Query regarding in-game network usage
Posted: 18 Jul 2012, 23:21
Hi, I purchased Shootmania earlier tonight and tried to play a couple of matches. However, the in-game experience was very laggy, even when trying to play on multiple different servers. The lag was definitely not hardware related, as my PC runs the game just fine.
I do not have a very fast ADSL connection, and this seems to be the culprit. My download speed is capped at 384Kbps, and my upload speed at 128Kbps. This means that my line cant handle download speeds higher than 40kb/s and my upload speeds cant exceed 14kb/s. Unfortunately I cannot upgrade my line speed currently due to various reasons, otherwise this would obviously have been a convenient solution.
Whilst playing tonight, I opened a network monitoring program on my computer called Netbalancer, which shows me the exact amount of bandwidth that any program on my computer uses. It would seem that Shootmania uses a rather high amount of upload bandwidth - at times exceeding 10 kb/s. Naturally this will cause problems, as when you start to reach the maximum download / upload speed on your line, you will experience lag - like in any other game.
This has not been a problem for me in any other online games that I have played before on this connection (QL, TF2, CS, SC2, LOL, DOTA2, COD, and countless others) so I am rather surprised that the game uses so much bandwidth. If there is no way that a player can configure the game to best utilize their internet connection, then problems like this will arise.
I wanted to ask if any of you know of any way to tweak network settings for the game in order to fine-tune how much bandwidth the game can use, or can possibly provide any other solutions. I have configured the Maniaplanet launcher to an adequate value for my line speed under the network connection settings tab, but it seems that these have no effect on Shootmania itself. Is there is no way to edit network settings via a config file? I haven't spotted any settings in-game that addresses network speed.
It would be great if the developers could take notice of this, and possibly give us any feedback on whether the game will allow network tweaking in future, or if there are already methods available to do so. I have been searching on the forums tonight, but I have not found anything yet that has helped. Unfortunately it seems that the game will not be playable for me in it's current state - but I do of course realize that the game is still in beta, and that it's likely that changes will be made in order to address this.
Also, if there is a more appropriate forum section to post technical issues, please let me know.
I do not have a very fast ADSL connection, and this seems to be the culprit. My download speed is capped at 384Kbps, and my upload speed at 128Kbps. This means that my line cant handle download speeds higher than 40kb/s and my upload speeds cant exceed 14kb/s. Unfortunately I cannot upgrade my line speed currently due to various reasons, otherwise this would obviously have been a convenient solution.
Whilst playing tonight, I opened a network monitoring program on my computer called Netbalancer, which shows me the exact amount of bandwidth that any program on my computer uses. It would seem that Shootmania uses a rather high amount of upload bandwidth - at times exceeding 10 kb/s. Naturally this will cause problems, as when you start to reach the maximum download / upload speed on your line, you will experience lag - like in any other game.
This has not been a problem for me in any other online games that I have played before on this connection (QL, TF2, CS, SC2, LOL, DOTA2, COD, and countless others) so I am rather surprised that the game uses so much bandwidth. If there is no way that a player can configure the game to best utilize their internet connection, then problems like this will arise.
I wanted to ask if any of you know of any way to tweak network settings for the game in order to fine-tune how much bandwidth the game can use, or can possibly provide any other solutions. I have configured the Maniaplanet launcher to an adequate value for my line speed under the network connection settings tab, but it seems that these have no effect on Shootmania itself. Is there is no way to edit network settings via a config file? I haven't spotted any settings in-game that addresses network speed.
It would be great if the developers could take notice of this, and possibly give us any feedback on whether the game will allow network tweaking in future, or if there are already methods available to do so. I have been searching on the forums tonight, but I have not found anything yet that has helped. Unfortunately it seems that the game will not be playable for me in it's current state - but I do of course realize that the game is still in beta, and that it's likely that changes will be made in order to address this.
Also, if there is a more appropriate forum section to post technical issues, please let me know.