way (i choosed the same CF settings while activating!) The windows are red e.g. (Believe me the settings are the same) and the lag is gone by nearly 70%.

A new MP user have to reinstall FL complete if he haven´t done it before.

Tomorrow I will test your tweakings too.

Just my two Cents

This won't be a prob for me, since I have all slide on zero, except for Effect Details, because if that's on zero you can't see your own bullets.

I cant agree on that. Each player, graphic settings have nothing to do with network (online) gaming, cause each player see all the details he set for his game, not the settings that others use.

Usually when playing a game online (nomatter what the game is) FPS (frames per second) drop more or less and cause problems to the player but this should not interfere server itself cause he keep its own track where each player is. Server will be interfered only if connection is bad (have lost packets) or game is running so bad that it cant send required information to the server fast enough (verry unlikely).

So if player is jumping there are several reasons for this:

1) your connection is bad (lost packets or too slow)
2) the other player's connection is bad (lost packets or too slow)
3) server load increased - cant send possitioning information to the players fast enough.

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Originally posted by C9H14NO3... massively misquoted by Drakon

Gunny

When you're new to the server you'll notice the lag and jumping in combat and be put off by it (since so many other games don't have this problem). It's bad enough that it could make a lot of people want to find a different mod.

Anyway, when I first installed CF I had no problems in singleplayer but multiplayer was all messed up. I asked about it here on the SWAT Portal and OP told me to redo the installation (since I didn't read and follow the instructions). I went back and started over, and now everything is working how it was supposed to and I've noticed that there's much less lag. Maybe if everyone had the mod installed properly there'd be less lag? Tommorrow I'll try reducing my settings.

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Gunny

Are there certain settings that have a particularly large effect? I don't mind turning down settings, but I'd rather keep a good tradeoff between graphics quality and smoothness of gameplay.

@PC

Could it be that when a person's settings are cranked up it strains your computer's ability to communicate with the server fast enough? I may be completely off, but wouldn't it make sense that the harder the computer has to work to run the game, the harder it would be for it to keep the connection speed optimal?

Thats one of my points but is only for a verry slow computers and if there are some here, probably they count on the fingers of one hand. FL is old enough game, plays well on most machines. Whats the point lowering the settings when your frame rate is over 50-60 (usually ppl should be playing at 120+) using max quality settings.

Thank you pc.....

When I started playing CF online, I had a problem with occasional freezes when there was a lot of gunfire/explosions. The problem went away when I turned down the settings the forty percent you mentioned. I don't know if it's related; I thought it was due to my old graphics card. I never had that problem in single player, though.

@ Gunny thx mate will try it.

Gust yep and u also cant see JH without the effects details , though u can reduce them a bit and still see the weps etc.

I was also told by one player to reduce the Graphic and sound Accellerators.

And also that old prob the 3D sound, which most ppl should know about

3D sound dont concern ppl with non-onboard sound (means additional sound plugged) so they can use it without crashing the game. There are some exceptions with good onboard sound that should work aswell and i think that would be SoundStorm, Realtek HD and some others.

Gunny is right about the drivers. Old games -> older drivers better. For ppl with with new hardware (means even 2 years old hardware) several fps plus or minus wont matter and they should be careful cause putting an old driver might screw something - the rest of the games they play or their hardware would be unsupported.

Something i discovered several months back, when my game was running awfull but i had high fps so it didnt make sense. Problem was caused of npcs and some other static effects (like planet or something). When the number of ships you see changes and/or increase cause a sudden drop followed by increase and drop again of the frame rate cause evrything moves fast or the number of ships you see changes fast so if you had 120fps and it drops to 60 (even when 60 is more than enough) is a big gap which cause games run like shit. But if you enable Vertical Synchronization (in your video driver) FPS will be limited to your monitor refresh rate (85-100Hz for CRT and 60-75Hz for TFT where 1Hz = 1 frame per second) which enough for smooth gameplay and you wont have any sudden FPS drops. Aswell as evry frame will be synchronyzed with the monitor, means all frames rendered by the video card will be shown on the monitor. When video card try to send mroe frames to the monitor than he can show you soem frames wont be shown and would be missed so there would appear another gap too.

This Tool is nice for tweaking your Online settings if you need to do so... (please handle with care!)

Tweaking Tool :klick me:

@Marshal Cunningham

LOL thx 4 translation

i have very few lags myself
i run max graphics and have no problems
i have disabled 3D sound when CONSOLE announced and soud change was severe i have SoundStorm integrated
and about monitor my refresh rate is 120kHz/144Hz my weekest PC part is video

and i have very fast internent connection to abroad
incountry it is faster and has less data loss so it might be your internet provider fault if it's limiting offcountry bandwith

Well my comp sys is not the best :

Intel Pentium 4 1.6 Mhz
Ge-Force 4 64 MB
256 MB Ram DDR
Gigabyte Motherboard

But Freelancer still runs good !
Shut down ur 3D sound , take down ur options and play

this may be a totally rediculous question/suggestion, as you know im probably the most un-knowledgeable guy on CF as far as computers are concerned!!!!

but would it make a difference if you carried out over regular disk clean ups and HD defrags, deleting all the temp. internet files etc....? just that i notice my pc slows down a hell of a lot if i dont do it more than once a week.

try not to laugh too much at the above if it is absolute rubbish!!!!

HD defrag -> made it and nothing

and all other you wrote - its regisrty clean up and it HELPED me for my lag ... but i still have few losses, so im waiting on alternative link from my ISP and hope something will change

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Originally posted by Doppleganger
this may be a totally rediculous question/suggestion, as you know im probably the most un-knowledgeable guy on CF as far as computers are concerned!!!!

but would it make a difference if you carried out over regular disk clean ups and HD defrags, deleting all the temp. internet files etc....? just that i notice my pc slows down a hell of a lot if i dont do it more than once a week.

try not to laugh too much at the above if it is absolute rubbish!!!!

Yes, on paper it do helps, cause helps the OS runs a bit better and easier.

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Originally posted by Tyrael
Well my comp sys is not the best :

Intel Pentium 4 1.6 Mhz
Ge-Force 4 64 MB
256 MB Ram DDR
Gigabyte Motherboard

But Freelancer still runs good !
Shut down ur 3D sound , take down ur options and play

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my old pc was half as good as this one and FL was working fine

oh and yes defrag does help... its running everyday on CF... but only the normal windows defrag and ive got told that it isnt that good