Linux Net Code

[Shotglas 0]

Is there any word on whether or not BI is going to improve the netcode for the linux build?

[Nutty_101 0]

Is there any word on whether or not BI is going to improve the netcode for the linux build?

Umm, if they improve the netcode on one they have to do it on the clients and other servers. Not just linux.

[baddo 0]

I demand better netcode now  

Just kidding!

What would you like to see improved? There must be something specific which you noticed and would like to see improved?

And I am sure you only have a "public beta" of the Linux server? So you should wait for a "final" release before you jump to conclusions.

[Shotglas 0]

not jumping to conclusions

Just wondering if they are working on making the netcode better. Right now the CPU usage on a 2xdual core 1218 box is over 200%, not good. I can run ETQW on that same box full of clients at 20% CPU usage.

[Nutty_101 0]

not jumping to conclusions

Just wondering if they are working on making the netcode better. Right now the CPU usage on a 2xdual core 1218 box is over 200%, not good. I can run ETQW on that same box full of clients at 20% CPU usage.

200%?? Oh i got ya. laugh

[whisper 0]

not jumping to conclusions

Just wondering if they are working on making the netcode better. Right now the CPU usage on a 2xdual core 1218 box is over 200%, not good. I can run ETQW on that same box full of clients at 20% CPU usage.

What are the in-game FPS?

The linux code is prolly not really best adapted to Linux, as it's a simple port from Win code. I don't know exactly how it works, though. Just guessing.

For me, as long as I have proper in-game FPS, it's all right

another question : what is the mission you run? If it's Evolution, no wonder you're at 200%

[Shotglas 0]

in game FPS is reporting 4, the windows box is doing the same thing, but worse. We run a tournament that puts just over 100 people on the server at once, the mission we are running on it is a basic capture and defend map.

[baddo 0]

I recall for ArmA II BIS speaks only about 50+ players, not about 100+ like they did say about ArmA I

Probably a reality check happened there.

[whisper 0]

in game FPS is reporting 4, the windows box is doing the same thing, but worse. We run a tournament that puts just over 100 people on the server at once, the mission we are running on it is a basic capture and defend map.

Well, that's prolly just that ArmA server isn't made for 100+ people (yeah, I know, contrary to what they advertised ).

You're sure of your server settings? Tested different possibilities? I guess some lowering are necessary to get that much people playing.

BTW comparing 100+ people on a server with ETQW is, to say the least, unfair, don't you think? Talk about 1-sided kick in BI.

[Shotglas 0]

etqw was just an example,

We run lots of other games, I used ETQW because right now its the most demanding game we run on our servers. Even when we have less than 100 people on the server, say maybe 75, the performance is the same. The FPS of the server only goes up to 50 when there are only 5-6 people on the server, it immediatly drops drastically when 7-10 or more get on it.

[Mojo 0]

Just to show it is possible ...

There were more than 200 active members a month ago, the numbers have dropped a bit due to issues (as discussed here) but the numbers are very do-able. I've no doubt that the issues are resolvable if BI wants to focus the resources and do it.

Lets hope they do, because the guys that run this tournament have many others going, one, the largest of its kind has been going for 4 years non-stop. That is the sort of community buy in that we are hoping to foster in this game.

Edit: And no, it isn't anything like Evolution. Just a map of N. Sahrani with a battle like the one for Baghdad, the lines of the Battle area shift as one army gains control of a sector over the other, campaigns that last 12 or more weeks at a time. /Edit

[Doolittle 0]

Do you have any other stats on the epic 108 player battle? Like what total data transfer was for send/recv over a certain period of time? What CPU usage was? Memory?

[Shotglas 0]

The info was given in an earlier post by me

[suma 8]

We are not planning any dramatic changes in the netcode, which applies to both Win32 and Linux. What we plan for DS is to fix important bugs, like a stability ones. You should definitely not expect the next patch to perform significantly different from current version.

[Garack 0]

And whats with the warping/lagging players ? Do have have any solution for it? Or perhaps in ARMA2?

[Mojo 0]

We are not planning any dramatic changes in the netcode, which applies to both Win32 and Linux. What we plan for DS is to fix important bugs, like a stability ones. You should definitely not expect the next patch to perform significantly different from current version.

