Version 0.14.13

[TheTom]

The obvious solution for that is not to use a server that is hundreds of milliseconds away. Particularly given that a decent connection on both ends you can reach any point in the USA from pretty much any point in europe with 150ms. Hundreds of milliseconds speaks for bad hardware or a funny internet.

Check your network and then use a server that is more local. SImple like that. A lesson players of a great many first person shooters have learned in many years. Also common sense.

[bobingabout]

The obvious solution for that is not to use a server that is hundreds of milliseconds away. Particularly given that a decent connection on both ends you can reach any point in the USA from pretty much any point in europe with 150ms. Hundreds of milliseconds speaks for bad hardware or a funny internet.

You say pick a better server...
I say, when I play with my Aussie friend, while living in the UK, not only do we have to contend with a poor internet infrastructure where packet loss is through the roof, but also that you literally can't get further away from each other.
Absolute minimum ping is in the 350ms range.

You say 150ms from Europe to US.. my experience puts it more in the 200 range. and my friend often in the 250 range. Sure using a server placed somewhere between us, like either the US, or China (he gets a really good link to China) would likely improve the game quality, but when it's just the two of us trying to connect to each other's games, that's not easy.

Previous attempts to play the game between us has proved unplayable. and in my personal opinion, if it can't handle such a link, it needs fixing.
However, the last attempt was in 0.12, so, the netcode has been completely re-written since then, it's time to try again, it's just convincing him to do it, instead of playing something else

[Fatpony]

Hi bob, would like to talk to you.

[TheTom]

The obvious solution for that is not to use a server that is hundreds of milliseconds away. Particularly given that a decent connection on both ends you can reach any point in the USA from pretty much any point in europe with 150ms. Hundreds of milliseconds speaks for bad hardware or a funny internet.

You say pick a better server...
I say, when I play with my Aussie friend, while living in the UK, not only do we have to contend with a poor internet infrastructure where packet loss is through the roof, but also that you literally can't get further away from each other.
Absolute minimum ping is in the 350ms range.

You say 150ms from Europe to US.. my experience puts it more in the 200 range. and my friend often in the 250 range. Sure using a server placed somewhere between us, like either the US, or China (he gets a really good link to China) would likely improve the game quality, but when it's just the two of us trying to connect to each other's games, that's not easy.

Previous attempts to play the game between us has proved unplayable. and in my personal opinion, if it can't handle such a link, it needs fixing.
However, the last attempt was in 0.12, so, the netcode has been completely re-written since then, it's time to try again, it's just convincing him to do it, instead of playing something else

Let me start saying - deepest respect for you. I Love bobs mod. Never play without it.

Now, lets get real.

You and your friend have ridioculous bad internet. Seriously.

Let me check my line. I am at the end of a commercial grade radio link - so you can add like 15ms to those numbers if you use fastpath copnfigured DSL, and anything more is ridiculous. I am in Szczecin, Poland. SPeedtest.Net check of a new york server gives me a ping time of 108ms. That is where I get the 125ms from for a retail link (my speed to the backbone of the provider is in the 2ms range instead of using DSL or something with more latency. Latency to Sidnay (and man, australians really have the worst internetI is 347ms. Nothing you can do here. Australie is a third world backwater for internet - that is just how it is. They also pay ridiculous amounts for anything. I remember an article once showing how buying Adobe software for him was so expensive in australia, he literally could pay a plane to New York and a night in a hotel for the difference (http://gizmodo.com/5984298/its-less-exp ... -australia). Sucks to be australian. My business has a partner down in down unter and seriously, it sucks to be there for anything internet related.

You can forget any reaction intensive gaming with more than 35ms (that is first person shooters). But at the end of a 0.8 second round trip you will have problems writing a text without feeling alienated (type, wait, watch text appear).

The best you really can do is either get better internet and / or rent a server somewhere between (middle, closer to larger latency hole to make the latency similar). Australia is as bad as it gets and while I really would like to tell you better news - you and your friend will always have problems doing any real time gaming with each other unless someone puts down better connectivity for australians.Do a little googling - australia as a continent has latency issues.

Your best choice is to g

[bobingabout]

Yup. Australia is the worst internet I have ever encountered so far. And due to throttling, My internet adds like, 50ms latency right there. I think when I ping something local I get 50ms at a minimum, so, your average of 125, add 50 to it, and that's where I get my 200 range from.

You said you got 347ms, that is actually similar to my experience, the 350ms range is a GOOD day.

But you're right, the best option for factorio would likely be to use a server in America as a midpoint.


But we... used to... game together quite regularly. the most FPS game we used to play was Borderlands or Dead Island... Co-op games. Both of those did relatively well with a 350ms+ Ping.

