Doctor Vivian

During one day at the height of summer, six glittering starships appeared out of nowhere. Suddenly, everything went dark. It was the curse of the evil monkey that eats cottoncandy. The people all fled in terror

During one day, at the height of summer, six glittering starships appeared

When you find yourself doing COH dances at a club. >_<

During one day, at the height

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You may be right! But I sort of somehow doubt it.

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The problem of this mindset is that no one not on the Engineering Team of COH for the last few years would be eligible to make a suggestion, and for those that were / are, this is not the venue for it.

I would like also to think that the COH team had employed a top-flight network engineer or three during the design and all these same folks had stayed during all successive issues of the game, continuing to hone and refine client/server responsiveness with all the tools in their kit.

However, I am also aware that when companies are sold, and teams change hands, such as took place during the Cryptic / COH / NCsoft deal, teams change. New members are added, old ones go away. Some cash in their options and retire. Code that hasn't been touched for a long time and isn't causing any problems rarely gets looked at, much less overhauled.

However, now that you've said it, perhaps it is indeed presumptuous of anyone not directly involved with COH development to ask questions of this nature -- as well as pointless, since it is almost a certainty that we will not receive a response here to such questions. We should leave these matters in the capable hands of those to whom they have been assigned by the powers-that-be.

Thus, properly shamed, I retract the inquiry! Moderators, please delete this thread.

I return to the land of PL MEH, just a bit wiser.

-- Vivian

I had a PhysX 100 card. It made the system a bit unstable, and after locking up once too many times in the middle of a big fight and having to reboot, I took it out. The difference with a fast Extreme Edition Core 2 Duo was so minimal I realized it was a waste of a slot.

When I upgraded my 640MB 8800 GTS to a 1GB 280 GTX with PhysX and CUDA, naturally I too thought that I would get a lot more PhysX in COH, as it is vastly more capable than the old PhysX 100 card ever was. COH doesn't give it a workout even with all settings at maximum and running at 2650x1600.

But I didn't get anything more, even though I always have my Physics set to maximum, it just uses the CPU to calculate them. Like Shadow said, it seems that until NCsoft integrates the new NVidia PhysX API into the game client, nothing but the old hardware will be supported.

Maybe in Issue 16-17? *^_^* Or am I being too optimistic?

-- Vivian

Whatever the solution is, I think we both share the same wish -- that they will be able to reduce the rubber-banding, mapserving and ghosting problems we're all experiencing at some point soon.

-- Vivian

What you said -- "Faster games where timing and accuracy are important use UDP" -- is exactly my point. COH is not a First-Person-Shooter. Timing and Accuracy have very little to do with anything in COH except in some rarified PVP situations with people leaping around trying to make it hard to hit them with in-range melee attacks. You can't "dodge" an attack in COH. You can't "strafe". You don't need to aim, even when sniping. There is no real FPS element to the game.

Where then is the benefit of UDP?

-- Vivian

PS: If you take the time and courtesy to provide links, I will of course take the time to read them.

PPS: The Ports were taken from the NCsoft Knowledgebase, HERE.

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UDP packets being completely discardable is a good feature when the bulk of the packets are time sensitive. Very few live/faster twitch action games use TCP, slower simpler click games do.

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Yes, I agree that is true in principle. However, back in 2007, COH used TCP. And when it used it, the user base experienced a far lower amount of rubber-banding and mapserving than they began to see when the client connections were shifted to UDP.

So in this case, while the switch to UDP may have marginally improved responsiveness for users with slow connections, it caused other problems for a lot of folks.

Although I don't have the actual stats, I would hazard to guess that most folks who use COH are using a broadband data connection, whether that's DSL, Cable or Fiber. Bandwidth and latency are not major issues for them. They're not benefitting from the switch to UDP. They're only seeing the bad side of it -- the rubber-banding and mapserving -- whatever that's being caused by.

It may be that the reliability layer -- if one was implemented in COH -- needs further optimizing to help eliminate these problems, and with that bit of refinement, UDP would work just fine. In fact, that may be one of many features coming in Issue 15, for all we know.

-- Vivian

PS: Thanks for the article links. The TCP-vs-UDP article by Glenn does indeed have a strong emphasis on using only UDP, but if you read it all the way through, you realize he is focused on First-Person-Shooters and not MMOs. The comments at the end of the article were actually very informative -- top MMOs like World of Warcraft, Lineage I/II, Guild Wars, Ragnarok Online, Anarchy Online, Mabinogi and Age of Conan all use only TCP.

This question was aimed at the Devs, and it is something that they themselves would need to implement at the client and server level either as a patch or as part of a larger Issue roll-out. There is nothing we, the users can do, if the COH client is currently set to only use UDP.

