Slashdot Mirror
The Modem Lives On
Ant writes: "There's an interesting editorial currently running on 3dactionplanet which I agree with.
Game developers and companies need to think about us people who can't get broadband connections!
Yes, I am a part of the analog modemers. I can't play Q3A, HL, games,
etc. very nicely due to my 28800 connections (even with 56K). No cable
and DSL services here. Other options are just too expensive or won't
work (i.e. satellite for online gaming?)"
I think part of the problem may be the ISPs. I have 56K and my ISP is seemingly very overloaded with users and of course all of our bandwidth suffers. If I connect early in the morning (3 am) then I can get some decent pings. But trying to play during peak hours is horrible.
I think the ISPs need to increase their backbone or route traffice more effiently. I'm sure there are some really great ISPs out there, but I sure don't have one.
- KioNeo
- If you can't be promiscuous, what's the point [of sniffing]?
Modems served their purpose, but the gaming industry needs to do its part to encourage even wider availibility of broadband.
As long as people don't feel that they need a broadband connection, there will be areas serviced only by dialup. There is no practical reason that the entire country can't have cheap broadband - the providers just need a little encouragement.
The most responsible thing for developers to do is to completely ignore modems. Once we all do that, they'll go away like a bad dream.
- qpt
--
Domine Deus, creator coeli et terrae respice humilitatem nostram.
That's one weird troll.
Good episode though.
--
--
RumorsDaily
All these countries share one characteristic: their telecoms infrastructure is years behind that of the USA. This means that computer games will continue to be developed with the old V90 technology as its primary communications engine for some time to come, regardless of broadband developments here in the USA. The USA is only a small part of the global economic picture, and all games that are developed will reflect this. Already they are made with the European and Far Eastern markets as a primary aim - this will ensure that broadband does not get a look in.
Its a shame in a way, but it is true.
--
Clarity does not require the absence of impurities,
/* And you'll never guess what the dog had */
/* in its mouth... */
--Larry Wall in stab.c from perl
Forget the computers. It's the net that makes the difference in the digital divide.
Giving computers to kids doesn't help them get information. And as Ant points out, the digital divide is regionally based. You need broadband to get games, as well as being able to get information to the degree that it makes a differenece.
Broadband-obsession on the Net, plus lack of broadband in places, equals disenfranchisement for many people.
Also, it's just as bad when there is only one broadband company. If that company doesnt like your piracy or your napster use and cutd you off, there you are, disenfranchised,unable to reach much of the data and art and culture online.
Governments should assume a more controlling role in the development of highspeed internet technologies; the laying of cable is a vital part of the economic interest of each country. This is an area that calls for more regulation, not less. With proper intervention by legitimately elected policymakers, highspeed internet investments won't go to Silicon Alley anymore, but to Utah, Alaska, Montana- places where industry and agriculture are struggling and where, more than ever, young people need the Internet as a way out.
Goat sex free since 2001
________
Does anyone actually have a Java program designed to control air traffic, or for the operation of a nuclear facility?
... if it is working right, i seem to have a pretty good phone line. I average about 300 to 400 ping playing tfc, not too bad. I think my subdivion should rent a big pipe or something and set up a really big network. Bell south refuses offer DSL because "we live too far from their offices in downtown area" I wonder what an oc3 and big fiber lan would cost :)
Justin Ingersoll
Modems will never be able to provide that kind of response. There are tricks you can do to attempt to minimise this perceived lag, particularly with prediction algorithms, but by definition, they will never be perfect.
If you are stuck on a modem, you should really forget about playing action games online. There are still plenty of other good games you can play.
--
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
I have 768/384 ADSL, and I download like a champ. My latency is usually less than 50ms. I can play all sorts of online games, but games that run off the Q3 engine I just don't seem to do real well. What is funny, on a 33.6 modem, I played Q2 without a problem. DSL is really nice for Q2 now and i probably couldn't return to a modem, but it still worked and gameplay was still fun.
The only luck that i have with Q3 online is when there are 5 or less players in the arena, which can be alright, but it's cool to be able to support at least 10 players in one huge arena. I've never had a problem with Quake 2, in fact, one night at a lan party with 4 computer being routed through one computer running a proxy with NAT, and there was absolutely no lag. Like i said, Q3 is just way too bloated & impractical.
I too have a 56k, although i luckily connect at 45.2 and get around 5kbyte/sec downloads sustained. However, I get dropped randomly all the time, which isn't so bad in the land of download managers, but is incredibly annoying for gaming. I play counter-strike, and my ping doesn't stop me from doing well, but I think it does put me at a great disadvantage in "shoot first" scenarios. I think that the need for bandwidth in online gaming should be decreasing as technology increases. I remember when QuakeWorld revolutionized the Quake scene because it used the CPU to predict trajectories and help smooth out gameplay. That was five years ago. I'm now playing with twice the bandwidth but with no perceivable improvement in gameplay. Agreed that some games, like Tribes 2, require more bandwidth because they are complex online games. As to broadband, I think those of us who can't get it now are up the creek without a paddle. Telcos are losing money and closing down CO's, forget opening them. Not to mention that I'm about 4000 feet outside the range for ADSL, meaning there is not a high chance of me getting another CO built nearby (I'm in suburbia). Cable? I'm under the monopoly of CableVision, but OptimumTV isn't going to get rolled out for 2 more years yet. Wireless? I have big New England pines surrounding me. What does that leave? I don't think the future looks bright... sigh..._ _________
________________________________________
a good example of society's attempts to hinder modem usage is idt's choice to drop all dial-up service. this, of course, was done without telling all dial-up customers. that's one way to get people to switch to broadband, i suppose.
Honestly, I don't really care about modem gamers anymore. Enough people have quality connections that I'd rather have the games be designed and optimized for them. It just isn't possible to get the same level of quality on low end connections, no matter how optimizations are done. I have my cable modem, and I want fast games!
That is the problem I face with "internet ready" devices. I have a home lan with broadband access. But yet for my "internet ready" devices that connect out for things, they all want a phone line. Would it be so difficult to put on a ethernet port?
You poor bastard.
Sure, the games verge on not being playable on a regular modem. But the game developers ARE thinking of you, the problem being that it isn't as simple as waving a magic wand in order to make all bandwidth and latency issues disappear. Game developers (usually) do optimise their net code to the best of their ability, the problem lies within the modem.
I'm sorry to hear that you're still using a modem. I remember those days of agony. Countless hours of downloading instead of 4 minutes to download 90 megs of Star office :)
My dad still goes through Dialup. He actually pays more for his dialup than I pay for my cable modem!
To avoid long distance fees (he lives in a farmtown with no local ISP), he is able to pay an additional $10-15 / month to the phone company so that all calls to the next town are considered "local". Then he has to have a second phone line (add $20-$25 / month), then on top of that, he has to pay for his ISP! ($10-15 / month)
Patience is a virtue
(but it still sucks to wait)
The the risk of sounding like a troll... asking everyone else to accomidate your 150 ms ping time is essentially asking the world to "dumb down" for you.
It's really amazing how well on-line action games work. Game developers have done a pretty amazing job of making the most out of these high latency connections.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
If you have bad ping to different games it could be because of the physical distance between you and the host/server also most people dont have broadband so if you play with all/mostly dial up people the lag shouldnt be too bad.
yes he is.
The advantage that those offering this type of service claims is that they can more easily add infrastructure than the operators relying on cable/fiber.
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
But when you start getting into the latest FPS's that are coming out now or in the future, that information load begins to push the limits of the average modem, resulting in the amount of lag we get currently.
So, unless broadband suddenly becomes commonplace, what can we expect from future games? Will they rely on trusting clients with more normally hidden in-game information to lower the bandwidth requirements at the cost of security against cheats? Or will there eventually be a seperation between games designed for either LPBs and HPWs?
Yes, I very much agree with you. I live out where I can't get broadband access either, and due to phone lines my 28.8 connects at an average of 19.2 - ye gods it makes for a laggy game of D2 or Quake 2, or whatever.
On the plus side, satellite net access is getting more realstic. The installation is still horrendous, but the monthly bill is getting lower. I have a list of them somewhere, but the only satellite ISP I can remember off the top of my head is Clipper.net.
Anyway, good luck and check out satellite net access.
There was a time when the complaint was that people didn't support computers that only had capital letters. We ignored them and used lowercase.
There was a time when the complaint was that door games didn't work right with monochrome text. We ignored them and used colors.
Now there are some games that only work right multiplayer if you have broadband. Poor baby, get over it; games are not a necessity, and even if they were, multiplayer isn't.
Get broadband. If it's not available where you are, start bugging the telco and/or cable company. If they won't act, move. Don't expect everybody else to make games that suck just so you can be competitive with a modem.
That would be like expecting them to make the games so that you could still be competitive with a 286 with 4MB of RAM.
-
Why can't I get quake3 on floppy anymore? Oh yeah, because it would cost too much to ship a box with that many damn disks.
The fact is, I'm kind of glad that these games don't really work well with modem connections because it increases the demand for bandwidth in the home market, something I'm all for. It's obvious that modems aren't going to cut it for even the more mundane functions of the internet soon (if this isn't true already). I'd say it's better to expect more from the bandwidth providers than it is to expect less (read: games that require less information passed around) from the gaming industry.
I know not having a fast connection is frustrating. I spend my summers away from school and wish we had cable. I think this is good though, because I know, despite what anyone says, that kids (oh yeah, and adults) who want computer games to run fast are the people who really drive the hardware end of the home computing market.
Come on people, this is pathetic. We can always cry about being left behind, but it will do no good. If you want games that support your modem/C64/whatever, write them yourself, or stick with old classics. Sheesh.
