Multiplayer in Arma 2 - Is Warping (Lag) and Cheats still an issue?

[garack666]

Hi,

I like A1 , but i play only in MP. In arma i cant play MP cause other player warping ( cause of big lag ).

http://forums.bistudio.com/search.php?searchid=41318

specially look at thread from dudester

And cheaters are alle over.

Game-monitor shows that not very much people play arma 1.

So is the warping issue gone in Arma 2 ?

Edit: i played Arma 2 and Yes it is still warping. Better play singleplayer.

[MadDogX]

There hasn't been much info on multiplayer yet and until the game is actually out, we can't really say whether there will be a cheater problem.

[Landstalker]

cheaters worry me a little but will not stop me from having fun. im ex BF2 so never seen warping before unless i strapped c4 on someone and pulled the detonator, but bf2 got molested with hackers hence the reason i quit along time ago sadly. all good tho -

[walker]

Hi garack666

Cheating must be a bad problem in other games; since ArmA now has BattlEye and DOACS, cheating seems to have disapeared in ArmA. That plus ArmA is not an Ego Shooter so there is no benefit for being a score whore in ArmA. Mostly in ArmA it is about team play.

And the big clans use their public servers to train people in their clan ethos and to recruit from and use private locked or hidden servers for their clan matches.

I think the cheat worries are partialy why CM keep putting the release date back on DR.

Seems to be a plethora of these cheat threads guess a moddy should amalgamate them.

As to warping it tends to happen on badly set up and optimised servers or missions with stupidly long view distances. If your server suffers from it contact one of the good servers for info on optimising your setup. LAG spikes can also cause warping. By the way warping is caused by desynch which is caused by LAG not the other way round ;)

PS garack666 your link does not work.

Kind Regards walker

[Landstalker]

thanks cool advice im hosting as soon as i get word back from a few sites ive mailed they said they have to run server loads etc , so when thats complete i should be up and running with a server and i hope to have it running pretty smooth going to take some tweaking but should be all sorted in no time [fingers crossed]

[garack666]

Hi garack666

Cheating must be a bad problem in other games; since ArmA now has BattlEye and DOACS, cheating seems to have disapeared in ArmA. That plus ArmA is not an Ego Shooter so there is no benefit for being a score whore in ArmA. Mostly in ArmA it is about team play.

And the big clans use their public servers to train people in their clan ethos and to recruit from and use private locked or hidden servers for their clan matches.

I think the cheat worries are partialy why CM keep putting the release date back on DR.

Seems to be a plethora of these cheat threads guess a moddy should amalgamate them.

As to warping it tends to happen on badly set up and optimised servers or missions with stupidly long view distances. If your server suffers from it contact one of the good servers for info on optimising your setup. LAG spikes can also cause warping. By the way warping is caused by desynch which is caused by LAG not the other way round ;)

PS garack666 your link does not work.

Kind Regards walker

type in warping in forum search and filter to topics

[pogoman979]

Hi garack666

Cheating must be a bad problem in other games; since ArmA now has BattlEye and DOACS, cheating seems to have disapeared in ArmA. That plus ArmA is not an Ego Shooter so there is no benefit for being a score whore in ArmA. Mostly in ArmA it is about team play.

And the big clans use their public servers to train people in their clan ethos and to recruit from and use private locked or hidden servers for their clan matches.

I think the cheat worries are partialy why CM keep putting the release date back on DR.

Seems to be a plethora of these cheat threads guess a moddy should amalgamate them.

As to warping it tends to happen on badly set up and optimised servers or missions with stupidly long view distances. If your server suffers from it contact one of the good servers for info on optimising your setup. LAG spikes can also cause warping. By the way warping is caused by desynch which is caused by LAG not the other way round ;)

PS garack666 your link does not work.

Kind Regards walker

sorry but i had to butt in here. warping has nothing to do with the servers set up it is an arma problem. it is not caused by desync or lag spikes, if you host your own dedicated server then join it from the same computer the ai still warp, even if the vd is 200m (and your ping is like 5 and theres no other players).

the first time i got arma i couldnt believe how noone else was complaining about the warping and i spent ages trying to fix the problem (even took my computer to different houses with diff internet connections), but in the end i realised it was just arma and grew to live with it like everyone else, but it is definately a real issue and if arma2 still has it then its multiplayer base will end up the same as arma1's (ie nonexistant)...

[kt187]

They let you mod the hell out of a game, thats all cheating is modding or glitching any one can rig the game to there advantage. They should make it like Americas army wher ethey have the Offical rorginal games and then the cheat/no anit cheat games.

[rowdied]

sorry but i had to butt in here. warping has nothing to do with the servers set up it is an arma problem. it is not caused by desync or lag spikes, if you host your own dedicated server then join it from the same computer the ai still warp, even if the vd is 200m (and your ping is like 5 and theres no other players).

the first time i got arma i couldnt believe how noone else was complaining about the warping and i spent ages trying to fix the problem (even took my computer to different houses with diff internet connections), but in the end i realised it was just arma and grew to live with it like everyone else, but it is definately a real issue and if arma2 still has it then its multiplayer base will end up the same as arma1's (ie nonexistant)...

Sorry, I have to butt in here and tell you, you are wrong and right to a certain extent.
Let me explain. I thought the same thing you did and messed around with the settings a million different ways to Sunday and still found it caused warping players. I didn't mind it so much but my friends despised it so much so that they regularly stopped asking to play ArmA and we played R6V1 and 2, GR1 and 2 and also L4D all without lag.

But after recently revisiting the issue and reading several posts regarding the problem here and on other well known sites, I decided to change the server I use. Going from and old AMD FX60 oc'd @<hidden> 2.85 with 2G ram and an old 7200rpm non defragged HD to a newer Quad core q6600 oc'd @<hidden> 3.2 and 2g's of good 8500 ram and a faster 7200 rpm 16mb cache clean HD, the change has been to say the least, remarkable.

