Breakthrough is definitely a joke ... [Archive]

Hammer

09-11-2003, 09:18 AM

... A BIG, BAD JOKE ... ON ALL OF US!

I never thought I'd be saying this about a MoH:AA game. EA disgusts me! When Spearhead came out I didn't think twice about getting it (EA counted on this) expecting to get AT LEAST as good a game as the original MoH:AA. I think we all were disappointed with Spearhead in one way or another. All the bugs, server performance issues, provider costs increases, etc.

Now comes Breakthrough! It's nothing more than a Spearhead clone ... same bugs, worse performance, even the client-side map restart problem is still there! However, you will not be able to use your existing Moh:AA or MoH:AAS servers to play; you'll need to get yet another server for BT ... wanna bet it will cost more to rent a server than a Spearhead one does? Enough is enough! I for one have had it with EA and will not purchase any additional games from them. I will also refuse to provide additional time on any of their MoH releases after the original. It's not worth it!

Here's me looking forward to CoD!

--[MC] Hammer
In CoD We Trust!

MSCSniperX

09-11-2003, 09:57 AM

here here..

I totaly agree with you!, with the slight difference that enoug is enough was about 5Screw jobs back.. welcome to the club my friend. )

elgaucho

09-11-2003, 10:00 AM

I entirely agree with you!

the EA bloodsuckers have turned into vultures, grabbing any opportunity and pushing it to the very limits!

To be honest, though, i can't say i'm overly surprised, ESPECIALLY after the Breakthrough interview that was on the mohadmin homepage a little while ago.

The argument that the MoHAA franchise is aimed at SP is quite frankly ABSURD! Who on EARTH bought SH for its SP??? Less than 3 hours to finish! It was clearly an MP cash-in. Would anyone have bought SH without it's MP inclusions? To try and use that argument for doing nothing to MP BT and leaving all the bugs is just suicide.

The Liberation mode, while fun for a little while,does have inherent flaws, and just feels very inferior to ToW in SH, imo. It will almost certainly just collapse into a tdm fragfest as you suggest... and quite frankly, i can't take another second of tdm. Played it to death, and only ever enter servers now when there's a ToW or objective game going on.

EA have just shot themselves in the foot, and you can be pretty sure i'll be having words with everyone i know if they buy this game! Bring on CoD!! :P

EA BOYCOTT!!!! :twisted:

(I can't believe they didn't even fix that restart bug....) 8O

Sitting_Duck

09-11-2003, 12:23 PM

I made my peace, so to speak, with the Q&A response. I was pretty upset, but I tried to heed the words of those who said to give EA a chance. The chance was given, and the displeasure was confirmed.

No fixes. The Liberation mode has the same bugs with the "trigger" scripts as TOWs do. Cheap looking Berreta skins, even cheaper sound FX for it. Bad textures in the map causing heavy FPS drops....Just as buggy as SH.

EA once again shows they are all about the money. I don't blame the new Dev team for being restricted by the front office. A guys got to eat right? I think its time we lightened the pockets of the EA big wigs. I say NO to all future EA MOH releases. Let them get thier money from the consoles....This demo makes me look forward to CoD that much more.
Ok, I'm done now.

FlyingWalrus

09-11-2003, 01:48 PM

Doh!

Once again EA has proven, that they're after easy money only!

MoH:Breakthrough is just a huge mess. The Demo released by EA is not a Game-, but a Lag-Demo. With it's really bad FPS-drops, the unfixed bugs of SH like the Trigger and Restart issues, BT is even worser than Spearhead was.

Now for the new Stuff... Where is the long missing FG-42? There were already the Skins for it in Spearhead. Why isn't it in the Game yet? For the Minesweeper thing, it looks really crappy. Also as already mentioned by someone before, the Skins of the Beretta Pistol look pretty cheap. And hell, the Multiplayer-Connection Menu, looks huge, fat, big and ugly.

Not to talk about the Server load! A 20 Players Liberation-Mode (Anzio-Map) Server eats about the same CPU as a 24 Players Spearhead TOW Server. Is there anyone at EA who thought about doing a Code-Clean to fix old bugs and Issues before releasing a new Episode??? Seems not! In my opinion BT dedicated Servers will become really expensive! Remember on a P4 2.4GHz Box with 1GB RAM you were able to run 3 full MoH:AA Servers!