--
Jon - TheSpork
Less than 10% of net users have a connection faster than 56kbps yet 90% of all network games are unusable without a few megabits of bandwidth. Truly ironic. And remember than US and Canada are still ways ahead of Europe in this respect where virtually everyone has no choice but to use analog modems or v. expensive ISDN.
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
Your post is totally off topic. You knew it, which is why you tried to argue in advance against anyone explaining to you that your post was off topic. Please go find some inbred, retarded mommy organization that whines about violent games. Leave thinking, rational human beings alone.
-Michael (Aristotle@Threshold RPG)
Online Roleplaying at its Finest
-Michael
Threshold RPG
Playing most new games over modems just isnt worth playing at all. I'm currently a dialup customer but I've had cable service in the past and have found that games like half-life (when the milestone netcode was introduced around counter-strike 5.2) make the broadband experience WORSE because the page refreshes on the netcode cant support dialup users without hindering the broadband gamer, part of that is engine and part of it is netcode.
Either way I think server side options should put in place to allow/support of broadband only gaming where 2/4 Kbps would be used normally the ammound of constant transfer could be upped to say 8/10 Kbps which would probably would make a big difference. Those of you who played HL pre netcode fix know that the prediction schemes only hinder game play to support the modem crowd. Modem users have a lot of great games to choose from and I dont want to shut them out either. I just think the option for a broadband enabled server might be a good thing.
I agree that the telecoms need to realize that we need broadband, and we need it now.
Unfortunately, the telecoms in my aren't doing shit to help us get DSL or any kind of high speed connection. We do have cable modem, but the company sucks and I'm sure they must have a 75% uptime at best. I'd almost rather stay of 56K with a 99% uptime than to be down almost two whole days a week. And a sat link is just too darn expensive for the performance you get.
Until broadband becomes cheep and widely available, we're always going to have modem users.
I'm just glad I'll have a T1+ at college.
- If you can't be promiscuous, what's the point [of sniffing]?
As a programmer directly involved with a very popular online game, the Age of Empires series, I can tell you online gameplay with a modem connection is taken very, very seriously.
If fact... Two of our very brilliant communcations programmers, Mark Terrano and Paul Bettner are giving a presentation on this very subject at the international Game Developer's Conference next month in San Jose, CA. (Go to www.gdconf.com and check out their presentation "1600 Archers on a 28.8 modem" (Actually, I just checked the site and they don't appear to have the full schedule posted yet, and the author search just goes off into la-la land)
Anyway, the things we at Ensemble do to insure good modem play include:
* Having our 8-player dedicated testing area not only include a LAN connection, but modems on each computer. Modem based playtests are conducted using up to 8 different dial-up ISP's.
* Periodically auditing network communcations bandwidth usage over the course of an entire game to determine peak bandwidth requirments. Network packets are optimized for minimal size even before they are compressed. Our performance target is for comm usage not to ever exceed about 24K BPS of bandwidth in both directions.
* In our new 16-station playtest facility that is currently under construction, we will have a fancy phone line simulator device that allows for controlled degration of line conditions.
* Tuning the communications code to account for the types of pings geographically diverse modem users are likely to encounter. (our games can dynamically adjust the communications turn length to adapt to shifting pings).
* Showing each user, while they are playing the game, an indication of the communcation link performance to every other player. This allows people to quickly determine who is the person whose connection has just gone to crap.
* And we added in Age of Kings, the ability to save and restore a multiplayer game when someone gets disconnected or crashes.
I could go on, but I just wanted to get across that we do spend real effort on all applicable fronts to make as good an experience as possible for modem-users.
Now this is no indication of what other developers do, and other types of game may be more sensitive to ping than bandwidth.. etc.. etc.. As allways, Your mileage may vary.
-Mp
I dunno, I've got cable service in a rather remote area and we've never been down in the 6 months I've had it. No real degredation either, save for a little around 3:00 or so in the afternoon when all the school kids get home and start the daily porn surfing before mom or dad get's home.
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
The key with online gaming is not bandwidth but latency. The packets you are sending are not particularly big, but they need to go fast. Take this example- Say you are playing a game with good net code (eg Tribes) on a 56k modem in the US on a server in Europe. If you then switch to a T1 line, your latency would not improve significantly-the signal still has to travel physically around the world. (Light circles the earth in 200ms, so in transmission the lowest ping to europe would be 100ms. Then we have to include latency around the computer, and the "last mile."
Satellite, while having good bandwidth, will probably have such bad latency that you can forget upbout any online games (including cards at msn gaming). The signal first has to travel up to the sat from your house. Given atmospheric signals, some of it will be lost and will be have to sent again. It then has to travel down to a microwave dish in europe, again with more signal losses. From there it has to route itself around various diseperate telecoms networks. The round trip in simple distance is probably greater than your 28.2k modem,and hence latency is greater.
If you need any more discouragement to get satellite internet- the bird is probably owned by microsoft.
Probably the best way to improve your latency would be to buy a 56k modem and find a very local isp who hosts a server of your favourite game. My Isp is in my suburb and has this arrangement.
Not everyone on the planet live in a dorm where one can get free 100MB ethernet. Infact, over 50% of americans still connect with "yesterdays" technology. It just makes good business sense to make a game playable over 56K. You know, that idea called profit, which is something every company should be interested in.
Being one who does research in a Uni, I am bessed with access to a fast connection and can play UT in the off hours in my lab. At home, I have 56K...why because getting broadband here is priced only for businesses and even if it weren't I can only get DSL, which the owners of my apt building wouldn't be too keen for them to hook up. Most of the US, and even less the World, can't get high speed internet, and if they can they are lucky to get it for a reasonable price.
Consider yourself lucky.
Burn Hollywood Burn
1) Get a broadband connection. Very few people do not have at least one broadband method as an option (cable, dsl, or satellite). 2) Play single player games: Personally, most games you buy at the store are better single player. Multiplayer just ends up being a nice add on. Sadly, gaming companies do not administrate their multiplayer environments, and you spend have the time dealing with assholes. Note: This is not always the case. Some games ROCK multiplayer. 3) Play multiplayer games at boxerjam.com If the game designers are going to do anything differently, they should just make sure the single player experience is a good one. In the end, this makes for a better multiplayer game anyway, so the time isn't wasted. I agree that the more games are designed for broadband, the more people will get broadband and the more telecommunications companies will get off their ass and improve their infrastructure.
-Michael (Aristotle@Threshold RPG)
Online Roleplaying at its Finest
-Michael
Threshold RPG
You play a multiplayer game with 20 people at the same time, how the HECK are you supposed to crunch the data enough so you can send position/movement/expression/ammos location/chat/yadi yada at at least 10 intervals per second in a 2.0K/sec connection? it's just a physical barrier, compression? extra loads of processing power? c'mon...
:) ) Point is, even if you'd optimise and crunch and this and that, at some point you'd have to accept the fact that your hardware was limited and you needed UPGRADE.
.plan updates about optimizing the network data even more (motion prediction algorythms)
:)
It's like saying, I want to be able to have 20 bots in Q3A on my celeron 300A, at some point you can't do anything about it, unless of course you concentrate a shitload of ressource to optimise the code even more, but then again you miss shipping date and you'll probably miss the "low system requirement is unlimited" target too.
I remember when I was on my 300 bauds modem, and I was downloading games on my C64 40 minutes to download something like 200 blocks.. while I could do it tons faster with a 1200 bauds. Of course when I arrived on PC with my 2400 bauds I've learned some protocols were faster than some others (well on C64 you had what, Punter and X-modem?
I'm sure game developpers aren't stupid enough to not try to crunch the most data possible so dialups can enjoy as much as possible. You want to get the most people to buy your game no? Look at Q3A for example, I remember some
I don't want to piss people off by saying that, but take for example doom 3, it'll run on a tnt-2 (poorly and slowly) if I recall what John said, and if you want to have the full featured effects and jaw-dropping graphics, you'll need a GF3, same goes for network, you *CAN'T* have broadband playability (i.e. 20 people at the same time) on a non-broadband connection. Live with it, or upgrade, if you can't, well, play with less people, it's still manageable, if you claim you're stucked on 3 players with your 28K8, how about upgrading it to 56K for a start... else you sound like someone complaining that pages load slowly on 14k4...
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
interesting how you worked politics into that.
In my area, unfortunately, which is literally under 500 feet from the TCI headquarters, there is no high speed option of any kind. Not cable modem, not DSL. You can of course get a satellite option but you're still restricted to dial-up for sending data.
But yeah, I agree about game development. You can make every effort to use network traffic efficiently, but if supporting modem speeds means you have to cut corners on the quality of the game, there's a good reason to just go the high-bandwidth route.
Vidi, Vici, Veni
There is no forum which is more appropriate for discussing story selection on /. than /. itself.
The reason I post that explanation is because with my post, I'm standing in between the g**ks and their toys, and thus it is predictable that they will scream out "Mommy! He don't want me to play my sim and make believe I murder hundreds of anonymous arabs!"
Thus, they will have to find a way to rationalize their rejection. And they will thus delude themselves into believing: "Hey, this is a story about modems and computer games. Thus, discussion about computer games is offtopic! (-1, Offtopic)."
Please go find some inbred, retarded mommy organization that whines about violent games. Leave thinking, rational human beings alone.
I'm happy you find it within yourself to have some sympathy for others (i.e. "thinking, rational human beings").
Anyway, it is not up to you to decide what is discussed on /.; such an attitude smacks of totalitarianism.
Vive le Québec libre, 'sti!
Gee, you think your entire bloody continent can match one country in GDP? Wow, that's impressive.
Games not taking advantage of broadband? Read the fucking story--the complaint is that many games now require it.
You're obviously a troll, so you deserve only this response:
ALL YOUR BASES ARE BELONG TO US!!!
