(MAJOR Bug) Targeted AI jerk around! Needs fixing!

[wug]

Tried two quick games yesterday - one MPI and one strat - with a friend over the Internet.  Both of us use ADSL (same ISP).  Didn't get any lag at all... only one unit warped once.

Used all default network settings, and both us have clean installs of 1.3.  My friend's first impression (in 3+ years) was that it played a lot smoother than he remembered.  But we didn't do any huge battles, so I can say if that would hold true in a long game.  Will have to play, I mean test some more.

Oh, and I was targeting stuff, including mortar bikes... wasn't a problem.

Maybe old setting from 1.2 are part of the problem?

[Sponge]

It would be interesting if we could remove the targeting feature, certainly would make a player develop some skills and knowledge of weapons.

[FlashFire]

Than we would have to reduce the ammo powerup cost to zero.  

[Fried]

I dont think it's settings from 1.2 that are the problem, ive tried every gdamn setting going for sometime now.

more like a combination of problems.
Out of interest perhaps we can nail this down a bit, can players who experiance this post system specs, connection speeds, server specs. and maxsmooth settings etc.

It truly would be nice if we could at least get closer to finding out the problem.

Out of interest ive had this problem for sometime while other players have stated otherwise and i run a high end system with a slow connection, see below.

AMD 3200 xp cpu
rad 9600 256mb gfx
samsung 140gb 7200 hdd 8mb cache
abit an7 nforce 2 mobo
1gb ddr3200 400mhz fsb  ram
win xp pro ntfs file system
dx 9b
all updates done

maxsmoothe has been at .25 of late though ive tried everything from 5 to .1 trying 5 again next .
usenewtimeskew set to false. im trying true on this next

minging 44k modem (56k max but never achieved) error control ,flow control and compression off) if i have these settings turned on it lags bz2 to hell though i need them turned on to play games such as ut2004 online.

This section in the config file interests me.

Setting to change the default usage of the NAGLE algorithm. Turning
// this to true will try and push packets thru with less latency (lag)
// at the expense of possibly flooding slow connections. 1.2 defaulted
// this to false.
DisableNAGLE = true

has anyone tried changeing this to false ?

[OvermindDL1]

The NAGLE setting is set dynamically depending on if you chose modem or broadband connection in the options in BZ2.  If eeryone in a multi game has the broadband selected, then NAGLE turns true, if even one has modem, they all switch to false.

[wug]

Has anyone with the problem tried a clean install, and not an upgrade from 1.2?  Yeah, it's a long shot, but I'd like to eliminate it as a possibility.

[Jwk the Hemp Monkey]

i have a fresh install...its not to do with installing over 1.2, I am not the only one who has observed this.

A good way to test is watching two scavs scavenge, and then target one of them...it becomes really obvious then. I dont know if the host experiences it or not ,because i cannot host.

[wug]

So has anyone *not* seen this problem?

I'll try the scav thing on the weekend hopefully, and see what happens.  Maybe it's pack-loss issue... with certain firewalls or something?

I don't really understand why BZ II uses TCP and UDP... most games use UDP only because TCP packet retransmits are time-consuming.  But I dunno squat about BZ netcode, so I'll shut up.  (I'd be glad to read a technical explanation though.)

Also, I'm using:
Celeron 1.3
512 MB RAM
Geforce2 MX (of some kind)
3com 905B NIC
Linksys firewall/router
Windows XP with Directx9b

[SilverB1rd]

Got this from GSH himself during a chat in the irc lobby,

UDP is use for non critical items that if you lose one or two it wont hurt the game.

TCP is use because it keeps track of all the packets and makes sure everone of them arives. This is use for critical items that you must have every signel packet for.

UDP is use for things like the text sent to the chat window, TCP is use for sending the movement commands and game state.

[DarkFox]

BTW I've seen the targetted AI units thing now, hemp is completely right, it only occurs for me on enemy ai units, and only when I've targetted them.

It's horrible.

[wug]

Well, I a tried an MPI game last night (2 players)... I couldn't get the warp bug to happen (or at least I didn't notice it).  I was targeting pretty much every kind of AI unit.

But if so many people have this problem, it's more likely a problem in BZ than with the computer itself.

[wug]

Crud!!!  I think I've found the problem... I upgraded to the latest Nvidia drivers last night, and the targeted skipping happens now and badly.

Anyone else can help confirm this?

[Commando]

I have no idea if there are newer video drivers, but I get the skipping when I target ships.  I have gotten it for a long time now.

I just checked nvidia's web site and I know my drivers are a lot older than March 15.  I think I last updated in February, possibly December.  With my current drivers, units warp more when they are targeted.  My guess would be that this is a multiworld issue, but it could be a video driver issue.  

Are there any people with ATI cards that can confirm that this bug either occurs or doesn't occur with an ATI card?

[OvermindDL1]

I have ATI and I have not noticed skipping, I'll test it next time I run in multiworld, But I really do not think video card drivers would effect the moving of an object because those calculations are done on CPU.

[Jwk the Hemp Monkey]

...Odd that you mention ATI...

I have an ATI Radeon 7200, a tad old...but it might get upgraded soon.