Please note that this section will be updated soon to reflect recent changes to the netcode, for now some notes are listed with the sections to which they pertain
Connecting to a TFC server, it hangs on initializing and downloading, or disconnects. Why?
What can I do to reduce my latency?
What are rate, pushlatency, and netgraph? How do I use them?
How do I get Half-life and TFC to work in multiplayer when I'm using a proxy to connect to the internet?
When I try to connect to a TFC server, it hangs on initializing and downloading, or disconnects after this message, how can I get this to stop?
This is most often caused by an antivirus program or some other program that you
are running in the background that interferes with Half-life in some way.
The best recommendation is to disable virus scanner/antivirus programs and
shut down any other programs that you may be running before you play
Half-life. To the best of my knowledge, IRC clients, ICQ, and GameSpy do
not cause this to occur, but you may want to shut those down as well (in
GameSpy go to Tools->Options->'When launching a game'->'launch
game and terminate GameSpy' if you want GameSpy to close when you try to
join a server).
What can I do to reduce my latency?
Note: The TFC1.5/HL 1.1.0.0 update has changed a few of the commands used for this.
Framerates are no longer taken into consideration for networking, so the fps_modem and fps_lan
commands were removed, and replaced with fps_max. Set fps_max according to what your video
card can handle, and then you're left with tweaking rate and pushlatency. The r_netgraph
command has also been removed, and been replaced with net_graph. Use net_graph 1, 2, or 3,
according to whichever you prefer. Also, netgraph_pos can be set to 0, 1, or 2 to determine
it's location, left, right, or center. netgraph_width will set the width of the graph.
There are a few
things you can do to reduce your latency, but the determining factors on
how low your latency can get are your ISP(Internet Service Provider), your
modem, your phone lines(if using a phone modem), and the route to the
server you're playing on (the path the signal takes from you to the game).
The only things you can really do about your ISP are complain to them or
change ISPs. As far as your route goes, right click on the server you want
to join (in GameSpy) and choose traceroute, it will then tell you how many
hops your signal is going through. Fewer hops usually means that you're
going to cover less distance and have a better connection, there are a
number of traceroute programs available on the internet that can go into
more detail on what your route is and where any problems may be, which
could help in determining if your ISP is causing your latency to be higher
than it should be. Basically, a better route equals better ping, and better
ping equals better latency. Try to join the servers that give you the best
ping and route if you're concerned about latency. You can usually call your
phone company and have them test your phone lines if you think they may be
causing data loss. The most common symptoms of bad phone lines are a
definite hiss during voice conversations (on your telephone) or
interference of any type (I used to be able to hear local radio stations on
my phone when the line was quiet, definitely a sign of bad lines). Make
sure you have the latest drivers for your modem, they may have found some
problems with the drivers you are using and fixed them, and those problems
may have been causing some of your lag. A great resource I have found for
tweaking all aspects of your game is Tweak3d.net They have a modem tweak guide and an
Half-life Internet Tweak Guide that could be
very useful for reducing your latency. They also have a number of tweak
guides for the rest of your hardware, including 3d cards, and some tweak
guides for other games. You may also want to try the Half-life Autoexec Creator which will build
an autoexec.cfg file for you that may increase your game's framerates and
also your internet performance. Adapting your rate and pushlatency settings
to your connection may also help. I would recommend setting pushlatency to
-1000 (type pushlatency -1000 in console), which will effectively give full
prediction of the actions of other players should your connection not
receive proper updates from the server. Prediction (and therefore
pushlatency) hides the appearance of latency and lag problems, -1000
basically sets it to a value of negative your ping, a value of 0 turns off
prediction. As for rate, I would set rate to a value of 5000 (type rate
5000 in console), and then reduce it by about 500 at a time(rate 4500, rate
4000, rate 3500, etc), while paying attention to your netgraph (type
r_netgraph 1 in console to view netgraph) to try to clear any blue, red, or
yellow lines from your graph. Note that you may not be able to get rid of
the yellow and red lines entirely, but you want to get as few of them as
possible.
What are rate, pushlatency, and netgraph? How do I use them?
Note: The TFC1.5/HL 1.1.0.0 update has changed a few of the commands used for this.
Framerates are no longer taken into consideration for networking, so the fps_modem and fps_lan
commands were removed, and replaced with fps_max. Set fps_max according to what your video
card can handle, and then you're left with tweaking rate and pushlatency. The r_netgraph
command has also been removed, and been replaced with net_graph. Use net_graph 1, 2, or 3,
according to whichever you prefer. Also, netgraph_pos can be set to 0, 1, or 2 to determine
it's location, left, right, or center. netgraph_width will set the width of the graph.
Netgraph:
Netgraph is a visual representation of the networking data that Half-life/TFC
is receiving while you play. In the default mode that most people use
(r_netgraph 1) it shows whether you are having delayed packets (yellow
lines in netgraph), which usually mean the server is sending more
information to you than you can handle, dropped packets (red lines) which
could be the result of the server sending too much information or a bad
connection, or corrupted packets (blue lines) which show that there's
definitely a problem between you and the server. Halflife.org's Yappin with Yahn section
, brought up the
question of netgraph with Yahn Bernier (Valve software's netcode guru)
which shed some light on the uses of r_netgraph 2 and 3, which is where I
got any of the info in this section relating to those two portions of the
netgraph. When using r_netgraph 2, there are a series of green hashes up
the side of your screen, each represents 50 bytes of data. As the graph
moves from right to left (this would be the standard r_netgraph 1 display),
each column is a presentation of a server message that your computer
received (or didn't receive, refused, or found invalid). r_netgraph 3 adds
a white divider to your screen above which is player data (yellow),
non-player entity data (purple), temporary entity data (blue), and sounds
(green). So, basically, r_netgraph 2 and 3 will show you what the
information is and how much of it is being sent, while r_netgraph 1 simply
tells you whether or not you're receiving all of the information being sent
to you correctly. In most cases, r_netgraph 1 is the only one of these
options that will concern you, and r_netgraph 0 turns it off. Pushlatency: Pushlatency is a variable
used by Half-life/TFC's netcode to guide the prediction code in the game.