What's more, the average ping on a satellite connection is 750ms. That's right, and that's on StarBand, the full-duplex provider.
The other broadband industries are also plagued as well: the baby bells are hindering progress on DSL expansion (just look at this map; green is DSL enabled, red is not). The cable industry has AOLTimeWarner to worry about.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
This might be slightly off topic but imagine everyone having some sort of broadband access. The net would crawl if not come to a hault. Remember the time when broadband was rare and you had to use your schools (or whatever) T1 line? Remember the speeds on those things? We don't get close to the speed we used to have because everyone is sitting on broadband (myself included) and sucking up bandwidth. All the ISPs have to upgrade their bandwidth to handle it all. Too much of a good thing becomes a bad thing. No, I'm not saying this to discourage people from getting broadband, I still use a 33.6 at home.
sig on vacation
I think that at 28.8 you shouldn't expect a hell of alot. Your sitting on the very trailing edge there. But even at 56K, I agree, it is hard to do some serious online gaming. Even with those that support it. But the modems and games are the whole probelm. Alot has to do with the ISP. If your ping rate is too low, then you can be fragged in a game before you it.
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier
Though I didn't fully read the article, game designers should design their games around being usable on a 56k modem. People aren't made of money. While they're at it, maybe they should run smoothly on any VESA-compatible video card, an 8 bit sound card, and IPX as well as TCP/IP. Make the game that efficient, and you'll have a game that can run efficiently, even in Linux. Even FreeBSD!!
The truth about Michael
Damn strait. Im tire of putting up with Bellsouth.
They don't offer services to ANYONE. Not only that but I called them a week ago to fix a problem, they said wed, but those assholes havn't been out here yet. Ive already filed 3 complaints against them.
M$ stock dropped in 1/2 since last year. If you are a MCSE, you will be broke.
In the audio world, 5ms is considered noticeable ... professional audio hardware usually strives for a latency between 3 - 5ms ... some pro audio cards can do 1ms latency (at the expense of ALOT of cpu power)
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
This editorial was written as a response to Grey Loki's editorial entitled Are We Living In A Broadband World?.
/
broadband/
For the goatse.cx weary, http://www.3dactionplanet.com/features/editorials
------------
CitizenC
To Recap: The bottom line is that if you have a moderately large gaming club of 25 to 50 members, you can start your own ISP at a cost that compares to some hardware upgrades.
The town of Laramie, Wyoming, has done just this by setting up Lariat.net. Residents started the networking business in 1995 in an effort to bring everyone in the area online after various squabbles with the area's telephone company (now Qwest). The initial cost was around $3,000, with many residents donating their own PCs, according to Glass. Relevant equipment was stuck on private land, and copper wire was bought from Qwest for areas that couldn't get wireless.
The cost of the service is pretty good compared to what it would be otherwise. Individuals get a normal dial-up service for $5 a month, or $20-$30 a month for high speed (10MB/second). It is doing quite well thank you.
They want to clone this effort around the country, so you can contact them via this page. So get you buds together and put together a business plan. You might wind up with something you can have fun with!
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
ok lets lose the whole "if you can't get it where you are then fuckin move" thing. um some of us can't move. and for some of us there is no place to move to. where i live (hampton roads VA) Verizon has a small suare mile area in one city wired for DSL. there is no one else to wire this area but verizon. @home is only available from cox. they plan to offer it to my area ,maybe end of Q1. I'm really beginning to consider satellite. but that option isn't much better for gaming at least. just knock off the crap about how i should be doing more to get my bandwidth. this isn't like upgrading a browser. can't just click a button and voila. ps. i just wrote verizon again proclaiming my desire for DSL I'm doing what can be done. there is no competition for verizon so they can take their time. I'm rambling now so I'll stop (applause and the crowd goes wild)
-
I know, i will hate when i move back home and have to go back to dialup. But the article does have put forth some nice points.
Besides, if games are optimized to be fast on modems, wouldn't they be even faster for the people that don't use modems?
I never get lagged out on my cable modem b/c the game was optimized for modems..
The querent is obviously in a state of near-total ignorance when it comes to modem gaming and the work companies do for it.
Quake II and III were both immensly popular, almost entirely because of the networking code. John Carmack and Co. poured many, many hours doing nothing but reworking the game code to compensate for modem latency.
The same goes for many other online games. Starsiege Tribes has incredible code for modem gaming, to the point that a 64 player game can be almost perfectly playable with a modem. The same can be said for Unreal Tournament (Although not for its predecessor.). Quake III and UT also had great AI bots to play against in case a modem player was not in the mood for lag.
And this does not simply apply to shooters. StarCraft has excellent modem code, as does Diablo II. EverQuest has incredible modem compensation, but they cannot add bandwidth to the servers fast enough for all of the customers.
In short, do not complain about the developers. They do all they can, modems just can not do the job. What you really need to do is keep bugging your telco for DSL. Call them every day. Get all of your friends to call. Show them all the money they can make selling to you.
When I moved to San Francisco, I got my cable modem. Now I'm the LPB, playing with a ping of 30 or 40 most nights. I noticed right away that my score in it shot up to the top. I thought it was just the ping for a while.
But after talking with friends who converted from dial-up, I realized that it was because we had been modem users that made us so damn good. Being forced to get good with a bad ping made us great when that ping went away. Kinda like a runner who trains with weights on his feet.
I know I'm not the only one who's noticed this...am I?
Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I'll never know.
Q. Highest penetration of broadband/fibre network in the world? A. China. Q. Country with incumbant telecoms enthusiastically kneecapping broadband providers. A. USA. Plus you can walk from Berlin to Madrid with a GSM mobile phone without dropping a call. In the US the telecoms infrastructure is so fragmented you can barely hold a call walking from your kitchen to the bathroom. No, the US telecoms infrastructure is nothing to be proud of. Kudos for your nuclear arsenal tho ;-)
xNuandax
For basic multi-player (8-16) games no game should be designed such that a modem has insufficient bandwidth. There seems to be a link between the complexity and detail of a games model and the bandwidth required to communicate movement of that model... I think this is just plain bad design. Game designers should striving to use as little bandwidth as possible... because however many players can comfortably run on a 56K modems you could feasably run 10 times as many players using cable... the more players in a game the more fun it is to play....
The problem isn't really the lack of bandwidth, it's the high latency of modems. In many fast-paced games, even a fraction of a second delay can throw you off (especially when sniping or doing anything else that requires split-second timing). It's not bad game design, it's simply a delay between the client and the server that could not be improved much even with the best networking code. It's broadband's lower latency, not its high bandwidth, that makes it better for playing multiplayer games.
There are plenty of games for those who can't get broadband yet. In the meantime, those who do have broadband want cutting edge stuff, as well-heeled gamers have always demanded. This is actually a good thing, for gamers test this cutting edge stuff for the rest of us. By the time the rest of the country gets broadband, there will be some amazing kick-ass games waiting for them, thanks to the early adopters.
If companies want to take modems into consideration, fine. But don't hold back on the cutting edge just because not everyone is ready for it. That's the way it has always been in the gaming world, and it will continue to be in the future, technology by technology
________________
________________
Private Essayist
Well, if you think about it, most games have made the push to force computer manufacturers to make better and cheaper hardware so that newer games could be produced. You can get CPUs now for under $200 which will play any game on the market presently, video cards for about $150 that will do the same . . . And it used to be that memory alone would cost you that much, now it's down to under $40 in some markets.
I say game manufacturers should keep pushing the technology and try to make analog modems obsolete. Yeah, so many people can't get high speed access, but in the US you don't really have room to complain, now that there is satellite access, and DSL and Cable access in more than 400 metropolitan areas. Simply move if your Telco or Cable provider wants to wait, and they don't want to hear you complain every day.
As for those who live in other countries, well, again, beg your Telco and Cable providers, or move, if you're that serious about games that you want them to stay stagnate.
I'd rather see Doom III require at least a fractional T-1 Line to play multiplayer. Many will hate me for saying this, but imagine how fast TelCos will lay lines knowing that over 1,000,000 copies of the game will sell on the first day.
This might also be a good time for game manufacturers to start contacting the proper companies to let them know how valuable faster lines would be.
Just a couple cents.
Dragon Magic
Human nature is the same everywhere; the modes only are different. -- Earl of Chesterfield
Switch to roadrunner?? Are you crazy? Dude, he CAN'T switch to roadrunner! Only people that have TimeWarner cable can get roadrunner. You must as well just tell him to switch his water supplier...
There are MANY games, both old and new, that work fine on a carrier 28800 dialup. Just because a modem may not hold its own for the newest crop of first person shooters doesn't close the doors to all games. I personally don't even play FPS games for more than probably 35% of my total gaming experience. The "get him in your sights and pull the trigger" fun only lasts so long.
Probably the same reason my "gaming machine" is a "lowly" PII/450 with a TNT2. I'm in it for the fun, not the pretty graphics or the high-speed action of FPS. Unless you're maybe talking about racing games, which have worked great for me over dialup for one-on-one and group grudge matches.
because alaska has the highest per capita broadband pentration in the world. this company owns 75% of the alaskan cable market and has cable modem access on almost all of that. the same company has a network for hooking up schools to the internet -- even in the most remote villages.
industry here is not suffering, either. my friends in the construction business are hopping as always, and with GW in the white house, we all expect ANWAR to get opened up Real Soon Now.
and the only real agriculture we have is big cabbages and good weed.
i don't mean to go off here, but hey, most alaskans get tired of the misconceptions.
Elitism
There seems to be sort of an elitist view among people who havehigh-speed Internet access. Before they get a cable or DSL connection, they're quick to speak about the evils of "LPBs." I also don't know of a single dialup user who has once complained: "Gee, you know, this game is really fun to play? but maybe it should have been designed for people with access to something I cannot have, just so those people can have less than 0.5 ms of lag!"
