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Aussie Players = Lag = Autokick/Abused

Posted: Sat Feb 17, 2007 8:35 am
by Grace F
Im an Aussie player and ive always got high lag, 212 at best! :shock:

This post is about servers such as Hix and missle war where my lag is 360+. Is there anyway for me and others in my situation to reduce lag? Or perhaps make the servers closer to home, rather than all the way in Germany or wherever they may be :P Can anythin be done so everyone can play without the worry of being kicked, or even abused in some cases. Or isnt that possible?

Plz dont post replies such as "Moving countries" :P Coz thats just out of the question.

Im aware of the Aussie servers, but its rarely got users.


Thx :D


<3 ~'+'~ Grace F ~'+'~ <3

Posted: Sat Feb 17, 2007 9:15 am
by CannonBallGuy
When communicating over such vast distances, you can't really expect low lag. I'd suggest you look for servers closer to you geographically.

Posted: Sat Feb 17, 2007 9:41 am
by Grace F
CannonBallGuy wrote:I'd suggest you look for servers closer to you geographically.
I know that :shock: i have been, but like i said they are quiet.


<3 ~'+'~ Grace F ~'+'~ <3

Re: Aussie Players = Lag = Autokick/Abused

Posted: Sat Feb 17, 2007 11:24 am
by ts
Grace F wrote:Im an Aussie player and ive always got high lag, 212 at best! :shock:

This post is about servers such as Hix and missle war where my lag is 360+. Is there anyway for me and others in my situation to reduce lag?
At first I thought you meant Austria.:?
You will always have at least > 300ms latency (300ms is often used as autokick value because with higher lag it gets really unplayable) so you should forget that idea.
Grace F wrote:Or perhaps make the servers closer to home, rather than all the way in Germany or wherever they may be :P Can anythin be done so everyone can play without the worry of being kicked, or even abused in some cases. Or isnt that possible?

Plz dont post replies such as "Moving countries" :P Coz thats just out of the question.
You can not play without high lag in Germany simply because you are almost exactly at the other side of the world. The servers can not be moved because then they would loose almost all of their players and there are a lot of German players.

I would suggest to you to look for servers located at the west coast of North America. They are - compared to the alternatives - rather close to you. There is also a tool that ships with the source ( misc/pingtimes.sh ) that can be run on real operating systems and generates a sorted list of server ping times from the location it is run from.

Re: Aussie Players = Lag = Autokick/Abused

Posted: Sat Feb 17, 2007 11:40 am
by Grace F
ts wrote: I would suggest to you to look for servers located at the west coast of North America. They are - compared to the alternatives - rather close to you.
Okkie. Well I play Badgers mostly, i have around 230 lag there which isnt quite bad, i dont know where that server is but thats kinda what i continue to look for.
ts wrote: There is also a tool that ships with the source ( misc/pingtimes.sh ) that can be run on real operating systems and generates a sorted list of server ping times from the location it is run from
:shock: i dont know what that means. (i just turned 15 :P)

I'll get my step dad he'll know :)

Thx :D

<3 ~'+'~ Grace F ~'+'~ <3

Re: Aussie Players = Lag = Autokick/Abused

Posted: Sat Feb 17, 2007 1:28 pm
by Green Manalishi
Grace F wrote:Okkie. Well I play Badgers mostly, i have around 230 lag there which isnt quite bad, i dont know where that server is but thats kinda what i continue to look for.
badgerking's is in central usa, a bit closer to the east. europeans have little chance on aus/nz servers and vice versa, so you may as well bid farewell to those servers and hope your favorite maps are hosted by non-european servers (like missle war has been previously).

Posted: Sat Feb 17, 2007 2:38 pm
by meeba
If you like Missile War, I have it on one of my rotations. NullBZ 5154.

