Need help with bullet lag in ET


(witos) #1

Hi!

I have a strange problem with bullet lag in ET. Quite often when I play there is a very noticeable delay between i fire a gun and it hits the enemy (a hitsound and a gasp of smoke are delayed). The strange thing is that i have stable 50 ping and 76 fps and when I have this delay it feels like if i was playing at 200 ping.

I have been playing et for over 2 years and I have this problem for a year atleast. This thing doesn’t occur every time i play, but i have it quite often. I tried zillions of configs, different rates, cl_maxpackets etc, but im 99% sure its not the fault of settings in game. Also i turn off firewall and any unneccessary processes before i play. Tried different drivers to mobo, gfx, soundcard and so on… I even tried formating and different os, but problem still occurs.

I have a good pc and net and absolutely no idea what could cause this ‘bulllet lag’. The lagometer is perfectly clean, fps are stable, ping is stable but hits are delayed :frowning: I tried playing on servers without pb or etpro but it seems this doesn’t have any effect on the delay. Still there are some days that hit registering seems perfectly ok (rarely).

I’d really like to know what could be the reason of this bullet lag.


(Bravo) #2

Is this just on one or two servers? Or is it on all servers?

What mod do you play?


(witos) #3

I have this for at least a year, I played on hundreds of servers since then. And even when there was no bullet lag on one of them, when I came back later it appeared… it don’t think it’s related to the servers, I think problem is somewhere in my pc.

I play etpro 3.2.5, but as I wrote before, same thing happens on pure etmain. Also it doesn’t matter if pb is on or off.


(witos) #5

Thanks for a reply.

I sometimes use ASE to find servers, but this ‘bullet lag’ appears even on those witch have 0% packetloss. And BTW, if there is packetloss, wouldn’t lagometer in et show red spikes? (and as I had written my lagometer is clean, sometimes there is a tiny yellow bump from time to time).


(SCDS_reyalP) #6

The lagometer only shows loss in the download direction. You could in theory have send loss and not see it. ASE isn’t a very reliable indicator in any case.

I really don’t see how the hitsounds and bullet effects could be delayed outside of your ping. If you are using positive cl_timenudge, it would have that effect, but only up to 30ms, and very few servers allow it.

Some people find that vsync (r_swapinterval 1) makes their game feel laggy. Your video driver might also have a vsync or “number of frames to render ahead” setting.


(witos) #7

I don’t use cl_timenudge and I play with swapinterval 0. Also I tried different drivers and vsync is turned off (application decides wether to use it). There is no ‘number of frames to render ahead’ option in ati cards if im correct. But don’t you think if it was settings or drivers problem, this lag would occur always when I play?


(witos) #8

Plz help :frowning:


(Black_Forky) #9

Maybe a bad router?


(SCDS_reyalP) #10

It’s essentially impossible to have ‘bullet lag’ if your FPS and network connection are both good. All of the cvars (at least in etpro and etmain) that might have this kind of effect have been discussed. So either you are missing the network or FPS problem some how, or you haven’t adequately described it.

One other thing I have seen that might give a similar feeling is sound lag, where every sound is cut off or delayed. This tends to happen with integrated sound cards, but could also be caused by driver problems.


(witos) #11

–>Black_Forky

I don’t use router. Just cable adsl modem.

–>reyalP

This isn’t soundlag, because small gasp of smoke when somebody gets shot is also delayed. Also when i shoot the wall the mark on the wall appears delayed. I thought maybe there was some sort of hardware conflict… dunno. But the problem is to easly noticeable to be just my imagination :slight_smile:

And btw: I don’t know what causes this ‘bullet lag’ but I know that it certainly isnt gfx card, sound card, ram or hdd cause I changed them some time ago (it didn’t help in any way). Also I don’t know if this is important, but sometimes the delay increases after a change of map, or even after a change of sides on the same map (this might be only impression).


(kamikazee) #12

Maybe it’s just antilag as it is. It sure causes delays because the servers needs to check if you would have hit something in your local game which varies x ms from the server.

Of course, if you host a local server with antilag off and still see the delay, something weird is going on.


(Lanz) #13

Antilag doesn’t cause delays like that.

