Recent Lag ... and what's being done.

[captainsnarf]

Last night on Gunshop there were some weird lag instances where I couldn't hit anything. I was clearly hitting my shots e.g. stationary levi, but no damage being done and no hit sounds were heard. Enyo had similar problems. He said he could hit his shots in a vehicle though, but not on foot. That points to a UTComp issue. It's hard to say for sure. It was intermittent.

The next time it happens to us I recommend going into the F5 menu -> misc sub menu and disable enhanced net code for yourself and see if that fixes it. I tried this but couldn't tell if it worked or not since it was happening sporadically.

[pooty]

Yes me too. I have stat fps/stat net up and no Packetloss and my fps was good around 140ish. But had instances where I was apparently hitting targets with Shock Rifle, but no skin flash and no hit sound. These were dead on hits, once like three times in a row.

Perhaps we could switch back to ONSPlus for the weekend and see how it plays.

That being said we had 26 players on DJY and didn't seem to have any lag.

[Enyo]

Last night on Gunshop there were some weird lag instances where I couldn't hit anything. I was clearly hitting my shots e.g. stationary levi, but no damage being done and no hit sounds were heard. Enyo had similar problems. He said he could hit his shots in a vehicle though, but not on foot. That points to a UTComp issue. It's hard to say for sure. It was intermittent.

The next time it happens to us I recommend going into the F5 menu -> misc sub menu and disable enhanced net code for yourself and see if that fixes it. I tried this but couldn't tell if it worked or not since it was happening sporadically.

Yep, that's exactly how it happened for me. I was peppering a cicada with the Flare Raptor, no lag, hitting it with ease. Jumped out before the cicada was dead because I was getting hit by foot soldiers, started shooting it with the shock rifle and nothing.

That went on for a couple min where I'd be in a vehicle shooting things just fine, but on foot it was like a bunch of unregs, no hit sounds, no flashes indicating what look like hits.

[captainsnarf]

Nevermore and DJY both had a lot of players (29,28), but I didn't experience any lag issues on those maps. I know the SoL freon server has been having lag issues also and is hosted on NFO. I wonder if we have the same shared box. Our peak times do line up, around 9pm - 11pm.

[pooty]

Yes, wondered the same thing. We can check the overall server CPU via NFO under Server Health (vs. Server Usage which is just our "Game server").

Also, I wouldn't put it past that some vehicles (eg. Levi Cannons, and other custom ones) cause issues. I have found several instances where some of the custom vehicles are pretty "hacked up" and it creates in the game class collisions (for you non-programmers - think of class as an object in the game a player, vehicle, tank shell, plasma shot etc) where they use the same name over and over. All the class names should be unique unless there's specific intent for the same behavior -- I've seen where a vehicle developer will just reuse them.. UT only has one big namespace.. so if you have for example MercuryMissle and its used in three vehicles but defined differently in those you might get one overwriting the other causing unintended side effects. Then add replication (sharing data between server and client) that might contribute to unstable states...if the replication in those classes don't match.

[pooty]

So after some careful thought, for the upcoming weekend I am going to switch back to ONSPlusOmni and turn off UTComp completely. Several players, including me, have felt that there's still something in UTComp that's lagging the server, with or without the Enhanced NetCode. This will be our A/B test to see if we have issues without UTComp. We did add Zounds, but that seems an unlikely culprit, but we will test that next if needed.

We had 32 players at some point last night, and CPU was max 45% which was really good, IMO, but we still had lag problems. As I thought was just me, Enyo pointed out it seemed to get worse as the match went on and it didn't seem to affect all players equally. Testing without UTComp for a few days to see how it plays will hopefully help us narrow the issues.

This will mean no hitsounds for the weekend -- not going to muddy the waters by adding standalone hitsounds.

Hopefully, UTComp isn't the issue as there's many good features there, and Snarf has done a ton of work on it. [Can we leverage much of that for ONSPlusOmni -- or perhaps a new Mutator that take the best of both?]

[Enyo]

The weird thing about the intermittent lag is it seems to only affect me on foot when shooting at players and vehicles. When it's vehicle vs. vehicle or foot soldiers, no issues. Last night I turned enhanced netcode off on several maps, sometimes that helped and sometimes it didn't.

[captainsnarf]

it seems to only affect me on foot when shooting at players and vehicles. When it's vehicle vs. vehicle or foot soldiers, no issues

UTComp doesn't affect vehicles. It only affects you when you are on foot. It does add more load to the server, but since it works for your in vehicle vs vehicle, it seems extra server load is not the problem.

Last night I turned enhanced netcode off on several maps, sometimes that helped and sometimes it didn't.

If it's a problem with netcode (and not from extra server load), then turning it off should have fixed your problems.

Either way I think pooty is going to disable utcomp on the server this weekend.

[Enyo]

Is there a way to have enhanced netcode turned off for everyone by default, but still allow those that want it to turn it on? Seems that would be better than defaulting it on for everyone.

I have noticed the lag that's happening only starts after a match has been going for a while. Happens more often on DM heavy maps too, which makes sense I guess as it only affects fighting on foot. The last couple times I played Captain Gordons, Gunshop, MasterBath and Bitchlsap it happened the same way, got about halfway through the match with no lag at all, then all the sudden you can't hit anything on foot.

[pooty]

Yeah so here's the plan.
Fri/Sat - UTComp Off, replaced with ONSPlusOmni - Lets see how it plays
Sun UTComp 1.30 On, but look for default to be netcode off -- not sure this is possible, there's a server wide setting to disallow enhanced netcode for everyone but turning it on does nothing. Snarf can you confirm a way that enh netcode is off by default but each player can turn it on?

Early next week we can see how it played