Choke and Lag spikes

[Jager]

Jager source uses a mostly decoupled engine, it's not like Enemy Territory where your graphical framerate and the game's framerate are tied. The closest we get is that your rates can never be higher than your framerate but whatever you set your rates to is still the maximum if you set it lower than your framerate. Case in point I use an uncapped framerate and I get no choke even at over 400fps... unless the server is doing a dumb and trying to send me too much data while they have their rates capped too low on their end.

 

There's just no physical means for your FPS being higher to affect your choke since choke is purely the server wanting to send you more data than it actually can for any reason their side or yours. Go check whisper's or the Valvewiki if you don't believe me.

 

There's something else going on here. NLS CEL: Are you on wireless or trying to connect to someone across the world or something?

 

youd be surprised what can happen, we had fps_max 500 set in the force client section of the server.cfg and it was forcing clients to unbound their fps max, which caused ridiculous amounts of lag. (unintentional error but still one that almost killed the reg css server for 3 days.) dropping that one command fixed the registry and lag issues that everyone was complaining about.

 

While the orange box does not suffer from the limitation, CS:s still does, too much, or not high enough fps can cause choke/lag issues for your client. while it may not make a huge difference, binding your fps to a set ceiling removes a possible issue . and if you are using vsync, turn that off.

 

 

as for the OP's issues if you are on wireless and vista or win7 you probably are experiencing the windows wireless internet lag spike. and there is a thread here that details fixing it.

click me for fix

[NLS CEL]

I'm on windows XP. I have also been having lots of problems with lots of steam games either crashing and or lagging out all of a sudden. So i check to see if i needed to defrag my C drive. I did.

 

 

Im not sure if this was part of the problem but im gonna do some more opti-my-zing and then try wired connection.

[Jager]

that will likely help quite a bit, abet not with choke/lag from or to the server.

[NLS CEL]

Well im on a wired connectin now, i still get 0 - 30 - 50 choke. I noticed that the choke goes up dramaticly when other players come into view. However the lag spikes seem to have gone so 50 choke doesnt seem to be a concern unless i should be. It doesnt seem to be effecting my game anymore.

[Jager]

run in console net_graph 3 and tell me what your in/ out numbers say,

[NLS CEL]

my averge using numbers from the minigame server and the escape server was this.

 

in - 413

 

out - 65

 

both numbers are averages

 

The worst case in on zm_boatescape5_remix which had these numbers

in - 1486

 

out - 72

[Shadowex3]

He's on wifi Jager, I'm pretty sure that's the problem. Before anything else lets try just plugging a network cable in and using that instead of wireless. While we're at it though right click on the steam icon, go to settings, and make sure your internet speed is set properly. That can cause problems too.

 

Also NLS CEL: From your net_graph 3 what we need are the numbers circled and labelled 5 in that link. The first two are a lot less important, the third tells us how many updates you're sending and receiving. In perfect-math-land (or with a good connection to a good server) that should be identical to the server's tickrate or within a few of it.

 

youd be surprised what can happen, we had fps_max 500 set in the force client section of the server.cfg and it was forcing clients to unbound their fps max, which caused ridiculous amounts of lag. (unintentional error but still one that almost killed the reg css server for 3 days.) dropping that one command fixed the registry and lag issues that everyone was complaining about.

 

That may have caused your lag problems but I guarantee you that it was not because it was actually doing what you thought it was. For years now servers have only been able to execute an extremely limited set of commands that have the server_can_execute flag on them, and fps_max is NOT one of those commands.

 

As the TA you should know more about the source engine than this, go read Whisper's again because you're claiming things that are physically impossible for more than one reason. Even aside from the server_can_execute flag there's also the issue that Source's graphics are almost completely decoupled from everything else. The ONLY way the client's graphical framerate will EVER affect ANYTHING is when their graphical framerate is lower than their update rates they will have a limit on the number of updates they can send TO the server.

 

If anything I'd say it was either the server's FPS you changed, which is a completely different thing from clientside graphical FPS, or it was some kind of glitch caused by putting a command the server can't actually execute into that section.

[NLS CEL]

I changed my speed settings to modem 56k. It was on 256 dsl for some reason. Im on a wired connection right now and im getting about 450 in and 60 out as an average. The lag is gone and my choke stays about 5 or 10 for the most part and 18 rarely.

[Jager]

our server fps is set via cmd line, but as you like to point to whispers wiki list of source info, what he doesnt cover is how your fps and the engine renders objects you cannot see

 

when you are playing and you toss a bunch of flash bangs, each "bang" drops your fps, for a fraction of a second regardless of the fact that your screen is white, the graphic engine is rendering everything there(the main reason why many visual hacks work, valve was part lazy, and part tech wasnt capable of rendering that stuff on and off on the fly when the original cs was rolled out.), which the more congested the server, and the more explosions or graphical entities to render appear, the more your fps drops, which is something net_graph can only show you when its a consistent hit over the course of at least its polling time (1 sec or so per update.)

 

my 4890 ati card is more then capable of handling CS:S maxxed out, but if we do something as simple as give everyone a para on more then one round, the fps drops precipitously as the graphics engine attempts to render data it says should be there (spectators having para's) but aren't always visible to the client when you are alive. In extreme cases you will see that in netgraph, but if you round a corner and several plaers and spectators are there, the instant choke hit from the fps drop is not noticeable other then as a "felt" lag spike until you are dead yourself and you can see the para's in everyones hands or "floating " behind whomever is being spectated.

 

the game itself renders beyond what the client sees, so forcing your fps to be set to a number removes two issues. one that the game defaults to your hardware settings and can default vsync on (without the options menu showing it) which chokes you to hell and back. and two forces your game to override whatever happened to be saved in your standard cfg, which if you have been toying with your settings or got new hardware it default to wonky crap til you manually set it.

 

other than that forcepreload is a decent idea to try as well. It force the game to load all the game assets before you get into the map. takes you longer to get in game , but you wont have as much potential lag from an overworked HDD loading objects, textures, sounds, etc.

 

You and I can go back and forth on this all we want, but what i am trying to nail down with him is the short and to the point fixes for the engines various issues without losing anyone in explanations like this. if he is playing escape and lags on nade throws that is something besides his bog standard rates. fps_max is one step in that fix, dropping graphical options, turning off rendering of skyboxes and other non essential assets is another.

 

 

edit:

 

nls check your graphical settings and see if you have vsync on, if so, disable it. and put fps_max 200 or so in your console. even with slow internet, you shouldnt be artificially limited to 60 out without your grapics card settings being off.

[Shadowex3]

All I'm going to say at this point on that subject is you need to take THAT up with the mapper who isn't doing his job very well if you're rendering everything in front of you all the time and that's not related to graphical fps but the engine's internal framerate.

 

NLS: Why would you set your internet speed at 56k? Are you actually on dialup? If you are then the problem is simply slow internet.