What I think we need to establish here is exactly what you call delayed hitsound/smoke/decals and how you feel it differs from a normal situation. I know this is obvious stuff but you always have to expect at least 100ms delay on these, since you have to send the attack command to the server, the server needs to process it and send the result back to you.


(SCDS_reyalP) #14

Does it happen on particular servers or mods ?

What video card and OS are you using ?


(witos) #16

–>gelantine
“sticky” feeling is the way i would describe it either. Question for you: does this ‘bullet lag’ appear always when you play? Cause I have it very often, but there are some days that everything seems to run smoothly (rarely… but it happens).

Also I have tottaly different specs then you have- you have amd proc, I have intel, you have nvidia gfx, I have ati… What adsl modem are you using (usb?)? From what I see, only thing we have in common is connection.

–>reyalP
I use radeon 9600 pro and tried running et on winxp sp2, win xp sp1 and win2000pro. I’m going to try it at ubuntu as soon as i download linux version of et. I’ll post as soon as I try it out.

“Does this happen on particular servers or mods?”

No. As I wrote before sometimes on a particular server everything is ok and when I come next day its ‘laggy’. Also there is no difference if I play on etmain or etpro. And the problem isn’t punkbuster either.

–>lanz
This isn’t normal… the difference between when all is ok, and when I have this delay is quite easly noticeble.


(Lekdevil.NL) #18

Install PingPlotter and have it create a latency graph of your connection to the game server while you’re playing on it and are having lag issues. Use a ping interval of 1 second. Then post the resulting graph here. This will at least give an idea if your problem is network-related.


(EB) #19

I have the same issue quite OFTEN.

2.8 ghz
1 gig ram
6800 nvidia
5mb/384kbs connection

no lagometer issues…no system resource issues …it happens somedays and other days it just doesn’t happen.
This happens on every one of my computers.

Jaymod, I could shoot a head, point blank…wait 5 seconds and then hear all of the hits 3 times as faster than they should have been relayed back to me.
BUT THAT IS ONLY WHEN THE BULLETS HIT…which is barely ever with Jaymod.

Etpub, this error type rarely shows it’s ugly head but if it does appear- soon after the bug clears I go from having a horrid time playing with a “lag-like” game to playing with an “I can’t miss heads even if I shoot bellies” game.

Etpro follows all of the rules above except that when I shoot a head point blank, more than 50% of the bullets actually hit after the odd lag second or so, Jaymod: 10% hit, Etpub: random percentages.

//=====

Some days, I shoot, wait .5 second for bullet to appear,wait .5 second, watch it hit, wait .5 second for hit to be seen(smoke), wait .5 second , listen for hit sound.
Some days, bullets hit the instant I shoot.

This DOES change after I reconnect to the server, most times.
Sometimes, this changes on a per-map load basis.

!gah…
//====

I wish network code and transmissions were a perfect science. :stuck_out_tongue:


(witos) #20

Well, I’m speaking about not more than 250 ms delay and a ‘sticky feeling’ as gelantine has put it… It’s playable but you don’t stand a chance with most of the people. You are talking about 5 secs? What connection do you have (isp)? Maybe you use wireless router or something. Do you use adsl? If yes, post if you use any modem.

In my case ‘bullet lag’ problem seems to be very strange, as I have good connection and decent fps (stable 76, on maps like valhalla stable 125). Also I don’t use any wireless shit. Still, lagometer is perfectly clean. I didn’t notice any ‘bullet lag’ in css, but it used different connection settings so it’s hard to compare it to et. Gelatine has even more powerful pc then mine, still he is experiencing same thing as I.

–>Lekdevil.NL

I tried running this program, but from what I have seen it doesn’t differ much from WinMTR, which I used before. The program doesn’t show any packetloss, also the pings are good (20 - 60).

Anyone got any other ideas?


(inf3rno.hungary) #22

[QUOTE=EB;145015]I have the same issue quite OFTEN.

2.8 ghz
1 gig ram
6800 nvidia
5mb/384kbs connection

no lagometer issues…no system resource issues …it happens somedays and other days it just doesn’t happen.
This happens on every one of my computers.

Jaymod, I could shoot a head, point blank…wait 5 seconds and then hear all of the hits 3 times as faster than they should have been relayed back to me.
BUT THAT IS ONLY WHEN THE BULLETS HIT…which is barely ever with Jaymod.

