Raven Shield vs. Me

[Creole Ned]

Although it extracted part of my soul in the process I managed to get Raven Shield re-installed on both my main and server machines. This is the good part.

The ded. server seems to run fine -- I can connect just like in ye olde days. However, once I am in-game I get severe rubberbanding every few steps. The game lags terribly then smooths out for a few second before rubberbanding again.

Server: Windows 7 Release Candidate 64-bit, Athlon 64 3500, GF 7800GT, 2 GB ram
Client: Vista SP2 64-bit, Intel Core 2 Duo 6800, GF 260 Core 216, 4 GB ram

If I reverse the scenario so that the Vista machine is hosting and the Win7 one is connecting, play is fine. Play is also fine on the Vista machine in single player, suggesting that the problem lies somewhere in Win7 acting as a host. Any thoughts on what might be behind this? I tried setting affinity on the Vista machine to one CPU but that made no difference. I have turned off Windows Firewall since I have a hardware one with my router and the network connection between the machines works fine as I can launch programs and move files without issue. Connection speed is set to ADSL on both machines and again to emphasize, the setup works fine if I switch the client and server machines around.

[Tai]

Does Windows 7 have any weird network "optimization" settings? If so, try turning them off? I know nothing about windows 7 so am really no help at all :(

[Tai]

If I get this via steam I can bypass that whole patch process, right?

[Creole Ned]

Yes.

[Paladin]

Try this, Ned:

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=857587

(Knucklesx post on page 2)

[Creole Ned]

Thanks, Pal. "net_graph" with or without arguments comes up as an invalid command in the RS console (logged in as admin), so I wasn't able to get anywhere with that, unfortunately. I did a check for RS commands (admin and otherwise) and cannot see it listed as a legit command anywhere.

Now, if he meant some sort of Windows-specific console, it would have been nice if he had mentioned that in the post. I tried it on a lark using the command prompt and it was again unrecognized.

[Paladin]

Yeah. Oops. I thought that was a Windows console command. It is, in fact, a Source engine console command and that was a CS support thread. I thought since the effect seemed to be the same, and if it was a Windows command, that it would be useful anyway.

Some thought I had today...

Force the Windows 7 machine to use 10 Mbit speed on the network card. It's possible something is being lost in the translation if your Windows 7 machine is connecting to the router at gigabit speed and your Vista machine is 100 Mbit, especially since RS network code predates gigabit speeds.

Another possibility is to set the MTU on the Windows 7 machine's network card to 1492. It's probably set to 1500 by default, and I've had latency issues before from the MTU being set to 1500 or more.

It sounds like it is something in the network setup that is introducing packet loss. Those two things might help.

[Creole Ned]

The network card in the server machine is 10/100, so no possibility of a gigabit connection there. I've also read that pre-release versions of Windows may have "funny" network provisions in them for whatever reason. I'll probably just revert the box back to XP. It's been fun to look at Win7, though -- it definitely improves on Vista in pretty much every area.

Thanks again for the help, though.

[Creole Ned]

Before I revert back the server to XP, does anyone who has RS installed want to try joining to see if you get the same laggy weirdness? The server is running Raven Shield version 1.60 (and Athena Sword 1.1).

If you need to re-install, there are two ways to patch without losing your sanity:

1. Buy the Raven Shield Gold Edition from Steam (RS + AS for $10).
2. Install Raven Shield, then install Athena Sword then install Iron Wrath. At several points you will be advised that you need to patch but if you click OK it will do it automatically. Note that Ubi apparently turned off the CD key server for Iron Wrath in October 2008 so the multiplayer portion of that no longer works. AS is unaffected.

[Tai]

I'll try to download the steam version over the weekend if you want to wait that long?

[Creole Ned]

Whoops, never replied.

Yes, there's no rush as I'm not imminently planning on wiping the system.