Lag detector?

[Revan]

I think this would be an interesting concept. If someone dies by lag instead of saying <user> coredumped <user> for <#> points. The lag detector could notify that the player was killed by lag. An option in server configurations could also be something like LAG_KILL, meaning how many points awarded when lag is a factor in the kill. Or it could just notify the players that the player was killed by lag so we don't have to stress our fingers typing three letters.. or to prove that kills are usually not caused by lag...

LAG_DETECTOR - Choose this option if you want the server to detect lag. 0 is off 1 is on.

LAG_NOTIFY - Choose this option if you want the server to tell the players that a kill was caused by lag. 0 is off 1 is on.

LAG_KILL_SWITCH - Choose this option if you want the server to award a certain amount of points if lag is a factor in the kill. 0 is off 1 is on.


There's probably a downside to this. But I think it would be pretty useful.

Note: I have hardly any, if NO experience in programming so I have no clue how to implement this into Armagetron.

[DDMJ]

What happens if someone with dialup is in the game. Are you saying that no one will gets points for killing them

[Z-Man]

What would qualify a kill as a lag kill? Latency has an influence on all close encounters. I tried to come up with rules, but could not come up with any.

Note that I'm biased against it. We've got people crying lag all over the place allready, I don't want to encourage that. However, if we find really good criteria the server can check that detect real lag kills, this could have a positive effect; false lag cryers could be identified then.

[Sticky]

I recomend an instant banning for anyone who uses the word lag and has had few pings above 200 in the last 10 min. Harsh I know...but fair.

[Jonathan]

I've had crazy 'lag' with round-trip times on the order of 50 ms.

[wrtlprnft]

The pure ping value says about nothing about the lag you're experiencing. What counts is how stable the ping is. If I play on my WLAN somewhere far away from the router it sometimes loses connection for some ten seconds, which isn't reflected in the ping value at all, but you can guess that it means certain death for me.

[Jonathan]

Your example is actually packet loss (not RTT stability at a low level). Both were affecting me in my example.

[Revan]

What happens if someone with dialup is in the game. Are you saying that no one will gets points for killing them

If the server was set to do so, yes. I wouldn't recommend setting a server up that doesn't reward players that have lag. I would rather have a detector that informs the players that lag was a factor of a kill.

[Sticky]

What happens if someone with dialup is in the game. Are you saying that no one will gets points for killing them

If the server was set to do so, yes. I wouldn't recommend setting a server up that doesn't reward players that have lag. I would rather have a detector that informs the players that lag was a factor of a kill.

This is a awful idea, its similar to the netcoding that almost destroyed halflife online. The benefits of high ping outweighed the disadvantages so that people induced lag in order to gain them. Again in tron I would be willing to play at 200 ping if it meant no one got points for killing me.

Perhaps a small ping graph could be displayed for each player on request, including dropped frames or showing unstable ping, then at least you can shut people up who cry lag all the time with evidence.

Although I can imagine it now

Code: Select all

"player 1: OMG lag"
"player 2: Your ping hasnt changed in 5 min"
"player 1: Look it went from 50 to 51 when you killed me.  how can anyone play like this"

Or maybe just a simple value showing peoples mean ping and the variance, then instability would show up as a high variance. Box plot would probably be the ideal display but a bit difficult in the space in the score table.

Also what I find much worse is the degradation in fps as servers get full(and on ctf in long games). I have tried running a profiler but haven’t seen anything one thing that by itself will make a big dent in performance if optimised. Any ideas how to improve the fps greatly(other than the usual stuff like buy a better gfx card or overclock it)?