=jps=sgtrock

The effects of ping times on network play. Ah, a subject that I know extremely well. I've been known to blather away on this subject for hours at a time. Cop a squat, young padawans, and prepare to be Enlightened. I've played shooters over the Internet for what seems like forever. You oldtimers out there may remember a handful of little utilities called tcpsetup, iDOOM, and iFrag that came out in the mid '90s. They allowed playing Doom ][, an IPX based game, over TCP/IP by providing a tunnel that encapsulated the traffic between networks. This in turn led to playing building to building across college campus networks, then to playing across the Internet. So far as I know, that was the very first time that anyone had the capability to play a shooter that way. I'm not positive, but I think that tcpsetup was also the first tool that provided any kind of TCP/IP connection for a PC running MS-DOS. It was certainly one of the earliest. A buddy of mine and I had been playing Doom ][ over the corporate LAN on the weekends when we had to come in to do maintenance. When I first found out about iFrag a couple of months after it was first released, I jumped on it. The idea of gaming across the Internet from home sounded like an absolutely wonderful idea! I used to use iFrag to connect to 4 player deathmatch games on a dialup modem at 9600 bps. Yep, back in the Stone Age. I regarded playing Doom that way as laggy but playable as long as no one used the plasma gun. The plasma gun fired relatively slow moving rounds at the rate approximately 20 rounds per second. Every round's position had to be updated to every player. Combine that with the fact that IPX could be an extremely chatty protocol, and you can imagine the lag effects that created for my gaming. Now, of course, I don't think I could stand anything like that delay. Anyhow, I naturally developed a bit of an obsession about learning how networks and network protocol design affect game play. I also used to design, install, and maintain networks for a living, so I understand the fundamentals at a level that 99.9% of players simply don't have the background for. There are four basic factors that affect your online gaming; player reaction time, network delay (best measured in in-game round trip pings), dropped data packets (rarely tracked well in-game), and how well the game engine is written to withstand the impact of the latter two. Reaction time varies somewhat by individual. However, measurement studies have demonstrated that most people process stimuli in about a tenth of a second, or 100 ms. This matters when you are comparing your ping to everyone else on a server. For example, assume that you are running at 300 ms and everyone else is at 100 ms or less. This puts you at a real disadvantage because they see you 2 tenths of a second before you see them. Basically, you're dead before you even know they're there. This is why it's important that game servers accurately report all player ping times. (This is one of America's Army failings, btw. It reports your time accurately, but everyone else's is reported as much lower than they actually are.) Now, assume that everyone is at 200 ms. Great! Parity! However, the lag will be noticeable when firing because you have to lead more than you normally would have to. Not the end of the world, but it does make going from a high ping to low ping server a little difficult to adapt to. It's even worse going the other way, though. Round trip ping is affected by several factors which are beyond your control. The most obvious is simply the distance between you and a server. There's the speed of light to deal with and propagation delay through all the intervening network equipment. Propagation delay is by far the bigger component that slows your traffic. That means that the further away a server is in network terms the higher your base ping will be. For example, if your PC is on Comcast's network and your buddy's server is on the local wireless ISP, you might experience a minimum ping over 100 ms even if his server is right next door. Your traffic might be going through a dozen or more routers plus a shared vendor connection that might be hundreds of miles away. More typically, though, you can figure roughly 70-100 ms for every 1,000 miles or so between you and a server. That's why playing across oceans generally means 200+ ms ping times. Another factor is the network bandwidth available at the server. Someone attempting to run a server in their house on the end of a DSL link simply won't be able to provide the same level of service as someone who has a server located in an ISP's datacenter. The last major factors that affect ping times are your client's and the server's ability to process information as it comes in. You can control your own PC, but you are at the mercy of the server admins. If they have set the player count too high, your gaming will suffer. It'll show up first as higher pings, then as dropped packets at the server. Packet loss. This is what causes what people on this forum call desync. Dropped packets obviously means lost information. As packet loss gets progressively worse, you'll end up with an unusable connection no matter how well the game engine is structured. Packet loss used to be fairly common back in the bad old days of dirty dialup links and over saturated frame relay WAN links. The most common cause today is generally one of two factors. It's either ISPs filtering traffic or overloaded servers. In any case, if you run into it, you're generally best off just dropping that server from your favorites list and finding another more stable one. The best game engines are designed to be tolerant of both widely varying pings coming from the clients and lost data. However, it's a tough proposition for a game engine like ArmA that wants to scale up to more than 60 players per server. That's especially true when the game server has to track and update clients with the status of more than a million objects! Now, throw in ballistics for Ghu knows how many rounds that may in the air at once, then players who will be doing all kinds of crazy things. It's a wonder that any game engine runs at all! ArmA takes things a step further, too. It allows for server performance tuning in ways that other games don't by forcing all players to use the same visual settings for selected variables. The single biggest factor that can be affected this way is probably shadows. Shadows can be a critical part of the game play because their presence or lack makes a huge difference in whether or not a player is easily spotted. However, shadows can also be a cause for lag on an underpowered client. If you've read this entire post, you probably know more about networks than you ever cared to. Now that you are network Jedis, your patience will be rewarded by a few more words of wisdom from your master. In my long playing experience, I've found that any network game was very playable with no noticeable lag if my own lag stays below 100 ms. If my own lag rises to 150 ms, the affect on my play is noticeable but tolerable. If it rises to 200 ms, lag becomes noticeable enough that I'll drop and look for a closer or less loaded server. However, I will play on a server with up to 250 ms ping if I can't find a closer server. Frankly, I can't wait until I have a selection of solid servers to choose from here in the U.S.

