Is anybody else a bit confused with ezQuakes new connectbr/connect serverbrowser connect/connect with x stuff? I just tried to connect through serverbrowser WIHTOUT proxy and even with cl_proxyaddress "" and connecting with enter instead of X (i thought X was suppose to be the proxy connect) it connected me through a proxy. This all would be fine but nowdays it seems like due some maintaining issues/routing some proxies really really suck. So just asking if there's any logic around? I suppose most ppl connect with just an address but as a player who doesnt play that regurarly I usually just use server browser.

Thanks.

(I suppose Johnny_CZ comes here and mocks me because I dont know some really neat way to use that serverbrowser, as always <3 )

You can do three things, basically
1) /sb_findroutes 0, or
2) press [n] when connecting via server browser (latest nightly builds should mention this with a small on-screen hint), or
3) manually /connect via console (you can press ctrl+c in SB to copy the IP)

Thanks JohnNy, I'm in the same mud as pektopahky.
The years pass by, the technology moves forward, but our qw servers moves backwards? (sorry, but that's how I perceive it)

Just out of curiousity, what kind of thought process has lead you to think this? I mean, the thread is about client's server browser and connecting to servers using it, something has nothing to do with any servers so I kinda fail to see how this is the servers' fault at all...

When we initially designed the feature, we thought that the routing will always work 100% and that routes found via proxies will always work the best. This was probably too big presumption. But I'd like to know what usually goes wrong and whether we could somehow detect that some proxy is not usable at given moment.

I think this is purely clientside. Well, maybe it's wrong to say that it's the client's fault, but rather the fault of the computer/network connection that is connected to the internet and does the pinging.

The results of refreshing the sb vary wildly from time to time, so I'm guessing increasing the amount of pings the SB does would be a good start, even though it increases the time the pinging takes.

Also, seeing this is the case:

I guess there's very little to do here. I'm thinking pangela proxy and sometimes troopers proxy can be really shitty ones, and I know for a fact that qw.fi proxy WILL pl between 23-24 local time (due to backup stuff).

As a player who has have some ping/pl issues I can only say that I don't understand QW ping/pl, I think it was you who give some hints how to ping a server so that it would be same kind of situation than when using QW, nevertheless I don't have any idea all this protocol stuff going on with QW, it just seems like QW has a lot more ping/pl issues than modern games, like.. I didn't have any ping/pl issues 10 years ago using ISDN but nowdays with my 10/10 fibre connection I've some shit going on on daily basis.

Anyway, that's just a sidenote. For me the problem seems to be that the pinging my ezQuake clients is doing differences from the actual ping/pl. EzQuake can inform me "connecting to server with 1 proxy with best ping of 32" and then when I'm on the server I've 60ms and 5pl. I didn't actually know that you could ctrl+c address from server-browser, so before this knowledge it was a bit awkward to reroute without using serverbrowser, ie. figuring out servers address, then doing sb_findroutes 0 and cl_proxyaddress "", then cheking which proxy gave you pl, checking another more suitable proxy, setting setinfo prx address and connecting to proxy. I suppose for those who're more used to play around with this shit it might be "easy", but when you're the last one who's not ready and suddendly your proxy starts to lag and you're in a hurry and try to reroute those 7 other people tend to be a bit hastly :-)

But thanks Bps for backing me up, I thought I was the only moron who couldn't route properly (btw, I think most ppl dont know about these "connect with n/x/enter" and ctrl+c in serverbrowser stuff)

Thanks Johnny and Renzo <3 :-)

yea, thats a kind of hidden feature, and there are more...

This looks more and more a connection specific problem, you should be getting 38ms ping in qw (client scoreboard) in such a situation.

But wait, there is one other thing... are you actually using Windows7?

Yes, i'm using Win7 o_O

Wtf is this

Try this:

- run regedit
- go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Multimedia\SystemProfile
- find the entry for network performance throttling, default value should be 10, change it to to FFFFFFFF hex (looks like 0xFFFFFFFF (4294967295) on the "data" column)

Reboot and hopefully profit.

Latest nightly builds contain a hint table with all the possible actions and keys that invoke them.

Or expect other side effects.. I got other problems when changing that, however most of my problems were solved
by making sure Multimedia Class Scheduler was turned off. Google it how to shut down or look through this forum, Diki posted a how to.

MMCSS is an essential part of the Windows7 services that prevents audio dropouts. Disabling MMCSS can make badly coded audio drivers (especially realtek ones) cause audio crackling when playing sounds under high CPU loads.