Etpub, this error type rarely shows it’s ugly head but if it does appear- soon after the bug clears I go from having a horrid time playing with a “lag-like” game to playing with an “I can’t miss heads even if I shoot bellies” game.

Etpro follows all of the rules above except that when I shoot a head point blank, more than 50% of the bullets actually hit after the odd lag second or so, Jaymod: 10% hit, Etpub: random percentages.

//=====

Some days, I shoot, wait .5 second for bullet to appear,wait .5 second, watch it hit, wait .5 second for hit to be seen(smoke), wait .5 second , listen for hit sound.
Some days, bullets hit the instant I shoot.

This DOES change after I reconnect to the server, most times.
Sometimes, this changes on a per-map load basis.

!gah…
//====

I wish network code and transmissions were a perfect science. :p[/QUOTE]

Same here since 2010 when I changed my PC, my opsystem from XP to Win7 and my ISP. I am still not sure which one is responsible for this experience. I was a high skill player with more than 50% acc, now I have around 35% or even less. I play only etpro. I am pretty sure this is not config related, since I used the same config with XP and it was fine. The only thing I changed is “r_primitives 1” for nvidia graphics card. I managed to rule out most of my hardwares from the suspects (I built 2 new PC-s since then, but the problem still persists). Only the monitor is the same Dell device, but this does not seem some kind of display lag. I think it is something network related, but I am not sure. According to my modem and online tests the connection is fine. Low ping, low jitter.

I shoot clear headshots on my screen, but none of the bullets hit. Not even panzer or rifle nades hit enemies properly. All I can do is preshooting with rifle to the common places. It kills the enemy sometimes and ofc I am accused with WH. On the other hand when I see a grenade coming to my direction there is no time to jump away. It’s like if everything on my screen would be in delay compared to what happens on the server, so when I see the nade coming on my screen, it have already blown up on the server and killed me. Other strange things, that sometimes I go into a room and ppl are not displayed for a few hundred msecs. I have a small yellow shark sometimes when people hit me on the head and after that I can’t move and I am killed in a sec. It’s like if the game would got the info that I was killed in time, so it does not allow me to move, but the info about what happened would come a sec later. I experience the same “delayed bullets” and the “things happening faster than usual after a delay” stuff too. Sometimes enemy is shooting at me, I go behind a wall or tree and 1 sec later bullets start hitting. Same things happen with my bullets too. The hitbox it totally off too, sometimes it is 1 meter before fast moving ppl, sometimes it is after them. Only rarely is the hitbox on the proper place, maybe 5% of the cases.

Another interesting stuff, that with my current config I have more than 200 FPS with Battlefield 4, while I don’t have stable 125 FPS on some of the bigger maps with ET. I doubt the problem is with my PC, I have i5-4670k and gtx 750 ti currently. It should be able to handle 125FPS in ET I think. I set memory usage to maximum in ET, so even that cannot be a bottleneck, but nothing helps. Maybe it’s just that the game uses only 1 core and current CPUs aren’t that strong on 1 core as old ones. I don’t know. DPC latency measurements are all green, so the drivers and everything should be ok. Really I could not come up with a way to debug this in the past 8 years. All I could do is checking the hardwares and now that I am mostly done with them, I’ll check what happens when I change the opsystem too, for example to Ubuntu or Mint with a low-latency kernel. I no longer trust Windows.

(I realize this is a very old thread, but maybe somebody managed to solve this in the past decade.)


(edxot) #23

Interesting information, because everyone is complaining of the same these days.

  • First: 2010. this date seems to have some meaning. I have noticed that some ET:QW players changed their nicks and now it includes this date. Looks like they are aware of some change introduced to the game at that point in time.

  • Second: While having the same sort of problems back then, I used to be asked to install the game at some friend’s home, because they were not so expert in the matter. Every time, I would be amazed how I would finish the installation, and the game was running perfectly, and I could play it better than back at my own home, where I had a much better computer, better connection, etc …

  • Third: Just as a side note, I used to think that windows 10 had the most retarded license agreement ever. But now I believe that it may be a little different. Probably they were the only corporation that decided to let people know how vulnerable to on-line attacks they were. Unlike others that pretend to be beyond government control.