Survival Eats Up Massive Bandwidth.

[Fourdee]

So I did the Survival Alert just now with a friend, and someone else on the household LAN was complaining about mega latency.

 

Sure enough, as soon as the mission ended, I checked the logs in the game they were playing -- Pings of 800ms to google, and the ISP's servers.

 

Basically, Warframe was eating 90+% of my 3Mbps downstream, causing the rest of the LAN to lag horribly.

 

This is the problem with throwing so many mobs in Defense/Mobile Defense/Survival missions -- peoples' ISPs just can't handle it reasonably.

 

This is why:

- All item drops are updated on the host and synced with all clients (vector3 + quat + int at least for each item, *3 clients with sync)

- All item drops have physx applied. Again, relies on host synced updates.

- All item drop pickups are contained on the host. When you pickup an item, the host has to confirm and send you that update, even if the item is null on their screen. Hence why the game feels sluggish at wave 15+, the host is calculating 1000+ items.

- Host server runs on the same thread as the host client.

- AI paths are updated only on the host aggressively. Minimal interpolation on the clients.

 

Its probably to prevent hacking, but yes, if your a host multiply the above by 3 player syncs, your CPU is going crazy on 1 thread and your bandwidth is being gobbled up like stardust.

 

Another reason why this game needs dedicated servers. And more reason to optimize the netcode for that to become viable.

Edited September 5, 2013 by Fourdee

[Xylia]

Another reason why this game needs dedicated servers. And more reason to optimize the netcode for that to become viable.

 

It is unlikely that Warframe would ever see dedicated servers, unless it got really, really huge.

 

But yes, optimizing netcode would really be nice. That, or changing missions.

 

Seriously, do we really need hundreds of mobs and items laying around?

 

Ammo Drops alone are a problem. Why do ammo drops even matter if you cannot use them at all? If a player does not have a mutator mod on, then don't even transmit the data about ammo the player has no need for.

 

For example, if I use a Rifle, I don't need to see, process, or receive data about Sniper and Shotgun boxes, because they are 100% useless to me. If my Warframe is level 30, strip Affinity Orbs out. I don't need to see or pick them up.

 

We have cheat detection software written into Warframe, get rid of the need to send/re-confirm everything with the host's computer. If the user is trying to memhack, he'll get banned anyways. Once you pick something up, there's no need to "confirm" it with the host.

 

PhysX applied to items? Simple: No Item Ragdoll. Break a chest? All items always land directly in front of the chest. Item drops from enemies? They fall straight to the ground and stay there unless they fall into the Void. That way, that's less data being transmitted.

 

etc etc etc.

 

And then, again, number of mobs. Instead of 50 weak mobs, why not 25 mobs that are 2x as strong?

Edited September 5, 2013 by Xylia

[Fourdee]

It is unlikely that Warframe would ever see dedicated servers

PS4 Version will be dedicated servers. Mainly become the PS4 as host wont handle it above 5fps.

 

And yeah, network optimizations should be on DE's top list.

Edited September 5, 2013 by Fourdee

[Xylia]

PS4 Version will be dedicated servers. Mainly become the PS4 as host wont handle it above 5fps.

 

Well, that stinks.

 

PS4 people will get far better online gameplay than PC users? *blinks* Did they actually confirm this?

Edited September 5, 2013 by Xylia

[Fourdee]

Did they actually confirm this?

Not yet, PS4 version is only in early alpha conversion + advertising stage.

But a PS4 as host using 1 thread wont give the player 5+ fps on the current netcode. Its common sense (for me anyway lol)

Edited September 5, 2013 by Fourdee

[Xylia]

Not yet, PS4 version is only in early alpha conversion + advertising stage.

But a PS4 as host using 1 thread wont give the player 5+ fps on the current netcode. Its common sense (for me anyway lol)

 

Do we actually know that, though?

 

A PS4 has...

 

8GB DDR5

8-Core AMD APU

 

It (wiki) doesn't say exactly how fast the 8-Core APU is, but for it coming out in November, I'd assume that it is at least 3.5Ghz.

