cl_particlefx / server tic rate

[Kiel |17.SS|]

where'd you get that dod_forceparticlefx.amxx? that would be a pretty cool one to have.

[Drek]

http://mods.teamcdrive.com/download.php?list.39

[Kiel |17.SS|]

I found it, but it doesn't work. Does yours?

[Drek]

You're right, it's not working. For some reason the command isn't being executed on the client.

[Drek]

It's working now. You should be warned though, this might piss off some of your clients. The only way for them to put change their cl_particlefx after this is to either put it in their userconfig.cfg, delete the alias this plugin creates then do it through the console, or edit their config.cfg, and I think a smart client could still work around the plugin if they knew exactly what it did.

The simplest thing though if you have any clients that are bothered by this is to tell them to put the cvar in their userconfig.cfg in their client dod folder. If it isn't their tell them to create it. That way, even though the server can still change it, the next time they start DOD it will be back to whatever they want it to be.

hmm i dont notice any problems with the death animations on my server and i run this as well as like 50 other plugins
I'm thinking this is a combination problem of some sort, and if I was placing a bet, I'd put my money on ShrikeBot for the culprit. It could also be related to my old server hardware. But just in case my friends from ShrikeBot happen to read this, I'm not complaining about ShrikeBot, I just know I have had problems of this sort related to other bots on my server. I usually run hlds at priority -20, but for the purposes of testing I don't adjust the priority, so it may be that once the priority is put on what I usually run it on, it won't have that problem any more. I also run at a fairly high sys_ticrate, so that might be causing some of the problems in combination with other factors, including this plugin, so I'll mess with that a bit and see if that helps any as well.

[Drek]

Lowering my sys_ticrate from 250 to 150 fixed the problem.

[diamond-optic]

lol

i usually run mine at 150-200

[Drek]

Around 100fps seems to be a sweet spot for hlds. I used Booster on Windows to control this, but when I switched to Linux I decided to try sys_ticrate and got a bit adventurous with it based on some posts I read, but it appears that the 100fps is a sweet spot for both Windows and Linux. I might deleting sys_ticrate and trying boost 1 and see if I like the results of that.

[Zor]

My provider sets mine to 150...is there anything I can use to crank up the fps to 100...currently its running at about 63, Im in a windows env:

07:42:06 stats
07:42:06 CPU In Out Uptime Users FPS Players
0.00 0.00 0.00 13 0 63.65 0

Cheers!

[Drek]

What you want is Booster 2.40 with conservative settings and completely remove sys_ticrate from your server.cfg because Booster will take care of that for you. I ran that for years until I switched my clan server to Linux, and I found 100fps to be a real sweet spot. It improved the responsiveness of my server and in certain circumstances it also improved server stability. You can find Booster 2.40 here (http://www.zepher.f2s.com/files/booster240_plugin.zip).

These are the settings I recommend and they should pretty much give you a solid 100fps:
booster_show_connmsg 0
booster_autofps 100
booster_minsleepms 10
booster_force_systicrate 0
booster_cpu_enabled 1
booster_cpu_spikemax 2
booster_cpu_spikelevel 60
booster_cpu_floor 20
booster_cpu_quiettime 60
booster_cpu_mmmin 2
booster_cpu_mmmax 8
booster_cpu_mminc 1
booster_lite_mode 3

edit: You may want to consider hosting Booster 2.40 if you are happy with it. That is the only place I know that you can find it on the web, and I don't much trust personal hosting, although this has been reliably hosted for a year or two. I don't think you should worry too much about permissions, the original author, Hullu, has basically disowned this version as it was taken over from him by someone in United Admins, who subsequently abandoned it. Hullu still hosts the last version that was entirely his work I think, but I like this one better as it has many more options and is more polished. The old version was also coded before the advent of Steam, and while it seems to work without problems, I would rather use this version that was finished after Steam had been around for a year or two.

[Zor]

Dam, not alowed to use a ping booster with my provider!

Cheers!

[Drek]

Well something is screwy, with sys_ticrate 150 you should be getting slightly over 100 fps. The fps you are getting is default. Try putting the sys_ticrate 150 in your server.cfg if it isn't already there. Maybe they expect you to put it in.

[Kiel |17.SS|]

"It's working now. You should be warned though, this might piss off some of your clients. The only way for them to put change their cl_particlefx after this is to either put it in their userconfig.cfg, delete the alias this plugin creates then do it through the console, or edit their config.cfg, and I think a smart client could still work around the plugin if they knew exactly what it did."

what's the alias the plugin creates?

[Drek]

We were discussing the Force Particle FX plugin, not the one this thread is supposed to be about. The Force Particle FX plugin creates the alias:

alias cl_particlefx particle_block

This means if you try to enter "cl_particlefx" into the console it will call "particle_block" instead, which will do nothing unless the Force Particle FX plugin is running.

[diamond-optic]

i can edit the force particlefx one so you can set a define to either use the current method (using alias to block the client from changing the value) or I can do it so everytime the client spawns it sets its value.. only thing with that is.. a client can just bind a key and press that key after spawning to turn off the particlefx..

[Kiel |17.SS|]

We were discussing the Force Particle FX plugin, not the one this thread is supposed to be about. The Force Particle FX plugin creates the alias:

alias cl_particlefx particle_block

This means if you try to enter "cl_particlefx" into the console it will call "particle_block" instead, which will do nothing unless the Force Particle FX plugin is running.

so if i were to delete the plugin, people go go back to cl_particlfx 0?

[Drek]

Once a client has logged on to a server with this plugin running, the only way to change cl_particlefx is the way I described. However, it is a relatively simple thing to put the cvar in your userconfig.cfg. That way, whenever they start up DOD their setting will load.