That assumes that you actually want to wade through the entire SP campaign in order to unlock everything. Or is the manual wrong and it's no longer required? If it still is required, no thanks. I didn't buy ArmA for the SP campaign. I bought ArmA just for the MP and the editing.

I have fond memories of being shot repeatedly by The Avon Lady on one of the few occasions that I could get the MP stuff to run. This was back before the first patch was out, I think. I stumbled across mention of her FAQ on the boards here and found it to be a very useful resource. I will miss it, too. Thank you for all of your quality work!

Well, the first thing to keep in mind is that the sheer scale of everything is so much bigger than your clan is used to. Many clans find it useful to set up at least a cursory set of ranks just because it helps to stay organized. A great discussion of a more formal organization can be found on dslyecxi's website: http://dslyecxi.com/ofpttp.html Even so, I can't give you an answer without knowing more. For example, are you planning to compete in organized events? Plan to spend most of your time doing big co-op missions? Simply want to dominate as a group when you're playing on public servers? If the answer to any of those questions is yes, I think that you'll find that at least some organization will be necessary to succeed.

Several games have come out over the past few years that allowed for muting text and voice spammers by the individual players. I regard this as a critical feature for voice for any server that I run. If it's not there, then I'll just have to run my ArmA server with VON disabled. Too bad, because it's such a useful feature!

There are plenty of companies that know how to handle downloadable games. Take a look at the way that Steam games typically work, for example. There are other small publishers who don't automatically assume that you're out to screw them. I think the real lesson is, "Don't ever buy a game from Sprocket. They already think you're a thief." Too bad, too. I was seriously considering buying a copy of the English downloadable version from them. I'm not going to now. Not after reading all these horror stories. I wonder how many other sales have been lost over this debacle?

A buddy of mine noticed that the .50 cal ammo for the tank seemed very low. When he told me this, I fired up the CTI mission to check that, the coax, and main armament. As near as I can tell, there are only 200 rounds available. Half of them can apparently only be fired if the commander is 'turned out'. The coax is limited to only a couple thousand rounds. The two websites that I checked says the M1 is supposed to have 2,000 rounds of .50 cal and 12,400 rounds of 7.62 for the coax. No wonder it feels like I'm shooting the tank dry so quick. The main armament is very close, though. The M1 comes with a standard load of 40 rounds, half sabot and half HE. Those same two websites agreed that is correct for an M1A2. Are the tanks in the full version also this limited in MG ammo? TIA

OK, I'll buy that. I don't much about the storage on an M1. Still, I am kind of puzzled. I remember reading somewhere about German tanks during WWII that were able to reload the coax MG by just adding continually feeding belts to it. All the ammo was supposedly accessible from within the tank's cab. I also think I once saw a video of someone firing a Sherman's coax MG from within the turret. That one was also belt fed, and I could swear I could recall seeing a couple of ammo boxes stored on the wall. I guess I find it hard to believe that the M1 didn't learn something from the lessons learned back then.

The Jackpine Savages are waiting. w00t!

I've done a quick search here on and on the wiki without any success. Has someone compiled a list of all the map symbols? Or does the map use a standard symbol set that I can refer to? TIA

Whiners. Haven't they ever heard of Murphy's Law of Combat #39? "Tracers point both ways."