 

It would surely be running a lot less software in the background than a PC would.

 

So what do we have that tells us that a PS4 would run Warframe any worse than a PC would?

[mogamu]

I really have always wondered about the way data about drops in the game was cluttering bandwidth.  Many popular multiplayer console games streamlined this during the last gen systems.  Would be cool to see some more optimization there.

[Loser]

Um, did you read where I said I was NOT hosting in my OP?

 

And I live in Southwestern PA. Nearest town of any size is a 15-20minute drive away and the BEST you can get here, is ADSL at 3Mbit, because my DSLAM is about 8 miles from my home (barely within the 10mi radius for 3Mbit).

 

EDIT: There is a smaller town about 10min away, and I THINK Comcast goes through there, but yeah. I'm way too far away from the closest cable route and even then, they tend to be expensive.

 

I also read you had 90% bandwidth utilization and were actually fine as a peer. It's the rest of your network activity what got screwed.

 

Which makes you a fine peer, but an awful host, which is why my checkboxes suggestion is right on for you.

Edited September 6, 2013 by Loser

[DeathByDribbling]

To clarify:

 

I was NOT the Host.

 

3Mbps downstream is ridiculous for an online game. That's ~384KB/sec (that's Kilo BYTES, not Kilo BITS).

 

Over 20 minutes, that's 460.8MB downloaded.

 

You're trying to tell me Warframe should be using up more bandwidth than your average Youtube video stream takes?

 

Very much doubt your stats then, think about it.  If each client needs 3mbits download and whoever is the host has to talk to 3 clients then they would need 9mbit upload.  That's upload not download! - a lot of high end connections won't give you that.

 

As I said earlier as I understand it host needs 1mbit upload, that means clients can't be getting more then about 0.3-0.4mbit download as that's all the host can provide.

Edited September 6, 2013 by DeathByDribbling

[Xylia]

I dunno, unless maybe it DID give me Host and it shouldn't have.

 

Usually, I do this kinda stuff with a friend. The way we do it, is that I have him invite me first, and then he clicks on the mission we want to do, and bam. He hosts every other time we've done that.

 

I suppose if it forced me to host, that could have choked the upstream. I dunno. Either way, Survivals, Defense, and Mobile Defense are ridiculous either way.

[DeathByDribbling]

Either way, Survivals, Defense, and Mobile Defense are ridiculous either way.

 

Don't disagree with you there, I get a lot of laggy games.

[icosta27]

3mbps is completely insufficitent to play WF. I should upgrade my channel from 10D/25U to 20D/50U mbps to play it at least comfortable. While you're host, you need VERY good upload speed.

Lol never in my life have I seen Upload that is higher than Download. You have it wrong. As well if you were doing 10MB Upload that's some rocking upload? 50? That is not a regular service provider lol Road Runner is usually around 50MBps DOWN 8 MBps UP (average) I don't care what they might tell you.

 

Don't believe me? www.speedtest.net <-- you can post what you have if it's really 50MB Upload then ill shut up.

 

BTW my upload is about 3MBps and I run no lag hosts.. my own computer gets bogged down a bit tho which sucks

[icosta27]

This is why:

- All item drops are updated on the host and synced with all clients (vector3 + quat + int at least for each item, *3 clients with sync)

- All item drops have physx applied. Again, relies on host synced updates.

- All item drop pickups are contained on the host. When you pickup an item, the host has to confirm and send you that update, even if the item is null on their screen. Hence why the game feels sluggish at wave 15+, the host is calculating 1000+ items.

- Host server runs on the same thread as the host client.

- AI paths are updated only on the host aggressively. Minimal interpolation on the clients.

 

Its probably to prevent hacking, but yes, if your a host multiply the above by 3 player syncs, your CPU is going crazy on 1 thread and your bandwidth is being gobbled up like stardust.

 

Another reason why this game needs dedicated servers. And more reason to optimize the netcode for that to become viable.

and i'll second this.