Seriously, the really bad player warping is virtually gone (still present to a certain extent on Evo type missions with lots of units present). I've had my friends ask me if I've made the AI harder because they hunt and kill us much more efficiently than before. They really don't sit and spin on the spot as much as they did before and make better decisions, or seem to anyways.

The only changes I made were to the hardware and the settings mr.g-c suggested found here http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=72451
Oh, and even when I host a dedicated server and join it from the same machine it never lags as much as you say it does. You might need to check your settings and/or upgrade your hardware, sorry.

Even with more powerful hardware and hooked up in a LAN setting, this game is still not as smooth as OFP and seriously needs better optimization to avoid the warping players and vehicles. On this point I can agree with you that it is an ArmA problem and hopefully will be fixed with ArmA2.

[.kju [PvPscene]]

BattlEye and verifySignatures do the job so far.
If server don't use it, no way to stop cheaters/hackers.

Rule of doubt. As we haven't heard AI warping at distance to be fixed,
it is still most likely an issue for A2.

No need to discuss it. The issue is a fact.
There is warping of AI units at distance. Tweaking minErrorToSend can
reduce it, yet NOT eliminate it. Seems like some bad OFPE optimization.

For human controlled entities there is no warping other than from bad connection
or server below 3 FPS.

[pogoman979]

yeah rowdied i wasnt talking about human players, they're fine. as kju says its the ai warping which is the issue.

[rowdied]

yeah rowdied i wasnt talking about human players, they're fine. as kju says its the ai warping which is the issue.

Actually, players at a distance warp also, but I did mean AI units.


No need to discuss it. The issue is a fact.
There is warping of AI units at distance. Tweaking minErrorToSend can
reduce it, yet NOT eliminate it. Seems like some bad OFPE optimization.

Very true, but I was responding to;


sorry but i had to butt in here. warping has nothing to do with the servers set up it is an arma problem. it is not caused by desync or lag spikes, if you host your own dedicated server then join it from the same computer the ai still warp, even if the vd is 200m (and your ping is like 5 and theres no other players).

only to say that it is not entirely true and that having a good system ( C2D or Quad core )and the right settings will help eleviate lots of the incredibly bad warping.
Hosting and then joining your own dedicated server, the warping is almost non existent. I've tried that out from an old dual core amd to a newer q9550 oc'd @<hidden> 3.4 and noticed hardware makes a huge difference. I'm just wanting to relate my experience, like pogoman979 did, with the frustrating warping units.
Lets hope we are the last people to discuss it and that BI eliminate it.:)

[tomcat_]

Actually, players at a distance warp also, but I did mean AI units.



Very true, but I was responding to;



only to say that it is not entirely true and that having a good system ( C2D or Quad core )and the right settings will help eleviate lots of the incredibly bad warping.
Hosting and then joining your own dedicated server, the warping is almost non existent. I've tried that out from an old dual core amd to a newer q9550 oc'd @<hidden> 3.4 and noticed hardware makes a huge difference. I'm just wanting to relate my experience, like pogoman979 did, with the frustrating warping units.
Lets hope we are the last people to discuss it and that BI eliminate it.:)

many discussions around this issue already...and i feel quite strong about it...however just to add a couple of things from my experiments with the server:

1. when u host your own server you don't see warping for obvious reasons...but the other mp players do see..

2. the way to fix this is reducing the minerrortosend, but then the bandwidth requirements go sky hi...in evolution with minerrortosend 0.001 bandwidth sent out from server for only two human players on the server was close to 100-110KB or 800kb

back to the subject now...i do thing this is a major issue that puts people off and gives an impression that the game is not polished off or not contemporary...so i really hope it has been fixed in Arma2

[pogoman979]

only to say that it is not entirely true and that having a good system ( C2D or Quad core )and the right settings will help eleviate lots of the incredibly bad warping.
Hosting and then joining your own dedicated server, the warping is almost non existent. I've tried that out from an old dual core amd to a newer q9550 oc'd @<hidden> 3.4 and noticed hardware makes a huge difference. I'm just wanting to relate my experience, like pogoman979 did, with the frustrating warping units.
Lets hope we are the last people to discuss it and that BI eliminate it.

ah ok im with ya :)

[Landstalker]

certainly a very intresting thread.

[walker]

sorry but i had to butt in here. warping has nothing to do with the servers set up it is an ArmA problem. it is not caused by desync or lag spikes, if you host your own dedicated server then join it from the same computer the ai still warp, even if the vd is 200m (and your ping is like 5 and theres no other players).

the first time i got arma i couldnt believe how noone else was complaining about the warping and i spent ages trying to fix the problem (even took my computer to different houses with diff internet connections), but in the end i realised it was just arma and grew to live with it like everyone else, but it is definately a real issue and if arma2 still has it then its multiplayer base will end up the same as arma1's (ie nonexistant)...

Hi pogoman979

I will not go over what others have already posted to correct you misunderstanding of the problem.

From your post you are talking about a client based server rather than a dedicated server on computer based at a server host.

You make it clear you are hosting the server on the same computer as the client you are playing with. Follow what others have posted to correct your setup but all that will mean nothing if your computer is not up to the task.

You need to have fairly good computer to do this. Dual core would be the minimum with affinity for the client and server set to different cores and lots of memory.

If you are doing this for a home LAN a better solution is a separate computer as server.

If you are hosting others on the server over the Internet you need something more than a standard ISP broadband, most only allow 256 K or perhaps 512 K outbound. ISP's often throttle people running servers from home computers and it may even be against your ISP contract.