Looks about like that:

on a P4 2.4GHz, 1GB RAM box you can run

MoH:AA - 3x 24-Player Servers
MoH:SH - 1x 24-Player Server
MoH:BT - 1x 20-Player Server

Overall I must still say thank you EA for releasing the Demo. Now I am 100% sure not to buy the Retail!

lion

09-12-2003, 10:51 PM

All I have to say is that I agree with all the above posts

I will not buy garbage from them again.

It is truely sad that they have to take what once was a great game and flush it down the toilet out of peer GREED.

Just my 2 cents

Oracleman

09-13-2003, 07:05 AM

I second all the above. And I must add that I am very surprised they release a MP demo with nonfunctional cfg files. There are bat files and all, but it doesn't work. Unbelievable. We, the community once again have to figure out the problem and solve it for them, what a load of horseshit.

I can't wait for CoD !

Painkiller

09-15-2003, 10:56 AM

I am a server admin faced with a decision. We have 3 SH servers and Im looking for whatever game will have more demand. At this point in time I am just not sure.

My opinion is that the game is sub-par, and I agree with everything that is stated above. Horrible performance, just not enough to take seriously especially with COD on its way. The mines are gay and the weapons are ok. Is that EA's best effort at keeping the series alive??? Enough is enough already. But now I need to decide whether to convert to BT or not based on demand from our community. Nothing will be revealed until the game is released but EA really put everyone in a shitty situation.

I'd like to know what everyone thinks. Whether or not you are converting to BT etc.

GaSplat

09-15-2003, 09:04 PM

Novelty may wear off, but there seems to be a good number or demo servers, and a lot of them are full. It does not have all we want, but it may have legs after all. I would not convert everything. Convert one as a test balloon and see the real world response after a month or two before converting the others. Give each server a separate directory (just copy the whole MOHAA tree) and they won't interfere with each other.

nypd030

09-16-2003, 12:32 AM

Yes the bt demo was laggy as hell and my fps was around 80 insted of 150 to 169 But lets remember this is just a demo when the full version comes out the fps will be back up to par from what i remember the spearhead demo sucked also and guys were bitching about that one also then the full version came out and after the firts patch came out the lag issuse was gone unless you were playing on a 56k modem or a pentium 2 windows 3.1 version then no mater what game you play it is going to lag out. It is not ea making mohaa die it is the hackers,cheats,crybabys that will kill this and every other game that comes out there this will include cod great demo yes loved every second i played of it fps were pretty good but again it wasent mulitiplayer which will cut down on anyones fps no mater what kind of system you are using. Alot of you guys have your minds made up already about this new game and i am not posting to change it but you can not bash a game because of a demo if that was the case windows xp would not be on 99.9% of our systems there demo also screwed up and crashed. This is just to give you an idea of the game and as for bugs in the liberation mode i did not see one some lag spikes yes but nothing to bitch about. i already pre ordered my copy of bt just like i did for cod i have been in charge of a clan for over a year with spearhead and i fixed the problems myself untill they released the patches. so i would think twice about turning your back on this game all the test servers i see are maxed out 24/7 that does not seem like a dying game to me. But again this is only my thoughts as you all have yours.

Sitting_Duck

09-16-2003, 12:41 PM

Nypd......Ok I understand your wanting to be biased...but did you read the Q&A from the Dev team? They even admitted they aren't fixing anything....as for crybabies...are you talking about us? The Admins who have stuck by MOH since day one? The Modders who have worked through the problems EA gave us? The players who, for some, faithfully bought the expansion even though we knew it was messed up and true support for the game wouldn't be there?
The SH demo was messed up, yes it was, and do you know who fixed the connection problem/server crash which kept occuring? It was those "crybabies" you are pointing the finger at. DK666 got his demo server running correctly with a "homemade" patch. The patch, which was worked out with I believe, CrowKing, took about a day to work out. The SH Dev team showed up in DK666's server and eagerly requested the fix data. Two days later they had it ready for downloading from the EA web site.
The SH demo maps were still included in the final release, except for Malta, which made no sense since its the best map they made for SH. My machine, for the most part, handled the expansion just fine. Some maps are just plain bad, TOW's, and did they fix the problem? Of course not. EA did balance the game itself out a bit, I was able to play where ever I wanted to, with a good ping of course.
I think what you are missing here is the game has not been fixed. The fixes which the fan base have been posting about since day one. The Dev team admitted they are not fixing anything. They added a new game play style but unfortunately didn't create new code for it. As far as I can tell they are using the same triggers for the TOW switches.....which is what screws up the TOW maps. There are sections of this demo map which have bad textures....in an official map.....I expect that from custom map maker, not the company I am buying from....how about you?

