Pilot Archive

Thread: Ship Cruising Bug Drops to 0 speed and then back to full power

atytula
Fri Jan 07, 2005 4:03 pm
#40






Shikkari wrote:
I have began to ignore this and always attributed it to the rubberband/latency effect, however that being said...IT HAS ANNOYED ME ENOUGH TIMES IN COMBAT THAT I WISH THEY WOULD PLEASE FIX IT!!! and I do remember logging off once because it was so annoying!





Please understand that this may not be something that SOE can fix. I myself don't have this problem, and it is very possible that there is something wrong between you and SOE which is out of SOE's control. You may want to do ping and trace route tests to see if there is high latency in the connection or high packet loss. The window that shows up in SWG that tells you your latency is not 100% accurate. To improve its accuracy, ust Ctrl-Shift-G.




General Kazar Racillen, Master Smuggler
Echo Battalion CO (Eclipse)
http://www.echobattalion.com
Nomolos_UK
Sat Jan 08, 2005 3:26 am
#41

i have had this to and put it down to lag!

+

i have also had the ships mine included speed up!! making it imposible to hit or be hit realy odd my wing man could not beleve his eyes when he was looking at me lol



Life is like a box of chocolates
Some sods eaten all the creams!

Thulsa
Sat Jan 08, 2005 5:36 am
#42



lund0529 wrote:
Been happening to me since before beta ended.
  • I'm not on autopilot when it happens.
  • It happens with every engine I use.
  • It happens in my Dune Lizard and my Kimogila.
  • It happens in 1st and 3rd person view.
  • I warp backwards every time it happens.
  • It happens in combat and outside of combat.

It looks almost exactly like rubberbanding on the ground to me.






True, it's just lag, loss of packetflow, whatever. Not a bug.



IGN= Tyrr Ikoth
Jacquelyn
Mon Jan 10, 2005 5:00 pm
#43


I could be wrong but I imagine it to be an issue with space partitioning. When you have a large world you cannot get good numerical efficiency by calculating all collisions and rendering all objects into memory. So what they do is they partion off the space into quadrants, octals or bsp's. If you are in a high performance single player game you will notice that there are certain places when you "load" for a second and that there are portals in specific places to get to other rooms. This is for efficiency as calculations are only performed on the objects within that specific partition. On the game such partitions are probably larger and have dedicated servers and are thus referred too as "server boundaries". (might even have their own databases for some things)


If you hit a new render quadrant, from a programming perspective you cease being a member objectof the previous quadrant and your object data is transferred into the new quadrant. When then they do this it is likely that the velocity information is notcopied over although the throttle state is.

Sehvral
Mon Jan 10, 2005 5:27 pm
#44

I've been seeing some interesting stuff on TC lately related to this:


Ever see any enemy ship go into convulsions? It wasn't moving (well, might have been, but it woulda been ultra slow), but it was just jerking back and forth, spinning around. Looked like it was in a washing machine. Couldn't get a single hit in on it while it happened. Maybe got stuck on a boundary plane??? When I moved next to it, the same thing happened to me. It was like an endless cycle of these rubber-band motions, except they happened so fast that I could never could back up to more than 1/3 speed before it happened again. Went on for a good 3 minutes before I hypered away. One of the weirdest (and best to watch) things I've seen so far.



Sehvral - Spy/RSF Ace
Bohrev - Jedi/Rebel
Korehv - DE/Imperial
Kohreval - Structures
Chalodew - Medic/Inquisition
Borehv - Entertainer
Kohrev - Officer
--TC
lund0529
Tue Jan 11, 2005 10:00 am
#45

Well, bug or performance issue, it's still an issue that I would LOVE to see fixed.

They fixed rubberbanding on the ground with vehicles (more or less), right?
TalonKarrdeTN
Tue Jan 11, 2005 11:09 am
#46



atytula wrote:


Shikkari wrote:
I have began to ignore this and always attributed it to the rubberband/latency effect, however that being said...IT HAS ANNOYED ME ENOUGH TIMES IN COMBAT THAT I WISH THEY WOULD PLEASE FIX IT!!! and I do remember logging off once because it was so annoying!