Re: Aussie Players = Lag = Autokick/Abused

Posted: Sat Feb 17, 2007 9:02 pm
by Grace F
Green Manalishi wrote: europeans have little chance on aus/nz servers and vice versa, so you may as well bid farewell to those servers and hope your favorite maps are hosted by non-european servers (like missle war has been previously).
Very Well :(
TangenT wrote: If you like Missile War, I have it on one of my rotations. NullBZ 5154.
Thx i'll check it out :)

Posted: Sat Feb 17, 2007 11:52 pm
by the_j0k3r
hmm, i am also in australia.
i dont know where the old bzfx used to be located, but before the server move my lag on that was about 180, which isnt bad.
generaly i just try to make sure i play on the american servers when i play gu league and that (shellshock, quol etc).

Posted: Mon Feb 19, 2007 8:37 am
by Grace F
the_j0k3r wrote:i dont know where the old bzfx used to be located, but before the server move my lag on that was about 180, which isnt bad.
BZFX? you mean Boxy? Or all the ones that say BZFX in the game list?

Now that its moved whats your lag roughly now?

Posted: Mon Feb 19, 2007 3:03 pm
by dango
the old bzfx was on the west coast of the usa, i think the new one will be on the east part of canada somewhere...

if your talking about eu.league.bzfx.net, that's in europe.

Posted: Mon Feb 19, 2007 6:32 pm
by jack
try hosting a server and if not make a copy leagly and have ppl play on it

Posted: Mon Feb 19, 2007 8:49 pm
by Grace F
jack wrote:try hosting a server and if not make a copy leagly and have ppl play on it
As soon as i figure out how to do that! :P

Posted: Wed Feb 21, 2007 8:42 am
by Bozo
Hi, Grace F,

I live on the West coast of North America, away out in the boonies, and have only a mediocre dial-up connection, so I have a similar problem as you. I've been playing BZFlag for a number of years, and, despite the efforts of the devs to write the code to reduce lag, it's been getting worse for me.

There are many factors which affect lag; the devs are working on some, some you can influence (not running background programs, etc), but one is a social problem, in that the number of people on a server affects the lag (more players=higher lag). Folks with nearby servers and fast connections don't notice it, but it is a definite factor for those of us with borderline connections.

When I first started playing, when you went to look for a server, you'd find maybe 100 +/-, with the top 2-3 fairly crowded, then over the next 20-30 the number of players would taper from 12 down to two players, and if you wanted to play an unoccupied server you could go to it and sit, and within an hour or so at least one other player would join. The last time I played there were 284 servers online, and only the top 6 had players. That means they were fairly crowded, and I couldn't play because my lag would go over 300. This seems to be the pattern now, and if you go sit on an unoccupied server, you'll wait for a *long* time before someone will join you.

I wish, after writing this book :) , that I could offer a solution to you. What it means for me is I rarely play anymore. :( . When I do I'm so rusty that I just annoy the regulars, (or I get so frustrated) that I usually quit after just a few minutes. I don't know of any way to force people to get more evenly distributed. My only suggestion is that you pick a server that is playable for you, come here and announce you will be there at a given time, and hope that others in your boat will join you. If you can get a hold of a server owner, see if they would host a map with the lag restriction loosened up, say to 350 or 400, and announce it as a server for high lag players. Maybe it would work. With the way the demographics are now, most of the servers are virtually unused any way, so it shouldn't hurt anything.

The only other thing I can think of to help folks like us would be for map makers to try working up some compact, simpler maps that would be fun for, say 4-10 people, and then if they started feeling crowded, players would spill over to other servers. But lots of people like the large complicated maps that hold *lots* of players, so supply and demand says they'll get them, and we're left on the wayside.

Enough; sorry this got so long, but I guess I've wished it would get said and couldn't hold it all in.

Posted: Wed Feb 21, 2007 9:57 am
by Grace F
Omg dat was soo cool :D Thx, yea it was a long reply but it helped heaps!