Nevertheless, once that same dialup user gets high-speed access, he or she just forgets about the modem gamers and is quick to jump on the "progress" bandwagon and begins to wonder why game developers still bother optimizing online games for modems.
I do think games should still be written for modem players. Not everyone can get broadband and to assume the attitude "screw you" to you people using a modem is piss poor. I currently play Unreal Tournament -Instagib CTF (w00t!) but since Ive moved to Dallas Ive been playing on a modem primarily. The part of Dallas I live in is far from rural but I still dont have access to broadband. I have a cable company who is unwilling to provide me with cable modem, my apartment complex is all fiber so I cannot get any kind of DSL. except IDSL. Satallelite or wireless is really out of the question cause of the high latency and even the high montly charges. A big problem has been the economic downturn of a lot of DSL providers recently in addition to the already large time of installs for DSL. I signed up in the first week of June for DSL and I didn't get it installed until the middle of september! Soon there after my ISP was bought out. The month following their purchase was horrible. Technical support was removed, I had outtages all the time. So when I was able to leave the ISP without any charges I did. I signed up for a new ISP in november and Im still waiting for my DSL. When you say people have to broadband to able to play online it would be better if you could get internet providers to a. make the service available and b. do it in a timely manner. Secondly, if anyone watches what is happening in the DSL market you will know that ILECs, like Northpoin, Covad, and Rhythms are having funding problems and are thus PULLING out of centrals offices. The DSL market is now shrinking makeing its availability even scarcer. Until broadband is available to 75% of the population I dont think the ability to play with a modem should be removed. I think game makers would be hurt if people who have only modems would stop buying their games because they dont have broadband.
That is the percentage of home internet users that have broadband access right now - 12% (see recent internet.com survey for more details. Two-thirds of the rest "say" they have a 56k connection - they may have a 56k modem but I doubt if many actually get a true 50k+ connection with their ISP - in fact, I venture that many of those who could get 56K have now opted for DSL - since being within a certain radius of the switching station an office hub (or whatever the correct term for it is ...), more than likely had the option of affordable DSL.
Until the market is represented by at least 75% broadband saturation, I don't think ignoring the modem players is a wise choice for any game producing company. Granted, the figure last December was like 7%, so it almost doubled in a year - maybe next year it will be 25% - at any rate, it will be at least a couple of years ...
I think the broadband factor is more an issue with the 3D FPS games - if you have a good ISP and get latency of 200-300ms on a dial-up - you can engage in enjoyable multiplayer gaming ... Other factors for RTS games like Age of Empires/Age of Kings are memory and processor speed as all of those AI pathfinding algorithms eat up both - especially when the grand total unit deployment goes into the 1000's. One player with a P-200 and 64 meg can make the game lag as all others will have to wait while his/her box tries to "keep up" with the action and faster computers.
I don't understand why broadband isn't more available in metropolitan areas at least - here in the Phoenix area, I live in the city but do not have any option (except Sprint broadband which really doesn't count - don't know what piece of the 12% of that survey are represented here either ... the initial latency makes multiplayer gaming for RTS or FPS or anything except turn based games tedious ...) for DSL or cable modems. Cable modems are coming soon, but then they said that last year ... Meanwhile, the giant media conglomerates that are Qwest and Cox are laying people off while there are residents clamoring for high speed internet ... go figure ...
AZspot
I live in a very small town in Georgia (Pooler), and we get cable modem. Our cable company (Comcast) is racing to get cable rolled out before DSL. They are speding lots of money in the process. The same thing is happening in Alabama, but with DSL. Things like online gaming is pushing the demand for companies to roll out high-speed access faster than the competitor. Even in small cities like mine, the competition to roll out is high. About 3 years down the road, a lot more people should have highspeed access.
-- Eat your greens or I'll hit you!
-- Eat your greens or I'll hit you!
Did you read that? This guy works for Ensemble!!!
Ensemble Studios! The company from whom MICROSOFT has lisenced the Age of Empires series! In effect, THIS GUY WORKS FOR MICROSOFT!!
EAT HIM ALIVE! How dare someone affiliated with MICROSOFT invade SLASHDOT!!!
Sik 'em, boys!
I recently took up playing CounterStrike so checked lots of sites for tips on tweaking HL performance. Whilst doing this I came across some info about the netcode in 1.1.0.1. Apparently Valve did in fact make it easier for modems, at the expense of broadband connections. What they did was allow some of the client-side prediction from higher-ping players to over-ride what the server would have thought happened. Thus a broadband player could have gotten a kill denied that he SHOULD have gotten 'cos the prediction on the modemer's client said he got out of the way in time. Likewise a broadband user can get killed by a modemer due to this. IMO this plain sucks. Leave it with things decided purely at the server and if someone wants 'fairer' get a better connection. -Ath
Has anyone ever used Kahn? That program rocked. It emulated an IPX network over the net. It used a form of compression. Kahn was usable in '96 and there was almost not lag with 28.8 modems.
I don't think developers have given any thought to developing some sort of compression algorithm for slow connections. They could really reach a large market with something like Q3.
I got a 56k, several of them actually still consistantly the fastest I can connect is 26.4k! though frequently I get 24k this is a disgrace. BOMB THE FCC! Those idoits think they can get away with tyranny... they are limiting my ability for free speech (it don't work at 26.4) T3's to the masses or bust! think about it, a T3 shouldn't cost $700/month. It should cost $50. modems should be at 200-300kbps by now, it's a plot by the Cable companies, but please bomb the fcc anyway
i agree with the point about the nationality bias, but you could have made it better.
I would like to see a game where, among the cast of characters, there are neither good guys nor bad guys, just characters.
by definition a game involving any type of competiton entails that there be some "enemy" or "bad guy" over which you can triumph. in chess, its the other player, in Grand Theft Auto, it was the cops.
what i had in mind was that you could use the Blizzard game Starcraft in order to demonstrate a healthy view of conflict from all sides. In Starcraft you can choose to be one of three alien races all involved in the same conflict but with different goals and methods. Its a valuable lesson in disguise, about diversity and the different needs and biases of different groups.
so anyway, yeah, modems. they're slow, but not too slow for starcraft...
(wow that was a stretch, this post really is offtopic)
Are you mentally retarded or something? A majority of people on the internet are connecting to it with modems and a majority of THOSE people aren't even getting 56k connections. Because you are in a potential DSL or Cable service area doesn't mean shit. If there is no one there to provide access you don't get access. If you can't get stable 56k access which a good deal of people don't get you'll not get DSL service either.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Maybe it's just me but I love everything retro. Remember the good old days of 28.8? *sigh. I like the old technologies ie. modems, 2D games, and a Command Line Interface. Besides... is high-speed internet really any faster? When 28.8's were around, there was a lot less SHIT on the internet. Now it takes me twice as long to find anything(even if the downloads are faster).
i'd hate to bite, but i guess trolls come in many different forms and varieties. read my post and then your post again and tell me if your follow up makes any sense or somehow contributes to anything. what do violent games have to do with anything? and why would you need to explain it to me if i already know? argh, sorry that i bit, but come on, quit being so disgruntled and contribute something useful.
sig on vacation
How much data needs to be sent between systems? Any thoughts on compressing the player data streams? Not using standard compression, but only sending data that needs to be updating.
Fight Spammers!
Cmon folks, if someone is geeky enough to be posting to /., they likely have broadband if available.
The comments about 'Well I want to run Q3 on my C64 why can't I do that' are completely missing the point. you can buy faster hardware, better graphics cards, etc., but unless you are one of the fortunate few who lives in the right place, you can't buy broadband at ANY price
I get on at 28.8, 31.2 if I'm lucky. I play Unreal Tournament, Diablo 2, and Asheron's Call. UT suffers the worst, but it isn't exactly unplayable. Diablo is fine, as long as I don't try with more than 2 or 3 people. AC usually runs great, little lag. Also Mechwarrior 3 seems to be really efficient.
I think the best solution is to control who you're playing with. I remember in Q2 days playing on the zone, people would label servers as either for dial up or broadband. That way, the BB guys don't get bogged down and the modem guys don't get slaughtered.
And yes, gamers will push the technological horizons, as they always have. If it weren't for games, we'd all still be using black and green 13" displays.
-- When a fool hears of the Tao, he will laugh out loud.
I propose that Slashdot run a poll on what kind of internet connection us "Slashdoters" have.
I would also like to take the opportunity to say that trying to download anything connected at 28,800bps (2.6k/sec average) is the most slow and agonizing thing in the world, especially knowin that there are people out there downloading at 200+ k/sec. I've spent as much as 36 hours downloading a movie.
---
you clearly know nothing about network programming. sloppy programming is why new games need "broadband".
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It's worth repeating: don't buy a satellite for online gaming. You will be unpleasantly surprised at the results. With simple Newtonian physics you can prove to yourself that the orbital radius for a geosynchronous satellite with relation to earth is 42,300km and also that the total round-trip time for communications is 2*(4.23e8/3e8) = or .282s. It's not physically possible for your ping to be lower than 282ms, which is about twice what I always got with a modem. Look elsewhere.
>> No cable and DSL services here.
Yes I know I need to "get a life" -- but after having a cable modem for 2 years....(and considering I make my living doing computer related tasks)....I would rank broadband up their with electricity, running water, and Color TV..as things that if not available in my current location would warrant a move to a location that would provide these things..
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
At the same time, I see no reason why modem gamers shouldn't be able to enjoy many online games. I play Counterstrike quite respectably with a modem, though I am better at it when I use the frame relay at school. In gameplay, pings of under 250 are usually completely playable, though that does depend a great deal on the quality of the network code in your game.
