PING affected by .mdls ?

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OneManClan
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Joined: Tue Feb 15, 2011 4:30 pm

PING affected by .mdls ?

Post by OneManClan »

KOP, you mentioned today that there's some technique/issue with deleting mdls and re-downloading them to improve ping. It sounds totally weird to me, but I got the impression you've tested it and that it works!? I'd like to bring this to the attention of the Gurus, but don't fully understand exactly what the situation is.

You said the idea was suggested by Wolf, so could either of you please describe in detail exactly how it works, and what you've tried, or even how/why you tried this technique in the first place. I'll then be able to forward this info to the Gurus, and see that the situation is.

thanks!

rincewind
Posts: 49
Joined: Sat Aug 06, 2011 3:38 am
Location: The Unseen University

Re: PING affected by .mdls ?

Post by rincewind »

This is an issue I had perhaps 2 months ago. What basically happened is my ping went from 140 to something around 350-450. Naturally I thought it was the server or even my own connection. Then by chance I was spectating a game on 2phan7 a few weeks ago and noticed that when I went outside the map whilst in free spec my ping dropped to its normal level. This is in fact what I asked King of Ping to do when he complained about lag (which he always does but I noticed his ping was stupidly high...even for him).

So abnormally high ping? Spectate and go outside the map......after a few seconds does your ping drop? Then, go back inside the map. Does your ping go back up? If the answer is yes then its very likely you have the exact problem I did. Annoyingly so nobody offered to help or listened when I had this problem.....in typical fashion I would be the first to get it!

So how did I fix it?....... I didn't. I installed a totally separate ezquake! Nothing copied over, including configs. After that, I began a slow process of copying, moving, re-copying files and configs from my old ezquake to my brand spanking new one. Eventually after copying the old mdl folder into my new ezquake I recreated the problem......this also happened on 3 other quake clients (fuh, zquake, ftequake).

The cause? Its an MDL. Ah but what specific MDL? I don't know and to be honest don't care. I solved the problem simply by downloading a new set of MDL's.

OMC, if you or anyone else can stop this bug from re-occurring then you'd be doing everyone who comes to :26666 a favour. If this starts affecting other players who dont know what the issue is we might not ever get them to come back...

OneManClan
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Posts: 281
Joined: Tue Feb 15, 2011 4:30 pm

Re: PING affected by .mdls ?

Post by OneManClan »

Thanks rincewind, I forwarded your description to Spike, the Guru behind FTE, and here's his response:
there's a cvar, named cl_shownet; if its set to 1, it'll print out the packet sizes, and the number of prints will give you some sort of idea as to the packet rate. When you're outside the map, you stop receiving any broadcast messages, and in such a case your bandwidth requirements will go down. Theoretically, frequent/large packets should result in packetloss and not higher latencies. however, some links, like wireless ones, will buffer packets instead.
Regarding .mdls:
The only relation to .mdls is the number of them. Remember, every frame change requires at least part of that entity to be resent. Quakeworld protocols are tuned to cope with packetloss without increasing latency, but this means that a frame change can be repeated multiple times, which means that a lot of idle monsters all just animating can consume a fair chunk of bandwidth. You can reduce the amount of data actually sent, and thus reduce the possibility of buffering, by reducing your rate (either the client's 'rate' cvar, or the servers 'sv_maxrate' cvar)
I'll need to re-read this multiple times, but I gather that there is no actual issue w any mdl, though IIRC you (or KOP) actually said you *did* get an improvement, though I'm not sure how you tested PINGs in-game without having the mdls in the progs folder.

rincewind
Posts: 49
Joined: Sat Aug 06, 2011 3:38 am
Location: The Unseen University

Re: PING affected by .mdls ?

Post by rincewind »

Technical gibberish aside....all I know is that when I copied my old progs folder into my new ezquake folder I had the exact same problem on my new ezquake client. When I replaced the old progs folder with the new one again the problem was miraculously cured.

I did this with almost all the files in a calculated approach so as to find what was causing my ping to double or triple itself. Two ezquake clients in two completely separate folders and lots of swapping back and forth between both......eventually I stumbled across the fact it was the mdl's.

Its the long hours of being a games tester that puts me off doing it for a living....

OneManClan
Site Admin
Posts: 281
Joined: Tue Feb 15, 2011 4:30 pm

Re: PING affected by .mdls ?

Post by OneManClan »

rincewind wrote:Technical gibberish aside....all I know is that when I copied my old progs folder into my new ezquake folder I had the exact same problem on my new ezquake client. When I replaced the old progs folder with the new one again the problem was miraculously cured.
I did this with almost all the files in a calculated approach so as to find what was causing my ping to double or triple itself. Two ezquake clients in two completely separate folders and lots of swapping back and forth between both......eventually I stumbled across the fact it was the mdl's.
Thanks for the info, I'll forward this into to the Gurus and see if someone can suggest something, because I have no idea what might be causing what you describe.

Even if there was 1 specific .mdl which was causing the prob, I don't see how that could be, ie how it would affect ping. If you've been present at a testing Session it's possible that you downloaded an alpha .mdl which has been replaced with the proper version, but as far as I understand, this would cause a disconnect from the server, a "model doesn't match" error (or something), and have nothing to do with ping. Hmm. If you're saying you've found a fix for it, then perhaps we can just pass on the info to all who are affected, and this 'solution' might have to do until a Guru can come up with a fix.

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