| Everyone is tired of games plagued by lag. Sometimes it is playable, sometimes it isn't. What should be a 20 minute game can often take 40 or more minutes. A lot of people don't realize they can do something about it. Well, here are some tips, fact and fable, that will increase your connection speed 2000 times! Just kidding, but hopefully you will notice some improvement. In Game Here are some things to try during the game. Some of this stuff might not work (maybe not even make sense) but try it anyways. Ctrl-M, turns off music, supposedly speeds up game since it takes some load off your computer. Ctrl-S, turns off sounds, same theory as Alt-M. Make sure you go to Menu -> Options -> Sound and make sure "Subtitles On" is clicked so you can play without sound. Actually, Ctrl-S should be used as a last resort, since it could affect your game. Turn off unit portraits, which can be found under Menu, Options, Video. Same idea, again. Credit goes to Onslaughtd for this. Pause, this is from playing Duke 3d on Kali where it was necessary to pause at the beginning of each game for the modems to synchronize, so it makes sense to pause in the middle of a SC game for synchronization. DO NOT TALK DURING THE COUNTDOWN! The countdown when the host presses start is for a few reasons. In War2, the host had to say "shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh..." but now Blizzard has implemented the 5 second countdown so don't be a square! Not technically during the game but exit out of other applications (same theory as Alt-M, which is giving more room for your processor), and applications that would take up bandwith, such as ICQ. I think Low Latency, High Latency, and Extra High Latency is very similar (if not the same thing) to packets on Kali. In War2, pkt:8 was default, which I think means 8 packets are sent every so often. When someone's connection is poor, and all the packets don't go through, the "waiting for player" screen comes up. So what we did in War2 was change it to pkt:4, which is 4 packets sent everyone so often. Although this means the game is slightly more choppy, it reduces the lag screens. Although I don't know for a fact, but I am pretty sure the Latency corresponds to pkt:, Low being more similar to pkt:8, and Extra High like pkt:4. While in the game it is not necessary to switch to Extra High Latency. The reason you are waiting on players at the start of the game is because they are still loading StarCraft. Turning it up to Extra High Latency when not lagged makes the game worse. When you do this is takes longer for units to react to your commands. When the game is lagged it helps to not make movement so slow, and reaction time isn't as bad. Keeping it at low latency is BETTER! And if the game is lagged then maybe switch it to High Latency, if still lagged switch it tot Extra High, and if STILL lagged maybe you should try alt+s. Tarlung emphasizes DO NOT switch it to Extra High Latency at the beginning of the game. Wait to see if it needs to be switch to Extra High. The lag at the very beginning is from slower computers. Battle.net There are a few things you can do to optimize your connection to Battle.net. Use BattleFix, a program which pings different Battle.net servers and then you can connect to the fastest one. Battlefix is useful because you find out which servers are down, so you can manually del them from the registry and not have bnet give you an error msg cause the first server was down. Thanks to twobrain for this bit. (In response) Battlefix the program does absolutely nothing to get you a better connection. The battle.net software already pings all the servers, so the program is actually useless. Also, since Battlefix pings each server 3 times it is putting unneccessary packets out on the internet. It is not good practice to go sending useless pings, especially at a multiplayer game servers like Battle.net. Anyway, I guess I said in my article at the beginning some of the stuff was fact and some fable, Battlefix, Battlenet Optimizer, Battle.net launchpad are all useless in speeding up your connection. They do nothing that battle.net does not already. Why Battlefix can be helpful: You can use battlefix to see which servers aren't responding well and manually delete them from your registry, which will save you a lot of time as you initially connect to battle.net. The battle.net pinger then won't bother checking the laggy/unresponsive servers, and make you sit there and wait for them to finally respond or time out. Also, battlefix doesn't take into account the packet loss - if 2 out of three tests don't respond, but it returns one ping with a low number, it will rank that server before one with slightly higher pings, but very low packet loss. Does anyone know if the starcraft pinger works the same way? If so, removing lossy servers from your registry will do wonders for your connection. If everyone (or a lot) of people have red bars try exiting off of Battle.net and going back on for a better connection. Your Internet Connection (TCI/IP) This doesn't apply to those "low ping bastards" with ISDN lines, cable modems, and the like, but here are some more advanced tips to optimize your connection. Free things: There is a lot of little programs that you can use to configure your modem settings for the best performance. It is kind of annoying, but if you have some free time I highly recommend you follow these instructions. This guy has done such a great job fooling with configurations that I'm not even going to attempt to try and write my own instructions. And at the bottom he explains in detail what everything did. He also has compiled some FAQs that answers a lot of questions, including what we are all interested in: "What is best for Quake, etc." Here is his answer: The key to good game play must be to reduce the latency so the first set is to make sure the com port settings are as high as possible (which should already be case if you have followed the tips page). The next thing to try is a smaller MTU setting like 576 or 512. Modems re-send data when it is corrupted and switch speeds (retraining) to follow phone line performance, all of which takes time. So another step to try is to limit the maximum speed of the modem to a lower level than normal to ensure you get no re-sends or retrains. The codes depend on the modem type so you will have to look in the manual to see what you need. Go to Your DUN Properties, General Tab, Configure Button, Connection Tab, Advanced Button and enter the code in the extra settings box. Other things that may help is to disable modem compression. To do this go to Your DUN Properties, General Tab, Configure Button, Connection Tab, Advanced Button and untick 'Use error control'. The reasoning behind this is that the modem buffers the data so it can compress it by looking for repetition, the same way any compression works. The last thing you want is for the modem to hang onto to your data. This step, depending on the internals of the modem may not stop it from buffering of course. You final and risky step is to turn off error correction but if you do get a corruption you may crash the game so treat this a the very last resort. At the same time you should reduce the maximum speed for modem to ensure a good connection. If you don't understand that, don't worry, just follow the instructions and you will be surfing like you have never surfed before! Well, I tried it, and it did make noticeable improvements, and I would reccomend to try it. PPP Boost: Download.com gives this description: PPP Boost can significantly speed up Internet transfers by changing some of the network protocol parameters. By default, Windows 95 assumes that you are connected to shared local area network and uses appropriate values for this arrangement. Most home users, however, connect via a modem using PPP (point-to-point protocol). By using values more suited to this type of connection it is possible to reduce the amount of time spent splitting data files into packets and subsequently reassembling them. Accounts of improvment have been tested positive. Put all the settings as recommended. After that, push, ok, then exit, then restart the comp. All this program does is make your data packet transfer smaller and easier to handle over a 28.8 modem or 33.6. of it is 56k it may still help, because out going info is still 28.8 and starcraft still needs to send out a lot of data. BUT if you have a ISDN, cable modem, T1, etc. There is NO point in using this, and it may slow down your internet connection. If for some reason it seems to be slower, then run the rpogram and put everthing at default. Also, if you have win98, there is no point in using this because it already transfers in smaller data packers. The reason win95 is consfigured in huge data packets is beacuse they designed networking to be on a LAN and when you connect to the internet, they think you're on a LAN. Other free programs can be seen here at Download.com and here, at ZD Net. |
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