So fine, call us cry babies, the people who have stuck by this game since day one. I'm done making mods and working on any type of fixes for this game. CoD may have only been a SP, but it ran smoother than the SP for SH and AA. Of course it helps when its the ORIGIONAL Dev team from MOH: AA making CoD, so I can stand by it and be pretty confident CoD will be a great full version game. Let the n()()bs who weren't around for AA's release say BT is an awesome game.

Ok I'm done rambling.

nypd030

09-16-2003, 01:01 PM

When i said crybabies it was said in general not to anyone on this panel. And as for people sticking by mohaa i agree there will never be another mohaa from eagames. The spearhead add on was way diffrent then mohaa and thats what most people are comparing it to. As for smooth game play if a 3rd party did fix the lag issues in spearhead then ea should be ashamed of themselves. But again i stand behind what i have said the biggest thing killing this game is the cheaters and hackers they take alot of fun out of it ea should of focused more on that which i doubt they did. But in return the thing that made sp and most bt fun to play is the players that play on the servers. My last post was not to put anyone down and i have no doubt that cod will be a hit. Alot of these post that you read bashing the game before it is even out is from a demo it seems like alot of people are not giving it a chance. i have also made my own mods because the game lacked things that i thought should be in but that made the game even more fun for me. so i am sorry if you took my first post the wrong way there was no finger pointing was just putting my 2 cents in.

XP-Tritech

09-16-2003, 06:01 PM

I keep seeing references to a bug with the TOW triggers. I wrote the TOW mode and have not seen anything that resembles what you are seeing with the switches. From what I have read you claim they reduce framerate but I cannot reproduce this. Can you pinpoint me to exactly what is going on? If you can I can and will fix it.

Also I have been trying to find some good information for what you guys are wanting fixed and while I have seen some things it would help if someone could post up a definative list that I can go through and see what I can do about getting this stuff fixed.

As to the lag we are seeing, this happened in Spearhead and a lot of it was from servers that were running on smaller pipes or were just not good enough machines. I have found a few places where the lag is really bad and others where it plays fine.

XP-Tritech

Oracleman

09-16-2003, 06:08 PM

Nothing to do with ToW but - we want something that will stop the cheaters from ruining this game. More or less all existing SH cheats have already been verified to work in BT. As soon as there is an equivalent game where I wont have to spend lots of time every day combatting cheaters on my server, I will go for it. This could be BT or SH even if this major problem was fixed.

I trust the other guys here can pinpoint ToW problems for you, I just conclude that my 10mbit, 2.4ghz, 512mb server is unable to run ToW. People lag and leave. In Objective I easily host 36 players.

XP-Tritech

09-16-2003, 06:21 PM

The TOW lag could have a lot to do with the maps. They have big huge open spaces. During the dev cycle on Spearhead we found that the AA net code which contrary to popular belief is mostly intact could not deal well with these bigger maps. So we made some optimizations that made the game playable. However during Breakthrough we found some other things and updated the optimizations and our performance increased a lot here. The slow server warnings were happening a lot less frequent and pings didn't shoot way up on those TOW maps when we had a 32 player LAN going (they would shoot up a bit in SH). So I'm hoping that this will address your issue here when the full game comes out. Since there is no way for you to test it now. I'll keep an eye on the forums when the game is released to see how things are going.

XP-Tritech

Sitting_Duck

09-16-2003, 07:00 PM

First off I appreciate you posting here. I love the idea of TOW maps, and of the Liberation modes. But the low FPS is a major issue for players with older machines even on LANs. I myself have a box that runs the missions just fine imho.
The discussion about the triggers affecting server performance has been going on since SH was released. Until a TOW custom map was created I wasn't sure if it was something else causing the low fps. But a map called TractorWorks, a big open map, and beautiful to top it off, had major problems once the TOW triggers were added to it. The creator first released it as a TDM. The final result was for it to be TOW. When he released the final TOW version it had a considerable drop in FPS. The drop was by about 30 fps regardless of what location you were on. When it was just TDM it ran at about 80 to 90 fps. The actual design of the map had not been changed, only the addition of the trigger scripts were made.