Thank you for the response. We hope to break the 200 player mark.

(As with several of the battles we've had to devise a queue system to rotate the player base through with the available slots.)

We have studied the threads on configuration religiously and have minimized the amount of load the maps themselves place on the server. I suppose that we will just have to creep up in numbers till we hit the wall. Any advice would be great, we are completely willing to share any findings with BI and would welcome a chance to work more closely.

[Espectro (DayZ) 0]

And whats with the warping/lagging players ? Do have have any solution for it? Or perhaps in ARMA2?

Lol...

Yea, why not correct all the bugs, make it stable, add true wildlife and enable multiplayer campaing. And then release it as ArmA2?

Oh wait - that was the feature-list of ArmA.... Now what do we do!?

[Dwarden 1125]

IC i think You need something like

4-5GHz 45nm Xeon with 6-12MB per core

4GB DDR3-1900 (well XDR would be better but i doubt we see that on PC platform anytime soon)

NIC with very fast packet offloading processor, huge buffer and ideally own memory (server type of card)

harddrive which is in fact fast as memory

maybe it sounds unreal but such setup is possible just the price is from another dimension

[SeppSchrot 0]

Wildlife is in there. Just not in the form of bears and deers but butterflies and invisible fleas lol.

I wonder why anyone would be looking forward to 200+ maps in ArmA.

The current cheater/player ratio seems to be about 2/10 or worse.

How could an admin overlook 200 people? Don't forget there will also be a hefty rotation due to JIP.

Then there is the problem of communication. Even if you equally split up in 4 teams and everyone is disciplined enough to use only sidechannel, you will have 50 players on each. On 4 visible lines, lol!

Oh, and don't forget about the effect that humans behave a lot dumber when in masses. Hehe, have fun

[ryankaplan 1]

200 peeps? whoa. The server i usually play at lags everyone for abotu 15 seconds when somebody JIPs in. its annoying enough with 15-20 people playing. How do you manage the JIP lag with 200 people? Or, is the JIP lag not happenign for you?

[Jack-UK 0]

JIP lag does still exist in IC, we have also not yet broken the 200 player barrier, we've had over 100 however.

Sometimes its a vicious circle, a long desync spell results in people reconnecting, which increases lag for everyone and causes lots of problems.

[cross 1]

IC-Arma is not a regular coop or pvp map with 100+ players.

Its an organized battle between US & SLA with 50 each and UN with 10 slots, over 3 cities which the last winner army selects and with a special mod pack.

[Mojo 0]

IC i think You need something like

4-5GHz 45nm Xeon with 6-12MB per core

4GB DDR3-1900 (well XDR would be better but i doubt we see that on PC platform anytime soon)

NIC with very fast packet offloading processor, huge buffer and ideally own memory (server type of card)

harddrive which is in fact fast as memory

maybe it sounds unreal but such setup is possible just the price is from another dimension

Well, the RAM thing - we never use more than 400 or so MB so 4 gig is just un-needed. The processors, sure, I would love to have some horsepower like that - but two dual core AMD Opterons will have to do for now... We aren't seeing any real disk read activity once the map is loaded, so we're fine in that department too. We're on a 1000 megabit/second link with plenty of bandwidth even out past our border router, the server is located in a datacenter in Dallas with excellent connectivity. I mean, no one is trying to run this from their house, you know?

As to cheating, you have to run our mod, first of all ... second, we have up to 10 admins on and we have an organised environment with a protocol for monitoring players and reporting glitches/cheats as they happen.

Finally, the JIP issue is exactly why we wanted BI to help us by modifying the net code.

[Dwarden 1125]

ofc i know You don't run it at home

but server located in datacenter tells me nothing about hardware used

connectivity itself is waste of line if NIC is some funky onboard something

about the CPU as ArmA uses single core only what matter is MHz and number of instructions it pumps per clock

rest is just to match the above

anyway i'm glad You do big battles in multiple games wish it's more common instead of rare

so keep it up

[tomcat_ 0]

connectivity itself is waste of line if NIC is some funky onboard something

i can understand all the above...but don't really understand why an onboard NIC is not good..

onboard NIC can easily reach up to 100mb...the only problem with the onboard is that is using cpu cycles...but with today's powerfull or dual core cpus i don't think that should be a prob...