Aces High Bulletin Board

Help and Support Forums => Aces High Bug Reports => Topic started by: hitech on July 17, 2004, 07:46:27 AM

Title: Switching TO TCP Message
Post by: hitech on July 17, 2004, 07:46:27 AM
It is caused by a long load time do to preloading all the textures, and the UDP Connection is timeing out. Untill we put out the next patch you can try a few things. The time out value is set to 15 secs.

1. Lower your max texture size.
2. Try entering the arena twice, the 2nd load can be faster.
3. Turn off preloading.


HiTech
Title: Switching TO TCP Message
Post by: AKWeav on July 17, 2004, 09:35:56 AM
Lowered max texture size, didn't work.

Tried entering arena several times, didn't work.

Had preloading already turned off. Tried turning it on, just booted me faster.

No AH for me until next patch I guess.:(

edit: just checked ping details, wasn't losing any packet for 30 seconds, then stopped receiving them at all.

P4 2.8ghz
1k ram
Nvidia g-force 4 Ti 4600 128meg vid card
cable modem connex
Title: Switching TO TCP Message
Post by: hitech on July 17, 2004, 10:30:29 AM
AKWeav, what your describing dosn't sound like it is releated to the patch.


HiTech
Title: Switching TO TCP Message
Post by: AKWeav on July 17, 2004, 02:34:54 PM
You're right HT, rebooted my modem and all is well.  What a maroon I am:p  My only excuse is it coincided with the patch download.
Title: Switching TO TCP Message
Post by: wigglepog on July 17, 2004, 10:38:25 PM
The same thing happened to me.  I turned pre-load on.  There was a 30 sec or so, "Apply" button depressed, system hang and then lost host.  Reran AHII and am getting the switching to TCP message when the arena comes up.  Still working on it.

zes
Title: Switching TO TCP Message
Post by: 214thCavalier on July 18, 2004, 03:46:26 AM
I was getting horrendous load times of up to 40 seconds from the select arena menu to actually getting into AH.

Checked hard drives with defrag and had some awful fragmentation, including some of the AH files.

This was possibly as a result of acting the dweeb and falling into the Zone alarm start up trap with a new version of AH.

Defragged and now load times from cold are just over 15 seconds which of course gives me TCP message.

However i can now drop back out to the arena menu and reload getting in around 12 seconds with UDP.

Basically defrag your drives it could make all the difference.
Title: Switching TO TCP Message
Post by: paulobrien6969 on July 18, 2004, 04:24:27 AM
tried all the above suggestions and the onlyway i get in the arena with udp(whatever that is) is to turn off preload of textures.
otherwise with preloaded i end up with just tcp(whatever that is)
but can still play
what difference does just playing with tcp make(is it lag?)
and without preload of textures am i going to end up the same as before the patch, with my harddrive causing studders?
game is running smooth with textures loaded and getting switched to tcp, but if its causing lag ,and if i understand lag properly, im going to have a hard time hitting any cons
i have a hard enough time anyway;)

i have had textures set to 512 and preloaded into my 256mb vid card which shows 130 mb used when playing and 200-220 of my 256mb system memory is used(smooth as)
tried 256 textures to, these both produce tcp.
 also putting into just system mem causes about 240mb being used and studder crazy.
will try 128 and see if that works.
Title: Switching TO TCP Message
Post by: paulobrien6969 on July 18, 2004, 05:20:30 AM
switching to 128 made no difference.
time out averaging 40 seconds
Title: Switching TO TCP Message
Post by: wigglepog on July 18, 2004, 02:58:21 PM
Still happening for me.  I will just not pre-load until next patch (seems ok enough without preloading).

btw - What was the Zone Alarm setup issue?


zes
Title: Switching TO TCP Message
Post by: Hyrax81st on July 18, 2004, 04:19:14 PM
I've gotten UDP switching to TCP a couple of times when entering arena (since patch 6). I just exited immediately back to main AH2 screen and went back in and everything was cool. I am DSL connection. I wonder if folks with more severe problems are dial-up?
Title: Switching TO TCP Message
Post by: Blooz on July 18, 2004, 06:34:49 PM
Enter the game offline. The textures will load then exit out to the main menu then enter the arena of your choice.

This gives the game the time it needs to load textures without interfering with your connection.

Worked for me. Hopeful it works for you.
Title: Switching TO TCP Message
Post by: DREDIOCK on July 19, 2004, 06:11:49 AM
Quote
Originally posted by paulobrien6969
tried all the above suggestions and the onlyway i get in the arena with udp(whatever that is) is to turn off preload of textures.
otherwise with preloaded i end up with just tcp(whatever that is)
but can still play

 


Yea just what difference does it make if your are playing connected UDP vrs TCP?
Title: Switching TO TCP Message
Post by: straffo on July 19, 2004, 07:16:15 AM
Quote
Originally posted by DREDIOCK
Yea just what difference does it make if your are playing connected UDP vrs TCP?


