Game Desync / Disconnections

PapaSmurf · 2019-02-08 02:35:54

I'm having issues with my connection to the server. I'm running the vanilla game off steam with no mods.

Every time I play this game on average every few minutes I lag out for 5-30 seconds unable to interact with things up or load the map. Sometimes Its long enough i get disconnected from the server and have to click reconnect.

I'm unsure why this is happening. I've tried reinstalling (deleted config too) and there was no change. This is the only game I've had this problem with. I play lots of Dota 2, Surviv.io and Warthunder and NEVER have large desyncs or lag. To test my connection I played on the server bigserver2.onehouronelife.com. While playing I pinged the server to see my connection was lagging.

The result was whenever I lagged my ping to the server was completely normal.

Here is my ping when I lagged out for 20 seconds and was kicked
https://i.imgur.com/xwf26Nh.png
I was pinging the server at 80~ ms throughout my game lagging.

Here is my average ping after playing for 30 minutes
https://i.imgur.com/SsArYUQ.png
An average of 86ms, and maximum ping of 347ms.

I've tried playing with my VPN enabled as well, but it made no difference.

How can I fix this and why might this be the only game I have this issue with?

jasonrohrer · 2019-02-08 02:51:30

Can you try pinging from inside the game?

Pinging from CMD like you're doing is sending the ping out-of-band (directly to the server IP) and not through the same pipe that all the messages are going through.

Just type /PING in the chat box to do it. It only pings once each time you do it, but that will measure the true round-trip message time on the socket that's open between you and the server. BTW, if messages aren't getting through at all, or very slowly, I'm not sure what will happen.... I think it will just wait to display the ping time until it gets the PONG back from the server, so if nothing arrives, you won't see anything. Practice with this when things are running smooth to get the hang of it, then try it again when you're having connection issues.

My guess is that your connection is not keeping up with the message traffic in the busy villages.

Have you tried running the tutorial on bigserver2, where you're playing completely alone? Do you get the same disconnect issues there?

Have you tried wandering away from a busy village (like, at least 100 tiles away) and doing your own thing? Still get disconnects there?

Actually, the client ONLY declares a disconnect if it sends an PING and gets no response back after 5+ seconds. That's what it does as a last resort before showing you the disconnect screen.

Now, this doesn't mean that NO messages are getting through. You may still see other players walking around and such. But what you're seeing is 5+ seconds in the past.

That's my guess, at least.

PapaSmurf · 2019-02-08 06:06:14

Thanks for the response.

My previous tests were in new villages.

In the tutorial I rarely would lag out. About once for 5-30 seconds every 3 minutes.

In large cities I was lagging more often than not.
https://i.imgur.com/ZBciQb7.jpg
The network graph in resource monitor shows series of 5-10 seconds of lag, catching up then almost instantly lagging again.

In this instance of lagging during the tutorial, you can see my ping shows 25000ms, which matches the graph exactly, going from smooth gameplay to NO data usage then straight back to normal.
https://i.imgur.com/l8m9jLA.jpg

I connected to server6.onehouronelife.com as the only player online and had no lag at all.

Speedtest shows that I have lots of bandwidth available
https://i.imgur.com/WnEXsgv.jpg

I played match of Dota, which uses even more data and system resources then OHOL and my network usage is completely normal, didn't lag once.
https://i.imgur.com/uKgJyvk.jpg

It doesn't seem like my network is falling behind, but that my data usage for the game completely stops when I lag.

jasonrohrer · 2019-02-08 06:13:58

Okay, I experienced this myself for the first time ever (in 2+ years of working on this game), in a really big, busy town on bigserver2.

It would only happen periodically.

Keep in mind that I'm playing this on a pretty old laptop with a weak GPU (which always gets some fps slowdown in busy scenes), and my network connection is just DSL (3.5 Mb/s down, 0,88 Mb/s up).

But sometimes in the center of town, my in-game ping (as measured by /PING) would grow to be over 6 seconds. Everyone around me kept walking around, but I'd be bouncing there, waiting to pick a berry.

If I walked away from the busy area for a short distance, the network lag would clear up instantly (and go back to my normal ping of 80 ms).

Furthermore, while this was happening, command-line ping was showing 70 ms.