The sad truth (Saddest for me as the town I live in now is barely 10K people) is that companies just don't want to invest in broadband if they can't reach a large number of users, users that are demographically inclined to use the net, from the central office location. Cablemodem has been in the process of coming here to Calais for several months now, but the cable company refuses to give us a date, despite the fact the college I attend has a comparatively large and rapidly growing computer tech program. Dozens of hyperactive 20 year olds wanting internet access like they have in school, once they graduate, are a target market that really doesn't make much impact. I'm glad to see this advance in modem technology, and hope my ISP and modem maker allow me to upgrade to it. If not... Anyone got a flashable modem I can have to put in my Linux box? I'm sure someone out there with broadband can spare an old modem. ;)
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
I have DSL and can do about 700kbs both ways. Unfortunately, I don't have a computer fast enough to play anything newer than Quake II. Well, I guess Diablo II ran fine, however, I'm not much of an RPG kind of guy. Can't wait till that tax refund check comes in...
Of course, and I highly suspect it, I may be talking out of my ass. -oqti
Network games and web sites both need to be designed by people who pay attention to low-rate connections. Besides the fact that the Internet path itself gets rather slow quite often, modem-speed access indeed will remain the norm for some years, as many people have no choice. And there's nothing that the ISPs can do about it, because it's the telecomm carriers and cable companies who have the wires.
Why some folks just can't get broadband:
* To get a cable modem, the cable company has to have the upgraded Hybrid Fiber-Coax (HFC) plant, as well as a cable modem terminating system (CMTS) and the rest of the needed gear. This is becoming more common but lots of cable systems aren't there yet; for instance, the old TCI systems were real fixer-uppers.
* To get DSL, the subscriber must be within 15,000 wire feet or so of the ILEC central office. This rules out a lot of homes, even in cities, because COs are spaced wider than that in all but the densest places.
* DSL won't work if the subscriber is served by a Digital loop carrier (DLC) system, which is the norm for new installations more than 12,000 feet or so from a CO (and sometimes much closer). Somebody could theoretically put a DSLAM at the DLC location, but the economics and practicality are often poor; it's very very rare at present.
* DSL won't work if the wire is not in good shape. That's often the case. (Especially in former-NYNEX territory!)
* There still has to be a DSLAM; this is hard to justify in smaller COs. DSL's basically an urban service.
* Wireless bandwidth is expensive. Even if you could go faster than 9600 bps on cellular, you wouldn't like the price. Unlicensed wireless is "free" bandwidth, but the range is short, so again most people don't live in range of a provider (wireless ISP). And that requires an antenna location, decent near-line-of-sight path, etc.
So I have advised my consulting clients to design their web sites using a 9600 bps link! If it's usable at 9600, then it'll be grand for most folks. I really hate sites that are slow to load even on a cable modem or T1 link. And those are too too common -- the developers aren't designing for the real world, but for an indoor demo.
Normally I just let all of the America bashing go with a turn of the cheek, but this one is very interesting. You assert the China, the country with the highest population and one of the lowest per-capita incomes of the first world has the highest penetration of broadband/fibre? Where are you getting these figures (please post the URL, I'm sure Slashdot is interested in knowing). Whats most surprising is that Chinese government has generally been very wary of the internet, and now suddenly every mom and pop rice field pesant has a fibre line to the hut?
Yes, I know China is a great and wealthy nation, I phrased it that way to make a point.
Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with melting snowballs.
I read the internet for the articles.
Please bitch, I doubt you even have the skills to take advantage of a broadband connection.
Most games i've played use less then 5kB/s. The reason people on modems can't compete with broadband users on FPS games is lag. I can't think of any way a fast real time game like Quake 3 can be expected to give a similar multiplayer experience to a 300ms modem and a 50ms broadband connection. RTS games, however, seem better able to deal with lag because no one notices if a unit takes half a second to start moving. Waiting half a second for your rail gun to fire, on the other hand, means its a lot harder to aim. Modem users should either play games that don't give LPBs the advantage or stop bitching.
Wow . . . You're an asshole
Well it would be a big deal to you if game companies just forgot about modem users. Thats the point of the article. Maybe i'll give modem gaming a try...i always assumed it world be horible over a modem, but i've never really tried it. :)
Look, I lived through modems. Their time has come and gone. I haven't used one since 1995 and I'm not going back.
I've given up on them. They are not efficient for realtime communications at all, and there's no way to fake it. I remember suffering through the lag of Doom 2 on my 28.8 and that was in a direct client to client configuration -- no internet involved (with its lost packets, ping timeouts and multitasking). If you think game developers "aren't trying" to make games that'll run on your modem, you're forgetting something: modems are ancient devices that are worthless in transferring data! Hell, developers are already squeezing all the performance they can out of your crappy modem -- and beleive me, they've created miracles. Squeezing any more out of it opens huge holes for packet hackers and other cheaters...for example, the first revision of Jedi Knight (in which a hacked client can kill you just by telling the server that HIS screen saw you die).
You want a game you can play fairly over your little modem? It's not going to be an action packed, real time death thriller. It's not going to be a crazy point & click multi-user realm. It's going to be slow, laggy and probably incredibly boring to those of us who aren't tethered to old Bell Labs copper. It'll be something like tetrinet, or a text based MUD, or better still a Play by Mail game like VGA Planets (sorry, no GNU version for you linux losers, but there's a nice unsupported Java client kicking around). And even THESE games benefit from a real internet connection.
Game developers are already doing all they can so you don't get iced by LPBs. Maybe you should stop your useless complaining and see what you can do to get a faster connection. I've got a friend who started an ISP coop in the small town he lived in...got a T1 line and split the cost among his neighbours, who he linked together with standard cat 5 and a $100 hub. Turned out to be cheaper than dialup for all parties involved, and there's no draconian ToS agreement.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
I've got news for you a T3 costs more in the neighborhood of $20,000-$30,000 a month. An actual T1 line (not an ADSL or cable connection) costs $1500 a month.
OK then. Firstly, the article was another whine "I believe that high-speed access is the future, but I don't believe that future is now." well there you go. Make it happen. After pestering my cable company for access *every day* from xmas '97 to xmas '98, they made it available. I feel like my campaign made a difference, even if it didn't. Squeaky wheels get greased. My UT cable connection now rulez. (gimme less than 50ping, and i'll take you down on your own box :)
eventually, market forces will drive better connections throughout USA. a lot of effort was expended here in creating a networking telecoms infrastructure now called the web. and before that, there was the federally mandated dial tone 24/7/365 to all phones paying for the service. at a time when european connections were sometimes spotty.
but why instigate? xnuandax made one of the funniest, most insightful comments on Jim Allchin's speech just a few days ago. are you just sniping the easy ones?
fred
Blessed is he who expects the worst, for he shall not be disappointed.
Amen. Though if DSL or any solution were available in my area I would buy it. Wireless is hype. There is no solution, unless you consider flying a plane over my area with a wireless lan (reffering to article in popular mechanics on a company that was going to do this in major cities)
Ok, I live in a lack-of-broadband-bubble on the outskirts of two cities. MediaOne in the next city over doesn't realize I even exist dispite the city's border is less than a mile from my front door (I've measured). Charter cable also does not recognize that my apartment complex even exists. Pacific-Bell's CO is downtown and thus 3 miles farther than ADSL reaches. This obviously leaves me WITH NO BROADBAND ACCESS AT ALL. I am stuck with a 56k dialup that often times does not even approach 50kbps. I get fair ping times for normal HTTP or FTP functions but anything real-time there is a very apparent lag. I think instead of catering to the broadband access world specifically game (or any real-time network app developers) ought look into ways to get better packet throughput into their games.
For those of you retards suggesting people ought to move because they like me can't get broadband access I don't think any explaination of why I can't move would make sense to your small underpowered brian. Protesting to your local telco or cable company isn't going to help any situation either (in most cases). Telcos make alot of money from commercial accounts and services and do not make alot of money from residential accounts. ISPs likewise make alot of money from providing businesses with internet services and make very little money from providing individual homes with internet access. ISPs therefore oversell their bandwidth and connectivity in order to stay in the green and telcos offer only the services and service that the most people will buy. Since the most people won't buy DSL they are slowgoing in providing coverage for alot of people. ISPs route almost too much traffic through their local gateways which leads to dialup users sporting hefty ping times in peak hours. Right now we're all stuck in the transition. There is no real reason for game developers to cater exclusively to broadband users unless of course they want to limit sales of their game. Optimize packet turnaround and everyone will benefit.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Your American ignorance is astounding. Obviously he was referring to "broadband" as in the sash all Chinese people tie round their waists, "fibre" was simply a mispelling of "fiber", in reference to all the rice they grow. If you really want me to embarass you further, you can check my source here: http://www.tigerstrike.com/karategi.htm
No you aren't. The latest broadband sat systems are two-way. Read up on it.
- A.P.
--
* CmdrTaco is an idiot.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
when you oversimplify the problem.
You have to deal with:
Variable availibility
Lost packets
Out-of-order packets
Connecting players
Cheating (you can reduce bandwidth by doing more client side, but then you have to trust the client more)
FunOne
FunOne
Am I the only one who finds the whole UberGamer attitude a bit tiresome? If I'm ever on another server and someone advises me to "suck it" or "bend over and take it" after a kill, I'm going to lose it. I mean...I know we should be tolerant, but I just don't swing that way! But hey...whatever frosts your flakes, you crazy UberWinGamers! The attitude disgusts me. I can only play a few rounds before getting fed up, and going into "ok...just one more round you stupid punks" phase for another hour or so.