UDP is a connection less mode that mean less workload than when using TCP.

In short UDP is faster but less reliable

To use an analogy when using TCP you send numbered bottle supposed to arrive ordered,with UDP you open the pipe ,it's just a stream.
Title: Switching TO TCP Message
Post by: DREDIOCK on July 19, 2004, 09:49:09 AM
Quote
Originally posted by straffo
UDP is a connection less mode that mean less workload than when using TCP.

In short UDP is faster but less reliable

To use an analogy when using TCP you send numbered bottle supposed to arrive ordered,with UDP you open the pipe ,it's just a stream.


But does it really matter?
whats the effect on gameplay?
From what you say it seems like an even tradeoff one way or the other
Title: Switching TO TCP Message
Post by: straffo on July 19, 2004, 10:09:33 AM
hmmm ...

How it will affect the game play ...

If there is a lot of  clients using TCP it increase the workload of the host => not good.
Plus TCP is slower than UDP and the packet are bigger (more bandwith used aka Skuzzy not happy :D)

So obviouly the prefered method of comunication is UDP and do the packet order control on the FE.


If your client is using UDP the impact of  a lost packet depend of how HT coded his predictor

Not having read the code I don't know how much lost packets are
tolerated by the FE ,but i'm sure taht when there is too much UDP packet loss the FE switch to TCP.

Now your FE is using TCP ,a lost packet will  be resent by the host => it resync your FE with the host

But ! to much lost packet and the host will disco you (afterall you suck ressources with your unreliable connection :p)

Dunno if it's clearer but I've to drive home so I'll try to make a better explaination later.
look here http://www.laynetworks.com/Comparative%20analysis_TCP%20Vs%20UDP.htm
Title: Switching TO TCP Message
Post by: 68falcon on July 20, 2004, 01:28:51 PM
Thanks for the education, always wondered what UDP and TCP did.
Title: Switching TO TCP Message
Post by: Pei on July 20, 2004, 09:58:15 PM
TCP is preferred because it is more reliable and consistent: the system swtiches to UDP when network problems are detected because it's overhead is less (in network terms).
Title: Switching TO TCP Message
Post by: straffo on July 21, 2004, 07:29:00 AM
What system are your speaking about Pei ?

Quote
TCP is preferred because it is more reliable and consistent

It's true in low traffic/non real-time application an application .

AH is likely to not use TCP primarily,just  for performance reason
Title: Switching TO TCP Message
Post by: Wizer on July 22, 2004, 05:50:27 PM
Quote
Originally posted by AKWeav
Lowered max texture size, didn't work.

Tried entering arena several times, didn't work.

Had preloading already turned off. Tried turning it on, just booted me faster.

No AH for me until next patch I guess.:(

edit: just checked ping details, wasn't losing any packet for 30 seconds, then stopped receiving them at all.

P4 2.8ghz
1k ram
Nvidia g-force 4 Ti 4600 128meg vid card
cable modem connex

AKWeav, I have the same vid card as you and reentering the arena worked for me.  Also turned preloading off and that also worked.   Wizer
Title: Switching TO TCP Message
Post by: JCLerch on July 23, 2004, 12:46:47 PM
hitech,

Just wanted to chime in,  as of this AM, I *WAS* getting this message.

Just downloaded the latest AHtest.exe, and I no longer get the message.

Cable Modem -> Linksys firewall -> WinXP (No software firewall, or other networking filters on local workstation)

BTW, No complaints with the test version, seems to run OK.

James
Title: Switching TO TCP Message
Post by: hitech on July 23, 2004, 12:50:22 PM
JCLerch, cc didn't note it, but it is fixed in the test version.

HiTech
Title: Switching TO TCP Message
Post by: Scrap on July 24, 2004, 02:56:07 AM
Hitech, Skuzzy:

One funny thing about texture loading.  I had a problem earlier this week with razor toothed variance across the network.  this produced very bad lag.  The problem has now been isolated... but I found that now when i turn on texture loading, my varience looks similar to when I had corrupt AH files.  My PC runs 512M of RAM,  and only uses half of that while running AHII  )and I'm loading into sys mem).  It hardley effects my gameplay like the last problem... but I thought loading tex' was supposed to help things.  Right now it only makes my gamplay sub-par.  I do just fine without it.

BTW, if switching to TCP is a problem for any of you... boot into offline first.  Then go live (online).  This helped me shake the TCP switch even with the corrupt AH files causing bad net lag.