Random spikes

[Durak]

I'm not sure what's causing it but since I started playing again I've been getting mad lag. It's serverside (I host a listenserver) and the game spikes for 5 seconds every couple minutes. It happens if there are 6 players or just me, on any map. It only used to slow down and spike when lots of monsters spawned at once. For example, if I was playing with 6 people in september on foutpost it might spawn when a new wave came. Now it spikes if I just started the server and I'm walking around helena.

Oh, and I just tried to go to keledrosprelude2 but I suppose I typed keledrosprelude by accident and it got upset :roll:.

Edit: I think it was fine in october and appeared when I started playing again in jan/feb.

 

[Thraxis]

Have you changed any hardware, setting for hardware (drivers) or anything outside the game that could potentially change this?

For example I switched from an old hawking USB wireless that broke to a newer belkin and now my connection is horrid with said spikes about every minute.

also if you are running the server make sure your running -insecure and try setting the priority up. Other than that I've no clue v.v

 

[Durak]

I haven't changed any hardware, besides a new monitor, but I've updated my nvidia videocard drivers. -insecure is in my launch options. I'm not even on wireless. Athlon 64 X2 3800+ is my processor, not that it matters since it used to run fine.

Oh, and some other bugs I've found (march serverside b patch) is that I can't transition from keledrosprelude2 to keledrosruins. It says it might be a future trans/map not found. I'm also wondering why bandit martial artists only take 20dmg from my Greater thunder axe with ice shield while they take 120 without it. I thought it was 50% for monsters as well as players?

 

[The Man In Black]

They have better ice shields.

No clue about Keledros... Blame Thothie >_>

 

[Durak]

I think this is due to my GeForce 7 series drivers from Dec 11th. The same sort of lag happens in Savage 2. However, these are the only games I've seen it happen in. A friend has the same card and also plays Savage 2 and after he updated the same thing occured. I figure I'll have to find the older drivers somewhere.

Edit: I'll try some drivers from may 07 and see if that helps.

 

[Durak]

Well, it didn't seem to work. My server doesn't spike when there are four people and orion is being spammed and yet this happens. Sigh.

On a side note, the axe boss of the_keep died for no reason when I was soloing it. Woo hoo...free great axe...

 

[Belmont]

Might I suggest that you look up into your nVidia control panel?

Anti-Aliasing might be set to 8x, wich could be very well the reason your lagging.

 

[Durak]

Might I suggest that you look up into your nVidia control panel?

Anti-Aliasing might be set to 8x, wich could be very well the reason your lagging.

It was set to application controlled. I've turned it off so I'll see if that helps.

 

[Thothie]

Given your other thread, I'm beginning to wonder if you have a proper install.

 

[Durak]

I was testing different drivers (from 2006-mar 2008) and none of them made a difference. I had windows task manager open as I was running around alone on edana and the CPU Usage was at 35-60 generally while just jumping around. A spike happened when it was at 55%. While at the menu screen it goes from 60-95 :|. I don't remember it ever doing this before except when there were lots of monsters spawning (helena in the old days (oldhelena) or sometimes in MSC when lots of things were spawning). I'm not sure what's causing it but I'd really like to see some work done towards it. I think everyone would be greatful if something could be done to even cut the CPU Usage.

 

[Thothie]

We're not getting that, so we can't work on it. MSC shouldn't capable of eating more than 50% CPU on any modern (Multi-Core/Multi-Threaded) CPU.

It does use an INSANE amount of CPU, and we've been doing everything possible over the years to make it use less (it is much kinder CPU wise, than it once was.) I suspect, however, just by the way it's put together, it will always eat more CPU than most video games.

 

[Durak]

We're not getting that, so we can't work on it. MSC shouldn't capable of eating more than 50% CPU on any modern (Multi-Core/Multi-Threaded) CPU.

It does use an INSANE amount of CPU, and we've been doing everything possible over the years to make it use less (it is much kinder CPU wise, than it once was.) I suspect, however, just by the way it's put together, it will always eat more CPU than most video games.

While in helena my brother was even getting 80-95% cpu usage constantly. I figure this is probably part of the problem causing the spikes. No one else is getting anything like this? Using AMD X2 3800+ dual core. And no, modern video games aren't using anything like this. I don't remember if it ever used to use this much in the old days but I've basically rebuilt my computer three times since then.

 

[Thothie]

A lot of modern games use less CPU than the older ones, sadly enough. Tis indicative of just how graphic dependant everything has become. I doubt you’ll find another game that eats CPU like MSC does.

How, however, are you getting 100% CPU usage on a non multi-threaded game on a dual core CPU? 50% should be top, as that's all MSC can "see" to use. That’s pretty close to the same CPU my laptop uses, and it doesn’t get anything like that when running the MSC server…

 

[Durak]

A lot of modern games use less CPU than the older ones, sadly enough. Tis indicative of just how graphic dependant everything has become. I doubt you’ll find another game that eats CPU like MSC does.

How, however, are you getting 100% CPU usage on a non multi-threaded game on a dual core CPU? 50% should be top, as that's all MSC can "see" to use. That’s pretty close to the same CPU my laptop uses, and it doesn’t get anything like that when running the MSC server…

Damned if I know. My brother had one core at 100% and the other at 50% while on another server but he doesn't remember having spikes while he was there. I can't remember if I get them on other servers since I've just been hosting mine for a while.

 

[Blasto121]

Default for most windows installs is to load balance the CPU, so a game like MS:C may only see one core. The OS on the other hand sees both and notices that MS:C is beating the snot out of core one so it attempts to lessen the load on it by using the second core. Course if it turns out that the leverage of the other core isn't helping much before you know it they are both rocking and rolling all maxed out like.

Though question why a dual core would be having so much issue in the first place is a different story. Considering my single core AMD 64 3500+ doesn't max out during play. Though it might now... haven't checked in a while.

 

[Thothie]

Usually, with a non-threaded app like MSC, windows will only allow one core to use it, lest you fux with the affinity. But maybe that's a difference between AMD and Intel threading - although I've never seen my Laptop go over 50%. It's just that 50%=max with MSC, and if yer at 50%, yer likely lagging like an SOB.

BTW one CRITICAL thing I shoulda mentioned: Check your msc/dlls folder - there are two files in there: SSE1 and SSE2 ms.dll archives. Those are optimized for different math FPU's - you might get better performance from the SSE2 archive. Or, if you are already using the SSE2 archive and it is causing lag spikes, I'd suggest using the default archive or SSE1 instead, as it maybe yer CPU is having some issues supporting SSE2 proper.

 

[Durak]

I'll give it a shot once I have the time. There's no obvious reason this is occuring and it's really annoying so I'm up for trying anything.

 

[Durak]

BTW one CRITICAL thing I shoulda mentioned: Check your msc/dlls folder - there are two files in there: SSE1 and SSE2 ms.dll archives. Those are optimized for different math FPU's - you might get better performance from the SSE2 archive. Or, if you are already using the SSE2 archive and it is causing lag spikes, I'd suggest using the default archive or SSE1 instead, as it maybe yer CPU is having some issues supporting SSE2 proper.

I tried SS2 and SS1 and neither got rid of the spikes. Just running around the temple in edana. With SS2 they seemed to occur less frequently but that might just be my perception, wasn't quantitative.

On an unrelated note, the "invisible wall" in challs is still there from years ago. Two of the wall shards (one light, one dark) in the edana temple spawn aren't fit together as the others are.

Edit: It happens in Savage 2 as well and seems to be the same thing. I'll ask the devs about it since they might have more time to devote to it since it's a paid game.