This has all hit very close to home, as one has moved into the dorm to replace someone who moved out. Immediately, he starts ragging on my setup! "That mouse is so small...terrible for gaming!" (Logitech RF wheelmouse. Haven't had a problem yet). I calmly had to explain to him that as an ECE major, I frequently have to do things that don't involve rail sniping, and most of the time, I'm in a text editor or CLI. "Wow...see you have one of those 'don't type on me' keyboards" (MS Elite). Never had a problem switching weapons, but it sure helps my hands not feel like they're going to explode following a night of programming!
Attention UberWinGamers: There's a whole big world out there, and being able to run around and use a sniper rifle like you would a pistol isn't going to get you very far!
This arrogance about connection speed absolutely fries me. 13 year olds salivating for the Flavor of the Month FPS might be a tempting demographic and market, but it'll be a long time until there are enough of them on broadband to compete with the analog market.
Attention UberWinGamers: Having a broadband connection does not...I repeat NOT make you special, 1337, or better than anyone else. It just means that you live in an area deemed to be marketable by the powers that be, and your parents were willing to part with their money to provide you with a low ping. If you were any good, you wouldn't need it, anyway!
This isn't a personal issue to me...I'm on a sweet University setup (except when I go home to the old dialup on breaks...naggna-happen there), but everyone should be at least a little wary of this technological elitism.
Donzens of posts deserving of a '-1, Redunadnt' have stated "why should companies 'dumb down' games for dialup users...screw them! They should move to a better place where they can have good ping!!" Isn't there something wrong with that statement?
Enough people higher up the thread than I have given the connection method distribution percentages, and dialup has by far the highest usage. Don't these people deserve a good gaming experiance? Don't you think that the gaming companies are going to cater to the largest possible audience to make more money?
That's about all I have before I start getting preacy, and remember...I'm just mad at the UberWinGamer crowd. There are plenty of good, respectable gamers out there. You know who you are!
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
What I find interesting is that you gameing people are having a cry over lack of bandwidth, but just think what your traffic is doing to the internet ingeneral. Game traffic is essentially a waste of good bandwidth and all for no usefull purpose.
And while you can all flame me for saying this there are a lot of network engineers out there who will agree with me..
The Internet is not a toy.
Cheers
... although I also like C#..
So you're making invalid assumptions. Perhaps only 5% of people online actually play first person shooters. Perhaps most of those are in the 12% who have broadband access. I don't have any appliccable statistics but then again, neither do you, so we're really on the same ground here, aren't we?
Ben Schumin :-)
People are complaining that companies should stop trying to push the envelope and think about the people who can't get better bandwidth. That's a very selfish statement to make, since more people everyday are getting faster services, or finding the means to get faster services.
There are cities near here with less than 400 people with cable service because the cable provider is Time/Warner, and they already have the fibre lines down, and these towns are at least an hour or two from any city with a building taller than five stories.
You'd be surprised how much begging and pleading, and pressure from game manufacturers, will go. But if you're serious enough that you want to halt online gaming's progress because you can't get faster service online, then you should be serious enough about your gaming to move.
Dragon Magic
Human nature is the same everywhere; the modes only are different. -- Earl of Chesterfield
I have to agree that having broadband is a big help when youre playing q3 or ut. However, a well written engine and a little strategy go a long way towards compensating for running on a 33.6. A lot of games have features that really help even the field for high ping players.
For example, I had a 33.6 for 2 years after I graduated and before I finally got cable. I played Q3, UT and team fort regularly.
-I found that although I would occaisionally get dropped from my ISP or have a weird crash, I could do pretty well in Q3. I had to "lead" people through the 300-500ms lag when using the railgun, but the client does a pretty good job of predicting, especially with the machine gun and RL. I found that on a server with medium-skill players, I could easily dominate. Sometimes it was unplayable and sometimes i would get 0wnz3d, but thats the price you pay for free internet, I guess
-In team fort, i found the game pretty unplayable as a sniper but I found that some classes just plain kick ass on a laggy 33.6 connection. For example, playing as an engineer is all about camping and choosing your sentry gun location right, and its fun as hell to EMP people. Also, playing as the spy and heavy weapons fatty are great ideas for hi ping players. They dont require a low ping so much as clever forethought. Besides, the spy is such a riot, especially when the other team is running around shooting each other isntead of invading your base.
-Unreal is pretty hard to play with high ping, due to the dominance of the sniper gun in a lot of the levels. Also, a lot of weapons like the shock rifle require timing to work to maximum efficiency. Still, the quality of the bots more than makes up for this, I feel.
Yeah, yeah. And I'm still upset that I can't run Q3A on my 486. Technology must go forward, not back, up, not forward, and turn and turn and turn for freedom! But anyway, It'll be a good day when the modems die out and everyone has a broadband connection and that day will never come if we keep on thinking about the people with obsolete technology. Thanks you and good night.
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
I don't care how this was modded. Perdida's right. In India, where the digital divide is pretty damned bad (I feel so saw-ry for those of you bitching because you can't get games except over broadband...grow up!), there's an initiative by the government to wire some of the poorest sections of the poorest states. Analysts over there predict that by 2005, every little village in Andhra Pradesh, one of India's poorest states, will have access to fibre-optic communications, and computers to go with. Already this initiative is turning AP's biggest city, Hyderabad, into "Cyberabad," as it's known in some circles. (Hyderabad programmers are also doing a lot of work for US-based software companies, BTW...) It's a big, big success story.
You could say that programmes like that are similar to turn-of-the-last-century Rural Electrification projects--unless forced, companies won't put broadband where it won't necessarily make money. And unlike what one poster said, it actually is in government and industry's best interests to provide telco (in all forms) as infrastructure. A happy, wired, information rich population works better than the alternative.
Similarly, here in Canada where the government generally does a pretty good job of keeping its thumb on corporations (with a few notable exceptions), broadband prices are regulated so that no one gets charged more than $50/month. Good deal, eh?
Hmmm, two Commonwealth countries with common-sense approaches to both government and the Internet. Could it be some kind of post-British colonial influence? Nah, because then American culture would have it too. But I wonder...
Interrobang
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
Everyone complains about lag on action games online, and granted playing with 150-350 ping on my 56k modem in Q3A is really pretty handicapping. But think of it this way: If you play the games on a 56k and get relatively decent at them...to the point where you can go out with a generic rocket launcher and nearly hold your own against the guys owning people with railguns and rockets down at 50ping and less, and the change to broadband (as I hopefully soon will) think of the higher skill in gaming you'll have. Not only would you have the ping for click/kill, but the instinct to predict where people are going. In my mind that makes for better players.
There are still quite a few games out there that can be easily played on a 28.8 connection. At one point my housemates and I had a LAN for the house with one Linux box that connected to our ISP 24 hours a day. You could easily play a game of Everquest over the shared connection, and rarely did Everquest use more than half of the available bandwidth. Game developers that keep the modem community in mind when developing games stand to earn a lot more money. Especially when you consider that next gen console systems will either come with a modem or have one available for seperate purchase.
When I got my Dreamcast, I had broadband and a router, yet the Dreamcast only came with the option to use a 56k modem. I didn't want to have to pay for another service so I ended up missing out on all the fun, and now that the Dreamcast broadband adapter is only shipping to stores around here in May, I won't be able to enjoy it at all!
.sig: Open Source, Open Mind
That's why the courts invented the restraining order.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
The International Telecommunication Union has put out a press release on the new ITU-T V.92 standard. This should breathe new life into the modem industry and POTS-based telecommunications in general. It's worth a read to get up to speed on what V.92 brings to the table.
--
I don't even live in anything close to a bigger Canadian city; Winnipeg is the Kansas of Canada! What's more amazing is that communities as small as a thousand people or so, and several hundred miles away from any major center, are currently being added to our broadband networks!
Maybe all the Yanks that hopped on the dot-com millionaire bandwagon should have spent a tad more money on infrastructure, and a bit less on beamers....
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Let's see... setting up your average modem... deal with drivers and/or interrupts and/or free com ports... heaven forbid it's a software modem and you want something other than windoze as your OS... hmm no connection to my ISP, is it my line, my modem, the ISP?
Contrast that with a properly set up cable ISP: install NIC, make sure you have a tcp/ip stack, connect to modem... surf.
Hmm, tough choice there :)
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
This man obviously doesn't get much in the way of female company... Just calm down my friend, and go and get layed.. you don't control the US army, and thank goodness you don't...
This is eerily similar to an argument I have to deal with on a constant basis. Being a designer, I have to deal with both lower resolutions, and weight in terms of load time when designing a layout, or even something simple like a graphic itself. Just the same as its necessary to code for 800x600 but not for 640x480, I think its certainly valid for games to cater to a 56k modem, but nothing slower. The proof lies in the statistics - the market is simply too small, and the amount of backing up (in terms of progress) they would have to do would essentially render it infeasible.
----- nikBONADDIO | www.lockjaw.net
[ insulting europeans is just a joke btw. Socialism bought you guys comprehensive health care, mass transit, and high level of education; not bad, just a matter of trade offs]
China has the advantage of being a command economy. They hired Nortel to build (not re-build) their telecom infrastructure. The chose Nortel cuz it ain't AT&T and a Canadian (not US) company. AT&T strived to be a pseudo-nationalized monopoly, so the sucked up to the US gov alot (aka put spy stuff in alot of telco hardware sold outside the US). Nortel jumped on the fibre game early to compete against the behemoth of AT&T. Hence China's burgeoning telco infrastructure was the most advanced fibre availble during the 70s and 80s.
Further, the US economy favors monopolies for all kinds of reasons SlashDotters are familiar with (patents, armies of lawyers, stuffing politicians pockets thru PACs, etc.). Monopolists don't give up their cash cows easy. And the incredable wired infrastructure of the US is a cash cow. Hence our telcos don't like competition from wireless or fibre (unless they own it). They really don't like investing alot of money in areas where it'll create lower profit margins; they love those fixed fees set by politicians they own. New unregulated competitive areas suck balls to these guys.