Simple typo? "blah" vs. "Blah"? Note, I know nothing about coding in either of BI's scripting languages. I've just had painful experience with languages that get case sensitive at the strangest times.

I didn't know that. Maybe use a different object then? Yep. I played CTF (among other games) when I was in boot camp. I suppose I should mention that I was a squid, not a grunt, though. I've also been playing CTF in all kinds of games since Threewave first released the mod for QuakeWorld, so I flatter myself that I know a bit about what works and what doesn't for this particular game type. Well, I know what works for me. Soccer??? Meh. Over the past few decades the rules changes have devolved it into the single most boring game on the planet. Me, I've always preferred hockey. You will actually see more scoring than the usual snore fest that you get with soccer. Even with the slower pace when it's played on a Olympic rink. Back on topic. I still contend that if CTF is played as essentially TDM in tournament play, then it's broken. If scores are consistently counted in binary, then IMO it's broken badly. It's definitely time to re-think the mod in that case. Ah well. If I'm right, some decent coder will come up with an alternative that works. If I'm wrong, then I'll be playing another type of game. God, I love the moddability of OpFlash and ArmA!

If scores are so low, then the game isn't worth playing because it becomes virtually impossible for a team to come back once they're down by two caps. Look, I'm not advocating hard core Rambo play. However, if we're going to use a game goal like CTF then we should recognize that we've already stepped away from the idea of the game as a military sim to some degree. Why not reward a team by giving them an opportunity to advance a flag slowly across a map by constantly touching a flag to prevent its return? If you've ever played the original Team Fortress or any other mod that used the same mechanism, you'd know how much more fun it can be. Trust me, it really adds a lot to a CTF mod. P.S. I'm also not advocating a really long timer on a flag before its return. IIRC it was something like 60 or 90 seconds for TF. Believe me, it seems a lot longer when you're a flag defender!

Wow! Great list! Thanks!

I wouldn't be bragging about CTF scores like that. If those are typical, then vanilla CTF is broken. Scores should be more like 6-4 or 7-3. There is a nice way of opening up the game, though. The Team Fortress design team figured out an elegant answer years ago. You simply set a timer on the flag once it's dropped instead of returning it as soon as the friendly team touches it. As long as the opposing team doesn't touch it, it eventually returns on its own. Makes for great battles all over a map instead of constantly battling in the same couple of places. It enhances CTF by making it more open ended. Defensive minded types need to adapt to constantly changing circumstances. All in all, it's a great way to play CTF.

VMWare or wine wouldn't work at all on my Linux server because I'm not running XWindows on it. I have an agreement with my ISP to keep it as clean as humanly possible to reduce attack vectors to the bare minimum. Since they're letting me keep it in their computer room and giving me network connectivity for free, I kinda want to stay on their good side. Man, if I have to consider putting a GUI on my gameserver just to run Armed Assault, my clan will just have to find another game to play. This is a HUGE dealbreaker for me. And I love everything else that I see about this game!

Anyone heard any more word on the Linux server? TIA

Why are all the English speakers focussed on just the boxed version? Isn't anyone planning to at least look at the downloadable version from Sprocket?

