BF2S Forums Choppy Titan Combat

Maybe it's my processor being a bit slow... the way things chop and jerk around is indicative of the processor not keeping up with game updates. Problem is, I think it's a design issue in the game that's causing this kind of demand.

The game starts off smooth and fine... but when the titans are boardable, all the hit detection calculations go through the roof. Combine that with two titans, it gets higher.

And MAYBE there's a maximum distance for clients to start processing hit detection on titans. So when they're far apart, the jerkiness is apparent, but not as bad as when the two titans are close together. Reason? The clients have to process two titans full of guys at the same time, in that case.

But this is speculation... I don't know for sure, I'm not a game programmer... but from my limited programming experience, I can imagine that this is the problem, not necessarily the server.

I just tried playing with every single detail minimized, and the performance is identical across multiple servers when there's heavy titan combat. Fewer players = less jerkiness on the titans, but that's attributable to less collision detection.

Once I get the rest of the titan badges, I'm sticking with conquest, because this is getting brutal. Maybe a new processor will help, but it's not an option for a while.

Okay, and update: After spending a day trying to (and successfully) getting my gold Titan Defence badge, I've pretty much isolated the issue.
Things get ass-tastically slow when sentry guns get laid down in titan corridors. I know it's a viable tactic, but it seems to cause things to grind to a halt once they do that. Must be something to do with how the bullets go through all the walls, yet deal no damage.

Notice that team mates repeatedly "shake" when they get shot by these phantom bullets? It's the animation for when a player gets shot. The stupid game is calculating every single bullet from the sentry gun, including all the hit detection, when the bullets should have been stopped on the first wall they hit. They do, damage-wise, but not physically.

Perhaps this is one of the fixes that DICE is implementing in the next patch... we can only hope.

Wow, thanks for that. My computer does the same thing. Ass slow on the titan when things get hairy. usually i'll be running 40-60 fps, but on the titan it'll drop to as low as 15 fps, and lingers around 30. i'll have to deal with it til i build a new rig.

I'm running a 5200 x2 (dual core) and 2 gigs of ram. Dual 7950GTs and I still have problems. The lag is getting to be really bad. Most of the time I've got to quit or just cap silos it's so bad.

Thats called "playing on boomtown servers"

You cant do anything about it if your connectionspeed is above 2mb

Ehhh it happens from time to time.

But yeah, I just got BF2142 installed on my work laptop... it has a Quadro 110 graphics card, which is a 7300 Go.
2GHz Core2 Duo, 2GB of DDR2 memory, 100GB hard disk. Quite a system, though not a gaming card.

Anyway, BF2142. After setting everything to low, 800x600, geometry on high, view distance on high, 48 player server with titans close together. Guess what? No problems.
edit: I should note that I ran EXACT same settings on my older personal laptop: GeForce Go 6800, 1.73GHz Centrino Pentium M, 1.5GB of DDR2 memory, 60GB 7200rpm hard disk), and there were issues.

Now, the issue with the comparison between this and the Original Post is that this system has 512MB more memory, and the chipsets are completely different (duh).
But I think it's safe to say that it's all a processor problem.

I still wonder about the AMD system posted above, and why it's having issues as well, and can only assume it's related to some other processes sucking up memory, or BF2142 is using the multiple cores a bit strangely. Try setting affinity to one processor, and see.

In summary, I believe that either BF2142's requirements are understated (for large servers), the rendering or network engines are very inefficient for high numbers of players (too much overhead adding up?), or something that happens exponentially more often with more players in larger servers is causing the increased processor usage.

The last bit would for example, be tons of sentry guns being placed on titans. That causes a lot of annoying noise and likely some performance problems due to the CONSTANT firing of the guns through walls. Another is so many players moving about on titans, making collision detection calculations go through the roof (the sentry gun thing adds to this issue, as EACH bullet's hit detection is calculated).
Or quite simply, it is possible that just having more players makes the requirements climb just that progressively. But since the servers did NOT have choppiness issues until Titan boarding started, I'd have to say that it's related to hit/collision/clipping detection and/or sloppy/inefficient code for commonly occuring events.

I'd say that it won't get more conclusive than that...

Last edited by kachunkachunk (2007-04-07 02:18:13)

Hacial wrote:

I think there's nothing to be done about it. The titans are pretty detailed + lots of players + commanders move titans close together = lag for everyone

and a seriously pissed off timmmmaaaah, when his clark/knife somehow misses from point blank behind a stationary enemy.....

after i spend 5 secs trying to get up from prone.

Last edited by TimmmmaaaaH (2007-04-15 23:15:22)

Go play on static titan server, there commanders can't move the titan = no lag.

kachunkachunk wrote:

After upgrading, I can confirm that there are no problems playing on even 64-player servers.
Core2 Duo E6600,
3GB of memory,
GeForce 8800 GTX,
4-Drive RAID5 array.

The game's using too much processing power for the number of players on Titan maps, but having a fast processor is about the only thing you can rely on, if you want big matches like this. Sorry to say it, I was hoping there would be a workaround or something.

That I'm not to sure of

I run an E6850 Oc'd @ 3.4
4GB of OCZ Platinum Ram
single 260GTX
Fiber optic connection

I have messed with low to high resolutions and on a full 64 player map and the TV missile and titans still lag very badly. The Hit registry in this game stinks to high heaven if anything you can get your Purple Heart!...which I'm amazed i haven't received yet. Id be happy if the up and coming patched fixed at least one thing and didn't cause another.
My only current  fix is have a half rack and you wont notice ;-p

The problem is your computer and/or your connection not the game or the server.