Multiplayer is just one big lagg & horrible to play

[whisper 0]

The 2 posts above yours imho explain much more the situation than simply BI designing a crappy netcode, though ofc the code can probably be enhanced. I don't buy the "No one can play this shitty netcode" for the simple reason I have near zero issue playing, and as you can see in my sig, server running with plenty of people on it exists, and I'm not the only one, far from it

[kremator 1064]

Haven't had any trouble that you guys speak of with the exception of ONE yellow chain. I have been playing A2 in MP constantly since I got my hands on it and it has proved excellent.

I'm not sure what to say to you guys but examine your rigs closely, check packet loss from your ISP and try to find servers with very low ping.

Please don't be put off this awesome game. It is WAY better than A1 was and is even now.

[mrcash2009 0]

I have a quick look at MP the other night, went to ping servers in the UK (where I am) at 45 ping levels and it was a jumpy, laggy, warping freak show on most of them. The only one that didn't seem that way was a PvP using a small map.

I have 2gb connection and nothing blocked .. was really quite an eye opener, literally tried 10 servers and was similar results, tried with not many players and was similar, wasn't much fun so exited back to SP.

Seems its the code of missions or something on the servers, need to find some well managed ones to be real sure.

[Lima-14 10]

goto map. leave map.

job done.

Yeah - tried that and nothing happened - (M key isnt it?) - I could hear plenty.. but just saw the message on the screen (blinking)..

At one point I was trying to flank some ofthe enemy on a map (high up in the hills) nothing much around me and then I got the Recieve message and then within 30 seconds it went and I could then carry on..

Regards

Lima-14

[ModeZt 0]

I'm really disapointed that BIS wasted that much resources on singleplayer and did NOTHING to improve the multiplayer. i have both arma1 and arma2 installed and i see NO differense in MP.

God damn! Even the 3years old headbug is not fixed!

[craigsa 0]

I'm really disapointed that BIS wasted that much resources on singleplayer and did NOTHING to improve the multiplayer. i have both arma1 and arma2 installed and i see NO differense in MP.

God damn! Even the 3years old headbug is not fixed!

So what you are telling me I just wasted another 50 GBP? :mad:

I went through this was ARMA1

:(

I dont know why no one listens, what was wrong with OFP? Nothing, if it aint broke dont fix it.

[kremator 1064]

FFS calm down. Things will get fixed. You haven't wasted your money.

Sheesh - place is full of drama queens! You know that BIS will address everything in time.

[craigsa 0]

FFS calm down. Things will get fixed. You haven't wasted your money.

Sheesh - place is full of drama queens! You know that BIS will address everything in time.

Bud all I am saying is that why must we spend money on an unfinished, untested product? I am being a drama queen, as I have to convert 50 pounds to South African rands.

13.68 - 1

A lot of money for this game and the same bloody thing happened last time with ARMA 1, guess what? They never fixed a lot of the stuff.

[Zipper5 74]

Man, some people reaaaaally need to chill out on this forum. I find there are a lot of over-dramatics here. Some people are jumping to conclusions based on what others have said, yet they themselves have the game and haven't actually tried it. They just immediately write it off. To tell you the truth, if that's how you're going to act, then you're not wanted 'round these here parts.

[whisper 0]

yes, over-dramatics indeed. Can you listen also to people stating that things are running fine, or focusing only on people having issues?

If you launch the game expecting to hunt bugs, sure you'll find them. That'd just hide all the good in the game, though. Sad reaction

[craigsa 0]

Man, some people reaaaaally need to chill out on this forum. I find there are a lot of over-dramatics here. Some people are jumping to conclusions based on what others have said, yet they themselves have the game and haven't actually tried it. They just immediately write it off. To tell you the truth, if that's how you're going to act, then you're not wanted 'round these here parts.

Wow thats great so people's opinions are only wanted here if they are good and concur with yours?

I have not played it but many here have and are complaining.

:rolleyes:

[ComadeR 0]

crying baby's dont do me any ascendancy. i've my own opinion. I see a bit of improvemens in MP and i like it.Give time for BIS. It is only one company, which makes games like ofp,arma,arma2 for me for us. be a tolerant :)

[whisper 0]

Wow thats great so people's opinions are only wanted here if they are good and concur with yours?

