ET slow map loading and sometimes ludicrous lag...

(Agrado) #1

On my computer ET always takes over a minute to load maps - even if you’re on a server which has the same map on every round so it’s loading the map that is already in memory. I get the impression some people load the maps in about 5 seconds. Why is my computer over ten times slower at loading maps than some peoples’? Quite often by the time I have loaded a map the first objective has been completed, or an enemy has run all the way across the map from their spawn and killed me! (and I don’t mean during the warmup, I never see the warmup since it’s always over before I load the map)

I have a 1.4GHz Pentium 4 with 256MB RAM and Windows 2000. ET loads from a 7200rpm IDE NTFS disk. Oh, and on the advice of other people I’ve tried /com_hunkmegs 128 and turning off “compressed textures”.

Also, if I am connected to a server when it goes from the end of one 3-map campaign to the start of the next, quite often I start getting huge lag. I mean about 1fps. Sometimes this happens right away from when I connect. It’s not my computer, because some servers are fine, I get very little lag at all. A lot of the time it seems to store the lag up until I meet an enemy - as soon as I see someone: splat. Computer stops. Maybe I even get “connection interrupted”. Then I’m dead since I have been a frozen unarmed unmoving target for the enemy to shoot. I am assuming this is a bug in ET since the ET demo was even worse but it is generally improved in the full version…?

Can anyone help!

(Coolhand) #2

Hi Agrado :slight_smile: Fun game on the beach at Battery, I think we could’ve had 'em with a little more time.

Lag and connection interrupts have plagued nearly all my Wolfie games: Murphy intrudes and ensures that it usually happens at the most crucial point in the game (and it usually fsks my game up completely). I sometimes wonder if this kind of thing turns some people teamkiller?

I also wonder: if there’s a lot of people writing stuff to each (teamchats) then might this induce lag (since this data has to be passed around to the relevant players)? I don’t know enough about the game mechanics / network connections involved to know if such data transfers are sufficiently large to make a difference. If this is true, then… (see .sig ;))

I’ve never had the kind of delayed start that you’re talking about though. Each map loads up for me in about 10 seconds or so (-ish, have never sat and timed it). I saw you doing the “sleeping levitation” bit at the start of a couple of games this evening. So that means that your system’s loading the map, huh? Interesting.

At least I assume this was you (never was very good with names and online is of course worse coz of all the aliases :wink: ) :smiley:

(Dawg) #3

I have no clue on these matters but I suggest you edit your stats to include your video card stats as others might. Having a good vid-card and up-to-date drivers is pretty important. I have an older one and it struggles some with ET - one of these days I will get a newer one.

Dawg

(SCDS_reyalP) #4

It sounds like you are running out of memory, which is a bit odd because 256 should be enough. Is your harddrive going when it lags in game ?

In this thread:
http://www.splashdamage.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1549&highlight=indexing+service
It was mentioned that the ‘indexing service’ can cause problems like this.

I would leave compressed textures on, that should not hurt your load times.
If you are low on memory, increasing com_hunkmegs may actually hurt your load times. I would leave it near the default.

Lowering your texture quality may improve load times.

(BoneZ) #5

I think you need more ram, even RTCW was painfully slow loading maps for me with “only” 256 mb of ram. I upgraded to 512 just for that game and it was worth every penny. Now i have a gb since ram is cheap atm and it does load in about 5 seconds.

(Cyber-Knight) #6

are you on 56k or on broadband?

I run a P3-450MHz with 448MB SDRAM on ADSL but I can still load maps pretty quickly (I can definitely load maps faster on ET than on vanilla Wolf for some reason). not as quickly as others, but fast enough that I only lose a maximum of 10 seconds of the actual gameplay. (depending on warmup time too)

(Kendle) #7

With 256Mb RAM and Windows 2000 I’d set hunkmegs lower. I have 256Mb RAM and XP and my memory settings are:-

seta com_hunkmegs “96”
seta com_soundmegs “32”
seta com_zonemegs “32”

I’ve also tweaked my services so that I’m only using about 60Mb RAM for XP.

You also don’t want to turn compressed textures off unless you have a vid card with 128Mb memory or you’ll get a big FPS hit in games. Turn compressed textures back on, you’d only have saved a second or 2 on map load times by having them off anyway.

But perhaps the best advice is, use XP instead of W2K and add more memory. I struggle with 256Mb and intend to at least double that very soon.

(Agrado) #8

Hi Coolhand yes it was me earlier.

Kendle I tried those settings and it made no difference. I tried installing ET into my Win98 partition and that does load the maps about twice as fast but for some reason the game itself runs really slow whenever there’s enemies in view (~ 8 fps). I tried updating my video drivers (GeForce 2) and it didn’t help. Ho hum. I can have the game running a semi-reasonable speed most of the time but taking ages to load, or loading in a semi-reasonable speed but being unplayable most of the time :wink:

I’ll try putting in some more memory, RDRAM appears to be tricky to get hold of though :frowning:

(DerKammisar) #9

These 2 words alarm me. “Win98 partition”

Seriously consider upgrading to at least Windows 2000 professional. You can get 2000 faily cheap at trade shows and the like. 98 is notoriously unstable, especially when you run resource hogging apps like games.

(Agrado) #10

Yes, if you look back up to my first post at the top of this thread you can see I use Windows 2000 normally. I have a Win98 partition which I can boot into to play games that don’t work under Windows 2000. I was just trying ET under Win98 to see if the extra memory that will be available under Win98 made a difference.

(Mystiqq) #11

Hi

Ive got the exact same problem. The game has ,often when i start it, weird lag. Lagometer is ok, so is ping (around 50-60) but still it has heavy lagging effect.
ive tryed all the remedies, like the indexing service… but its still there… really weird.

cheer
mystiqq

(Agrado) #12

I’ve upgraded my machine from 256MB to 512MB, it has made a great improvement. Most of the lag and sound loops during the game are all gone. Map loading now takes about 30 seconds, which is obviously better but is still very slow compared to other people I think. I’ve got com_hunkmegs 192… So yet again does anyone have any suggestions? :???: