On the subject of connections

Bleh for P2P

By NwExilon on September 5, 2008 3:36:13 PM from

Since both Demigod and SupCom are built on the same engine, it's not suprising that the two games have similar techinical problems.

One of those I would identify as critical is the intolerable amount of bandwidth the game requires from each player in the game.

For those not privvy, this is how the current system works:

Player A hosts the game and B, C, and D join said game. A connects to B C D. B connects to A C D... and ecetera. That means there's 3 connections for each player and 4 players in the game, resulting in 12 total connections. Each connection is critical to the game, because if one fails, the lobby returns a "nil" and the game cannot start. In short, for n players, there are n P 2 points of failure.

Every single P2P RTS I've played has run into this problem. I.E. In Age of Mythology, larger custom games were a pain to host simply because people could not connect to each other.

The nil issue isn't even the worst offender in P2P models. In SCFA, 3v3 and 4v4 may take ages to start because someone with a CONE NAT joined, but of the games that launch quickly, about 1/8-2/8 are also quickly aborted due to lag. The P2P model is highly sensitive to a poor connection because of its bandwidth requirement on all players. A 8 player game in SCFA would take a stable 150kbps to run smoothly, not including the overhead, and obviously, not everyone can cough up the required bandwidth.

GPG/Stardock needs to take a serious look at this problem. Among those that killed SupCom's population count, network lag ranks among crashes and high system requirements (aka scalability sucked). Either strip down the bandwidth requirements or move to a host to peer model, like WC3's custom games.

TL:DR - Bandwidth sucks and Demigod's sucking up alot of it.

+1 Karma | 8 Replies

I´ve got extremely lags playing over hamachi.

Playing versus AI is very smooth.

I don´t think it´s because of my internet connection, it´s not very fast, but I´m not having such extreme lags in any other game (when I´m connecting to an US server [I´m from Germany]).

When I ping all players I play with, I get resulst from ~50ms to ~180ms. Not a reason for mass lag in my opinion.

So my question is: Is the netcode just messed up with Demigod?

The fact of the matter is this isn't what multiplayer will be running off unless it is an actual LAN. Hamachi is just used to link our computers. Do not worry about how multiplayer lags until we get to that phase of the beta. This lag is just a side effect of using hamachi, nothing to panic about.

Edit: If someone could try an actual LAN and see if it has good connection that would narrow it down to hamachi for sure.

Quoting Kogue,

reply 2

I've already tried a lan. On my old computer the game was real laggy, but I'm amazed that it even worked, because it's been having some real problems. It was connected to my newer computer which ran it amaizingly smoothly, even with my lag, it ran the game at it's best rate possible, and the only real waiting time was at the start of the game, I was amazed how well it worked for a Beta.

When I said check a lan(not hamachi lan a real lan) I meant check it with suitable computers and see if the connection problem stills exists. If it doesn't then hamachi is the problem, if it does its the way the game connects.

I've played some games without lag. Some that stopped now and then, and hiccuped rather frequently.

Last game was going at like 1/4 speed :/

I guess we'll see when it works with online play. Phase2 will i think?

In supcom there was a 500ms delay that alleviated the small hiccups.. Such a long delay wouldn't work in a game like Demigod.

It's not hamachi. It's the way the game engine works. Every player has to be connected to every other player. When using hamachi and getting nils, that simply means the two computers can't find each other because they aren't on the same network. Hamachi is even a solution to the nil problem that SCFA suffers because it's a VPN tunnel that allows people behind CONE NATs to play with each other.

When you're in a physical lan, there's basically unlimited (well, 100/1000mbps) bandwidth so that doesn't tell us anything. In the real LAN, connections don't have to be routed across WAN and LAN so the CONE NAT problem doesn't rear its ugly head. The real problem is that players over the internet sometimes can't cough up the upload required for the game. Even if the amount these players is less than 2% of the population, that's still 16% that you have one (all it takes to ruin a game) in a 4v4 game and even higher in 5v5. The same goes for nils

OP makes a very interesting point, and I hope the devs look into it.

The real problem is that players over the internet sometimes can't cough up the upload required for the game. Even if the amount these players is less than 2% of the population, that's still 16% that you have one (all it takes to ruin a game) in a 4v4 game and even higher in 5v5.

Side Effect of using hamachi instead of a real LAN. This is why using hamachi is a problem at the moment instead of an actual gameserver. These problems do not need to be looked at until another phase of testing.

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On the subject of connections

Bleh for P2P