Original WZ multiplayer people

[Buginator]

For the people who have played the Original version of Warzone, can you tell us how good the network code was?
Can you describe any issues you had while playing?  Be as detailed as possible.

Was it always a issue, or was it more the result of lag?

[Terminator]

well from my expirence off. 1.10  I can tell that Lags & some problems was but only in the Internet play . But in localnetwork wz works fine.

[Chojun]

As I said earlier on IRC the netcode seemed to work fine.  I echo Terminator's words:  I only played 2 MP games in 9 years..  One was lan and the other WAN, the WAN one was the only one where lag was any sort of a problem.  But nowadays with low-latency broadband I'd bet that the lag problem is pretty obscure.

[Per]

I cannot be very detailed, sorry. In our LAN game group, we played Warzone a bit, and for the most part it worked like a charm. However, when it stopped working, we  discovered that we were playing completely different games. Game state had just totally diverged, and the game did not say anything. That was eerie. The current (original) network code does a lot to hide inconsistencies between game states, which means it can take a very long time before you really notice that the games are off-sync.

[kage]

also, each client was its own host -- there was no server. so cheating would've been perfectly easy if any had chosen to do it (like: "oh, btw, i just magically built 50 units at once in my base"), but i don't know how much effort wz crackers put into it. also, it seemed quite infamous that anyone with a faster connection always won tank battles between equal starting armies, and that anyone with the faster processor would build more quickly over the same amount of time (not enough to be noticable in the short term, but after 20 mins...)

[RBL-4NiK8r]

Well for the short T1 games like on Rush or Mountain you never had much of a lag issues, but when you got into a T1 or T3 game on a map like Teamwars and you had 8 players in it you really didnt see problems start till you had tons of defense and when the artty let lose. I think a lot of players had minor problems with mass fields of artty going off if they had there viewing screen in or near the artty field. Also Ripps didnt seem to have this effect from what I recall. In games that you maxed out building defense I think it was around 127 of whatever you made you could all but crash the game or make it come to a stand still, till you got rid of a lot of the junk.

I would say I played close to if not more then 10,000 Multiplayer games in may days, and the first 6 months was on 56k, but most of that was while the game still was only a demo, but by the summer of 99 I was on cable so I fould that to be a lot better but 56k was not to bad for 1 vs 1 games on low tech maps so most games didnt last to long. Also if you had someone on your side that was on 56k they tend to bring anyone next to them down or makes them slower. I also recall the speed of your PC effected what you could do in multiplayer games, and no I am not talking speed hacks here. Keep in mind when the game first came out most systems where just reaching 500 mhz on there CPU, and by the time people started getting systems over 1 ghz CPU you could build and make units faster then someone on a low end system, and trust me this was tested many of times over the years.

On my last system I was using to play WZ I could build a full base and have about 45 HC Mantis Hovers at about the 5 min mark on Teamwars map, now granted I had my own system, but showed many of others how to do this, the thing is most people that were on shity DSL where they were just a tad better then 56k they would never come close the same goes with low end systems they would be lucky to have that many tanks at 10 mins. I cant say what effect if any was do to the net code, but thats some of the things I recall off the top of my head.

4nE

[EvilGuru]

I think it is more to do with the dodgy timing code in the game. Something with how real-life time maps down to game time and CPU cycles. The netcode itself does not do a lot other than pass units around, relying on the rest of the same to tell it when to send them.

Regards, Freddie.