Curse

toastgodsupreme · Jun 18, 2008, 07:28 PM // 19:28

The Problem:
As of recently, characters no longer run from point to point. Instead they teleport around, often appearing in many different locations before finally getting to a stopping point.

It's as if the client is constantly out of sync with the server. Players appear in one spot, then appear where they really are a moment later.

Leading up to the problem:
The game was fine (for the most part) up until yesterday afternoon. I had closed it, walked away to do some stuff, came back and launched it again (just like normal) and that's when the teleporting was apparent.

The game had this issue twice before. Once on my old install of windows on my old 200gb hard drive. Deleting the dat file and redownloading fixed it. This remained fine up until last week when I had a video card go bad. Replaced the video card (temporary downgrade), motherboard (upgrade), processor (upgrade), network card (upgrade), hard drive (same size, brand change from Samsung to Western Digital).

After that, I reinstalled windows, clean. Installed the game, played for a while, teleporting started happening. Reinstalled windows again because that install was only SP2 slipstreamed. New install was SP3 slipstreamed. Game played fine up until this afternoon.

Attempted solutions:

-repair
-image
Used Contig on the dat file
Deleted the dat file and replaced it with one from my old hard drive that didn't have these problems.
Ran the game from my old hard drive (changed the registry entry to point to the old install on the other drive)
Disabled all unneeded services and programs (through services.msc and the Startup control panel applet)
Changed video settings to low
Stopped all downloads on my torrent server
Restarted the router
Restarted the computer a number of times during all these.

Other things to note:

This is a new install of WindowsXP with SP3 slipstreamed. All updates have been applied, system restore is off, auto update is off, etc.
Being that this is a new install as of 3 days ago, graphics, network, motherboard/chipset, and all other drivers are up to date.
The network card being used is a gigabit Netgear card set for best throughput mode.
Through various sites I have verfied that my speeds are good, there is little latency on my line, no dropped packets, and all network settings are in line with my connection speed.

What fixed it:
PHYSICAL Drive 1 = Game
PHYSICAL Drive 2 = Old Hard Drive

Problem = Page file on Phys Drive 1 set at windows default of 2gb-4gb resizable.
Solution = Page file on Phys Drive 2 set at stationary size of 2gb-2gb.

Thoughts about why it worked:
Was it a cleansing of the pagefile that fixed everything?
Old page file was deleted when the new one was made. If this is the case, then having windows clear the page file every time the computer is shutdown would be an appropriate solution.

Was it making the page file a stationary size the solution?
Making it a stationary size reduces overhead from windows and allows it to save resources since it's not constantly resizing the page file.

Was it having the page file on a drive on a separate channel from the main drive the solution?
Given that the drives are on separate IDE channels (pata drives), this allows more bandwidth. So windows can access the page file and still read and write data from the main drive/game faster.

Aera · Jun 18, 2008, 07:40 PM // 19:40

I'm glad you fixed it. I used to have it whenever I alt-tabbed and back to GW, I'll change it as well and see if that fixes it for me ( it still happens every now and then )

Snograt · Jun 18, 2008, 08:17 PM // 20:17

Hum, I remember doing this on my old Xp system. Can anyone give the ideal page file size? I believe it's based on physical RAM size - I used to make the page file 1.5x the size of physical RAM, but I have a feeling that it's not necessary with larger amounts. 1:1 for 4GB and above, maybe?

gremlin · Jun 18, 2008, 09:11 PM // 21:11

Re Page file optimum settings.

I found many of these reccomended settings were from the days when 256 memory was common.
Loads of out of date advice on the internet

The page file was very important then, now we have 2 and 3 gig systems its less of a problem.
In fact I have seen some websites reccomending no page file.

If Windows plus the game plus swapfile is exceeding your memory then maybe you need to alter the page file settings.

On my old xp 1 gig system I tried
1/ default settings
2/ small page file on c drive larger 4gig fixed swapfile on drive d
3/ none on c and large swapfile on d but variable between 50 meg and whatever i had the max 2 gig then 4 then 6.

I never found much improvement in speed so went back to default sizes.
I do set the page file to none when defragging

So I go out on a limb here and say I don't believe altering the swap file settings on modern PCs is worth bothering with.

Taking all the bells and whistles off the PC by setting it to performance instead of best appearance.

Reducing the number of services that are running and closing down uneccesary programs in the startup would be my way of increasing performance.

toastgodsupreme · Jun 18, 2008, 09:22 PM // 21:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by gremlin

Re Page file optimum settings.

I found many of these reccomended settings were from the days when 256 memory was common.
Loads of out of date advice on the internet

The page file was very important then, now we have 2 and 3 gig systems its less of a problem.
In fact I have seen some websites reccomending no page file.

True, but even if you set it to no page file, windows will still page things to the hd. So i'd rather just set it to where i can control it's size and location.

And I have 1.5Gb of memory running at 200Mhz. 8-3-3-2 settings.

gremlin · Jun 20, 2008, 10:26 AM // 10:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by toastgodsupreme

True, but even if you set it to no page file, windows will still page things to the hd. So i'd rather just set it to where i can control it's size and location.

And I have 1.5Gb of memory running at 200Mhz. 8-3-3-2 settings.

Thats probably best, I just let the system manage the page file on both drives.
I did try a huge page file on the second drive for a while but didnt notice any improvement.
The argument for fixed verses dynamic page files seems to be dynamic eventually occupies fragmented areas while a fixed size remains unafected by the fragmentation of the rest of the drive.

My latest experiment in improving game performance is to start another user account for the computer and customise it just for games.
No extras installed other than whats vital for the games.

used to be a program called "end it for good" that you could run before gaming to shut down unwanted programs, maybe its still to be found and might help.