I problemi di lag

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Various lag issues
While we are still working with OpenTransit to solve lag issues that still affect access to our platform, players who suffer from lag are not all affected in the same manner since there are various possible sources for the lag. When one or more of these combine together, the framerate can become very low with the picture jumping from frame to frame, sometimes with several seconds between intervals.
If you are affected by this, the following explanations (thank you to Flimgoblin from FreddysHouse) will help you identifying the different types of lag and maybe reduce them.

1. Frame rate lag (Frame rate / FPS)
They are bound to the specifications of your computer (processor, graphics card, RAM). They can occur during a keep take when suddenly 20 Midgardians come along. Your computer tries to load them all at once and your hard drive makes some noise. Depending on how good a computer you have this may or may not slow you down. You can identify that symptom on the performance-monitor (shift - p) as the third circle (the one on the right) turns to a yellow triangle or a red square.
It becomes hard to move your character around - looking around is sluggish, pressing buttons on your screen is very unresponsive - sometimes the wrong buttons fire (if you click then move the mouse).
Sometimes the first two performance monitor icons will turn red. If that happens after the fps square has turned red then it is possible due to network card drivers not allowing the network card to run well when the cpu is under load or you may experience a link-death.
Solution :
Turn down the graphics options in the game - switch off shiny water, turn off shadows, Atlantis ground and trees. Turn on precaching of armour skins (if you at least have 512 MB ram). Reduce the level of detail limit (though this may impact your RvR playing). Turn off spell effects (/effects self or /effects group).
If you experience link death problems from this - try upgrading your network card drivers. This also solves crashes caused by using portal or djinn stones.
If your computer is not powerful enough and you however wish to go into the Frontiers, prefer open battles than great keep sieges where you will meet many enemies and an intensive usage of siege engines, and multiple area of effects spells.
Then, upgrade your computer which is never a bad thing but may require some investment.

2. Server lag.
This sometimes happens when the server is very busy (it used to be the 4.2 encounter Fortress of Storms would lag the server to death).
Your character moves around fine on the server, you can look around without any problems everything is nice and smooth. But when you say something it takes several seconds to process. Sometimes the client doesn't receive information for a too long period and you get booted from the game with a "an error occurred " message.
Note that the performance monitor (shift-p) will show a green circle for the first two icons in this case (the third one is purely about your fps - see above). If either of these two are showing red then it's not likely to be server lag - it's more likely to be connection lag - see type 3.
Solution :
The decrease of this kind of disturbance is our daily work and we work on it together with Mythic. We work on the optimisation of our network architecture cluster, regular material upgrades and code optimisations performed by Mythic for the version 1.71.

3. Connection lag.
This is what happens when something on the lines between you and the servers breaks down. e.g. ISP has problems, flakey router, etc. In this case, as above, the game may seem smooth but it takes a long time for any messages to get through.
Solution :
Run traceroutes/pingplotter to find out where the problem. Sometimes, the problem comes from your ISP. In this case this lasts generally only a few hours. If that lasts do not hesitate to send the results to the technical support so that they can be analysed and transmitted to our partners like OpenTransit, if that appears to be necessary.

As you can see, there are different kinds of lag and the causes are rarely simple. Network issues are the most complex to solve, but they are still the priority of our technical teams. We hope that these explanations will help some of you immediately or in the future.

Upgrading your computer
As you may know, computer features are always evolving. Computers and software are more and more powerful and games can compute more and faster and display more detailed pictures. To benefit from this higher performance it is thus necessary to upgrade your equipment, because over a few years, advances can be numerous. It is not always necessary to change your computer though, since a few changes can be enough to update your computer and increase the length of it's life. Here are a few pieces of advice for those who are not experts in this particular domain, so that they can enjoy Dark Age of Camelot as much as possible and have a more powerful computer at lower price :
- Run the Windows updates, which can improve the performances of your computer, but above all, improve security.
- Update DirectX which can be found on Microsoft's website. The current version is 9.0c.
- Update the drivers of your graphics card. You can download these updates from the website of the producer of the chipset of the card (ATI, Nvidia)
- Upgrade your sound card's drivers. Again you can find the updates on the website of the manufacturer.
- Be sure that you have enough free space on your hard drive, at least 1 GB would be best. So, delete any useless files regularly.

All these operations are costless and require no "physical" intervention to your computer. Furthermore these changes have little chance of physically harming your computer. Carefully follow the installation instructions to avoid any mishaps.
Another easy thing to do consists in adding RAM to your computer but this requires you to open up the case. You can find some illustrated guides on the Internet so you can visualise the proceedings. Look on your bill or in your motherboard manual to see which type of memory you have (or contact your retailer), as you need to buy a ram stick with identical features (for example DDR PC 2700). Ask the vendor how much memory you can add, but nowadays it is better to have at least 512 Mb RAM.
Finally, if you are an expert or can ask a specialist, you can also change your graphic card and install a more powerful one. Here again ask advice about the model you can buy but a card with 128 Mb RAM is advised today in order to get the best of the current games. You can also change your processor and upgrade the bios of your motherboard but this kind of operation is more complex and not advised if you do not have a good knowledge of computers.
With all these changes, you can upgrade an old computer for a lesser price. In any case, you will certainly have to make changes your computer every five years or so to keeo up with technical advances and play new games. If you want to fully enjoy Catacombs and play with every option, take a close look at your computer since this expansion will require more resources than Trial of Atlantis does.

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Tulkar Helluin - Druido Nephian - Vampiir Farmer Narmorion Niklaus - Costruttore di armature

[Modificato da Salgas 19/12/2004 11.38]

[Modificato da Osten 23/12/2004 1.21]

fotoclick <-- In giro QUA è LA'

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Scritto da: Osten 22/12/2004 22.29
quando parte mi da 46 !!!!! processi attivi senza manco io abbia ancora aperto nulla, e nn so quali scartare senza rischio :( e allocata di suo 255mb di memoria

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Tulkar Helluin - Druido Nephian - Vampiir Farmer Narmorion Niklaus - Costruttore di armature

[Modificato da Arixa 23/12/2004 20.33]