game freezing up often

[firefox2026]

so I guess I'm confused a bit since it sounds like nobody knows what is causing the hangs or i'm just not getting it lol? I don't understand how frame rate would have anything to do with it. My freind told me so far the low res mod doesn't seem to help him much. He does have sat internet so maybe that's a factor, but basically shouldn't the game. I am in Denver USA area (normally) and have no problems. When I went up to Wyoming I had this loading/stuck thing but no hangs. So seems like maybe internet service quality has a factor in it than just distance.

[Procne]

Sat internet would be a huge factor. When your character moves client has to query the server for new pieces of land. And it's coded in such a way that it makes client freeze if it takes too long.

[loftar]

And it's coded in such a way that it makes client freeze if it takes too long.

... no it's not.

[Procne]

And it's coded in such a way that it makes client freeze if it takes too long.

... no it's not.

I had a stutters like this numerous times. Often with black "loading" screens.

[loftar]

I had a stutters like this numerous times. Often with black "loading" screens.

Perhaps, but the cause would be something other than network response time.

[firefox2026]

Perhaps, but the cause would be something other than network response time.

Yeah a software bug..

[Procne]

Well, it happens only when new pieces of map are loaded. So either it's netcode or the client has problems with loading new pieces of geometry

[nonsonogiucas]

I don't know if it helps but here is my experience:

In the place I live I can only connect to the internet through a mobile phone, and since all my neighbors do that as well, bandwidth tends to fluctuate pretty wildly. I'm talking going as low as a 56Kb/s or worse.

During a low bandwidth event, after selecting the character I get 10-60 seconds (some times more) of black "loading" screen. During that time I can see every icon in the hotkey load separately, the character portrait and the equipment window start as a question mark on purple background, minimap tiles can be seen as they load one by one... then the 3D view eventually pops in place. While playing I experience wild delays between inputs and resolution, and the queueing of actions in the client is pretty much evident.
Black screen loading time seems to be worse in Boston.

Now this is more or less how I would expect a client-server application to behave in very low bandwidth, what I still haven't figured out are the following phenomena:

1) Most of the times there seems to be a lot more latency on my character response rather than critters / tumbleweed movement. This gives me the feeling of being frozen (my character) while the rest of the world actually goes on pretty much unchanged (maybe just a bit jittery). Can it be that it is just my upload bandwidth that is very low? Maybe my inputs travel through TCP while world updates are UDP packets?

2) At random times the game would freeze (no camera control) and objects (like animals and trees) would start flashing on and off. At times it goes back to normal after 5-10 seconds (normal being "just" painfully slow), at times I have to restart the client.

[lachlaan]

For reference, here's the .bat file I've been using to start the game that makes it run a bit smoother.

Code: Select all

start "" javaw.exe -Xms512m -Xmx512m -jar lsalem.jar -U http://game.salemthegame.com/res/ game.salemthegame.com

[Procne]

What about that bat makes the game run smoother?