I have not played it but many here have and are complaining.

:rolleyes:

But you prefer to only read the crying, dismiss other reports trying to describe you what probably happens explaining some issues, and go all "BI sucks balls" way. Many here have and are playing it fine in MP. Why not listen to them also?

[Killerwatt 0]

....I played Ofp for 4years soiled .....

Didn't that get a bit uncomfortable? (not to mention downright smelly?):D

[leeroyka 10]

This post is for a dedicated guy who is willing to understand how basic netcode functions, without all the made up stuff.

Well the whole map doesn't actually get "streamed", otherwise you would have to stream over 1 gig sometimes... Netcode works in different ways.

Simple explanation... in most of the games, (their servers) just send compressed "states" of the whole "dynamic" environment to each player.. You don't have to send the map, it's static on your pc, but everything that can move, change, must be transmitted.

What that means, if you have say 10 players respectively, then their positions, in coordinates (x, y, z), their states (health, ammo, name, etc) are transmitted, along with other code, for example when they are in a vehicle. This applies to objects too. So in fact its very minute packets of data, being sent to every player. Then your computer (client) does the rest, it updates the positions of players, vehicles, objects. As you can imagine, no "graphics" or huge textures are being sent, its mostly vector data with other string information, i.e code, and that is all small.

At the same time, the server constantly receives updates from each player and simulates the "world state" to be transmitted to each player again.

Preferably, that happens many times each SECOND, so in say 1 second you may get 10-40 (or more) updates, and send as many, depending on ping, quality of connection, errors, etc.

As you can see the principle is not difficult, for the Server...to get all information (coordinates, keyboard inputs, mouse inputs, mic inputs) from clients (receive from players), process information, then create a simulated update "world state" of all, to be sent to all players.

But you start running into problems, because this all happens asynchronously and at fast rates, there are delays at each step clients--->server---->clients, so it doesn't happen fluid real time, like a single player game, where the delays are in nanoseconds, not milliseconds.

In good netcode practice (take Valves Source Games i.e. Counter-Strike Source). Alot of the problems could be counter acted, or optimized, with a variety of sneaky and smart techniques. Here are 2.

A) Use of delay compensation... i.e the server remembers, (stores) old states that happened 1 or 2 seconds ago (that's alot of states) so that it can refer to them, and see if you actually shot guy 1, if he was at position x, at real time 1500000 milliseconds. Because your signal was delayed and your shot came through only at real time 1503000 on server, by that time the guy 1, was in position x2. But because it remembered the old states, it can optimize your delay, and see what you actually hit in previous states.

B) Client Side Interpolation (really needed in Arma2)

In reality you (the client) is receiving constant updates of word state, so its like in cinema, you get frames. The higher the frames, the higher the fluidity motion of movement. But these updates are sometimes not frequent enough, you don't get full 30 packets per second (many reasons, server load, bandwidth limits, not enough packets from clients to server) Therefore everything is bound to move jittery, or strangely at one point. BUT! Your computer can interpolate! Which means it can smooth out the motion, or fake some of the movement, between point x and point x1. For example guy 1 has shit connection, he updates to you at intervals each 1/5 of a second, it would seem like he is not running, or moving, but warping on your pc. But knowing at which intervals that happens, your computer can smooth out the movement, between the points, using averages and predictions. Server has awareness of your interpolation too!

Most of the advanced netcode techniques have been pretty much grasped and used in most successful multiplayer/massive multiplayer games. Not so in ArmA2, yet hopefully. The impact of map size or size of environment has less importance on smoothness of gameplay within netcode (not fps or graphics slowdowns) (not load times), as opposed to amount of players and moving objects, on a server. So higher number of players, need more bandwidth and amount of data transmitted.

Good examples and explanations of netcode practices found at http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Source_Multiplayer_Networking

Edited June 24, 2009 by leeroyka

[neurojazz 10]

Yeah, there's nothing like getting a chopper with someone who has a huge ping ;)

[whisper 0]

This post is for a dedicated guy who is willing to understand how basic netcode functions, without all the made up stuff.

Well the whole map doesn't actually get "streamed", otherwise you would have to stream over 1 gig sometimes... Netcode works in different ways.

