um, I originally started messing around with cvars on Quake - the display was too dark on my ATI Mach64 card 
- didn’t have a 3Dfx card so the 3d stuff was all software rendered - ppl needed to be able to mess with their settings to get their internet connections playing right also. Have you ever tried to play QuakeWorld on a sub-V34 modem? You’ll know then that you need to fucktard the settings every time for a new server to get clean play. Same goes for Quake2, Quake3, RtCW and ET (and anyother online game that your considering using with your modem) - it’s only in the last few years that ppl have been able to get fast connections without paying massive amounts of money to miserable theiving Telco’s - it wasn’t so long ago that ISDN was going to change the world…
As for the fps thing, what’s the baseline? I’m a V90 modem user and as such I’m very restricted to the servers I can play a useful role on (UK only, minimum amount of hops to server kind of thing) - now I’ve messed around with the netconfig settings for q3 based games and I can say that for each of the servers I play on there’s a certain amount of tweaking that has to happen (especially with ET - server to server without fail I have to change cl_maxpackets, rate, and snaps even too. Now I know you might sit back and chortle ‘But we’ve already told you that snaps above sv_fps makes no difference’ , but I can tell you that on a modem setup it does. appear to.
Let me give you the following example (sorry lads, it’s for RtCW not ET)
Get your old dusty modem out of the closet, get your fave AOL CD from the coffee table and get yourself a dial-up connction (no, really don’t use AOL, Freeserve or BT - use a game dial-ip provider like Jolt if you can - shaves off some more ms from your ping) - treat yourself to a fresh install of RtCW and go-online without changing a thing. Fire-up RtCW and just set your default recommended settings along with ‘modem’ play for online speed and go to this server;
212.137.70.2:22222 [FuN] Depot
Now I live in a village outside of a small city - the local exchange is analog and there’s no upgrade to BB, DSL or ISDN - line noise is more or less ok - I’m telling you this so you have an idea of the environment I’m in for using my modem to connect my pc to the internet to play a game online.
Now by my reckoning your going to have a bumpy ride on that server. - set cg_lagometer 1 so you can see just how bumpy it really is. Now it seems to take 5 minutes of actually being on a server before lag calms down a little bit and you can actually play but I’m betting that your connection doesn’t stay consistant enough to really ‘play’ or compete - most likely if you can stand it, you’ll end up just supplying ammo or health to ppl because you can’t firefight with bad lag.
These are the setting I use for accessing that [FuN] server;
rate : start this at 5000 and work your way back - have a keybind for a very low rate (/2500 or /3600 to cleardown chokes)
PB_Sleep “300” // slow frequency of PB updates down a bit
seta cl_maxpackets “15” // works great for me but I wonder what it lloks like for other folk.
seta com_maxfps “43” // can go higher (Ti4200) but best for modemplay
seta cl_packetdup “0” // I only want one copy of a packet thanks
seta cg_predictItems “0” // I only pickup what I really have
seta cl_timenudge “0” // disable for anti-lagged servers (-20 for non-anti)
seta snaps 40
Now I do all kinds of graphical tweaking - I drop the detail down as far as PB will let me and I also brighten everything up as far as PB allows - I need ‘something’ so I can claw-back the advantage high-speeders have over me.
Now wierdly, with snaps set that high I actually seem to get a better rate (no pun) of accuracy with my shooting - often the connection doesn’t choke as badly either - The downside is that having cl_maxpackets set so low means that for some reason there are times when you just lose the inbound packets from the game server - if this happens I just up maxpackets 'til I find a sweetspot - if it’s late at night that might be 30, 50 or even as high as 100 - this doesn’t work for all servers and maybe the it’s as bani suggests and server admins set this value high without first realising it’s implications (I’m not suggesting that this is the case with FuN servers however).
Now you can say I’ve been on the crack pipe again but a combination of low maxpacket, a rate of 5000 to a game server which pings under 280ms and a snaps of 40 seems to give me a very smooth ride - I don’t know what this must look like for other players on the server, but for me it’s great - I still get chokey lag - but it’s not often and can be managed (ie I can still have a lot of fun with the game online).
What I’m getting it as that those settings work for me and according to you having /snaps set so high shouldn’t make any different but it bloody does!
:banghead: