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Improved stability and dedicated server - Discussion


NineLine

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From a player point of view, unfortunately the 2.5 update has more or less killed most of multiplayer for me. I'll preface that my system specs are up to par, and I keep settings rather conservative to make things smoother rather than prettier. The main issue I've found is the very long connection time to the server, and the subsequent wait of five to fifteen minutes before I am able to actually click an airfield/aircraft on the list without crashing the game. At times the connection flat out fails and I end up in the main menu again. This sometimes becomes a cycle.

 

 

Because of work and education commitments, there's simply not enough time in the world to spend up to 1h staring at loading screens and restarting the game before getting any flying done, and because of that I've put 100% of my online gaming time into Il-2 Sturmovik as it presents a more reliable return for time invested.

 

 

The instability and loading times are even worse if the server is populated or uses scripts heavily, but please understand that while these factors can and will sometimes exacerbate the problem, it is a problem that exists as part of the game, and that is the part that needs attention. Server owners, I'm sure, are happy to work together with you to bridge the gap between development and practical application, make sure to use that.

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Generally that means you have a bad connection to the server, what kind of pings are you getting to a server that this happens to you on, and does your computer meet DCS specs, its all connected, ED cant fix everything, but they are trying to do as much as they can.

 

Correct. I tested a bit the MP issues, and for example, it seems to load a lot objects (and data) from the server, in a lot of very small packets. Also if you loose packets the server-client sync can be problematic (in loading and also playing). I can recommend to check the connection and use always a wired network because wifi almost always loose packets (and adds some noticiable latency). For me a thumb rule is: more latency = exponential load times.

 

Also is remarkable the VERY high VRAM usage at now, and for this is very important to have less pre-radius range. The VRAM is limited and the RAM is a lot slower, when you haven't VRAM the system uses RAM for graphics, and this is slow.

 

Other issues is when a player enters in the server, this will lag to all players and also the current high resource consumtion for objects. A mission with a lot objects will be very hard to the server and the clients (on load times and running fps).

 

Anyway, DCS 2.5 is improving a lot and very fast, i'm sure that those problems are known and ED are doing their best work to fix it and also creating new content.

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  • ED Team
I've tried to code multiplayer games before and completely understand that it's amazingly complex. More so than a lot of people understand.

 

You mentioned official servers, is clarification about that coming soon? Having ED run dedicated servers with an open sourced blueflag-like (or other large-style mission/campaign) would provide immense value to both sides.

 

You would see the pain that we see and have the correct context to be able to work with it and improve things. And the community would get insight into the best way to use the lua engine to code missions/libraries.

 

So if those are the official servers you're talking about I would be totally on board with that idea, and even helping out with working on the content for them.

 

Official servers will be EDSA run and User run. But yeah, more info to come.

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"both us and the servers"

 

I'm game for this. These changes that need to be made I'm super on board with it, but we definitely take incredible care with our code and do a lot to ensure that our scripting is lean and does at little as possible to facilitate dynamic feeling missions, and as soon as we leave the realm of trivial, we encounter issues. Is there specifics around this?

 

Naturally, first start with a server that at least meets the minimum spec for online play and a fat bandwidth. After that, they key is to build missions iteratively. Just 16 players to start, no scripts, and a minimum of objects and units. Once you have good stability at a very basic level, start adding additional components (players, scripts, units, etc.) one at a time until you reach a “breaking point” to determine what is triggering the instability.

 

Thanks,

Matt

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Did you read Wags post, ED is certainly not pretending there isnt an issue, and moving forward with efforts to make it better.

 

I did read Wags post, and it's nice to hear something, but we've heard all this before. It's been very vague "please bear with us guys" now for years. And I'm not exaggerating, like, 7 years give or take. We were very trusting then and we backed off confident that a solution was coming out, and we were trusting for a long time and here we are still.

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I did read Wags post, and it's nice to hear something, but we've heard all this before. It's been very vague "please bear with us guys" now for years. And I'm not exaggerating, like, 7 years give or take. We were very trusting then and we backed off confident that a solution was coming out, and we were trusting for a long time and here we are still.

 

There will be more news this Friday. So that should be soon enough ;)

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I wouldn't start panicking yet, ED will listen to everyone's concerns, they see what people enjoy playing out there, and what kind of content they want. Just wait for more info, but by all means state what you would like to see, it does help mold DCS.

 

I don't think thats the issue, I assume it will be in the same vein as like games like Battlefield where its just a dedicated server running specific missions run by the Devs.

 

My concern is, it means we are locked into specific missions with specific rules.

 

My group runs missions that range from every casual (Ticket to Creech) to a little more "hardcore". We add a lot of special customization and special dynamic side missions. Stuff like this is what makes our server popular. Stuff like this might not run on official servers.

 

Not only that, but it harms communities when its only the OFFICIAL servers that run stable and squadron servers run like crap. So now no one flies on squadron servers and it kills our ability to make friends and recruit and run our style of miission because its always empty.

 

Now, if "Official" is like how Americas Army 2.0 did it, which is rented validated servers, thats fine, but that does tend to get super pricey because of inflated pricing due to being "exclusive"

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First off, I want to express my thanks for DCS and the incredible modules Eagle Dynamics and its partners have provided. This is a niche market of very demanding players and I'm super thrilled to have a sim of this quality with support for a constantly evolving list of new planes, new features, and a huge thanks for VR support.

 

I've started playing Multiplayer more and more lately, largely due to the (somewhat) recent availability of both Hoggit's Georgia at War and Through The Inferno. My reasoning is simple: These are the types of missions that appeal to me, namely larger scale PvE. As someone who's primarily interested in A2G with friends, this is an excellent format.

 

I get a 60ms ping to TTI and 170ms to GAW. I have roughly the same issues with either server ... I get disconnected (crash? not sure) back to the Main Menu, only to need to login and go through the process of starting up, reloading ordinance, taxiing, and flying to target. Last week while playing on TTI I had this happen 4 times in a row before takeoff.

 

The experience can be quite disheartening.

 

As best I can tell it often seems to be the MP server process itself crashing. Most(?) of the time the mission timer has reset for TTI which as far as I can tell means the server restarted. I've hung out in the Hoggit discord channels enough to know the server stability problems they've been having.

 

I know first-hand that these problems are challenging to find and fix. I have a feeling many of us in the community would love to help if we only knew of a productive way to do so. If there is something we can do to gather data, provide access, or otherwise help, please let us know.

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Naturally, first start with a server that at least meets the minimum spec for online play and a fat bandwidth. After that, they key is to build missions iteratively. Just 16 players to start, no scripts, and a minimum of objects and units. Once you have good stability at a very basic level, start adding additional components (players, scripts, units, etc.) one at a time until you reach a “breaking point” to determine what is triggering the instability.

 

Thanks,

Matt

 

This is a tough sell to be the approach for mission making. We did build our large mission iteratively, but still tried to keep each "stage" a useable, playable, and fun mission.

 

Going through stages of mission development that aren't fun / have no substance is a tough sell to get people to try out. Our debut for Georgia at War had 40-50 people on it during the weekend, but we had to provide an actual experience with that before people would really bother giving it a try.

Acidic

Hoggit Admin / Server Owner / Mission Maker

Discord: https://discord.gg/hoggit

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Wiki: https://hoggitworld.com

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That language makes me nervous. I dream of the day we have a proper dedicated server binary for linux that we can run on our own metal.

 

The quote makes me wonder if we're instead headed for curated hosting companies with canned mission packs. "The bronze package includes the basic mission pack and supports up to 5 players! For the serious pilots we offer the high performance tier that supports up to 10 players and comes with the bonus mission pack!"

 

I hope that's not the case.

 

A dedicated server for linux will be a great boost for the current MP. This for sure.

I really hope to see it.

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I'm also with Deadlyfishes & Drexx as well. I know that they would spend hours each day day fixing & changing the scripting for the servers.

 

Although I do not do any scripting for our servers. I have the pleasure of running a TTI server for the Australian & New Zealand community.

 

 

Managing the server takes time & dedication and of course money.

 

 

 

It has been over a year now that we have had our server running Deadlyfishes "Through the Inferno" missions.

 

 

 

I look back and see that from when the Persian Gulf Map was released, he has updated the MP mission many times including changes to the TTI single player missions.

 

 

ED, this is dedication, and comments from members that run, manage, develop MP/SP missions for the overall community should never be disregarded.

 

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This is a tough sell to be the approach for mission making. We did build our large mission iteratively, but still tried to keep each "stage" a useable, playable, and fun mission.