Please understand that this may not be something that SOE can fix. I myself don't have this problem, and it is very possible that there is something wrong between you and SOE which is out of SOE's control. You may want to do ping and trace route tests to see if there is high latency in the connection or high packet loss. The window that shows up in SWG that tells you your latency is not 100% accurate. To improve its accuracy, ust Ctrl-Shift-G.




Uh, no...it's something SOE can fix. I use CTRL-Shift-G up all the time since I started experiencing the problems beyond the rubberband snap-back effect...that part has existed all through JTL beta as well. But I never had any problems with the invulnerability periods/ship warping/'drunken bees' effects in JTL beta that I've had ever since it launched live, and nothing changed with my system/setup between beta and live. I consistently monitor my ping rate as well as the sent/received info in CTRL-Shift-G and everything is totally normal there. My ping rates range from 85-125ms average normally and the majority of the time more like 85-100ms. The problem is some sort of sychnronization issue between the game client and the server. I understand alot of people don't experience the effects, but we've come to the conclusion that there's no single 'commonality' between OS'es/hardware/devices/drivers/programs/etc that can be pointed to on the user's end, everyone has something different that is suffering from the more extreme symptoms. Additionally, more people have started experiencing the problems as time has gone on, not less. Some started experiencing them after certain 11.x patches that came later. No, it's something SOE can and should fix.





Characters:
Tynd (formerly Tyndaleon) Starstrider (human)
Tharilac Crey'lya (bothan)
Tibattican (wookiee)
Tiomeg Bysik (ithorian)

Beta & Day 1 Tarq Vet, Longtime Officer & Member of the Order of Infinity (IFN), Current member of Wraith Squadron (WSQ)
Mael_BH
Tue Jan 11, 2005 11:10 am
#47

this is indeed a strange problem, it does not happen when i am in a fighter but when i fly my yt-1300 it happens every time i use the booster. if say i am going at full speed and hit the booster after i let go my speed drops to zero. this never happens any other time or in any other ship, so am a bit clueless as to the cause.



-----Maelcoluim Cinaeda-------

MBH, MCarbs
Master Neutral Pilot
Rebel Master Sergeant

"Its a trap!!!!"
atytula
Tue Jan 11, 2005 12:07 pm
#48

Talon, I am only stating this to be absolutely sure. I have NONE of these problems that you mention, so there are three possiblities.


1) Your server is lagging (I play on Eclipse) and it is a server specific issue, maybe due to a higher population in space or some corruption in the DB.

2) The connection has something wrong with it. Maybe it has packets coming in out of order which doesn't necessarily show on a ping but can cause issues since games use UDP (this usually is an ISP problem)

3) Something is happening to your computer like spyware or a virus.


It is possible that the problem is SOE, but make sure you are sure. It would be really dumb if SOE spends many man hours trying to fix the problem when it is really something out of there control.




General Kazar Racillen, Master Smuggler
Echo Battalion CO (Eclipse)
http://www.echobattalion.com
TalonKarrdeTN
Tue Jan 11, 2005 12:27 pm
#49

I understand what you're trying to say aty, I really do. In my case though, I'd like to think know what I'm talking about at least to a fair extent. I'm no genius nor a programmer, but I do PC/network tech support for a living, and I've built my own PC's on up from the 486 days. I run, now, as of the release of the MS Antispyware beta, 4 different adware/spyware/malware programs to make sure I'm as clean there as possible. Also have Norton/Symantec for AV and I keep it updated, no problems on the virus end. There's a huge thread dating back to October on these issues in the JTL Discussion forum. Some people have completely wiped their harddrive and reinstalled their OS'es and still having this problem, again, with no latency/lag issues showing when properly monitored. I totally, totally understand it's a strange 'hit and miss' type problem. But out of the hundreds and hundreds of posts in the one thread in particular, there's been no commonality whatsoever found. Everything has been shot down from the user side perspective. I myself have gone on Test Center and have the same problems there, so it's not a problem with just my server, there are people from all over the 'Galaxies' suffering from this. And again, I'll point out that I never had these problems once, other than just the rubberband snap-back alone, the entire time I was in JTL beta, and I was one of the very early acceptants. I run on DSL at home, but I've taken my setup to my brother's where they're on cablemodem, same thing there. To further confuse things, there *are* some people in JTL beta who *did* have these problems when I and others didn't.