Howdy, all. I'm the clan leader for the Jackpine Savages. ArmA is the first game in years that I'm excited about enough to suggest to my guys that we may have found a spiritual home for the foreseeable future. I'm really looking forward to the possibility of getting in some organized competitive team play with this game. Heck, even if we never join a ladder or league I think we'll still have a lot of fun pubbing with this game. Anyhow, I like to have a good idea about how all of the various vehicles and weapons work in any new game so I can plan our overall strategy based upon a realistic appraisal of the strengths and limitations of what we'll be working with. I generally try out every weapon at least for a while as part of my preparation for that role. The last time we played a game as a clan that utilized transport helos was the Desert Combat mod for BF42. That was a fairly fast paced game to begin with. The BF42 engine also let a player decide when to pull the rip cord, so it was easy to do HALO jumps. The view distance was also limited with that engine, so it was generally easy to get high enough up into the haze that you couldn't be seen from the ground. Finally, most maps had helos that respawned in about 45 seconds. This combination of factors led us to develop a tactic for infantry insertion that was pretty effective. We would load up a set of Blackhawks and/or Little Birds with an assault force and get some altitude while approaching the target. When we were within range, the fireteam or squad leader would call for a bail out. Everyone, including the pilots, would bail at once and start gliding towards their designated drop zones while the helos crashed well away from where we were actually headed. We'd pop the rip cords as low to the ground as possible. Our best guys could time it so that they were actually below the roof line of a two story building before their chute opened. As guys died, the ones designated for continual assaults would spawn back by the helos and repeat the tactic. This strategy gave us several benefits. First, it was pretty easy to achieve tactical surprise. Spotting guys who are gliding in from high up is a lot tougher than looking for helos or parachutes hanging in the sky. Second, it meant that our exposure to enemy fire while still in the sky was minimized to the greatest extent possible. Third, we got pretty good at pinpoint insertions so there was very little delay in getting organized once we had dropped on target. OpFlash and ArmA obviously have very different characteristics. It looks like it's going to be much tougher to achieve the same level of tactical surprise. However, there's no denying the value of insertions via helo, so I want to learn what works and what doesn't. I've only got the demo while I wait for an official English language release, so I'm obviously limited in what I can try out. I've watched dslyecxi's Little Bird insertion/extraction video on Google several times. I've also been practicing flying the Blackhawk and the Russian equivalent on the CTI map. Let me say right now that I'm not a very good pilot. My questions are more about control systems and technique. First, I'm using an old Microsoft Sidewinder joystick with the built-in slider, one hat switch, and 8 or 9 other buttons. I've set the slider for the throttle and the hat switch to the "look" commands. Primary and secondary fires are bound to the usual places. I haven't done anything else with the other buttons yet. Please don't suggest getting another joystick that would let me do HOTAS. I don't fly enough to justify the cost. While it looks like TrackIR would be a nice addition to my rig, I'm also holding off on buying one for the time being. Within these limitations, does this sound like an OK control arrangement? Should I forget about using the slider for the throttle and use the keyboard instead? Just what is the best way to land? The flare technique that dslyecxi does so effortlessly in his training video is pretty tough to do when you don't know what you're doing. Do I want to approach the drop zone under full power? Half? Something else? Should I be losing altitude from 'way out with a nice long run to the DZ? That seems like it might be a good way to get an entire squad killed against good opponents. If I'm coming in low and fast, how do I bleed off speed without losing altitude? If I try to flare, I end up high up, stationary, with my nose elevated so much I can't see where I'm supposed to land. If I try to drop the throttle slowly while slowly transitioning from nose down to level, I take too long. I also generally end up pretty high, again making the chopper a fat, juicy target. If I try just trying to hold the chopper level while dropping the chopper by reducing the throttle, I inevitably end up landing hard as I generally come down too fast. Also, I'm such a bad pilot that I almost always end up side slipping or drifting forward or back. Another question that I've got is how to judge altitude, rate of climb or descent, and position with respect to the LZ when the nose is up. Do you pick a couple of landmarks on your way in and use those to help guide the final approach? Not let the nose get too high? Something else? TIA for all the help that you can give me.

What about right and left rudder? Do you use the twist of your joystick, or assign left and right keys? Thx again for everyone's tips.

As I stated in my original post, I only have the demo at the moment. That means no editor, and only two helos to try flying. Besides, even if I had the editor I still wouldn't have the answers to my questions. Or would I? So, what can I do with just the demo except keep flying?

So would I! If the Linux server comes out and we don't see the dreaded StarForce copy protection on an English language version, I'm jumping into this game with both feet. If I don't have a Linux server, I can't host it. If I can't point my clan to a version without StarForce, they won't play it. Here's hoping that we'll score a twofer! All hail BI, rulers of our gaming destiny!

Just for the heck of it, I fired up the demo coop mission on night and fair skies and wandered over to a hilltop. I looked north for about 20 minutes trying to pick out the North Star and the two Dippers. No luck. I could have sworn that I was able to successfully navigate at night in OpFlash using just the stars. The night sky in ArmA doesn't seem correct to me. All of the stars seem to have almost identical observed magnitude on my display. Has anyone else tried this?

Old thread that I found when I was looking for something else. I just wanted to add my .02c US that this is /exactly/ the kind of mission that I love to play. It sounds somewhat similar to the seizure of the airport near the end of the original OpFlash campaign. That's a huge compliment, because I always thought was one of the best missions in the single best vendor supplied SP campaign that I've ever played. Good on ya for doing it! With that said, I'd love to see someone add some additional effects to this mission that are similar to what Cameron was talking about. He's right in one respect. That kind of attention to detail is what takes a mission or campaign from very, very good to great. Still waiting to buy the game in the U.S. so I can play all this wonderful user driven content!