Simple explanation... in most of the games, (their servers) just send compressed "states" of the whole "dynamic" environment to each player.. You don't have to send the map, it's static on your pc, but everything that can move, change, must be transmitted.

What that means, if you have say 10 players respectively, then their positions, in coordinates (x, y, z), their states (health, ammo, name, etc) are transmitted, along with other code, for example when they are in a vehicle. This applies to objects too. So in fact its very minute packets of data, being sent to every player. Then your computer (client) does the rest, it updates the positions of players, vehicles, objects. As you can imagine, no "graphics" or huge textures are being sent, its mostly vector data with other string information, i.e code, and that is all small.

At the same time, the server constantly receives updates from each player and simulates the "world state" to be transmitted to each player again.

Preferably, that happens many times each SECOND, so in say 1 second you may get 10-40 (or more) updates, and send as many, depending on ping, quality of connection, errors, etc.

As you can see the principle is not difficult, for the Server...to get all information (coordinates, keyboard inputs, mouse inputs, mic inputs) from clients (receive from players), process information, then create a simulated update "world state" of all, to be sent to all players.

But you start running into problems, because this all happens asynchronously and at fast rates, there are delays at each step clients--->server---->clients, so it doesn't happen fluid real time, like a single player game, where the delays are in nanoseconds, not milliseconds.

Most of the advanced netcode techniques have been pretty much grasped and used in most successful multiplayer/massive multiplayer games. Not so in ArmA2, yet hopefully. The impact of map size or size of environment has less importance on smoothness of gameplay within netcode (not fps or graphics slowdowns) (not load times), as opposed to amount of players and moving objects, on a server. So higher number of players, need more bandwidth and amount of data transmitted.

Good examples and explanations of netcode practices found at http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Source_Multiplayer_Networking

ArmA has client side interpolation. The updates from server are sometimes just too separated from each others and it result in warping anyway.

You can see the bad interpolations + too much lag in action when passenger in a vehicle of another player and a lag condition occurs. Sometimes, you'll see the vehicle continue a turn for 1 or 2 seconds, going completely out of road. That's your client interpolating vehicle movement based on last movement recieved, which was a slight turn, but it has zero update from server so it continues to interpolate for long long time. Then suddenly the update comes from the server and your car is back on the road by teleporting, at which point it will turn again out of road (still missing the server next update), then teleporting, and again and again

As for your antilag described in A), good call in principle, I just wonder how a ArmA2 server could handle this knowing the number of unit, size of map, ballistics calculation can potentially (depending on mission) be way higher than a typical antilaged FPS server. Most of the time the ArmA server is probably not that much stressed, but it potentially can be (lot of units possible, big area possible, etc...). This "potentially" put limits to what calculation you can do on each single entity of the game. It's very akin to programming MP engine of a MMO, you can't do all you want because the result could be catastrophic, even a little calculation added can get a worse result than not doing it, because it can be potentially a caculation made a thousand time per second

Don't forget, the original purpose of Virtual Reality Engine is scale, it is designed with this in mind

EDIT : damn, don't I sound patronizing there? :( That was not meant to be, well... I just wanted to state how difficult I felt correcting the MP engine could be

Edited June 24, 2009 by whisper

[Lord Byte 0]

The Multiplayer aspect of this game has got to be the worst I have ever seen in a game. How on this earth are you suppose to play this game online with so much lagg? I have a 10 meg connection and a ping of 17ms, but all I get is massive lagg. Looking back at Ofp and how great that game was, it makes me scratch my head and wonder where Bis went so wrong with this effort. With this game it seems they went wrong at every turn. I played Ofp for 4years soiled and have already given up on Arma 2 up after just 3 days.

Did you actually play OFP multiplayer? It was horribly laggy in the beginning until a few patches later. Usually what people are referring to as lag in this game tends to mean "low framerate". And I highly doubt you have a 100mbps connection :j:

Try to lower detail and fillrate and try again, and ping means nothing for 'lag'. Lag can also be caused if your connection has low up or downstream (due to others on your network downloading / uploading) or due to exceeded download capacity.

[Balgorg 10]

I guess many of these posts are from people who just brought the game over in the US. Good on ya all for speaking up, lots of european gamers seem to worship this game.