The prediction code hides your latency by replacing any lost or delayed
packets with a prediction of what the other player(s) may be doing.
According to Yahn Bernier (again from Halflife.org's Yappin with Yahn)
setting your pushlatency to a value that is a negative number, with the
absolute value of the number being higher than your latency, will cause the
game's code to dynamically change the pushlatency value to a value that is
negative your current latency. This means that a value of -1000 for pushlatency
will automatically enable full prediction so long as your latency is below
1000. If for some reason you don't want prediction to be used, set
pushlatency to 0.
Rate: Rate is the speed at which the
server will send information to your computer. The basic idea is that you
want your rate to be high enough to get the neccessary information, but not
so high that it causes your computer to turn away information or drop
packets. Overall, I have found no reason for anyone to use a rate higher
than 5000 (which is the rate limit in many leagues and is more than
adequate for the information normally sent in a game of TFC), though TFC
will allow rates as high as 10000. When trying to adjust your rate for the
best performance for your connection, I recommend starting by setting rate
to 5000 (rate 5000) and turning on netgraph (r_netgraph 1). Look at the
netgraph for yellow and red columns. If you're having a lot of red and
yellow appear, reduce your rate by 500 (rate 4500), and look for the red
and yellow columns again. Continue to do so until you find that your red
and yellow columns are significantly reduced (as few of them as possible),
stop if you get below 2500, and try looking at other ways to improve your
connection. Once you find a value that seems to work for you, you may want
to tweak it a little more (change the value by intervals of 50 or 100
instead of 500) to find a setting you like. Remember that you can't do this
in a LAN game or on a server that you are running, as it will have little
effect. Try to do it on a server with only a few people (an empty server
may work as well for a baseline) that you have a good ping to, so that you
can get a 'best case' situation for your rate, and work from there.
Note: to adjust your rate, type rate # where # is the value you would like
to use in the console.
How do I get Half-life and TFC to work in multiplayer when I'm using a proxy to connect to the internet?
I found this answer with the help of the
great people over at our own PlanetFortress Forumsand would like to thank them for
posting and reposting this for me.
This pertains mostly to people using a proxy that they have control over.
In other words, you will be able to configure the proxy yourself. If the proxy
is controlled by your ISP (Internet Service Provider), the you'll have to
contact them to see if they will do this for you.(also note that some of
this must be done on the proxy, and some of it must be done on the computer
you will be using to play TFC)
--) Disable the CompuServe and AOL proxy functions. The ports they use
conflict with the ports HL uses.
--) Create a mapping with the name Auth Server, TCP, proxy port 7001, IP
209.67.28.140 (or half-life.east.won.net), outbound port 7001.
--) Create a mapping with the name Auth Server2, TCP, proxy port 7002, IP
209.67.28.140 (or half-life.east.won.net), outbound port 7002.
--) Create one named WON Server, proxy port 6003, TCP, IP 209.67.28.140 (or
half-life.east.won.net), outbound port 6003.
--) Create one named WON Master, proxy port 27010, UDP, check
"bi-directional", IP 209.67.28.140 (or half-life.east.won.net),
outbound port 27010.
At this point, you have mappings for everything but the game servers; You
can get a WON authorization, and you can get the master list of servers
showing what games are running, but you CAN'T get into a game. You need to
create a seperate mapping for EACH game server that you want to play on.
--) Get into Gamespy or HL and write down the IP addresses of your favorite
servers (good pings, always running, whatever).
--) Create a new mapping for EACH game server.
--) The first one will look like this. Name "Some Cool Server",
proxy port 27015, IP 123.456.789.012 (uh ... I made that number up :), UDP,
bi-directional, outbound port 27015.
--) For the rest of the game servers, you need to increment the "proxy
port", like this: Name "Some Other Game Server", proxy port
27016, IP 123.456.789.012, UDP, Bi-directional, outbound port 27015.
--) Name "Yet Another Game Server", proxy port 27017, IP
123.456.789.012, UDP, Bi-directional, outbound port 27015.
You get the idea. Each port ON THE PROXY SERVER changes, but the outbound
mapping always points to the "real" port at 27015.
Now to connect to a game, start from the HL console.
--) There's a variable (cl_timeout) that tells Half-Life how long to wait
(in milliseconds) for a response from the server before failing, and it's
normally 1/3 of a second. Your connection will usually take longer than
that, and ALWAYS will if the proxy needs to dial, so change the value to
make it wait long enough for a dial and login, maybe 30 seconds (cl_timeout
30000) or 45 seconds (cl_timeout 45000).
--) Now connect to the first server you mapped with "connect
your.proxy's.ip.number:27015". Connect to the second with
"connect your.proxy's.ip.number:27016", and so on.
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