It's a strange burden to have the greatest infrastructure of the 50, 60s, and 70s. The entrenched powers don't want to replace it. Many emerging economies are going straight to fibre infrastructure and wireless for the last few miles.
-- I am not a fanatic, I am a true believer.
Yeah, Cable/DSL is pretty much an urban/suburban thing. That's life.
Why is it such a shock that the infrastructure is better in more populated areas? I really don't have much sympathy for people who want to live away from other people, and complain about lack of infrastructure.
The fact is, it isn't 1996 anymore. A great number of people have broadband now, and they actually want to use it. Why the fuck should we wait for the slow and ignorant?
Here in Canada the Tel/Cable Co's have to supply broadband, and at least one is available in pretty much all areas that can somewhat plausably claim to be populated. Even my brother, who lives in Prince George, BC (a redneck hive way off in the wilderness) has cable now. If you don't have access to it, it is your fault for not demanding that the appropriate companies supply it (or demand that the government legislates them to do so). Obviously, you did not do this - don't take that out on those that did.
Cheers,
Rick Kirkland
There are a lot of people who live in rural areas or in small towns and just can't get any better than a 56k modem connection. While these games may promote higher speed connections, it doesn't help these people at all. Not everyone lives in a city, and people who live way out in the country may never have access to a high speed internet. It's not even just games, a lot of web pages these days are really only viewable with something better than a modem. I think I was kind of better off 2 years ago with a 28k modem than I am now with a 56k. There are some games that work better than others now for modem users, but I doubt I'll even be able to play any games a couple years from now if I don't move to a big city.
---
500MHz Pentium III, or similar
520MB Free Hard Disk Space
OpenGL 3D Accelerator
Broadband Internet Access
NOTE: If cable or DSL is not available in your area, Mindfuck Software recommends our partners at Century 21 Realestate and monster.com to aid in your relocation. This may seem harsh, but it really is better for society for you to move away from your almost-paid-for 2-story house on 3 acres of land, and into a 2-bedroom apartment with crackhead neighbors who throw eachother into the wall at odd hours to the incessant beat of stompin'-loud Kid Rock. You won't regret it, and your LPB gaming peers will thank you.
We hope you enjoy the game, and wish you well for your adventures in the ghetto.
Kid-proof tablet..
the only people that complain about not being able to play on dial up are the people that are on dial up getting killed byu people with lower pings. learn how to play, or only play with other dial up users. geez people, stop f****Ing whining.
Winnipeg is the Kansas of Canada!
That's not a very good analogy, since Winnipeg is a city and Kansas is a state. Time to brush up on your North American geography.
***
There is a whole planet out there, not just one country. The modem is a long way from dead and broadband is unlikely to ever encompass the globe. There will be a new technology before it does. In the meantime, broadband will only get to built up areas where it is cost effective to install it. I live in the country and despite lots of promises I do not believe broadband will get here within the next 3 years.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
YES! lets run our modems at 300kbps and watch at the phone companies equitment fries! then you have no internet access. When you feel like running the fiber cable and copper cable and building your own internet I'm sure you can pay $50/month for a T3 until then shut the fuck up
If there's enough interest locally, do the broadband yourself. You'll need a telephone company that permits you to rent 4wire copper connections (so you are all _electrically_ connected to your shared machine room); however, as these are _zero maintainance_, if offered they will be cheaper than any service provision. Then from the machine room you doo need an upstream, which costs the big bucks, but the cost is shared by all your co-subscribers. Every subscriber needs to provide their own pair of modems, which can be baseband modems (2Mb) of course. That's exactly what we've done at Kotiverkkoyhistys in a region just west of Helsinki (www.dna.fi - in Finnish). (Having said that, broadband is available, we just knew it could be done for less.) Note - this requires time and effort to manage and maintain, but is worth it in the end.
FatPhil
--
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
Around here T1 service (yes, a leased line) can be had as low as $500/mo (with $1250 setup) and T3? About $18,000 a month. Still not cheap nonetheless. But at least T1s have come down... heh.
...if you're going to release a game that requires broadband access, don't bother releasing it in the UK. Go and see The Register and read about all the problems our monopoly of a telco are causing (for example, only allowing 30 ADSL installations/day, giving preference to it's own "impartial" ISP)
Feel that power? That's mah MOUSING FINGER
desining games around 28.8 links isn't really going to do anything for you on an FPS. This has been an issue since they days of Quake. I used to dial a friend's house and he used to rock my world w/ a railgun because of the latency issues involved.
It worked the same way with the servers we used to join up on gamespy. I remember when just about everyone on a server had 250+ ping and the lucky sons-a-bitches were the guys pushing anything less than 100. We were ALL HPB's at that time because Quake wasn't really designed for anything but dialup. But - you remember when you joined that server and were playing against the guy in college with the 20ms ping time? He owned everybody (except for that one dude in the really good clan [ThreeLetterAcronym]-Jesus- or whatever his name was on your server). The point is this: the guy with the fattest pipe wins every time in an FPS because the data that can be pushed is completely dependant on your connection. Even a game designed for a 56k link. The guy on the OC-3 is just going to say to the server "Ok, i got that, now gimme more!"
The only other "quit your bitchin!" point i want to make is this: MAKE BROADBAND A PRIORITY IF YOU REALLY WANT IT THAT BAD! In every apartment/house/cardboard box that i look at, one of the first questions i ask is "Can i get broadband, and how's the quality?" If the answer to those questions does not seem favorable to my being able to thwap the fsck out of my CS pals on a nightly basis, then i move on to the next place because broadband is a major factor in my decision on where/when to move. If you live in bumfuck, IA. then you seriously need to ask yourself if you value broadband that much. If you do, then by all rights, it's time to move.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
Only people that have TimeWarner cable can get roadrunner.
so move to an area that has TimeWarner cable.
---
I have to take issue with only one point: Diablo II networking is anything but good. The game makes little or no effort to accomodate pings higher than 300ms (modem + latency to game servers.) Many of the skills, spells etc. are dramatically less effective in these conditions. Teleporting monsters, freezes, etc. are not uncommon.
The sad thing is that network play over a LAN in Diablo II is little better, and sometimes worse! Great game, great gameplay, really really sucky network code.
Coding real-time games to run over a 30kbit/sec connection is highly non-trivial. I'm speaking from experience (networking code for a car racing game: over modem, 8 to 12 players peer-to-peer networking).
If you update (say) 5 times a second, that's 200ms latency straight away, and you've already sucked up 10% of your bandwidth in packet headers. More in a peer-peer scenario! Then of course, you need to send each parameter in each object's config space in that update.
To minimise bandwidth wastage, you'd go client-server. But that effectively doubles the latency, and 400ms latency just from the networking is hard to compensate for. I won't go into all the ugly details - there are better discussions already online than that which I could write at 2am local time :) - but if you do the maths, you'll find it's not so easy after all.
in my area, useing nearly any isp I get ping from 600 to infinity, with earthlink I can get 300 for 10min and unable to connect for 10min, ive lived in areas ware I could get 150 from a 33.6 modem I was also able to run 4 download streems, play an online radio and be in a chat room without any lag, (this was 3 years ago in another town) not bad for a 33.6 modem, now im lucky to get one download to compleate without stalling much less do anything else on a 56k modem@44k even on my connection I can still play q3 most of the time(assuming im not at 999ping and everyone else is also on dial-up)what Ive found interesting is when I play phantasy star online for the dreamcast even when im way laged I can still keep on playing and an almost seemless resync when im no longer laged. still cant wait till I move to San Diego and can get on cable modem, not just good for games ether, be nice to be able to download the latest ver of the linux kernal/kde/xfree without spending a few days connected or waiting for the next distrabution. sigh, I remember downloading linux slackware for the first time 3 years ago in just 4 hours on a 33.6 modem , full working distrabution gcc, xwindows everything, now I cant get less then 250megs not without loosing too many things
Anywho, I'd like to thank Alien54 for bringing this idea to my attention. Living in the middle of nowhere, I thought, gave me one small problem, and I really do consider this the only problem. The problem of no broadband is only a concern when upgrading my sweet li'l Red Hat. I, ironically, am writing that from IE on you-know-what, but this is a problem I'm soon to surpass.
So, as I was saying...who's up for volleyball?
"Yeah...it was the numbers that were irrational, not the murderous cult of vegetarians...." -- Hippasus of Metapontum
Here's a map I found on dslreports.com, which shows DSL-enabled Central Offices in green and non-DSL ones in red. It was put up on February 24 2001 so it's current.
The map is Here.
I know, this only covers DSL and not cable, but it does give a pretty interesting picture nonetheless.
Here, here! I totally agree on this one. I don't have broadband in my area and game companies aren't designing games specifically for me. Sure, Quake III included bots so I could enjoy DeatchMatch for the first time, and sure the network code was specifically tweaked to take the best advantage of a modem connection as possible, but what I expect of id Software is that they magically transform my 28.8k modem into a T1. That is what I want and I am the customer! I'm not going to yell at the Telcos for gouging me, or my parents for refusing to ante up their hard-earned money for cable modem. Instead, I'll target someone who has absolutely no control over the speed of my connection!
And while you're at it, Half-Life runs like ass on my IBM XT, can someone look into it?
---
Wow...you are crazy. You are telling him to move possibly hundreds of miles JUST for a cable modem? I supsected it in your original post, but now you proved it; you're retarded.