 

Going through stages of mission development that aren't fun / have no substance is a tough sell to get people to try out. Our debut for Georgia at War had 40-50 people on it during the weekend, but we had to provide an actual experience with that before people would really bother giving it a try.

 

The other side of this is we went from 1.5 to 2.X and many missions didnt adjust to the new maps, object counts, and performance demands. All Wags is saying is that it is a 2 way street, and it helps us when you show where the limits are and where we need to push more development.

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The other side of this is we went from 1.5 to 2.X and many missions didnt adjust to the new maps, object counts, and performance demands. All Wags is saying is that it is a 2 way street, and it helps us when you show where the limits are and where we need to push more development.

 

 

The other valid concern that is related is any sort of moving goal posts from patch to patch. Any minor change in the behavior of any given scripting functionality causes a knock-on effect of frustration. It applies to triggers and even AI also. That doesn't include bugs introduced to aircraft itself that end up being annoying to deal with for even a short period of time.

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The other side of this is we went from 1.5 to 2.X and many missions didnt adjust to the new maps, object counts, and performance demands. All Wags is saying is that it is a 2 way street, and it helps us when you show where the limits are and where we need to push more development.

 

Probably including the ones provided by ED too though. We don't have a lot/any of examples of "good" missions that are 2.5+, or any "best practices" for scripting for missions. The way I found out we had a lot more objects than expected was from a Tacview debug output, which I have no idea whether it has any accuracy to it because it's not first party.

 

But I was just made aware of some missions that shipped with ED products that use the lua scripting but are likely out of date.

 

Is there a meaningful log we could provide that has information you can use? All I've ever really seen is the dcs.log, but that has no information about the level of scripting going on in the mission afaik. We also have no tools to help us figure out when a mission's script is actually causing the strain, or if it's the object counts, new maps or performance demands.

 

As you're aware there's a lot of things that could bring servers to a halt, as people that use a scripting engine, we should (and are, for the most part) aware that when we put in bad code we'll get a bad result. But there's no indication about what part of the code is bad, or what part of the sim is slowing down that we can either bring up with you guys, or work to improve ourselves.

Acidic

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Discord: https://discord.gg/hoggit

GAW Website: https://atwar.online

 

Wiki: https://hoggitworld.com

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The other valid concern that is related is any sort of moving goal posts from patch to patch. Any minor change in the behavior of any given scripting functionality causes a knock-on effect of frustration. It applies to triggers and even AI also. That doesn't include bugs introduced to aircraft itself that end up being annoying to deal with for even a short period of time.

 

While that is a problem, trust me I have seen it with my campaign work, its not really related to the topic of stability of servers and netcode I dont think.

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I fly everyday with 16gb DDR3 system RAM and can connect to the busiest of servers zero problems (a well configured pagefile helps https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?p=3548636#post3548636)

 

I also make use of a custom MP autoexec.cfg file for larger network upstream/downstream loads

 

https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=214799

 

I put your file on the appropriate director (open beta), but that not fix the problem, I intent enter on some servers:

- 59th Raven Public server (67 Ping)

- Havok company dedicate #1 - 24/7 server (70 ping)

- Buddyspike Caucasus (70 ping)

 

I cant reach the server lobby or if enter into them I cant select any aircraft (frozen). 5-10 minutes pass and or DCS turn on black screen (need kill them), or DCS return me to the main menu.


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  • ED Team

Yup, its been a lot of work transitioning over, but we are trying to get everything tidied up, and its still ongoing, and that is the point, everyone needs to do it, the other option would have been to make everything 1.5 incompatible with 2.X and then start over, sort of like DCS World 2018, I think that would have been worse, I dont know.

 

Probably including the ones provided by ED too though. We don't have a lot/any of examples of "good" missions that are 2.5+, or any "best practices" for scripting for missions. The way I found out we had a lot more objects than expected was from a Tacview debug output, which I have no idea whether it has any accuracy to it because it's not first party.

 

But I was just made aware of some missions that shipped with ED products that use the lua scripting but are likely out of date.

 

Is there a meaningful log we could provide that has information you can use? All I've ever really seen is the dcs.log, but that has no information about the level of scripting going on in the mission afaik. We also have no tools to help us figure out when a mission's script is actually causing the strain, or if it's the object counts, new maps or performance demands.