Disabling network throttling on the other hand, will not disable any services and cause problems because of this. Obviously tasking your network fully under gigabit networks might cause high enough CPU usage that could somehow affect multimedia playback is possibility, but seeing PEKTOPAHKY mentioned "10Mbps fiber" I highly doubt that.

As for the problems, I have never had any with the networkthrottle tweak. Disabling MMCSS however, has caused audio crackling on two different computers (integrated realtek audio and sound blaster x-fi) so for me the choice is obvious. When Fucu tried disabling MMCSS, his integrated audio chip caused static/crackling constantly. I also remember Miarf saying something negative about disabling MMCSS, so considering you (PEKTOPAHKY) know him personally, ask him for more details.


You can also check this thread from which both of the tweaks were originally found, and see which one of the tweaks have been causing problems for people.


EDIT: oh, and don't use wlan for qw, it's bad. Ask diki for more details.

I also had issue disabling it completely. Got major audio problems - untill I found the "disable network throttling".

I've personally never had any issues with disabling MMCSS, including on Realtek chips.
However it was about a year ago last time I used Win7 on my workstation so its possible that they have changed stuff with MMCSS.

...

MMCSS is (or was in the initial release of Win7, dunno if they have fixed it) buggy. Their implementation prioritizes "multimedia" way too high making network packet handling delayed and causes issues like stuttering/fps-drops (in some games) and worse ping to mention a few things. From what I remember MMCSS also had some impact on network throttling, so disabling network throttling as a general rule might then likely override throttling MMCSS tries to do.

But as I said, its possible that they have fixed the real issue with too high priority.


Agree on that.

Hi Renzo, I knew you would reply to my perhaps not so thought out comment
I'm sorry the criticism pointed towards servers, my bad, and not my intention. I was just trying to express how I experience todays "connection issues".
Current status of servers and/or errors around them makes me abit sad. First off, the pangela.se servers randomly go unplayable (~60pl) at times, forcing frustrating breaking of games. Ofcourse now when we're aware of it, we should change to play on other servers. Problem for me is that there is no other (reliable) swedish servers currently running. Attempts of bringing new servers like persuader.no-ip.org is appreciated, but my experience is that those are offline every other time I try to join them; rendering them unreliable. Frustrating.
Lately the 'dwarfbug' (spectator camera lowered to the ankles of the player) seem to be a common problem to spectators, which is frustrating.
And I've started to get 60pl at random times, which was frustrating. Now I know it was because I had sb_findroutes set to "1", which made me go via pl-pangela.
Another thing, oftenmost after getting 60pl, I haven't even been able to connect to other servers at all, even after clearing cl_proxyadress. It just said "Connecting...". I needed to restart Ezquake to be able to connect again.

All those "small things" adds up to my perception of a not so smooth experience connecting to servers nowadays. I hope things will change for the better. And that mr.Pangela shows up to try and solve the issues with his servers, if possible.

I don't want to be bashing and this might just be an issue that comes with playing a 15year old game. Some times my internet is less stable.
In all modern (counting Q3 as modern...) This results in some ping spikes with about 10ms added ping. So I get 35ms instead of 25ms sometimes which is totally playable. (And this is true for all games I have tried)
However in QW this results in 3-40pl which is totally unplayable...

I can also see this ping spikes (no packetloss) when doing ping in the terminal.
Is this just a problem that comes with such an old netcode that I have to live with?

I didn't actually know which one you meant, the physical servers or the software, so I was wondering about it.

But I have to agree, some servers are problematic these days, but is there anything that can be done. I think most of the servers are somehow sponsored by/free of charge, so surely there could be some issues with it, for example high loads at times or high network utilization.


I noticed this one too, there have been some changes to the server software and QTV, so I need to forward this to qqshka (unless he notices it himself, or has noticed).


It does this even if you do /connect ip again? (/reconnect tries to connect to last ip, so it would try to connect to the proxy in such case, I guess)

Is there a guide on how to get the best possible ping? I mean using proxies and forwarding etc. Ive never fully understood any of this so im just connecting normally to every server and hope for the best... Luckily i dont have much problems except a little high ping, 55ish, on dybbuk.

I probably wrote some news back in the day, I'll check if I can find something...

EDIT: I guess I didn't, which I find a bit odd. Maybe there was someone else's (johnny_cz) writings about it at some place.

It's a change on server side that surfaced a bug in ezQuake. It was fixed about a week ago in ezQuake.

bps and others: Go grab latest nightly build of ezQuake (or compile latest source) and the problem is gone