Mon Apr 21, 2003 3:59 am
Problems with Freelancer Network play
After many many hours of testing internet play on various types of servers under many different conditions I have come to one conclusion. This games client prediction sucks and needs some work. Even on a fast LAN I can see client side prediction making pathetic attemtps to predict ship movement and the end result is the most unrealistic looking flight model I have ever seen. Don't get me wrong I love the single player look and feel and I love the massively multiplayer aspect and size of the game but I must say the netcode is crap. I know there are alot of trainers out there and cheats causing all sorts of problems on servers but even on servers with the proper hardware and bandwidth and low player load the client prediction just isn't good enough to produce a realistic looking flight model of any sort. I hope the first patch will attempt to make the client prediction alot tighter than it is now.
Now onto a serious bug I seemed to have stumbled upon and your not going to beleive this one. Freelancer has managed to lockup my 3COM @HOME DSL modem three times now. As strange as that may sound (and I know it sounds out there) using the client browser has litterly crashed my modem three times and the only way to fix it was to power off and power on again. I have NEVER come across a piece of software that could do that but I assure you it's happened to me several times. The first time it happend I assumed it was my DHCP server because my connection went down and I could not obtain an IP. I waited for three hours and finally said ok this is silly. Rebooted the modem and all worked fine. I chalked it up to coincidence and moved on. Not only a day later the same thing happened but instead of waiting three hours I decided to trouble shoot the modem first and guess what it worked fine. Now after that I thought is that even possible or am I having some BAD luck. Anyways it happened again last night. I sat down opened the browser got a list of servers and joined one and played for a bit. Then I logged out and went to pick another server and strangely enough no response from the Global Server. At that point I dropped out of the program and checked my connection. Sure enough it was gone. I even called the ISP this time to make sure this wasnt just bad coincidence and lo and behold there was nothing wrong on my end and once again I had to reboot the modem. In 3 years of using this modem this has never happened once and oddly enough it has only done that when using Freelancer. If anyone else out there has experienced something simular with a 3COM external DSL modem feel free to post your thoughts. Assuming they patch the client prediction I do want to play this game online but not if I am going to have to reboot my bloody modem all the time =)
Avernus
Now onto a serious bug I seemed to have stumbled upon and your not going to beleive this one. Freelancer has managed to lockup my 3COM @HOME DSL modem three times now. As strange as that may sound (and I know it sounds out there) using the client browser has litterly crashed my modem three times and the only way to fix it was to power off and power on again. I have NEVER come across a piece of software that could do that but I assure you it's happened to me several times. The first time it happend I assumed it was my DHCP server because my connection went down and I could not obtain an IP. I waited for three hours and finally said ok this is silly. Rebooted the modem and all worked fine. I chalked it up to coincidence and moved on. Not only a day later the same thing happened but instead of waiting three hours I decided to trouble shoot the modem first and guess what it worked fine. Now after that I thought is that even possible or am I having some BAD luck. Anyways it happened again last night. I sat down opened the browser got a list of servers and joined one and played for a bit. Then I logged out and went to pick another server and strangely enough no response from the Global Server. At that point I dropped out of the program and checked my connection. Sure enough it was gone. I even called the ISP this time to make sure this wasnt just bad coincidence and lo and behold there was nothing wrong on my end and once again I had to reboot the modem. In 3 years of using this modem this has never happened once and oddly enough it has only done that when using Freelancer. If anyone else out there has experienced something simular with a 3COM external DSL modem feel free to post your thoughts. Assuming they patch the client prediction I do want to play this game online but not if I am going to have to reboot my bloody modem all the time =)
Avernus