Gaming Madness Community Forum

sorry for the following long post...

i have some questions about some older known "glitches", bugs or w/e,
if they are fixed yet or not, since some seem to be gone or not reported
or not recognized or not appeared in a way like it did some time ago.

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problem 1
after opening weapon crate:
suddenly loosing all weapons when scrolling/cycling through all weapons from crate. fixed yes or no?!?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
problem 2
after opening weapon crate:
suddenly loosing all weapons when throwing away (useless) weapons from crate. fixed yes or no?
------------------------------------------------------------------------

i didnt recognize these 2 problems in last time from other players, and i was
too scared about loosing all stuff again like it happend so often some time ago.
so i rarely opened it last time myself.

thats why i asked if these are fixed or if it was because of some (now deactivated)
special new weapons in the crate, which i cant remember.

btw. in 179 the benelli shotgun "sometimes" caused the same effect,
the suddenly complete weaponloss when it was tossed away. dunno if
these 3 special weapon losses have something in common.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
problem 3
now another thing that really pi$$es me off. that critial errors that kick you from server with that
powerup runaway loop, which were reported hundreds of times in old 179-bugforum.

the thing is: all these month, when 180 only was "testserver" (development), i and many
others played there a lot, also in last test phases when more than 3-5 players played,
it nearly never happend to me (or others..). nearly means like 2-3 times since 180
existed as playable version.

now the question: why the fkn hell did i NOW get suddenly so often kicked out of the game
nearly every second map again and again by these old sh!t sh!tical errors from that powerup
runaway loop problem?

what is NOW different to the time when it "only" was testserver?

also i recogniced i have this problem when titan rocks hit me (like it happend
so often in good old 179-time, but never happend when used 2 titan pu´s, which
now isnt possible anymore), when titans crush me (when they be "tossed" at me),
when deemers hit me from blue luzi.
rocks and deemers when in close range to titan or luzi, when they are far away and they
hit me with rocks or deemer it happens rarely.

also sometimes when my screen was overflooded with close range explosions when beeing
surrounded by millions of monsters.

why did that never happen before? was it really "saver" to have 2 titan-pus so this problem
was nearly gone?

i cant tell.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
problem 4
the weaponloss because of "laaag".
means:
1. (monsters and players) weapon fire starts to disappear
2. powerups not visible anymore
3. monsters starts to be invisible
4. powerup inventory blanking out
5. new players appear as "monsters" with no name and healthbar on their heads
6. weaponswitch causes loss of the previous weapon.
7. totally "empty" map, nothing is visible, but you hear millions of bullets and monsters around you

so... this was supposed to be not happening anymore. this problem i also had only
like 3-4 times since 180 was ready to play on dev-server.

now a handfull players told me they have this problem since server re-opend with 179 after it was broken.

i recogniced i cant do traceroute to server anymore, something close to to mm-server or the server itself
is blocking the request.

so my questions are, is that sort of security "fix"? or maybe some kind of bandwidth-filtering, like decreasing
connection speed or bandwidth when players have higher pings?

would be nice if someone could find that out since its really strange when its true that this problem is for some
us- and eu-players since restart of 179 server some "days" ago and "never" had it before. ("never" means every
now and then and not 24/7 whenever they try to play)



ats

So question on question number4. Was there packet loss going on? I've noticed that when PL is going on that happens.

oh well, hehe, for some reason i waited for THAT question
but you may not like that loooooooooong answer
well, the answer isnt only for you, its in general for all who think packet loss is only a servers fault,
in hope they read this, too...

i didnt write about the packet loss problem because this weaponlossproblem started for some players
after the relaunch of the new 179server after old server was broken. so it was more question about
coincidence or if serversided settings could have changed some things what have to do with connection,
connection speed, etc.. specifications and technical datas about that is a bit too high for me...

in my opinion, there are three main "things" that could be reason for this weapon-loss-"laaaag".

(32%)
dia-bllo tried to explain it with that:
http://www.gamingmadness.org/forum/view ... dia#p20604

like i said if it goes to deep into technical details, it starts to be chinese for me. but as far i
understood that, he (dia-bllo) wanted to say that the stuff about netspeed and tickrate also
could lead to the same weapon loss problem WITH NOT EVEN ONE player having packet loss!