You may have been fooled into thinking that other games do not suffer warping, They do. To get around it they use a range of limits and tricks. First off they limit number of players, next they limit view distance, they remove ballistics. They then begin the tricks: if you are running the client/server you are not seeing the world that others are so you will think things are better when they are not, it allows you to think it is a bad clients LAG problem rather than your server, you are being fooled; they use interpolation to guess where the player will be rather than give the true position, they use line of sight for bullet path rather from end of the gun, they use laser gun rather than true ballistic path, they do not model sound placement or environment etc.

ArmA has more resistance to warping than any other game you will play. If you were to play ArmA at the view distances of other games, 200-300m your warping would disappear in ArmA on a properly set up server, but ArmA is played at a much larger scale.

If you crank ArmA up too far, say if you play on a properly set up dedicated server on mid range server at a mid range server host with view distances of 5000m plus on all clients and the server and 60 plus players on the Internet, with players on a range of differing capability clients from minimum to top end, on the bell curve, the clients will definitely see warping.

That is because you are pushing the server and the mission too hard, drop view distance to 1200 m and the warping will disappear. It is pointless having 5000 m view distance for most people playing, any way humans cannot resolve another person at greater than about 2km even top snipers with the best scopes.

Yes you can alter view distances for special role clients such as fixed wing pilots and snipers but be controlled about it. Do not just give max view distance to every one. Use it logically.

Kind regards walker

[tomcat_]

Hi pogoman979

I will not go over what others have already posted to correct you misunderstanding of the problem.

From your post you are talking about a client based server rather than a dedicated server on computer based at a server host.

You make it clear you are hosting the server on the same computer as the client you are playing with. Follow what others have posted to correct your setup but all that will mean nothing if your computer is not up to the task.

You need to have fairly good computer to do this. Dual core would be the minimum with affinity for the client and server set to different cores and lots of memory.

If you are doing this for a home LAN a better solution is a separate computer as server.

If you are hosting others on the server over the Internet you need something more than a standard ISP broadband, most only allow 256 K or perhaps 512 K outbound. ISP's often throttle people running servers from home computers and it may even be against your ISP contract.

You may have been fooled into thinking that other games do not suffer warping, They do. To get around it they use a range of limits and tricks. First off they limit number of players, next they limit view distance, they remove ballistics. They then begin the tricks: if you are running the client/server you are not seeing the world that others are so you will think things are better when they are not, it allows you to think it is a bad clients LAG problem rather than your server, you are being fooled; they use interpolation to guess where the player will be rather than give the true position, they use line of sight for bullet path rather from end of the gun, they use laser gun rather than true ballistic path, they do not model sound placement or environment etc.

ArmA has more resistance to warping than any other game you will play. If you were to play ArmA at the view distances of other games, 200-300m your warping would disappear in ArmA on a properly set up server, but ArmA is played at a much larger scale.

If you crank ArmA up too far, say if you play on a properly set up dedicated server on mid range server at a mid range server host with view distances of 5000m plus on all clients and the server and 60 plus players on the Internet, with players on a range of differing capability clients from minimum to top end, on the bell curve, the clients will definitely see warping.

That is because you are pushing the server and the mission too hard, drop view distance to 1200 m and the warping will disappear. It is pointless having 5000 m view distance for most people playing, any way humans cannot resolve another person at greater than about 2km even top snipers with the best scopes.

Yes you can alter view distances for special role clients such as fixed wing pilots and snipers but be controlled about it. Do not just give max view distance to every one. Use it logically.

Kind regards walker

I respect what you say....however...

anyone who buys Arma2 and installs it on a dedicated server (say dual 100mb, C2D@<hidden>) and loads up a mission should not be looking at warping aircrafts and warping AI units....that is not doing any justice to the game...

having to read (the very few official guidelines about network settings) in order to set up a server properly, is not helping much....

let's wait and see in a few days....:)

[garack666]

yes servers with 2000 metres view distance have warping players/KI too.

[Trauma.au]

Agreed, warping is unacceptable, the netcode in Arma is it's No. 1 flaw imo. Trying to lase a moving tank from 3k+ is rather annoying when they are warping, I'm pretty much at a point where I don't engage moving targets, now thats saying something about the issue.

[LtCmdrBoon]

the problem is if there is some netlag then at some point warping must be done to bring the units into the correct position, unless they kinda drift into their correct position in an unnatural way i see the only way to combat it

it only takes a player with torrents, an overworked server, 7pm uk time etc and u got a problem

[garack666]

was not a server problem. me and all clan members had this warping seen on ervery server since arma 1.00.#

[sidhellfire]

I didn't experienced any warping on our community server :|
Indeed a bigger smoothing, or rather a smoothing between two smoothed already representations of player position would be a big bow to the players with poor connections, or weak servers.

[whisper]

There have been some corrected issues through patch, afaik, like the attempt to stop like spike on client connection on server, so we can guess such correction will be present in ArmA2.
That said, I'll never expect the same smooth netcode from ArmA series than from a CoD/BF server, for obvious reasons. Once again, ArmA's uniqueness (its scale) impacts the "normal" aspects of the game.
There's a saying where I live : "On ne peut pas avoir le beurre, l'argent du beurre, et la crémière" :p
("you can't buy butter, keep the money, and bring the seller's daughter with you", or something of that extent)

[PsychoPigeon]

My guess it will still be a laggy online game.

[garack666]

Perhaps some stats from the devs, bevore i buy this game and bring it back cause of warping players/ai in MP ...

No statement is a statement too :)

[MadDogX]

Perhaps some stats from the devs, bevore i buy this game and bring it back cause of warping players/ai in MP ...

No statement is a statement too :)


Arma2 will be released in Germany next Friday anyway. You can be pretty sure to see loads of activity and info on these forums once that happens, including people talking about MP. I for one intend to play the campaign in coop mode with a couple of friends and will be posting experiences and possibly videos along the way. :)

[Aussie]

was not a server problem. me and all clan members had this warping seen on ervery server since arma 1.00

Mate i think your server specs or settings are rooted. Warping is rarely seen on a server that is configured correctly

[Landstalker]

MadDogx '' ride on '' next friday wow didnt realise was that soon for german release damn things are looking up for the desperate few wanting to play it i best learn german and quick .......:yay:

[garack666]

MadDogx '' ride on '' next friday wow didnt realise was that soon for german release damn things are looking up for the desperate few wanting to play it i best learn german and quick .......:yay:

subtitles are german and the game. the speech is in english.

[pogoman979]

Hi pogoman979

I will not go over what others have already posted to correct you misunderstanding of the problem.

From your post you are talking about a client based server rather than a dedicated server on computer based at a server host.

You make it clear you are hosting the server on the same computer as the client you are playing with. Follow what others have posted to correct your setup but all that will mean nothing if your computer is not up to the task.

You need to have fairly good computer to do this. Dual core would be the minimum with affinity for the client and server set to different cores and lots of memory.

If you are doing this for a home LAN a better solution is a separate computer as server.

If you are hosting others on the server over the Internet you need something more than a standard ISP broadband, most only allow 256 K or perhaps 512 K outbound. ISP's often throttle people running servers from home computers and it may even be against your ISP contract.

i dont actually host servers for other people to join, it was just a test. i have a dual core e6750 clocked at 3.4Ghz and a whole bunch of ram, i just thought that since i'd essentially be joining a lan game there should be no lag, but from what rowdied said i see that i need a much better computer to have no lag.

wrt the rest of your post i know arma is a demanding game, however even playing the default version of warfare on decent servers (where the VD is fixed at like 600m), there is still ai warping, so it is a real problem.

[whisper]

Again, no other engine can dream of showing that many AI units, acting independantly (meaning in Warfare, they go on their own missions, capturing towns and such, even if it's not so well done), that you can see over a what? 1200, 1500m if not more view distance. This uniqueness induce the lag you see. I'm not sure you can expect perfection there. Better get used to it.

Ofc, that doesn't mean we should shut up and not ask for improvement :)

[garack666]

Again, no other engine can dream of showing that many AI units, acting independantly (meaning in Warfare, they go on their own missions, capturing towns and such, even if it's not so well done), that you can see over a what? 1200, 1500m if not more view distance. This uniqueness induce the lag you see. I'm not sure you can expect perfection there. Better get used to it.

Ofc, that doesn't mean we should shut up and not ask for improvement :)

Thats right but Arma 1 is useless. Such a great View Distance and lots of KI.

But all are warping and the nice real bullet Physik is useless when you cant hit them cause there warping.

[whisper]

That's exagerating quite a lot

[tomcat_]

Again, no other engine can dream of showing that many AI units, acting independantly (meaning in Warfare, they go on their own missions, capturing towns and such, even if it's not so well done), that you can see over a what? 1200, 1500m if not more view distance. This uniqueness induce the lag you see. I'm not sure you can expect perfection there. Better get used to it.

Ofc, that doesn't mean we should shut up and not ask for improvement :)

point i was trying to make is that if we make a simple mission/test:

1. restrict the viewing distance to 300-500 or whatever you recommend

2. make on a mission with no ai, and get a plane to fly at high speed at low altitude

If you watch that plance flying above your head....you will see it warping...

i haven't done the above experiment..but planning to do it in Arma2...but i guess with only one plane on a whole map there is still gonna be warping...

[whisper]

If you haven't done it, how can you say it will warp? oO

[garack666]

After playing first time on a dedi server: Warping like hell, worst then arma 1. warping problem still exist , netcode is not better. forget MP. Patches cant correct this, cause they never cant in arma 1 i think. but lets hope...dont buy the game so fast when you dislike warping KI/ players.

[sidhellfire]

Strange, that I've never experienced warping on my community server in A1, and bet there will be none for me in A2. Yet, I expect to see this a lot on public hosts with unknown connection.

[Leopardi]

Warping is near non-existent on a proper server. I don't think there are proper servers in ArmA II yet.

[tomcat_]

well i guess we can move this thread to new multiplayer forum...?

[Placebo]

Indeed. Moving to MP.

[ChrisAA]

Not sure if it was some guy cheating, but every time I killed him he kept spawning on his body, nobody else would. He just kept spawning ontop of himself.
Can't remember what game mode it was, but not even I could do that! (capturing points, but we had the controlled point he was spawning in)

He seemed very afk as well, like he had to come out of the game to do whatever he was doing.

[{SAS}Silentkiller]

For me I think playing Evolution there is occaisional warping/lag this seems to be when some goes on one of the side missions; puts their bots in a little bird or wake up 2 towns at once.

These things really stress even the best server.

Btw, does anyone know if you actually need a copy of the game to run a server or are there server files?

[-=seany=-]

So evo is included with Arma2? interesting. Is it there own version like warfare was to CTI, or is it pretty faithful to the Evo of Arma?

One other question on multiplayer, does it still take up to 15-20 minutes to connect to some servers?

[garack666]

So evo is included with Arma2? interesting. Is it there own version like warfare was to CTI, or is it pretty faithful to the Evo of Arma?

One other question on multiplayer, does it still take up to 15-20 minutes to connect to some servers?

nope takes just forever cause of a blackscreen bug :j:

[toloquta]

I think the position prediction net code is a bit lacking. If the algorithm can make a good guess at the position of moving objects the corrections (warping) required when the actual position disagrees with the real position will be smaller and less noticeable.

The Quake3, Source and Unreal engines all have good prediction code.

If the server is hitting 100 percent CPU load things are probably going to start getting screwy even with good prediction so you'd want to verify that wasn't happening at the first sign of excessive warping.

Due to the nature of some of the game modes with lots of AI there could be a lot of load on the servers. I'm not sure if the server code will take advantage of 8 - 16 cores but I think that is what you would want to shoot for a high capacity server with lots of AI if it did.