Just wondered though if many of you have been playing the evolution maps, for me these by far lagg the worst, and as the first towns to conquer are the largest, this might explain things. I also fell through the floor on Evolution Marines and fell into the ocean, beneath the base. I looked up to see all kinds of 'sh@t' falling in a continous stream from the base into the hidden ocean, like me. It was if the tanks, bikes, trucks, and AI units were re-spawning and falling down in an endless cycle. Any server trying to keep that up is gonna lagg bigtime.

Since the new patch things have improved, and oddly upping resulution and fill rate, as well as setting HDR to 16.

When you consider how hard this game pushes our home computers, its gonna also max out allot of servers, even ones that were formerly running other online game succesfully.

[Yoma 0]

I personally think that the game is not too bad in MP at all. It does suffer from general stability issues which hopefully will get solved. People should realise that making software is not easy and the more complex and demanding the software, the more bugs you will introduce.

People shouting "just do it like ofp" forget that OFP also had tons of patches that fixed tons of issues.

I'm sure BIS will do/are doing their utter best to fix the most important issues.

And for those looking at OFP2: i'm pretty sure that if you liked OFP, you'll love Arma2, but i'm not too sure you'll like OFP2 :o

[Heatseeker 0]

I havent gone MP yet but the claim of OPF having better netcode/performance than Arma in MP is wrong. Arma was better, its just that some missions pushed things too far.

[leeroyka 10]

ArmA has client side interpolation. The updates from server are sometimes just too separated from each others and it result in warping anyway.

You can see the bad interpolations + too much lag in action when passenger in a vehicle of another player and a lag condition occurs. Sometimes, you'll see the vehicle continue a turn for 1 or 2 seconds, going completely out of road. That's your client interpolating vehicle movement based on last movement recieved, which was a slight turn, but it has zero update from server so it continues to interpolate for long long time. Then suddenly the update comes from the server and your car is back on the road by teleporting, at which point it will turn again out of road (still missing the server next update), then teleporting, and again and again

As for your antilag described in A), good call in principle, I just wonder how a ArmA2 server could handle this knowing the number of unit, size of map, ballistics calculation can potentially (depending on mission) be way higher than a typical antilaged FPS server. Most of the time the ArmA server is probably not that much stressed, but it potentially can be (lot of units possible, big area possible, etc...). This "potentially" put limits to what calculation you can do on each single entity of the game. It's very akin to programming MP engine of a MMO, you can't do all you want because the result could be catastrophic, even a little calculation added can get a worse result than not doing it, because it can be potentially a caculation made a thousand time per second

Don't forget, the original purpose of Virtual Reality Engine is scale, it is designed with this in mind

EDIT : damn, don't I sound patronizing there? :( That was not meant to be, well... I just wanted to state how difficult I felt correcting the MP engine could be

Yeah good point. There are difficulties in doing that mostly because apart from the normal players, you get additional dynamic objects as bots. Not sure about ballistics of game, since I think Arma2 does not have actual registering of projectiles in real time, they likely hit with a delay depending on distance or otherwise that would be uber difficult to implement in reality. The size and scale are a problem but the higher size means it expands the scope of the x, y, z coordinates passed with each entity which is again a string/hex/few bytes of data representing numbers. 100,000 points in space (arranged as a cube) can be plotted with x(0-99), y(0-99), z(0-99). It's probably more complicated than that in ArmA2, but still I think its possible to do with large scale maps as in Arma2.

[Dwarden 1124]

server owners needs to start tweak with MinErrorToSend etc ...

these who knows it from OFP/OFPR/ARMA don't need to pay attention to me ...

http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/basic.cfg

http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/ArmA:_Tweaking_Tips

[Eclipse4349 0]

I only read the first page of replies, but...

Don't complain about poor performance when using a bare minimum video card. Your fps will be low. It isn't their fault. On my system, with SLI forced in the control panel using the EVGA SLI Enhancer stickied for Nvidia users in these forums, my FPS is great, smooth as glass, on all high/ very high settings at 1280x1024. Time for an upgrade, gentlemen.

[Cobalt_UK 0]

To the post above mine, of course your fps will be decent with such a dirt poor resolution.