However, I am looking at my config files, and it appears as though the alias doesn't get saved, so I don't think you need to worry about it. They should still put the setting in their userconfig.cfg, but after they restart DOD they should be able to set it to whatever they want through the console as well. But they will have to restart DOD in order to be able to do this.

And diamond, personally I like the Force Particle FX plugin the way it is coded now.

[Kiel |17.SS|]

Same here, but too many people were complaining about lag so I had to take it off :( If only I had a better server to work with.

[Drek]

If you have a very old machine, and I do mean very, probably at least five years old, then you might have problems with cl_particlefx 2. I run an AMD Athlon XP 1700+ with a Radeon 8500, and I have no problems with it causing lag whatsoever. My guess is, that probably the ones that are complaining are simply not used to the game being played the way it was designed to be played. I very much doubt that it is actually causing any lag, they just don't like the particle effects, especially from the anti-tank weapons, because it makes it hard for them to see. Which is the basic point of that plugin. Your server has nothing to do with it. That cvar won't affect server performance at all. If you look at my server specs in my sig, you'll notice that my server runs on a very old machine. It isn't perfect, but any issues I have are more related to my broadband connection than to my server hardware.

[diamond-optic]

well i have a P4 1700mhz - 1024mb RAM - MSI GeForce 6600GT and i get lag with cl_particlefx set to two.. especially if its a server with 20-32 players and even more so if its a map with weather...

[Kiel |17.SS|]

Yeah, I personally don't get lag. But I notice some people who are ususally at 80-100 ping are at like 150-200. And people at 70-80 go up to 90-100. I think the server with that many people in it can't handle it.

[=|[76AD]|= TatsuSaisei]

Yeah, I personally don't get lag. But I notice some people who are ususally at 80-100 ping are at like 150-200. And people at 70-80 go up to 90-100. I think the server with that many people in it can't handle it.

ping is a measure of network connectivity "health", a players performance based on a client setting has no effect oon the displayed ping. When you open your scoreboard and note the pings you see, those are the ping values from EACH player to YOU, it is a measure of how well your connection is to everyone on the server... a guy who has all the top of the line equipment and experiences no performance lag whatsoever can still have a rather large ping, becuase they are probably running other programs in the background that are monopolizing their network traffic (generally downloading something while playing) using ping as a judge of a persons pc performance is false and a sudden overall increase points to a "network/connectivity" issue and has nothing to do with the use of higher quality effects in the game

[Kiel |17.SS|]

So because everyone has particlefx at 2, their connection to everyone else is a lot slower?

[diamond-optic]

i think (and think tatsu is saying) that the particle setting will have no effect on ping..

as the particles are ONLY going to affect the clients gpu (which would affect FPS) and it doesnt change or add any more data to be transfered... so there wouldnt be any affect on ping from it...

tho i could see it being possible if you have a really old system.. or your system is already strained by applications running in the background.. that having your gpu render the higher particlefx could send more info thru your cpu.. which if its already bogged down.. could cause network traffic to be slightly slowed but i would also think that you would notice large fps drops and general PC slow downs before you'd notice the ping difference..

but idk.. thats just my opinion if you wanna call it that lol..

[Kiel |17.SS|]

Haha I sorta kinda see what you're saying. But it's not my computer. I can easily play with particlefx set at 2. It's just people were complaining about it lagging their computer, and once I took off the mod, everyone's ping went back to normal. I'm assuming that their FPS droped really low, then their ping went up. lol who knows... or they were just whining because they didn't want to see the smoke and rain because it made it harder to play.

[|OnEHiTwOnDeR|SoCal]

Dam, not alowed to use a ping booster with my provider!

Cheers!

same shit here

[{SR} *Raggy*]

GameServers.com?

[TigerMan4]

|= TatsuSaisei;3561']ping is a measure of network connectivity "health", a players performance based on a client setting has no effect oon the displayed ping. When you open your scoreboard and note the pings you see, those are the ping values from EACH player to YOU, it is a measure of how well your connection is to everyone on the server... a guy who has all the top of the line equipment and experiences no performance lag whatsoever can still have a rather large ping, becuase they are probably running other programs in the background that are monopolizing their network traffic (generally downloading something while playing) using ping as a judge of a persons pc performance is false and a sudden overall increase points to a "network/connectivity" issue and has nothing to do with the use of higher quality effects in the game


Listen to what Tat says , he`s 100% correct.

I keep my particles set at 0 and most everything in dod set at 0 cl_fog / wetherdis , everything that makes for more frame drop / bullet ejects etc.

It increases your FPS and makes your game clearer and easyier to play , but has no real affect on your ping.

Ping is a direct reflection of your bandwidth and your proximity to the server.

My server is in NY , my ping is 15-20 , I played on the worst server I have ever played on last night , and my ping was 125+ and so was everyone elses in the server except the server owner who was at 15-20 , and the server was in Cali.

Now I play on some other servers from around the world from time to time , France ( my ping is 98 ) the UK ( ping is around 78 )

Ping can also be directly affected by the server and the mods running on it.

say...gore , you run gore and everyones ping will go WOOOSH through the roof...and some other stink-o mods will drive the ping up as well...rate enforce does terrible things to peoples pings as well.

But to be honest , TAT is correct , PC health and such , is only a tiny fraction of your ping , its your bandwidth and connection rout to the server.

I can tell you this as well , as good as my ping is in my own server , let it rain real hard for a day , and thanks to ComCast , my ping will be over 250 and glitchy as hell , untill the line dries out , that they say they cant seal.

It`s all bout connection and routs to the server....personal settings like Particle_fx and such only make your game better for you and your pc.

[Wilson [29th ID]]

http://www.dodplugins.net/forums/showthread.php?t=744

This can help block particlefx changes.