 

As you're aware there's a lot of things that could bring servers to a halt, as people that use a scripting engine, we should (and are, for the most part) aware that when we put in bad code we'll get a bad result. But there's no indication about what part of the code is bad, or what part of the sim is slowing down that we can either bring up with you guys, or work to improve ourselves.

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While that is a problem, trust me I have seen it with my campaign work, its not really related to the topic of stability of servers and netcode I dont think.

 

You probably know more about it than we do, but if AI code gets changed to be more demanding of performance, and a function that was previously stable is calling that AI code, surely that will manifest itself in multiplayer too.

 

The stability of servers and netcode problem isn't limited to people just experiencing lag. The servers themselves grind to a halt processing the mission itself after a while. So I personally feel that this is related to the server stability issue.

Acidic

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Discord: https://discord.gg/hoggit

GAW Website: https://atwar.online

 

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I put your file on the appropriate director, but that not fix the problem, I intent enter on some servers:

- 59th Raven Public server (67 Ping)

- Havok company dedicate #1 - 24/7 server (70 ping)

- Buddyspike Caucasus (70 ping)

 

I cant reach the server lobby or if enter into them but I cant select any aircraft (frozen). 5-10 minutes pass and or DCS turn on black screen (need kill them), or DCS return me to the main menu.

 

Do you run SSD drives?

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The other side of this is we went from 1.5 to 2.X and many missions didnt adjust to the new maps, object counts, and performance demands. All Wags is saying is that it is a 2 way street, and it helps us when you show where the limits are and where we need to push more development.

 

What about missions that ran perfect in 2.0 (NTTR) that are now unstable? From what’s been said the NTTR didn’t change (or didn’t change much) from 2.0 to 2.5?

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You probably know more about it than we do, but if AI code gets changed to be more demanding of performance, and a function that was previously stable is calling that AI code, surely that will manifest itself in multiplayer too.

 

The stability of servers and netcode problem isn't limited to people just experiencing lag. The servers themselves grind to a halt processing the mission itself after a while. So I personally feel that this is related to the server stability issue.

 

I am sure maybe in some cases, but I think Grimes was more talking about mission breaking events, but maybe I read it wrong.

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What about missions that ran perfect in 2.0 (NTTR) that are now unstable? From what’s been said the NTTR didn’t change (or didn’t change much) from 2.0 to 2.5?

 

I dont think the map specifically, but underlying parts of the engine did, as can be seen in things like deferred shading and such. So again, the demands and specs did increase when we went from 2.0 to 2.5.

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I wanted to share my experience so far with DCS Multiplayer...

 

I played Single Player for a LONG time before even jumping into multiplayer and I started my youtube channel doing just single player stuff.

I will say that trying to get into DCS Multiplayer is rather daunting and I think this could be helped by a more streamlined GUI and integral Voice chat between players as at the moment we have to use separate programs and not all servers use the same programs.

 

As for stability I have had very few issues with that and that has SHOCKED me because for the last few months I have been playing DCS Multiplayer in probably one of the most remote places DCS has been played in... a Tiny island in the Caribbean with less than 200 people on it at any one time called Little Cayman. The internet here is horrendous and yet I can still play DCS multiplayer with no issues or problems over a wifi connection, both as a client and as a host, especially in the small private servers that we put up in the multiplayer group r/WingmanFinder.

 

The fact that I could play and record us flying and having a good time while in this very remote area completely shocked me. This experience has led me to believe that a lot of players are trying to connect to public servers which are way over crowded with clients and objects. As well as players maybe not having machines that are up to spec for the heavy load of DCS multiplayer (of course who can blame them computer components are EXPENSIVE!)

 

We have had our fair share of issues as well such as ice skating on the carrier deck and some lagginess which we believe was due to a large complicated mission on a server without enough RAM.

 

I hope this didn't come off as braggadocios or unhelpful but I think that if I can run DCS World multiplayer with few issues from an extremely remote desert island with shoddy telecom infrastructure it can be run anywhere under the right circumstances. I think my experience really points to over crowded servers with too many objects and aircraft as a main factor for a lot of people's issues.

 

Heres a video proof of a rather large mission flown without issue from a very remote location

[sIGPIC][/sIGPIC]

 

Spudknocker DCS World YouTube Channel!!

 

RTX 2080 Ti - i7-7700K - 32GB RAM - DCS on 1TB EVO 970 M.2 SSD - Logitech X56 HOTAS

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