Sry to hear you dont play much :( You seem like a decent, honesnt person which sometimes is missed in the servers.

I dont think there will ever be a server where players with 350 + lag can come and hang out lol. No1 could kill anyone and you'd lag through flags and walls :P

I've been known to do that sometimes lol

Hope to see you around. Thx again for the reply :D

P.S whats a Boonie? :?

Posted: Wed Feb 21, 2007 10:57 am
by the_j0k3r
jack wrote:try hosting a server and if not make a copy leagly and have ppl play on it
that sentence makes no sense to me ;)

the old bzfx when i was 180 was back when geno was 3-shot, etc, the same as when the transparent things were just pyramids i believe

my lag on the new bzfx was 230, i dont know where it moved (bzfx is currently down if your wondering)

Posted: Wed Feb 21, 2007 3:49 pm
by ducatiwannabe
I have several "miniture" maps designed for a maximum of ten players, but usually for fewer. I've got minihix, minibadgerkings (cept I don't think the teleporters are right on that one...), and several other just small maps. At this point *I* can't host a server from where I'm at. After I work a bit, maybe I could afford to pay for one, but...no no for now. If anybody wants to use some of my small maps they could contact me and I'd gladly let them host. I'm sorry I can't do more, and I know that lag is just plain...bleh.

So, if anybody wants to pop up a small server to help peeps, I'd gladly help too...

DW

Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2007 10:34 am
by Bozo
P.S whats a Boonie?
From the Wikipedia:
Boondocks refers to a remote, usually brushy rural area. The expression was introduced to English by American military personnel serving in the Philippines during the early years of the 20th century. It derives from the Tagalog word bundok, meaning "mountain". It also carries the implication that it is "backward" or "unsophisticated"; hence taga-bundok "people who live in the hinterland": i.e., people who are backward or unsophisticated.

Boondocks or diminutively "the boonies" has since evolved into a more general American slang term for "the country" or any rural/wilderness location in general, regardless of topology or vegetation that is isolated and away from "the action" or the comforts and variety of urban life.
I could add, a place where broadband is not available, or maybe (to keep this on topic) a place where lag is unavoidable. :)

Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2007 12:01 pm
by Grace F
Thx for that unusally late response :P Im glad you did though, I had forgotten all about that.
Bozo wrote:I could add, a place where broadband is not available, or maybe (to keep this on topic) a place where lag is unavoidable.
So everyone will have lag? Lol that doesn't help. I've play a map once where everyone had over 360lag and high jitter, it was just horrible, people were jittering all over the place :evil:

Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2007 12:03 pm
by that exploding tank
The fortunate thing is that when most Aussie players play, its after midnight in the U.S., when everyone has already said good night. Thus, the servers are less crowded and less lag will result.

Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2007 12:29 pm
by Grace F
Then again it is also unfortunate that everyone has said goodnight :) Since it can tend to get very boring :P Very quickly!

Re: Aussie Players = Lag = Autokick/Abused

Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2007 7:00 pm
by too much loving
ts wrote:I would suggest to you to look for servers located at the west coast of North America. They are - compared to the alternatives - rather close to you. There is also a tool that ships with the source ( misc/pingtimes.sh ) that can be run on real operating systems and generates a sorted list of server ping times from the location it is run from.
It would be cool to a have a version of pingtimes.sh, that downloaded a serverlist from the following page, and ignored the empty servers
http://stats.bzflag.org/serverlist.php

Sadly I am not so strong with the xml myself... :)

Posted: Mon Jun 04, 2007 2:03 pm
by guyfawkes_usa
Grace F I guess you can move where the servers are ;-) That's not feasible I know. If you have everything cut to a minimum on your workstation that runs the client, there is almost nothing you can do. You can however, start up a server in your area and get an Aussie version of Hix or whatever you like to play. :-)

Posted: Mon Jun 04, 2007 9:15 pm
by Grace F
Already have. This topic is fairly old ;)