(32%)
joeyz wrote:
http://www.gamingmadness.org/forum/view ... f=2&t=2257

well, sorry, looks the full article is missed because forum moved some years ago
and paintball only had a 1-2 years old backup from the forum, as far i remember.
google cache failed this time

he (joeyz) described there with pictures, how much monsters and players weapon projectiles
produce massive data "spam" when they hit each other and "no" effect should happen,
for example, in the original invasion mod monsters fight each other if one monster
"accidently" hits another one, this one turns around and shoots back.

this "feature" was mostly deleted or deactivated from the code, or maybe bypassed
in the way monsters now can shoot "through" monsters so hit collision information
is only working when player hit player or monster, or if monster hit player.

he also described why a lot of flak-razors and/or bio-spam from one or more players
caused massive lags due to hundreds of high resolution "projectiles", which could cause
clientside lags because of old "slow" gfx cards, because of too slow connection for that massive
ammount of data for these hundreds of projectiles and the massive splashdamge effects from
bio on players and monsters.
(bio is only example, rl spreads doing same, just not so fast and this high ammount of "bullets")

so he managed to reduce this massive "data spam" to a minimum, and like you can see now
on 180, it really works with at least 2 players spamming a superforced bio with two(!) spreads loaded
while also 2 players used flak razors the same time with no lag-effect!
still need to test what happens if 16 players use it (bio) ! in a huge map.

as far i remember he also said because of this massive data nearly everything is slowed down,
server, connection and client. which could lead to the next.

(32%)
packet loss
comes and goes, happens out of nowhere. if a player has a "normal" connection, the packetloss
shown in the playerlist, when you hit "esc", is allmost "0", also nearly every player has "PL"
every now and then, but "only" shown as "1" or "2" as maximum then turning back to "0".
it happens for every player a handfull times every map WITHOUT any recognisable effect.

if PL is higher than "2" and appears more often than 3-4 times every minute over a long time,
you get these weapon-(fire and-pu-) loss-problem in the described order from my question #4.

what is causing "PL"?
that can also have some reasons. mostly its the "bottleneck-syndrome". the problem is,
most players think, that a "connection" is just "one" (direct!) line from him to the gameserver.
but thats not true, there are many servers/server nodes between them. and because we
are talking about and playing ut, i like to call that "connection-line" -> "path"
and the "server-nodes"->"path-nodes".
in the maps its the same. bots/monsters need these "paths" and "pathnodes" to be able
to "find" every corner of the map. if a path or pathnode is missing they might end up
beeing "trapped" at one place, not "knowing" what to do.
so, back to the connection. if a server or server node is too busy, overloaded or maybe
broken/missing, where do your ut2k4-datas go, which you need to play without "laaag"??

right, it needs the same time you needed to read the last question to find a way around that
"bottleneck", because of too many packets suddenly gets "traffic jammed", these overloaded
servers mostly first sort out ("trashcan") the unimportant stuff like game-traffic, cause
more payed business comes first to serve... thats why "our" packets move into "bytewana"
and were never seen again... like the weapons you are missing now when it happens to you.

so, i hope everyone understands now why "you" with the best new most expensive
high-end-pc and/or "you" with the (from your provider announced as promised to be)
best and highest available (internet-)"connection"(-speed)), are not able to play
comfortable with that equipment if something is "wrong" between you and the server...!!!

how can you check if you are victim of the "PL"?

for that i make a extra-topic in the guide-area here:

http://www.gamingmadness.org/forum/view ... 196#p35196


(4%)
the rest.. serverfarm is overloaded, server is overloaded with old data, server is going to die...
and other known or unknown things that i not think of atm...

the % is just my personal feeling about it...

oh well... and another long reading... i hope you understand it all..

ats

Interesting post Amy. I get PL sometimes but not often enough to bother me. I also use a wireless mouse and a wireless connection. I do notice that some others do get PL a lot. I also clean out my cache every now and then.