Described in detail here: http://silkgames.com/forum/ viewtopic.php?f=35&t=9115&p=77062#p77062
I'll bottom line it. Trying to play NEStalgia from a College House, getting the oddest lag (Not really lag, but seems similar) I have ever seen. I can see other people moving, but my controls will not respond. Controls work fine on many other games, like Team Fortress 2 and such, but here all button depresses seem to take much longer then usual (Sometimes locking up for 3-5 minutes) while I watch the entire world move around me, the chat log scroll, and everything else happen normally.
Drivers were checked up to date, Direct X and Java as well. Swapped to a new computer, Clean Installed BYOND, used Dream Seeker and Stand Alone Client, nothing seems to work.
I'm out of ideas as to what is causing this. Would anyone be able to help me?
Oh, I just read your thread on the SilkGames forum and see that you already tried software mode. So it's most likely nothing to do with the client. You might try version 493 just as a test. The fact that it's happening on two machines leads me to believe it's something with your outbound connection, maybe something on the router-level blocking packets? Very strange. If you can test from a different location, even a public network like at a starbucks or a college, that would be good to know.
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Tried moving throughout the college at various points, still having the problems. Functioned properly at an area off of the campus site.
So, I have the ISP's office and such, what exactly would I tell them the problem is? I know who to contact, but I have no idea how I would explain my problem to them. Thanks for the advice! | |
Does the problem happen with every BYOND game? If not, you could try running a traceroute oommand to the servers NEStalgia is hosted on to see if there is a bottleneck.
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Checked it with Sigrogana Legends, same issue. So it's totally a net problem. Now the issue becomes how to convey this issue to other people that can actually attempt to fix it. (Not holding my breath >.<)
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Hmm, I wish I could give you some advice here, but I've never seen this issue. It's odd that you are getting a connection but it is an unstable one-- I'd think they'd either block the packets or let them through, not filter them or whatever their doing. Or it could be something else. I guess you'd want to talk to the IT staff there and ask them if they are doing anything with outbound connections to arbitrary ports. Although it's strange that other network programs work fine; maybe they are running on known ports like httpd 80 or maybe I'm completely off base here.
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Yeah, tech support basically said they couldn't help me. And the college doesn't support any outside ISPs, freaking wonderful.
Well, thanks for your advice Tom, maybe I can find a way through this myself. One thing, the tech moron on the other side of the phone mentioned something about trying a router. I didn't think it would help, and I don't want to spend the money on one unless I have to, but would a router have anything to do with this train wreck? | |
I'd think a router would just add another level of filtering and the data is presumably already filtered/dropped by the time it is getting there, but I can't say for sure. From your report, it sounds like inbound packets are working just fine but outbound ones are somehow getting stuck? I guess a router could play into that. If I were you I'd see if I could borrow one just to try it out.
One thing I would normally suggest is trying a free VPN/proxy (which would reroute your traffic through another ISP) but we recently started blocking those due to rampant abuse (ruining the experience for those that actually need them) ... so that won't work. Although if you do want to try it out (eg, Tor), I could grant an exception on a particular ip address. I'm skeptical that this would work since the traffic would still have to go through your college at some point, but who knows. Ultimately to get to the bottom of this we have to see what's going on. I tried googling around to see if "outbound lag" was a common thing, and the closest I came up with was this: http://www.battlefieldheroes.com/en/forum/archive/index.php/ thread-367303.html That has some recommendations you could play with (make sure to save the originals if you go this route). | |
Lumino wrote:
Think I found the problem: Yikes, that's crazy. Although that's just to our website, not the actual game. You'd have to contact Silk to get the ip/port the game is running on and do a similar test. I'm not sure why you are getting so much packet loss though. That happens from all machines? | |
Yeah, tried playing with some stuff for the last few hours, no results. So the issue is not my computer, it's either BYOND or the University at Buffalo's net. Tomorrow will be me going to troubleshoot with them, in the 'Not going away until you actually do something' kind of way.
Fun Fun. | |
So, the suggestion my campus wound up giving me was using a VPN. Would it be possible to get that exception made, just so I can see if it actually does fix the problem? If it doesn't, I can just refund my 7 day trial, but I'd rather find out sooner then later.
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For closure, the VPN solved the problem so the issue was a route from the college network, which I think will be temporary.
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You can also try an older build of BYOND to isolate the problem. These are found at http://www.byond.com/download/build. You can just download the ".zip" file and run from the desktop or something so you don't have to overwrite the install. Version 494 was the last major release (it switched to DX9, although that would be moot if the problem shows up in software mode), so 493 would be the one to test.
Anyway, let me know what you find and we'll make sure to work it out.