[walker]

Hi toloquta

ArmA has more resistance to warping than any other game you will play. If you were to play ArmA at the view distances of other games, 200-300m your warping would disappear in ArmA on a properly set up server, but ArmA is played at a much larger scale.

You may have been fooled into thinking that other games do not suffer warping, They do.

To get around it they use a range of limits and tricks:
First off they limit number of players, next they limit view distance and they remove ballistics.
They then begin the tricks:
If you are running a client/server you are not seeing the world that others are so you will think things are better when they are not, it allows you to think it is a bad clients LAG problem rather than your server, you are being fooled; they use interpolation to guess where the player will be rather than give the true position, they use line of sight for bullet path rather from end of the gun, they use laser gun rather than true ballistic path, they do not model sound placement or environment etc.

This is why all those other games suffer from accusations of cheating, according to their machine they hit the guy, according to his he was not even in that street, the usual COD/CS chatter.

Warping is not realy an issue in ArmA as it is in other games.

Kind Regards walker

[toloquta]

When you're talking about view distance here I'm assuming you're really talking about the rate of position updates the client is receiving which would depend on the number of moving objects within the view distance radius. Its possible that if the client and/or server were smart they could further reduce the number of updates by eliminating object updates that could be determined to be irrelevant (object is too small to see at current distance, object is obstructed by terrain, etc).

All client/server multiplayer games presenting a real-time environment are going to have to use position prediction on the client side for moving objects unless they simply don't change the position of the object as viewed in the client until a real position update is received (this would appear as jerky movement unless the updates could be sent at a rate which would match the clients rendering frame rate). The effectiveness of the prediction algorithm used is very important to providing an accurate jerk free multiplayer experience, although of course it is not the only factor. I haven't spent much time analyzing the behavior of the prediction in ARMA or ARMA2 if what you say is true then it must have a pretty effective algorithm.

I realize a lot of games take a lot of shortcuts in their net code. From what I've seen ARMA (not sure about 2) takes quite a few shortcuts in that they don't make much of an attempt to validate data sent by the clients. Putting in more validation to test if the client is "lying" would make cheating much more difficult.

As far as how the weapons work I agree that they appear to do it right in ARMA. If I were writing it, I'd have the client send out a packet as soon as the weapon was fired with the weapon vector. The server could then compute the bullet trajectory and determine if the bullet would hit anything along its path. When firing from a distance this could work very well in that server would still be computing the bullet path before the object you were going to hit was even there. I'm not sure if ARMA/ARMA2 is smart enough to check the weapon vector received by the server to see if it plausible. For instance if the server knows the player wasn't reasonably close to the position of the weapon vector last update it should throw out the packet and possible kick the player from the game.


Hi toloquta

ArmA has more resistance to warping than any other game you will play. If you were to play ArmA at the view distances of other games, 200-300m your warping would disappear in ArmA on a properly set up server, but ArmA is played at a much larger scale.

You may have been fooled into thinking that other games do not suffer warping, They do.

To get around it they use a range of limits and tricks:
First off they limit number of players, next they limit view distance and they remove ballistics.
They then begin the tricks:
If you are running a client/server you are not seeing the world that others are so you will think things are better when they are not, it allows you to think it is a bad clients LAG problem rather than your server, you are being fooled; they use interpolation to guess where the player will be rather than give the true position, they use line of sight for bullet path rather from end of the gun, they use laser gun rather than true ballistic path, they do not model sound placement or environment etc.

This is why all those other games suffer from accusations of cheating, according to their machine they hit the guy, according to his he was not even in that street, the usual COD/CS chatter.

Warping is not realy an issue in ArmA as it is in other games.

Kind Regards walker

[Mojo]

+1 to Walker, well said.

Cheating is minimized with required signatures and only specific addons allowed.

I can't speak clearly on Arma2, I've only just gotten my hands on it and testing is still underway, but from my initial looks, I'd say that we can do at least 80 to 90, I hope to push to 150, but I bet we can run 80 all day and never look back. <-- as I say, that is just a guess, a week or so will give us a better view.

That said, there are a wide number of "optimal" server settings. It all depends on WHAT YOU PLAY. As an example, if you play Evolution, with all the scripts running the way that they do, you need a great deal more computer power that a properly optimized mission with as much work as possible of-loaded to the clients via mod.

With careful optimization of the configuration files, a well built mission, a properly configured island and a decent mod, you can run 80 to 100 players in arma1, 50 pretty easily with a minimum of warping/lag/desync.

The net-code and how the server uses it, is the most interesting and devious thing about arma1 in my opinion. I absolutely love to grab network trace files of the missions running, because of the way the server code and net code seem to inter-operate, ping is much less important in the ARMA world that in any other shooter. A player with 12ms and a player with 120ms pings are an a more equal footing than I've ever seen before.

[garack666]

Hi toloquta

ArmA has more resistance to warping than any other game you will play. If you were to play ArmA at the view distances of other games, 200-300m your warping would disappear in ArmA on a properly set up server, but ArmA is played at a much larger scale.

You may have been fooled into thinking that other games do not suffer warping, They do.

To get around it they use a range of limits and tricks:
First off they limit number of players, next they limit view distance and they remove ballistics.
They then begin the tricks:
If you are running a client/server you are not seeing the world that others are so you will think things are better when they are not, it allows you to think it is a bad clients LAG problem rather than your server, you are being fooled; they use interpolation to guess where the player will be rather than give the true position, they use line of sight for bullet path rather from end of the gun, they use laser gun rather than true ballistic path, they do not model sound placement or environment etc.

This is why all those other games suffer from accusations of cheating, according to their machine they hit the guy, according to his he was not even in that street, the usual COD/CS chatter.

Warping is not realy an issue in ArmA as it is in other games.

