Multiplayer in Arma 2 - Is Warping (Lag) and Cheats still an issue?

[heady89 10]

Hi toloquta

ArmA has more resistance to warping than any other game you will play. If you were to play ArmA at the view distances of other games, 200-300m your warping would disappear in ArmA on a properly set up server, but ArmA is played at a much larger scale.

You may have been fooled into thinking that other games do not suffer warping, They do.

To get around it they use a range of limits and tricks:

First off they limit number of players, next they limit view distance and they remove ballistics.

They then begin the tricks:

If you are running a client/server you are not seeing the world that others are so you will think things are better when they are not, it allows you to think it is a bad clients LAG problem rather than your server, you are being fooled; they use interpolation to guess where the player will be rather than give the true position, they use line of sight for bullet path rather from end of the gun, they use laser gun rather than true ballistic path, they do not model sound placement or environment etc.

This is why all those other games suffer from accusations of cheating, according to their machine they hit the guy, according to his he was not even in that street, the usual COD/CS chatter.

Warping is not realy an issue in ArmA as it is in other games.

Kind Regards walker

Well true to some extent.

Besides nothing claims it's impossible to code good solutions for Arma 2 either , i mean so you're using the 3000 view distance as an excuse for warping and lag issues to be justified? (or being a better way to do it?)

The thing you're mentioning with people not being there and then cheat accused I've never heard or encounter before and I've played in mature/serious clans in BF / COD series since they came out in 2002-03. There's been occasions were you might have fired a round in you're screen but infact at the server you never shot it because it hap pent in a millisecond at a collision say were you die at the same time of that shot. Doesn't really harm anyone anyway?

I tell you cheats doesn't depend on that, it's more of a game design when people barely show their 3rd person head around the corner but in the first person view they're leaning out totally clear to shoot. Could be fixed pretty easily tbh , several mods have done it.

Sure several details run client sided.. it works.. better than Arma and no you're not at a different place, the codes ain't a joke like Armas current netcode. I mean mp is unplayable , coop works fine with some buds on a private server but that's just about it...

Btw remember bf1942 , great view distance by the time 2001/2002 around OFP release , no issues there.. blame the ballistics or lack of detail it's just absurd. I tell Arma to skip it then if they can't do it since their current mp is useless and i'd trade ballistics for less lag anytime.

Why bother defending it?

I'd trust ID , IW , EPIC or any company besides BIS when it comes to code a netcode and solid mp.

Heck even Americas Army is doing a great job , it's got even more realistic ballistics than Arma. (yeye not same open world..........!)

Edited June 8, 2009 by heady89

[whisper 0]

If you don't want open world and prefer perfect netcode, then sure, ArmA2 is not the game for you

[toloquta 10]

Anyone work at an ISP? It would be nice to see how a 64 player ARMA2 server would work right off of a backbone.

[whisper 0]

Anyone work at an ISP? It would be nice to see how a 64 player ARMA2 server would work right off of a backbone.

The net quality is far less important than the server quality.

I'm at an ISP, my server is "in the backbone", but it's not a good enough one and can't handle too much pressure atm :(

[Mojo 0]

Anyone work at an ISP? It would be nice to see how a 64 player ARMA2 server would work right off of a backbone.

You can have 100Mb/s connections all day, but if your server isn't up to the challenge, you won't get any better performance.

It isn't about ping - that doesn't mean nearly as much - anyone under 300ms can play with out a problem. You have to have processor, ram and server side configuration setup.

Stop thinking network and start thinking about the server. you can run 100 people on a 12Mb/s up and down connection.

[garack666 10]

never a dev has ever posted in this warping threads, cause ....we all know why:eek:

[.kju 3239]

Suma has in the A1 bugtracker.

[An Fiach 10]

The simple truth is that the majority of gamers do not remotely understand how things work, they simply want them to work, and flawlessly. The truth is, the larger the world, the larger the number of objects and the more realistic and intense the scenery and effects, the greater the chance of warping and lag issues.

This is a niche game and only sim fans will ever truly enjoy and appreciate it, only they are willing to sacrifice things that are taken for granted in shoebox games to have a sandbox to play in. I regularly play another sandbox game that is 100x larger than Arma but in order to obtain that, graphical quality must suffer. In turn Arma is devoid of certain physics and ballistic properties I value as well as size. Both push the absolute limits (granted BI is better funded) and that means there will be performance issues.

Better to approach this game with the understanding that it will never be without issues and to understand many people will have to find many different solutions to the same problems. If you want to be angry, be angry about the senseless bugs and graphical errors that should never have made it past post production, expecting the netcode to behave just like it does in every other game that isn't remotely like this one is an exercise in ignorance and futility.

[garack666 10]

jaja welt gross alles toll und komplex und die ai/player lagged trotzdem..

[OrLoK 20]

Hello all

I regularly play in coop games and although the AI lag/jump still occours. its not half as bad as it was in Arma1.

I do get JIP lags when folks join but its a small price to pay in the scheme of things.

As to PvP play, im not able to comment as I usually avoid these as in my experience, they often end up being DM type game which dont suit me at all.

