[Feedback] Performance Report

Computer Specs:

Operating System: Windows XP Home Edition (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 3 (2600.xpsp.080413-2111)
System Manufacturer: NVIDIA
BIOS: Phoenix - Award BIOS v6.00PG
Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3000+, MMX, 3DNow, ~2.0GHz
Memory: 2046MB RAM
Page File: 1550MB used, 22838MB available
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
Card name: NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT
Display Memory: 256.0 MB
Current Mode: 1280 x 1024 (32 bit) (70Hz)
Monitor Max Res: 1600,1200
Sound Devices: SB Audigy 2 ZS Audio [AC00]

Observations

*Game runs fine at all settings High, with the exception of Low shadows.
*Game Lags horribly when overlay Menus are open. (Shops, Inventory, and Character Progression)
*Some pauses online, probably due to Hamachi.
*Lags in large games, also probably due to internet connection.

Details

After several days of playing in games varried between one to six players in total, I've had a fair share of observation for how the game handles. When I play alone, the game functions quite fine with smooth graphics and quick reaction time. Even running most setting on High. The system only becomes bogged down when Shadows are also high, the FPS clearly starts to reduce in the animation quality. Setting Shadows to low makes the game run quite smoothly. Though, there is slight presence of lag when large amounts of units gather on the screen at one time - otherwise it still handles quite nicely.

Elements of horrible Lag occure only when the shop UI appears. This is the same for all overlay menus, from character leveling, shops, to status menu. The game is reduced to half quality, and becomes sluggish until the menu closes.

Games with two players also handle just as fine, with slight hang-ups or lock-ups that pause the game from time to time. But the game eventually progresses nicely afterwards.

Games with three or more players begin to see more lag. Perhaps this more due ot the connection through hamachi and the internet rather than the system itself being unable to handle the game.

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Elements of horrible Lag occure only when the shop UI appears. This is the same for all overlay menus, from character leveling, shops, to status menu. The game is reduced to half quality, and becomes sluggish until the menu closes.

I think this one is being fixed, and the rest should work better once proper internet connectivity is established.

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Net_lag set to 200ms will cause spikes whenever someone exceeds the specified ping. It has nothing to do with hamachi and more to do with the fact that LAN mode was designed with the intention that the connections are over the local area, i.e. a building, so there is less tolerance for latency. I've seen good pings while playing over hamachi (use netstats) so that's hardly the VPN's problem.

In SupCom, we rarely saw these "too high latency" cases because net_lag was set to 500ms; thus only people with 500ms ping or higher caused mini pauses. Rather, because of SupCom's high bandwidth requirements, spiking due to insufficent data stream was much more common. If the devs stripped down bandwidth requirements, I do see a potential problem with setting net_lag too high to accomodate the international nature of the game. It'll hamper micro and fine unit control.

Battle.Net solved the issue by separating the servers into regional zones where players can find hosts that are closer, resulting in less latency. This is why hacks like ListChecker and VCK's Latency Reducer work: as internet connections got better, the required delay was reduced to from 250ms to 100ish ms. Since Blizzard's online RTSes run on a host to peer model, only the person exceeding the delay interval lagged. If Demigod remains a micro and timing intensive game, we should see separations between different areas of the world.

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