Our ReVolt Pub

nero @ Mar 9 2014, 11:24 AM wrote: With the 0306 patch, SebR teleports like crazy. He is practically invincible this way, nothing will stop him. Want to zap him? Nope, not gonna happen. Rockets? Nope. And what if he has a zap? You better pray he doesn't teleport to you.

Sting also lags like crazy, gliding all over the track and also being invincible because of it.

It's not only with the 14.0306...
With the 13.0820 and many others alphas, sebr could lag like the hell sometimes...
It depends what he does when he plays...

And for my experience, i joined a race this week hosted by Monty with the 14.0306 and it was perfect like it was when i hosted...
With this build G, The gameplay is not affected... It's the most important...
We just can see who have really bad connection in the game and we can't really do nothing about that...

All the races I had with Build G so far were perfect, I've never had such a good unlaggy experience, the position of other drivers are so smooth and stable for me.

The only bad aspect is that I also see the very serious radar bug which happens almost all the time, even when playing with people that live close to me the radar goes crazy. But this happens in a 3 player race or more, and jig said that his build isn't optimized for more than 2 players yet.

I don't how much time I'll have this WE so I've very quickly compiled a new test build since this one introduces per-player message throttling, and also tries to fix the radar issues.

Warning: The PPS code is really fresh new, I've just finished writing it and couldn't afford testing it as I should. So this may work, but may as well just fails miserably...

Here is new Build H:

Re-Volt_14.0314_H.7z

(Use 7-zip if you can't open the archive. This is the exe only, so use it on top of a full v1.2 install).

Build H quick changelog:
- Try to minimize Radar issues. Also display extra debug info in the Radar (in case of radar bug, take a screenshot).
- New PPS (packets per second) management code in multiplayer. This build also introduces per-player message throttling (which has not been tested yet with more than 2 players in room, so let me kow how it goes).

Known issue:
For some reasons (I didn't have time to investigate yet) the Spectating mode appears to be broken (cars position is not updated).

I don't find the lag in build G annoying in comparison to the annoying lag of 0820 and Build F, but if you're still interested I just tested this Build H with a friend (1vs1) and I made some screenshots when there was lag. The radar went "crazy" in few occasions and in other times the other player's car starts to act weirdly temporarily, for example turning in circles (in my screen) but I know he's not doing that in his screen. And then after a moment his car goes back to normal position and keeps racing in my screen (but i know he was racing all the time in his screen). Are screenshots of this kind of lag useful for you? Or you need only those where the radar goes absolutely mad? I'll send you the radar-going-mad-type shots.

Also, what is WE? What is throttling? What is PPS throttling? Please can you explain things in a more comprehensive way (easier way)? You're asuming we know the cientific terms you're using but nobody understands these words from your post so we try to guess what's been changed or not. ^^

Phantom @ Mar 15 2014, 05:44 AM wrote:Also, what is WE? What is throttling? What is PPS throttling? Please can you explain things in a more comprehensive way (easier way)? You're asuming we know the cientific terms you're using but nobody understands these words from your post so we try to guess what's been changed or not. ^^

WE is not cientific lol ! I think it's Week-End

Oops!

I told you I have to guess everything! lol

Throttling is when your ISP slows your internet speed down to ridiculous proportions. It happens when you're using too much bandwidth (for example via torrents).

Yep, WE actually stands for weekend. I guess that's more more obvious for French people since we write it week-end, with two separate words.

Packets Per Second throttling can be seen as adaptive PPS. It means you try to adjust the rate of data you're sending so that: 1) it fits in your bandwidth, and 2) it also doesn't overload any remote player bandwidth.
For example, Re-Volt try to send your car position 12 times per second to all remote players. But it can be too much if you have a low upload bandwidth, or if any remote player has a low download bandwidth. In that case this rate has to be lowered, for example to 6 packets per second, or even less (down to a minimum of 2 packet per second in the worst case).

Automatically finding the ideal PPS value is not easy. You want it to be as big as possible, but without overloading the available bandwidth. That's what PPS throttling is about.

So, didn't you notice any improvement about the radar bug between build G and H?

About screenshots, I think they'll be more helpful for the radar bug than for the lag issue. Anyway, let me see what you have (edit: I should have checked my PM before...). I'll be interested to know if the radar suddenly went crazy just before the screenshot, I mean, did you noticed if the radar value change from good to bad all of a sudden, of is it rather progressive?

jigebren @ Mar 16 2014, 07:52 PM wrote: I mean, did you noticed if the radar value change from good to bad all of a sudden, of is it rather progressive?

Not in this case, but generally speaking. I think it always starts increasing, like if the other car stood still, and it stops when the value is 1 lap+the real value.

Balint12 @ Mar 17 2014, 11:42 AM wrote: I think it always starts increasing, like if the other car stood still, and it stops when the value is 1 lap+the real value.

Ok, that sounds consistent with the screenshots Phantom sent me.

Still I'm curious whether build G and H have similar or noticeably different behaviour as far as the radar issue is concerned...

And please remove the inivisible wall on Garden1 at the last ramp. Or is this already fixed? Just curious since it also has something to do with collision. :]

I haven't written any other report because I'm not really sure what are we supposed to test. I don't understand why 0306 and 0314 are compatible to each other. If a player with 0306 joins a 0314 host or viceversa, i've no idea what should we be looking for exactly. And those chinese numbers at the bottom of the screen i've no idea what those are for.

At the moment I'm very comfortable with 0306.

Well, what had to be tested was simply what is written in the changelog, that is to say:
- has this build changed anything about the radar issue.
- does this build works better with more than 2 players in the room.

You don't have to care about the extra numbers meaning, as I stated they are just debug info for the radar bug. You'd just have to take a screenshot and send it to me.

Anyway, I've already worked on another method for PPS since this last build, but it was more than a week ago... I was actually motivated to improve the v1.2 network code and other points, but it's just no longer the case. This forum looks plain dead, this community is either dead as well, or just not willing to help; in both cases I have no reason to care any more.

jigebren and Huki, the Italian community of Alias Re-Volt Master (me included) is still interested in your work, and we want to thank you. Please don't give up!

I personally don't play online very much, I'm more a car and track creator, and the things that you did to simplifiy the work for us (car-track developers) are great.