Im sure someone will correct me on that tho!

Also, I think we must remember that the devs of this game are not in the same league as other major companies, such as Blizzard and dont have endless amounts of cash to hire upteen coders to sort out the stuff that needs to be addressed.

Yes, there are issues harking back to OFP/VBS/ARMA that are still outstanding, but no matter how annoying these glitches are there MUST be a reason for them not being addressed, and we will have to make do for the moment.

I'm no fanboy of BI but I'd rather have ARMA2 warts and all than no ARMA at all.

Just my 2 pence.

rgds

LoK

[An Fiach 10]

Also, AI has nothing to do with Netcode and everything to do with the server so unless there is an issue in the network causing greater latency/spikes connection has nothing to do with the issue.

[heady89 10]

It's a freaking joke the whole warping / net code, i mean did BIS ever try the game outside the office with some latency ?

Can't believe this haven't been solved after all these years, even COOP warps which it at least didnt in Arma 1.

[whisper 0]

Warping == Server can't handle the mission. As simple as that. Server has not enough FPS and can't relay information to clients.

At around 15 FPS on server, you'd begin to see warping for units at like 600m or such, depending ofc on the server configuration and the number of units. If there's a whole battalion in these 600m, then yes you can expect to see warping for farther units

[.kju 3239]

No - warping at distance happens also with good FPS for human players.

[whisper 0]

if you have client / server network "issues" (note that doesn't mean "ping" issues).

Example : low FPS on said client

I don't think it's the general warping people are talking about here, though

[heady89 10]

Dear god, it's time for Bohemia to build a new engine i mean this is the 3rd release really and it contains so many bugs that it's just unacceptable.. great potential but yes i actually regret buying it.

Don't get me wrong now i am a hardcore simulation fan and i can handle a few bugs here and there no game is perfect but that doesn't mean i can live with crashes , glitches , flickering , netcode issues, script issues , campaign lockups.. was this game tested before release.. i mean you find bugs everywhere the troubleshooting forums is filled.

My faith in BIS has run out , sorry im done with you're products.

[whisper 0]

goodbye, random rant #307

[toloquta 10]

The net quality is far less important than the server quality.

I'm at an ISP, my server is "in the backbone", but it's not a good enough one and can't handle too much pressure atm :(

Sounds like the server is quite resource intensive. Hopefully we will see some optimizations to the server side code so it makes the most of the hardware available.

Come on BIS breakout the profiler and find a few bottlenecks in the code. I'd do it for you, but I don't have the code. I'll forgive ya if you get around to it eventually, just wish the game had a bit higher budget to deal with this stuff early on.

[Game__On 10]

I also see a lot of warping in multiplay coop .

Basically it's no use to shoot at any moving target . You just have to wait untill the target stops moving.

Is this avoidable ? I mean i see it on EVERY server .

[walker 0]

Hi Game__On

Choose servers where you do not have so high a ping, usualy ones on your continent.

Kind Regards

[Halli~SPARTA~ 0]

Also servers that do not allow mods will have less Snyc time involved and as such will be smoother and Video lag even with that bad boy card you have(feels like mem leak to me) on your part could be a problem and seem like a server issue.

[Game__On 10]

Also servers that do not allow mods will have less Snyc time involved and as such will be smoother and Video lag even with that bad boy card you have(feels like mem leak to me) on your part could be a problem and seem like a server issue.

It's actually 2 of them. (vid cards) . Could that be causing the warping perhaps ? SLI ?

I usually play on servers that are close to me, where ping shows as 16 .

Thing is, i have never ever seen an enemy run sideways from me (from far away) without skipping meters. It's REALLY annoying.

I do not get this in single player, so i think it has to be a server issue ? Hmm i'll try disabling sli and see if it changes anything online. I've tried everything else so why not :d .

[whisper 0]

The farther away from the unit you watch, the more players connected and the more units in the mission you play, the more warping you'll see.

This is kind of unavoidable (probably optimizable though), with the view distance of the game and the potentially high number of units present, without any way to control the amount of units visible (without breaking the flexibility of the engine), the engine must have some network flood control in place limiting the amount of data sent. BI chosed to base the data flood limitation on relative distance between player and watched units. Thus the warping you see on distant units , mostly visible in big missions with high players count

[Game__On 10]

The farther away from the unit you watch, the more players connected and the more units in the mission you play, the more warping you'll see.

This is kind of unavoidable (probably optimizable though), with the view distance of the game and the potentially high number of units present, without any way to control the amount of units visible (without breaking the flexibility of the engine), the engine must have some network flood control in place limiting the amount of data sent. BI chosed to base the data flood limitation on relative distance between player and watched units. Thus the warping you see on distant units , mostly visible in big missions with high players count

I see. Thx for this clear answer.

+1

[JaKe.OnE 10]

A cheater community now released a mem hack, and now you have cheaters everywhere.

ArmA 2 is lost now. Cheaters can do what they want and no one recognizes this.

Very bad, but I will stop playing till there is an anti-cheat engine. Additionally we will look for a different game.