Trust me, I wish it were something so simple and could be easily isolated to some common problem on the user's side, I wish it wasn't such a headscratching issue along these lines....but I've yet to see one hard shred of evidence to make me think this whole thing is anything other than a synchronization issue. The reason being, these problems/symptoms always clear up immediately after the rubberband snap-back effect takes place, until such time that the client/server develop synch problems again. As someone else has pointed out, this same rubberband effect plagued the ground game for awhile, actually on at least two different occasions since SWG launch, and that definitely wasn't a end-user problem either. I'll be more than happy to see someone be able to point to something, anything user related that magically solves all these issues if such a time ever comes. Until then, I'm totally convinced that only SOE can resolve this.





Characters:
Tynd (formerly Tyndaleon) Starstrider (human)
Tharilac Crey'lya (bothan)
Tibattican (wookiee)
Tiomeg Bysik (ithorian)

Beta & Day 1 Tarq Vet, Longtime Officer & Member of the Order of Infinity (IFN), Current member of Wraith Squadron (WSQ)
Jacquelyn
Tue Jan 11, 2005 4:12 pm
#50


this is indeed a strange problem, it does not happen when i am in a fighter but when i fly my yt-1300 it happens every time i use the booster. if say i am going at full speed and hit the booster after i let go my speed drops to zero. this never happens any other time or in any other ship, so am a bit clueless as to the cause.


I could be mistaken, but I think the booster accelleration/decelleration issue in the YT and Decimator are a separate issue. There is an issue with using the booster in the big MP ships that cause steering and control issues especially if you are turning. However the issue they have discussed here and from what I have encountered , it can occur in any ship. I notice also that it seems to occur when switching to a higher detail mode, but I also think that things may switch into a higher detail once you load into a new partitioning quadrant. I have noticed that there seems to be certain "boundaries" where if you pass and repass over the boundary you can reproduce this effect.


I think if someone is in a curcular dogfight and keep hitting this partition boundariy (sending them into different quadrants) then that could cause some real issues.


If you have a 4 by 3 grid sucha as:


XBXX
XAXX
XXXX
XXXX


If you are in location A then one technique may be to perform collisions checking algorithms and high detail rendering and meshes for everything in the "A" quadrant. Once you move into quadrant "B" all of your state data is copied over to "B" and the objects in "A" are no longer loaded in high detail and collissions are no longer calculated. However "B" will now load high deatil.


If something is in quadrant B and you are shooting it from Quadrant A you may not hit it at all. I think it is possible that your velocity information my not be persisteed between partitions although your throttle state is. This would cause you to immediately got to 0 velocity and then run back up to full throttle.


When this happens, stop and make a waypoint to the location where it occurd. Go boack and forth over that location at full throttle for about 1k or so. If the effect happens consistently in that location then we know it is likely a partition issue.


I will do some testing and post my results here. Hopefully someone else can also do this to collaborate the data I collect.

atytula
Tue Jan 11, 2005 5:01 pm
#51

Talon, I hear ya, but I still think it might be something out of SOE's control. Before JTL launched, I proclaimed that JTL should NOT be twitch. It would have problems that will not be related to SOE or the coding, but just general problems due to connectivity. Everyone shot me down, 1 starred me and said that JTL must be twitch for it to be successful and fun. I have played non twitch space MMORPG and I know they are fun, bet regardless, JTL is out now and it is released as twitch.