As for better internet... Local monopoly. I live in Hull. The only landline option is Karoo (Kingston Communications internet). Unlike most other telephone companies, they own all their own hardware. All other companies rent from BT, who own all the rest of the hardware. They have a deal with BT, not KC. Now, the issue there is, KC basically wants to maintain the monopoly, even though they've been told they have to allow 3rd party companies to rent their equipment, so they set the rental price so high nobody wants to. The only other option is to get a wireless link to somewhere outside of town.


Going back to my previous post, Lag is one thing, playing the game with delayed responses when it takes a 3rd of a second to send data is one thing, with lag hiding, that can be worked with. When I say previously the game was unplayable.... 1 tick every 5 seconds. On top of that, when you pressed WASD to move, you had to wait untill the server acknowledged you pressed the button before you started moving, then you'd keep moving until it acknowledged you released the key, so simply tapping the button could have you move a tile and a half. THAT is unplayable. If the tickrate continued as normal, but it took a whole second to be able to place anything, that would be playable, even if the lag was annoying.

[TheTom]

You, sr, like in a f****d place.

50ms is a ridiculous large ping latency - misconfigured DSL (without fastpath) is in this range (but yes, this is generally assumed a misconfiguration - it does error handling, which IP and TCP etc. do anyay).

1 tick every 5 seconds screams error. If I were you - rent a virtual server with a cloud provide (Amazon, Microsoft Azure) and put it there. Cheapest way (Azure gives you free credits) for a TEST. This gives you time to find out whether it changes anything.

[bobingabout]

1 tick every 5 seconds screams error.

That was in the 0.12 version. 0.14 is a total re-write, so we need to try it again.



But yeah, we just live with the internet issue.

[Deadly-Bagel]

Know what you mean Bob, I'm also in the UK and play with my brother in Australia. The internet there is atrocious. Not only is its landmass rather isolated and very far away from other English countries, but regionally ISPs see far less return for supplying areas with better internet as houses are much more spread out. I mean if you walked 100m on my street in the UK you'd pass about 50 houses, if you walked 100m on my parent's street in Australia you might be able to see the neighbours. Even when we lived in the middle of town, you'd only pass maybe a dozen houses. Therefore I scoff when Sydney advertises a "massive" 2mb/s plan, which I read on Facebook through my 60mb/s internet.

Path of Exile is actually a pretty good game at hiding latency over long distances, from what I can gather they have "Gateways" around the world that synchronise games over long distances. I don't know how applicable that would be to Factorio, but the development probably wouldn't be worth it as they've far surpassed their original multiplayer goals.

[Nebrot2k]

Any idea if this realease will be the stable one ? (and when it will be stable)

[TheTom]

At least from my experience it is stable (single player). No problems. Not sure when they will promote it.

THe plan IIRC for 0.15 was November - until then this one should be stable.

[Neemys]

I think they will make a version stable when most of all bug report are fixed. Seeing the bug report subforum, when we remove all bug report that will be fix only for 0.15, there is not a lot left.

Why do you need 0.14 as stable ? if you want to play on it, backup your save and update, you'll see by yourself that despite the experimental tag, there is no problem to play with it.

[Nebrot2k]

@ Neemys
I have a factorio server hosted by https://server.nitrado.net (4 player slots for 4 € a month), but they support only current stable version.

For singleplayer i also use the exprimental builds

[Neemys]

@ Neemys
I have a factorio server hosted by https://server.nitrado.net (4 player slots for 4 € a month), but they support only current stable version.

For singleplayer i also use the exprimental builds

Ahh, yes I see. Apart from hosting a server yourself, you will have to wait a bit. Maybe we will have info next friday

[Twisted_Code]

how does the only-admins-can-pause parameter work? Does pause mean the entire world stops like in single player? Or just that the person pausing is given some slack for something? I'm guessing it's the former, as that would explain the option being true by default (but also make me wonder why anyone might set it to false), but any information/details would be nice

edit: or am I just being stupid and we literally mean "they can do the thing that's bound to control labeled 'pause', I.e. the one that makes lines delimiting chunk and tile boundaries show up"?

[kovarex]

how does the only-admins-can-pause parameter work? Does pause mean the entire world stops like in single player? Or just that the person pausing is given some slack for something? I'm guessing it's the former, as that would explain the option being true by default (but also make me wonder why anyone might set it to false), but any information/details would be nice

edit: or am I just being stupid and we literally mean "they can do the thing that's bound to control labeled 'pause', I.e. the one that makes lines delimiting chunk and tile boundaries show up"?

They may pause the game for everyone by clicking the pause game in the menu.