Smolensk .76 - General observations Options

[ScrapyardBob]

At the peak last night, we had 13v13 players online (with 1 or 2 in spectator mode). While we didn't have a server crash at all last night, a few people complained about periodic lag spikes. Now, I also experienced lag spikes last night, but I suspect it was because XFire was downloading an update in the background. The previous night on 12v12, we didn't suffer from any lag spikes.

A few people have trouble with high pings on this map. We may need to do some digging into old CoD:UO tuning threads to give some additional suggestions. Because it's a larger map, some people may need to adjust various settings (quality, resolution, hunkmegs, datarate, etc.).

At a minimum, before complaining about ping / lag, please turn on both your FPS display and your lag meter. You can enable these by entering the following commands in the console.

/cg_lagometer 1
/cg_drawFPS 1

Useful COD Settings FAQ
http://www.mobclan.com/forums/upload/index...?showtopic=7047

You should also refer to this thread, which explains some basic performance tuning and also covers how to read the lagometer.


This post has been edited by ScrapyardBob: 02/17/06 11:11am

[ScrapyardBob]

Hah, I forgot about the gametype-specific and map-specific CFG files...

(from the 1.51 patch notes)

- Added ability to execute map and gametype specific config files. When a map is loaded on the server, a config by the name of <mapname>_<gametype>.cfg will be executed automatically, if it exists. If it doesn't exist, then it will be ignored. Eg. mp_foy_dom.cfg will be automatically run when mp_foy is started in Domination mode.
- Can specify a config file to execute within the sv_mapRotation command. For example, "sv_mapRotation exec mycfg1.cfg map mp_foy exec mycfg2.cfg map_kursk". (Note: doing this will override the <mapname>_<gametype>.cfg and prevent that config from being executed.)

So you could go with a base assault tank respawn of 30 or 60 seconds, but up that to 120 seconds (180?) for CNQ play to lessen the quantity of tanks. (The default value for tanks in the GSCs is 10 seconds. We used to change it to 60-90 sec to make tanks a bit rarer and worth protecting.)

There is a CVAR for jeep respawn (set scr_jeep_respawn_wait "5"). The default, however is already 5 seconds in the GSCs.

Other things to possibly set in a game-specific CFG:

1. Artillery intervals. These can be adjusted in the CFG files. The following snippet of code from _rank_gmi.gsc shows what the default values are along with the names.

if( GetCvar("scr_artillery_first_interval") == "" )
setCvar("scr_artillery_first_interval", "45");
if( GetCvar("scr_artillery_interval") == "" )
setCvar("scr_artillery_interval", "120");
if( GetCvar("scr_artillery_interval_range") == "" )
setCvar("scr_artillery_interval_range", "15");

scr_artillery_first_interval - seconds to wait after player spawns before giving them an artillery strike
scr_artillery_interval - seconds between additional strikes, randomly adjusted by scr_artillery_interval_range (so min time is just "interval", longest time is "interval + interval_range").

For CNQ play, setting it to 90 sec first interval, 120 interval, and 30 range might be enough. It's not easy to stay alive for 90 sec in CNQ play. It would cut arty roughly in half.

2. Points per rank

The code in UO (again, looking at "_rank_gmi.gsc") is rather simplistic. The only CFG setting is (scr_rank_ppr) which is the number of points per rank, and the code simply multiplies this to come up with additional rank values. The default for scr_rank_ppr is 10.

At one time, we (old clan) ran a mod that allowed us to have more of an exponential points-per-rank setting. It worked out that the rank points were 10, 20, 40, 60, 90 instead of the linear version.

May need to change PPR on CNQ to 15 (so no arty until you get 75 points) or even 20. With the 20/rank, helping to capture an objective should be 3-4 points instead of 2, and defense should be 2 points instead of one (IMO). Big rewards for getting in there and helping to capture or defend against re-capture.



This post has been edited by ScrapyardBob: 02/24/06 9:27am