I think that would finish off the industry. There was another article about an interview w/the President of Nintendo; i think he's just about pegged the gaming industry, and is right in most respects.
let's call if more of a metaphor, or simile, or what have you
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
All the traffic that matters is upstream. I've graphed it with MRTG.
x2, Klfex, and V.90 are limited to 33.6K in the upstream direction. (Even though the ISP's end is digital (channelized T1's or ISDN PRIs) the users end is analog.)
That's why ISDN (even when using only 1 64K B channel) gamers are such LPBs. The extra 11K (64 - 53) they get on the downside doesn't explain the several hundred ms ping advantage they enjoy over HPBs.
It's the extra 31.4K (64 - 33.6) they get in the upstream.
I'm blessed/cursed by @Home service now, but my analog handicap wasn't ever that bad really. I had pings in the 200 range, depending on the server. Like has already been mentioned in other comments, the ISP really matters. The biggest factor is compatibilty with their remote dialup equipment. V.90 is great, but 3Com modems still do best with Total Controls, and Rockwell/Lucents still do best with Maxen/Portmasters. (Your own local line conditions certainly matter, as does your ISPs upstream connnection, but I've found it's the equipment that matters most.)
* The salvation for modem gamers is V.92, which pushes the upstream limit to 48K.
July 4th, 2000
July 21st, 2000
--
--
My comments and opinions completely reflect those of anyone and anything I am remotely associated with.
Well, its a bit more complicated then that, because you may be mixing a dozen stereo channels down to however many outs your card has, plus applying effets, and possibly even generating sounds ...
:)
... in win2k, its a dog :)
however my answer would have to be, 450 mhz is alot of cpu for linux, and not much to windows
I have a dual PII300 and it just smokes in linux, compiles a kernel in like 5 mins, boots mandrake in like 30 seconds, just is a real pleasure to use all around
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
From my perspective, broadband connected gamers are ignored.
More specifically, those players using ICS/Masquerading, have no way to tell if they will be able to play multi-player without buying it. They're better off assuming any specific game will fail to work though, since 95% of them indeed fail.
If a game requires a dedicated connection to a server [ultima online, Diablo II, everquest, etc.], it's waving a BIG red flag that says "Save your money." I have a multiple t3 backbone at work, and a piddly little dialup at home - the only games I play are Baldur's Gate, my SNES (emulated or the actual box plugged into my TV, depending on the game), occasionally Quake, and, when I can get my friends together, Starcraft.
I have a LAN- a ten-base hub and three (five, actually- one in storage and another I have yet to pick up from a freelance client) Macintosh computers linked into it. One of the boxes gets the Starcraft disk, the other two get the spawn. A couple of friends come over and we blast the shit out of the computer generated opponents. A few bucks on pizza and soda, and it's a night of fun without having to worry about bandwidth or WPM through the chat protocol that's included with the game. It's a lot easier to plan a strategy when you can talk to your teammates and relay orders and requests in meatspace while leaving the entirety of your gaming experience devoted to just that - the game. No fuss, no bother, no worrying about dropped packets or lag [well, lots of lag when one of the machines is a 7100 using an AAUI to RJ45 adapter, but them's the breaks]
I've never had to hassle with Battlenet or worry about my connection speed- I use my dialup for news and email, and aside from that it has a nice thick layer of dust on it. If I can't actually *see* my teammate or opponent, or at least hear him scream like a girl when his squad of Zerglings finally finds my bunkers [with seige tanks right behind them] and turns into mist, then I'm missing out on the best part of the gaming experience.
Keep your damned dialups and broadband- I have my LAN and I use it.
I imagine it can't get any worse, but having free local calls means that to download something over a meg, you just leave it connected overnight. I think we were looking into the starband service, but it has 400 pings with faster transfer rates somehow. Not sure if it really works all that well.
Satellite is definately a strongly considered option out in the country, and hopefully that article a while ago about using grain elevators as towers for a wireless 128k internet link is a hopeful technology.
This isn't all that far out in the boonies either. It's an hour south of Minneapolis/St. Paul.
- tred
Next time, use "Bumfuck, Iowa," or if you want to use a real city, say Dubuque, Iowa ;-)
***
That is a lot of money, but isn't much of it used for things like road maintenance? Infrastructure costs are staggering, and funding has to come from somewhere, so doesn't that justify some taxation of automobile fuel for the overall public good?
Getting 28.8, 26,400, very high pings? If you do enough research and put enough work into it you can fix most of it. There are plenty of tweaks and ways to deal with US phone companies to get these items resolved. I will be introducing a new section to ModemHelp.Net within the next few weeks that goes into detail on detecting line noise using the different 56k modem chipsets, how to deal with your phone company, and other topics. I will also be introducing a section on speed tweaks and one on determining your modem chipset. Cable and DSL stuff on the page are a ways off, but things have been going pretty well on the progress of the page. I hope to have the noise section up in 1-2 weeks and the tweak section up another 2 weeks after that. Those of you on 56k, keep yer eyes peeled!
Bradford L.
Bradford L.
http://www.modemhelp.net
Network Address Translation does present a problem mixing players inside and behind the NAT gatway; sometimes it is made worse by which NAT soultion is being used. Firewalls also present problems.
I can say that Ensemble is working on developments for our future titles to help when some players are NAT'ed. This is not an easy task.
The post above mine said it wasn't possible for him to switch to RoadRunner, I just said it is possible.
---
You solution is absurd.
If it was a service offered by competing companies, then yes, he probably could switch. What you offered is a non solution.
It is also possible that i can get fed up with Earth enough to build my own space ship and colonize Mars. But do you think thats very likely?
Contractions are always viewed as one word though. :)
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Yes, I do have a valid reason. I started lobbying the telco, cableco, and the gov't for broadband in the mid 90's. I now have it. If you still don't have it, 5 or so years after it started being talked about, tough shit.
dictionary.com defines ignorant as:
- Lacking education or knowledge.
- Showing or arising from a lack of education or knowledge: an ignorant mistake.
- Unaware or uninformed.
I think that after 5 years, those that haven't lobbied for broadband can be considered ignorant.Cheers,
Rick Kirkland
If you live a forgotten part of the world like Australia, you'd be lucky if any games companies have decided it's worthwhile installing a server less than halfway around the world from here. You want to play against your friend 2 streets away? Go thru a server in the US or EU!
All they care about are US citizens. And that being the case, they can easily assume many people have broadband.
---
To the moderator: I'm sorry that I expressed an opinion that was in disagreement with you, but you seem to not grasp the fact that you moderate content, not viewpoints.
It seems with Slashdot nowdays that you can either post an opinion or post to karma whore. Quite honestly karma doesn't worry me all, what worries me is the fact I get branded as a troll for expressing my opinion.
All well, rant mode off now... :)
in 1999
Happy New Year.
Happy New Year.
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
Will I retire or break 10K?
bzip2 pipe the traffice
Most newer games' network packets are already compressed before they're encrypted. bzip2 won't help. The real problem is latency. Even 3 Mbit of bandwidth (dual T1) won't help if you have 500 ms ping time to a server on the other side of the Internet.
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I'm assuming you mean an original IBM XT and not an XT clone. If I'm to take full advantage of the raw speed provided by it's 8mhz 8-bit processor
The XT used an 8086, a fully 16-bit processor with 16-bit registers and a 20-bit address bus.
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Subject: I can only afford an amber monitor, pander to me
You may have a point there. Games should be accessible to those with color-deficient vision and to those playing on high-quality grayscale monitors (often found in places that do dead-tree publishing). This is why, even though many puzzle games use color to distinguish puzzle pieces, newer ones also use brightness and shape (think Columns, Tetris® Attack, or Dr. Mario on Game Boy and graphing calculators).
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
Will I retire or break 10K?
You should probably be lobbying the gov't to make them upgrade.
Regardless, you're on the ass end of tech adoption. That means things won't work as well for you as the do for people on the opposite end. You can either whine and bitch about people using their broadband, or you can whine and bitch to the telco/cableco/gov't to get it yourself. Which do you think will be more effective?
Come join the rest of us when you can, but until then, don't expect us to wait for you.
Cheers,
Rick Kirkland
;-P
-I used to play a lot of Team Fortress on a 33.6k modem. Engineer is the greatest equalizing class for high ping players, as your strength (sentry guns) resides on the server (0 latency). Scout can be fun when you're severly lagged, as it makes you a difficult target for snipers. I usually stalked snipers as a combat medic, though. There's something deeply satisfying to hear a sniper whine about me getting a one-hit kill (bioweapon) on them. -If you play Diablo II on a slow connection, you can get a little revenge on LPB's as a necromancer. Clog the game up with a screen full of minions (which run on the server) and enjoy the screams of severly lagged cable users. Muhahaha!
there is one easy approach, actually.
Subspace (what could be the best multiplayer game of all time, but little known) used a simple 10k gateway program (called Fun-O-tron) that you would install on your proxy/firewall/NAT machine.
From your client machines you would connect to your gateway as if it was the game server, and FunOTron would route that appropriately.
This may be low tech, but I'd assume most gaming is done on home networks, and not corporate environment where they are locked out from the firewall machine.
Supported by Most Major OSes.. Mac, *nix, and that other OS. :]
----- The internet has given everyone the ability to have their voice heard equally as loud.. even if they shouldn't be
You wouldn't say that if you had to deal with British Telecom, heel-draggers extraordinaire...
--
Never mind Spamassassin. When's Spammerassassin coming out?
I believe that this comment will be archived. seriously.
Friends don't let friends use multiple inheritance.
I remember the time when I still used a modem... it was hard. Couldn't even play StarCraft with that. Then I switched from 56k modem to 64k isdn and -- it was great! OK in the USA isdn is 'only' 56k but that is not the problem. The problem is lag and there is simply few lag with isdn. And, if that's not enough, dowloads are approximately 50% faster. I love it.