Furthermore, I asked other nearby players if they were experiencing lag, and they said no. But most people have faster internet than I do....

So this is some kind of "full pipe" problem here. I'm still trying to figure out exactly what's going on in this situation.

I mean, obviously the cause is pretty clear (too many messages about other players in too short of a timespan), but I still need to pinpoint where the bottleneck is (network, client processing loop, etc.)

My hunch is that it's just a network bandwidth issue.... and sadly, if it is, there may not be any solution to it.... but I'm hoping that I find something else.

jasonrohrer · 2019-02-08 06:27:40

Wow, you do have a ton of bandwidth....

So... you really think the "lag" is the time where there's low network usage, and the "spikes" up to 100 kbs is the "normal" smooth gameplay?

That's really weird, and probably different than what I'm experiencing.

I mean, 25 seconds of lag during the tutorial.... there's gotta be something else going on there...

I was on Linux, and didn't have a network graph running, but I did see other people clearly walking around doing stuff during my lag. Like, the world was going on without me, and in the terminal, I could see loads of client messages coming through. I assumed it was a problem of "too many" messages.

In big cities, what are you seeing during your lag? Everyone frozen? Or still walking around despite your lag?

It is nice to know that the game generally uses less bandwidth than DOTA!

One big difference between this game and probably DOTA or some other games:

This game uses TCP socket connections.

I'm guessing that DOTA uses UDP.

If you are experiencing some kind of weird packet loss, then that could really jam up a TCP connection (which guarantees the delivery of all packets in order, before the stream can continue).

UDP is more like a machine gun of independent packets that will arrive at the destination in whatever order and no guarantee that some won't be dropped. It's much more robust in the face of network hiccups... it just keeps going. (But much harder to program against, because there are no guarantees.)

jasonrohrer · 2019-02-08 06:34:54

Papa:

Can you do this again (short game, in a town), get it to lag at least once, and then send me:

1. your stdout.txt

2. your latest recordedGame file

jasonrohrer AT fastmail DOT fm

Léonard · 2019-02-08 14:07:43

Jason, did you forget about the ticket opened on github about this issue?
The way you describe it happening to you is exactly what happens to me and the other people who reported it over there.
Recently, "jrudolph" posted what he thinks is the cause along with a patch.
I've been testing it and so far it has fixed the issue every single time for me.

jasonrohrer · 2019-02-08 22:33:13

Sorry, I will look in a sec, but can you link to it?

So many things going on over here....

Yeah, I looked just now, and can't find the ticket or the patch on github.... help!

Léonard · 2019-02-08 22:38:36

It's this one.
Sorry, I should have linked it. Didn't realize updating an issue doesn't bump it on github's default sorting.

MariMcMillan · 2019-02-08 23:03:09

I have this desync/disconnect aswell, in large town where a lot of players and items are.
As soon as i head out of the crowd it fades away to no desync/disconnect when i'm alone in the wilderness.
It's not from today, having these isues since the bigserver started.

I'm playing from EU, Netherlands, dunno if related but might be worrth noting here in case it is related to the desync/disconnect.

PapaSmurf · 2019-02-09 00:52:34

jasonrohrer wrote:

Papa:
Can you do this again (short game, in a town), get it to lag at least once, and then send me:
1. your stdout.txt
2. your latest recordedGame file

jasonrohrer AT fastmail DOT fm

Email sent

One Hour One Life Forums

#1 2019-02-08 02:35:54

Game Desync / Disconnections

#2 2019-02-08 02:51:30

Re: Game Desync / Disconnections

#3 2019-02-08 06:06:14

Re: Game Desync / Disconnections

#4 2019-02-08 06:13:58

Re: Game Desync / Disconnections

#5 2019-02-08 06:27:40

Re: Game Desync / Disconnections

#6 2019-02-08 06:34:54

Re: Game Desync / Disconnections

#7 2019-02-08 14:07:43

Re: Game Desync / Disconnections

#8 2019-02-08 22:33:13

Re: Game Desync / Disconnections

#9 2019-02-08 22:38:36

Re: Game Desync / Disconnections

#10 2019-02-08 23:03:09

Re: Game Desync / Disconnections

#11 2019-02-09 00:52:34

Re: Game Desync / Disconnections

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