I can only assume that there was a reason for them to originally shift from TCP to UDP, and I would certainly love to hear it, but I am not really expecting a reply from any of the network engineers. The folks who actually make decisions at this level and do the programming are not (as far as I am aware) the ones who participate and post to the Boards.

I wrote the question in the hope that it might be passed inward at NCsoft, so that perhaps at one point one of these persons might at some point see it, and think about it.

The actual process of changing anything would be much more convoluted. After several meetings, discussions, tests and evaluation, the Network Engineer(s) would determine if switching back to TCP would produce more reliable connections. If it did, that find would be followed by many more meetings and at some point an Executive needing to greenlight the change, etc., etc. (which is why it's easier to lump in with an Issue, it's easier to allocate programmer time to it as a task when it's mixed in with 1,000 other tasks). So a year from now we might see it happen, if at all. (I.e., "if it ain't really broke, don't fix it" usually applies)

-- Vivian

Back in November of 2007, three TCP ports were in use by COH: 6994, 13094 &amp; 23094.

In mid-2008, UDP ports 7000-7100 were added.

Now in 2009, as far as I can tell, COH uses UDP alone to connect its clients and servers.

UDP, being a non-tracked protocol, has no means for ensuring delivery of its packets, unlike TCP, in which every packet is tracked and can be re-transmitted if lost. With UDP, packet loss really means missing data, not just a slow-down while the missing packets are re-transmitted.

I suspect that it was this transition from TCP to UDP that coincided with the marked increase in rubberbanding and mapserving the user base began experiencing -- so much so that a new command was introduced to combat it -- /sync.

If this was the root cause, would it be possible to switch back to using TCP?

It would seem to stand to reason it would increase the reliability of connections considerably.

-- Vivian

Arc Name: Rise of the Battle Drones
Author: Doctor Vivian
Publish Number: 52557
Morality: Heroic

Length: 3 Missions: <ul type="square">[u]Mission 1[u]: The Warehouse. Small map, Level 1-54. Ambush, Boss, Battle, Defeat All.

[u]Mission 2[u]: The Council Base. Unique map, Level 35-54. Collection, Patrol, Ally.

[u]Mission 3[u]: The Denoument. Medium map, Level 35-54. Ambush, Boss, Patrol, Ally, Defeat All.[/list]Level: This Arc has been extensively game tested, from low level to high, from solo to groups of 8, on all Challenge Levels from Heroic to Invincible.

Notes: Filling your Inspiration Trays with Break-Frees, Catch-a-Breaths and Lucks prior to each mission is highly recommended. Pay close attention to the Contact Dialogues, Clues and NPC Text. Second Mission is timed, but can be Stealthed if preferred. With large teams, on high challenge levels, [u]participants need to play this arc tight and by the numbers[u]. Stick together, support one another. Keep your Allies buffed and close. Be ready for reinforcement ambushes when final Level Bosses in Mission 1 and Mission 3 are taken down.

Description: <ul type="square">Recruited by Agent Six to help with an apparent Council attack on a warehouse, the hero soon finds something strange -- the Council there are actually engaged in fighting a group of robots, of a sort never before seen -- and the Council are clearly getting the worst of the fight. After the hero puts paid to both of the groups in the Warehouse and turns the robot remains over to Agent Six, things get serious.

In order to find out more about what's going on, Agent Six asks the hero to raid a small Council Base just off Striga Island, get in and insert a data worm into the facility's master computer. While there, they find Fusionette being held captive. Freeing her, she helps them not only get the data they need, but to get out in one piece.

The recovered data shows that the robots were created years ago by the Council, achieved self-awareness, destroyed their maker and escaped. Having spent the last few years improving themselves, they're now poised to spring an attack on Paragon City. Their powers over electricity allow them to "take over" and control heroes with electrical powers, as well as computer-controlled equipment, such as Vanguard HVAS, Arachnos Heavy Blaster and Longbow Cataphract units.

This threat has to be nipped in the bud before it is unleashed -- and in a spectacular denoument, the hero and a local Vanguard detachment head to the abandoned installation that these robots have made into their secret lair... can they possibly triumph against these soulless machines and the electrically-based heroine they have captured and re-programmed?[/list]

It would be nice to have birds in the City. Didn't any survive the Rikti War?

Then again, clouds, rain, thunderstorms, etc., would be nice in the City, too.

Sometimes I think we're not still on Earth at all, but living in a giant Rikti zoo exhibit / experiment.

Why are there no children anywhere? Even walk-around NPCs?

... anyone ever see "DARK CITY"?