Kind Regards walker

yep, good explenation, but all features are senseless when all players warping and laggy so you cant hit them. then i dont need any balistic, cause the balistics are sooo wrong when a player warped 3 meter away..i couldnt catch him with laser beams too:(

[kklownboy]

i believe the upload of the server is King... soo if the serve is lame on its upload bandwidth you will have some real jip problems. That being said some servers are not set up right yet to play A2...

[heady89]

Hi toloquta

ArmA has more resistance to warping than any other game you will play. If you were to play ArmA at the view distances of other games, 200-300m your warping would disappear in ArmA on a properly set up server, but ArmA is played at a much larger scale.

You may have been fooled into thinking that other games do not suffer warping, They do.

To get around it they use a range of limits and tricks:
First off they limit number of players, next they limit view distance and they remove ballistics.
They then begin the tricks:
If you are running a client/server you are not seeing the world that others are so you will think things are better when they are not, it allows you to think it is a bad clients LAG problem rather than your server, you are being fooled; they use interpolation to guess where the player will be rather than give the true position, they use line of sight for bullet path rather from end of the gun, they use laser gun rather than true ballistic path, they do not model sound placement or environment etc.

This is why all those other games suffer from accusations of cheating, according to their machine they hit the guy, according to his he was not even in that street, the usual COD/CS chatter.

Warping is not realy an issue in ArmA as it is in other games.

Kind Regards walker

Well true to some extent.
Besides nothing claims it's impossible to code good solutions for Arma 2 either , i mean so you're using the 3000 view distance as an excuse for warping and lag issues to be justified? (or being a better way to do it?)

The thing you're mentioning with people not being there and then cheat accused I've never heard or encounter before and I've played in mature/serious clans in BF / COD series since they came out in 2002-03. There's been occasions were you might have fired a round in you're screen but infact at the server you never shot it because it hap pent in a millisecond at a collision say were you die at the same time of that shot. Doesn't really harm anyone anyway?

I tell you cheats doesn't depend on that, it's more of a game design when people barely show their 3rd person head around the corner but in the first person view they're leaning out totally clear to shoot. Could be fixed pretty easily tbh , several mods have done it.

Sure several details run client sided.. it works.. better than Arma and no you're not at a different place, the codes ain't a joke like Armas current netcode. I mean mp is unplayable , coop works fine with some buds on a private server but that's just about it...

Btw remember bf1942 , great view distance by the time 2001/2002 around OFP release , no issues there.. blame the ballistics or lack of detail it's just absurd. I tell Arma to skip it then if they can't do it since their current mp is useless and i'd trade ballistics for less lag anytime.

Why bother defending it?
I'd trust ID , IW , EPIC or any company besides BIS when it comes to code a netcode and solid mp.
Heck even Americas Army is doing a great job , it's got even more realistic ballistics than Arma. (yeye not same open world..........!)

[whisper]

If you don't want open world and prefer perfect netcode, then sure, ArmA2 is not the game for you

[toloquta]

Anyone work at an ISP? It would be nice to see how a 64 player ARMA2 server would work right off of a backbone.

[whisper]

Anyone work at an ISP? It would be nice to see how a 64 player ARMA2 server would work right off of a backbone.

The net quality is far less important than the server quality.
I'm at an ISP, my server is "in the backbone", but it's not a good enough one and can't handle too much pressure atm :(

[Mojo]

Anyone work at an ISP? It would be nice to see how a 64 player ARMA2 server would work right off of a backbone.

You can have 100Mb/s connections all day, but if your server isn't up to the challenge, you won't get any better performance.

It isn't about ping - that doesn't mean nearly as much - anyone under 300ms can play with out a problem. You have to have processor, ram and server side configuration setup.

Stop thinking network and start thinking about the server. you can run 100 people on a 12Mb/s up and down connection.

[garack666]

never a dev has ever posted in this warping threads, cause ....we all know why:eek:

[.kju [PvPscene]]

Suma has in the A1 bugtracker.

[anfiach]

The simple truth is that the majority of gamers do not remotely understand how things work, they simply want them to work, and flawlessly. The truth is, the larger the world, the larger the number of objects and the more realistic and intense the scenery and effects, the greater the chance of warping and lag issues.

This is a niche game and only sim fans will ever truly enjoy and appreciate it, only they are willing to sacrifice things that are taken for granted in shoebox games to have a sandbox to play in. I regularly play another sandbox game that is 100x larger than Arma but in order to obtain that, graphical quality must suffer. In turn Arma is devoid of certain physics and ballistic properties I value as well as size. Both push the absolute limits (granted BI is better funded) and that means there will be performance issues.

Better to approach this game with the understanding that it will never be without issues and to understand many people will have to find many different solutions to the same problems. If you want to be angry, be angry about the senseless bugs and graphical errors that should never have made it past post production, expecting the netcode to behave just like it does in every other game that isn't remotely like this one is an exercise in ignorance and futility.

[garack666]

jaja welt gross alles toll und komplex und die ai/player lagged trotzdem..

[orlok]

Hello all

I regularly play in coop games and although the AI lag/jump still occours. its not half as bad as it was in Arma1.

I do get JIP lags when folks join but its a small price to pay in the scheme of things.

As to PvP play, im not able to comment as I usually avoid these as in my experience, they often end up being DM type game which dont suit me at all.

Im sure someone will correct me on that tho!

Also, I think we must remember that the devs of this game are not in the same league as other major companies, such as Blizzard and dont have endless amounts of cash to hire upteen coders to sort out the stuff that needs to be addressed.

Yes, there are issues harking back to OFP/VBS/ARMA that are still outstanding, but no matter how annoying these glitches are there MUST be a reason for them not being addressed, and we will have to make do for the moment.

I'm no fanboy of BI but I'd rather have ARMA2 warts and all than no ARMA at all.