The problem that you are facing is one that a lot of people are experiencing. I am willing to bet it gets worst the farther you are from the west coast, though I that is just a guess on my part (I used to live on the East Coast where I did experience this problem, but now that I am on the west coast, it is much better). But since others are having no problem, it is most likely not a server problem (especially if others around you are not experiencing the same thing as server lag or bugs would affect everyone). So that leaves a bug in the client that is being affected by a specific hardware configuration (like it affects AMDs but not Intels or something of that nature), a software issue like spyware or a virus (I have done network support, I am a programmer for a security company and it is possible that something new can be affecting your computer, unlikely, but possible) and lastly a connectivity problem.


Here is an example of how it can be a connectivity problem. Games tend to use the UDP protocol which does not guarentee delivery of packets or that they arrive in the correct order. So if one packet gets lost, its gone and any information that was part of it is gone too. This will lead to inaccuracies between the client and the server. You may be experiencing intermittent packet loss where every N minutes, you lose a few packets and that is when you experience the drop to 0. The best way to find out if this is occuring is to get a program like pingplotter or do a continous ping to the SWG server and let it go for a few hours. If you have any packets being lost, then your problem is a connectivity problem. Unfortunately anything less then 5% packet loss is usually not considered an issue for most ISPs. Now there is the possiblitity of the packet coming in but late. If you average latency is 80ms (which is pretty good) but every N minutes you get a few that are 800ms, this might not change the avg ping time that SWG shows you (even with Ctrl-Shift-G) by much, lets say it goes up to 90ms, which still seems bad. These few packets are now late and hence the client may try to catch up, which gives you that drop to 0 because you are out of sink with the server. Again, a program like ping plotter or a continuous ping will identify your max ping time which should not be all that different from your average (maybe 50% higher at most).


It is an annoying bug, and when I had a crappy internet connection, I experienced it all the time, but now that I have a stable connection, I never see the problem. Again it may be SOE, and if it is, I hope they fix it, but it very well can be out of there hands and if it is, well, what can you do. Your internet connection should be stable (no packet loss and a constant ping time) but it is not uncommon for an internet connection to have small problems which can cause this problem, and most ISPs won't do anything. Try the ping test (do it for at least an hour to get a good sample set) and see if the connection is having any problems at all. Remember to do the tests to the SWG server since it can be any hop between you and SWG that can be causing the problem.




General Kazar Racillen, Master Smuggler
Echo Battalion CO (Eclipse)
http://www.echobattalion.com
TalonKarrdeTN
Tue Jan 11, 2005 8:04 pm
#52

While I understand what you're trying to say, until they fix the rubberband bug which is obviously interrelated in all this and affects virtually everyone whether or not they experience any of the other side effects I and others are plagued with, I still refuse to believe it's anything on the user end. It's most definitely not something processor/platform related, as we've long since knocked out the idea of such ideas as AMD only or NForce motherboard only or the like. And note I'm not saying it's totally server-related. I think it's something lacking in the way the client and sever are programmed to synchronize together. Again...this exact same type rubberband bug was in the ground game, more than once, and it's something they found and fixed. It wasn't an end-user problem beyond the game client that was indicative of anyone's ISP connectivity or hardware. Once they fix that, if myself and others in droves are still having these issues, I might be more receptive to the idea of there still being some gremlin out there other than SOE's software and programming, but until the rubberband bug is fixed, I stand by my conviction that it's something only SOE can fix.

On a side note, I would also point out that pub 11.2 was said to have addressed some of these issues, and it *did* do that, because the severity of these problems *were* lessened by that patch by comparison to how bad it was before...but the fixes didn't cover all the bases.





Characters:
Tynd (formerly Tyndaleon) Starstrider (human)
Tharilac Crey'lya (bothan)
Tibattican (wookiee)
Tiomeg Bysik (ithorian)

Beta & Day 1 Tarq Vet, Longtime Officer & Member of the Order of Infinity (IFN), Current member of Wraith Squadron (WSQ)
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