Just my 2 pence.

rgds

LoK

[anfiach]

Also, AI has nothing to do with Netcode and everything to do with the server so unless there is an issue in the network causing greater latency/spikes connection has nothing to do with the issue.

[heady89]

It's a freaking joke the whole warping / net code, i mean did BIS ever try the game outside the office with some latency ?

Can't believe this haven't been solved after all these years, even COOP warps which it at least didnt in Arma 1.

[whisper]

Warping == Server can't handle the mission. As simple as that. Server has not enough FPS and can't relay information to clients.
At around 15 FPS on server, you'd begin to see warping for units at like 600m or such, depending ofc on the server configuration and the number of units. If there's a whole battalion in these 600m, then yes you can expect to see warping for farther units

[.kju [PvPscene]]

No - warping at distance happens also with good FPS for human players.

[whisper]

if you have client / server network "issues" (note that doesn't mean "ping" issues).
Example : low FPS on said client
I don't think it's the general warping people are talking about here, though

[heady89]

Dear god, it's time for Bohemia to build a new engine i mean this is the 3rd release really and it contains so many bugs that it's just unacceptable.. great potential but yes i actually regret buying it.

Don't get me wrong now i am a hardcore simulation fan and i can handle a few bugs here and there no game is perfect but that doesn't mean i can live with crashes , glitches , flickering , netcode issues, script issues , campaign lockups.. was this game tested before release.. i mean you find bugs everywhere the troubleshooting forums is filled.

My faith in BIS has run out , sorry im done with you're products.

[whisper]

goodbye, random rant #307

[toloquta]

The net quality is far less important than the server quality.
I'm at an ISP, my server is "in the backbone", but it's not a good enough one and can't handle too much pressure atm :(

Sounds like the server is quite resource intensive. Hopefully we will see some optimizations to the server side code so it makes the most of the hardware available.

Come on BIS breakout the profiler and find a few bottlenecks in the code. I'd do it for you, but I don't have the code. I'll forgive ya if you get around to it eventually, just wish the game had a bit higher budget to deal with this stuff early on.

[Game__On]

I also see a lot of warping in multiplay coop .

Basically it's no use to shoot at any moving target . You just have to wait untill the target stops moving.

Is this avoidable ? I mean i see it on EVERY server .

[walker]

Hi Game__On

Choose servers where you do not have so high a ping, usualy ones on your continent.

Kind Regards

[Halli~SPARTA~]

Also servers that do not allow mods will have less Snyc time involved and as such will be smoother and Video lag even with that bad boy card you have(feels like mem leak to me) on your part could be a problem and seem like a server issue.

[Game__On]

Also servers that do not allow mods will have less Snyc time involved and as such will be smoother and Video lag even with that bad boy card you have(feels like mem leak to me) on your part could be a problem and seem like a server issue.

It's actually 2 of them. (vid cards) . Could that be causing the warping perhaps ? SLI ?

I usually play on servers that are close to me, where ping shows as 16 .

Thing is, i have never ever seen an enemy run sideways from me (from far away) without skipping meters. It's REALLY annoying.

I do not get this in single player, so i think it has to be a server issue ? Hmm i'll try disabling sli and see if it changes anything online. I've tried everything else so why not :d .

[whisper]

The farther away from the unit you watch, the more players connected and the more units in the mission you play, the more warping you'll see.
This is kind of unavoidable (probably optimizable though), with the view distance of the game and the potentially high number of units present, without any way to control the amount of units visible (without breaking the flexibility of the engine), the engine must have some network flood control in place limiting the amount of data sent. BI chosed to base the data flood limitation on relative distance between player and watched units. Thus the warping you see on distant units , mostly visible in big missions with high players count

[Game__On]

The farther away from the unit you watch, the more players connected and the more units in the mission you play, the more warping you'll see.
This is kind of unavoidable (probably optimizable though), with the view distance of the game and the potentially high number of units present, without any way to control the amount of units visible (without breaking the flexibility of the engine), the engine must have some network flood control in place limiting the amount of data sent. BI chosed to base the data flood limitation on relative distance between player and watched units. Thus the warping you see on distant units , mostly visible in big missions with high players count

I see. Thx for this clear answer.

+1

[JaKe.OnE]

A cheater community now released a mem hack, and now you have cheaters everywhere.
ArmA 2 is lost now. Cheaters can do what they want and no one recognizes this.

Very bad, but I will stop playing till there is an anti-cheat engine. Additionally we will look for a different game.

[LeftSkidLow]

Also servers that do not allow mods will have less Snyc time involved and as such will be smoother and Video lag even with that bad boy card you have(feels like mem leak to me) on your part could be a problem and seem like a server issue.


Do you have any proof to back that statement, why would there be less sync time?

[Halli~SPARTA~]

Do you have any proof to back that statement, why would there be less sync time?

I do not have proof but as one of the Admins for our group it has made a WORLD of difference and made our server run 80% better and we are talking about one of the best professional server companys in The united States Defcon servers in Dallas,Tx using Quad core and Fiber optic connection.

So just an observation playing on a Server setup with Domination and usally
filled with about 25-30 folks when I am on.

Oh and I don't know why but it is just an observation.

[Daniel M]

A cheater community now released a mem hack, and now you have cheaters everywhere.
ArmA 2 is lost now. Cheaters can do what they want and no one recognizes this.

Very bad, but I will stop playing till there is an anti-cheat engine. Additionally we will look for a different game.

Anti-cheat=Don't play on public servers??

There's a little bit of sarcasm in there. But I digress

I don't think it's "lost" just because people want to cheat. Find a group of people on pubs, is possible, but i think if you join a private server you will not have this issue.

[Halli~SPARTA~]

Oh I thought about locking the server but If you stay on top of things the play can be fair and fun.
Haha banned 8 last night they came in and worked as a squad to TK including glitching in the control tower on Domination to shoot though the wall.

[L3dZ3P]

I joined a Domination game last night, where there was some sort of hacking going on when I joined. We were just being constantly being shot at the spawn flag by some wallhacker whos name wasnt appearing for the kills?

Anyway got fed up of this constantly for a few mins, and what chance has an admin of kicking/banning this cheater if no name is appearing?

We need something to sort this and soon .... for me public is the only multiplay I am gonna get. I cant really join a clan or something to get on a private server. My situation is that I usually be playing from around 11.00pm till around 03.00 am when my kids are sleeping in the room next door so I cant be hollering "INCOMIN'" on ts! Unless I wanna wake up the whole house which wont be pretty lol. I can listen just fine on my headphones though so thats fine for now:)

[LeftSkidLow]

Oh I thought about locking the server but If you stay on top of things the play can be fair and fun.
Haha banned 8 last night they came in and worked as a squad to TK including glitching in the control tower on Domination to shoot though the wall.

Hahahaha.............. yeah except it is extremely unlikely that all 8 were guilty.

[R71]

Yep, SPARTA server is very bad to ban for no reason. I would not say it but when you ban for no reason and then will not say why you did it.... :mad:

I had a friend on thier ask why and they just ignored him. funny thing is I was right in front of a admin as he was looking at me he got shot in the back then bans me. this is no way to get good people in your servers.

[Halli~SPARTA~]

How about you tell them That we just got Nuked In Vybor and All hell was breaking loose
You were right behind me and I got TK'ed at base after tking Choppers and other players SO How was I to know if it was you or the guy behind you in a situation like that you must make fast decisions to stop the hackers.

You know I sent you a PM but you come on here talking Bovine Scat. If you want to go play on Kiddie servers go right ahead but Things must happen in the heat of Being Hacked.

---------- Post added at 01:24 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:17 AM ----------


Hahahaha.............. yeah except it is extremely unlikely that all 8 were guilty.

WRONG I know beyond a doubt who was Tking. I have Screen shots.

[Morgan969]

Yep, SPARTA server is very bad to ban for no reason. I would not say it but when you ban for no reason and then will not say why you did it.... :mad:

I had a friend on thier ask why and they just ignored him. funny thing is I was right in front of a admin as he was looking at me he got shot in the back then bans me. this is no way to get good people in your servers.

Admins at SPARTA never ban for no reason. When a group comes in and starts wreaking havoc it is the job of the admin to restore order. In chaotic situations there can be collateral damage, but thats the risk of war.

Did you PM an Admin at the Sparta web site and explain the circumstances? Did you make any effort at all other than having some mysterious 'friend' ask about the action?

Your friend asked why and was ignored.. why is that surprising? Why would an admin discuss an administrative action with anyone but the affected player? Why would you expect any admin to discuss their actions with some stranger?

You want to know why you got banned? Ask through the appropriate channels. If a mistake was made and it can be verified, then the action can be amended. Simple enough.

[Tinker]

this is no way to get good people in your servers.

Is actually hard to get on the server at night because it is always full. At least 80% of them are on TS too, which is awesome.

This should be discussed on the clan website, not here also.

[R71]

Is actually hard to get on the server at night because it is always full. At least 80% of them are on TS too, which is awesome.

This should be discussed on the clan website, not here also.

I am not going to have to sign on everyones web site when I did nothing wrong.

@<hidden> Morgan969

"Your friend asked why and was ignored.. why is that surprising? Why would an admin discuss an administrative action with anyone but the affected player? Why would you expect any admin to discuss their actions with some stranger?"

If you want to be a prick about it then sure say nothing. I see no reason why he would not respond when asked in a nice way. Arma has very little players as it is now, lets not chase them all away. I just wanted to post here so server admins would know this is not the best way to deal with it. I have been playing this game for 8 years and never had a ban before. This is going to pm now with Halli.

[dustoff]

Admins at SPARTA never ban for no reason. When a group comes in and starts wreaking havoc it is the job of the admin to restore order. In chaotic situations there can be collateral damage, but thats the risk of war.

Did you PM an Admin at the Sparta web site and explain the circumstances? Did you make any effort at all other than having some mysterious 'friend' ask about the action?

Your friend asked why and was ignored.. why is that surprising? Why would an admin discuss an administrative action with anyone but the affected player? Why would you expect any admin to discuss their actions with some stranger?

You want to know why you got banned? Ask through the appropriate channels. If a mistake was made and it can be verified, then the action can be amended. Simple enough.

I get that all the time a group will come in and just go crazy disobey the rules run others off etc , trying to sort it I kick and ban the ring leader right off most of the his followers will leave too, but once in a while there will be one guy that has to stick around and complain that his friends where kicked.

[R71]

I have not seen that many hackers in this game. The main amount of problems I see is team killers, and people that dont want to work as a team. I do spend most of my time in a locked server though.

[JaKe.OnE]

Anti-cheat=Don't play on public servers??

There's a little bit of sarcasm in there. But I digress

I don't think it's "lost" just because people want to cheat. Find a group of people on pubs, is possible, but i think if you join a private server you will not have this issue.Good idea, yeah.
And what do you suggest to server hoster and hoster with own missions? :mad:
Thanks for your care but still no solution.

And locking the server of a game which has no defined rounds or no end is no solution either.

The best solution is an anti-cheat engine like Battleye.

[Halli~SPARTA~]

The best solution is an anti-cheat engine like Battleye.

Yep the sooner the better as I would like to play rather than babysit.

[LeftSkidLow]

Battleye won't help for most of the cheats you are seeing because they are just addons, not 3rd party apps.

[whisper]

Mere addon hack doesn't go past signature check. There's something else for this, and BE could help

[Rowdy426]

I hate fatty little tools that start these hacks. If I had the chance, I'd kick their jaw in.

[dmitri]

minerrortosend