I am not a map maker, just a modder, and a MOH Admin for just over a year. I have reviewed alot of maps, like many of us here, and I kept a list of what maps did and didn't work for my last server. I don't have any TOW maps which were able to properly work on any of the rented servers we used. The average server my group used was a 2.0 P4 512 to 1 gig of ram Win2k or XPpro on a variety of connections ranging from hyperthreaded T1's and OC3 lines. The average number of player slots were set to 20 + 4 Admin slots.

This is the TractorWorks TDM D/L link. Please feel free to contact the creator for info on the problems he experienced. It appears he didn't do a final release of the TOW after we had trouble with it on the server.
http://www.alliedassault.us/pafiledb3/pafiledb.php?action=file&id=167
__________________
Here is a link to the wishlist some of us posted. I also copied over my post. Its nothing personal man, it has felt like EA has a vice grip around the throats of the Dev team when it comes to time frames and getting things done right.

http://www.mohadmin.com/nuke/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=2658

Sitting_Ducks Wish List:

FIXES:

1) The Portable MG42 sound error which causes an average drop of 30 fps when it is fired. In the console a report of an ubersoundfile script error.

2) The quad AA gun causes a drop in FPS also when it is fired, its either the sound or the large quantity of tracer rounds its firing.

3) The BUTT SLIDING which occurs when a player is hit and ducks down...2.15 didn't fix it for everyone, and the "fix" that was put out there by a modder isn't either.

4)Place an instant death script under all of the maps you release with all future expansions. There are always "holes" in the released maps so the easy fix, till one of the modders does the work, is to place an instant death/minefield under all of the maps.

5) Screen shots should be .jpg vs. .tga....primarily the file size makes a huge difference when we have players send a security screen shot.

6) Get rid of the "CHAT BOX" over a players head every time they go to send a message. Making it visible for only your team can be manipulated.
Giving the option to turn it off will have it manipulated...just get rid of it please. I like to refer to it as the "admins" death sign.

7) Fix the code for the TOW maps, the triggers for the switches seem to be causing a problem. At least this is what I noticed when a custom map had a TOW version created for it. And the FPS again dropped about 30 pts.
8 ) Remove "forced" skins, its about the easiest "cheat" out there. Theres nothing like seeing guys switch teams and they forgot to turn off the "snow" uniform they were using to see thier enemies.

ADDED OPTIONS:

1) The ability to turn off specific weapons "in game."

2) Weapon count restrictions, each team is allowed a certain number of MG's, sub-mg's, and sniper rifles. The base rifle of each country would be unlimited.

3) "auto" team balance.

4) A swear filter would be nice, for the kid friendly servers, and for us old people who get tired of seeing F**K in every statement.

5) REAL SECURITY, (hey I can still wish right?)

6) The ability to run multiple mp game types in one configuration.

7) A bayonette to fix on the rifle.

8 ) A combat knife to slit throats, silent kills....theres nothing like it.

9) A good old fashioned Capture the Flag game type.....is it asking too much?
10) The option to allow respawning on Objective maps....and actually get it to work beyond 2 respawns.

11) The ability to go PRONE. (I had to add this one since I'm sick as a duck can be right now.)

Ok I guess thats my wish/fix list for now. I know its way too late to expect any of the things I've listed, but it is what it is...a wish list. Then again I don't plan on buying the latest expansion till I see solid proof that they fixed everything. Sorry RD, I just had to add that, I don't want to look like I changed my mind about my first statement.
_____________________________________________

That should be it. If you are part of the Dev team then I appreciate you coming in here and taking the time to post.

nypd030

09-16-2003, 07:05 PM

The server we are running sp on is a duel 3.2 ghz with over a gig of 400mhz ddr ram connected to an oc3 line and when we play the tow maps the pings do go up and you do get a little lag from it no problems with any other maps or game play just the tow seems to jump higher.

XP-Tritech

09-16-2003, 08:31 PM

Can you point me to someplace I can download his TOW script? I suspect that there is an error in the script that is causing this. I'll do some tests on our TOW maps to see if there is a FrameRate drop when running them under different modes. I'll also have our test check and see if there is a greater load on the machine running TOW.

Thanks.

XP-Tritech

Sitting_Duck

09-16-2003, 11:05 PM

This TOW map of his was created many months ago. I will dig around to see if I have it still. But my point about his adding the triggers was that it wasn't just his TOW, it was the same "feel" as what we experience with the base SH TOWs.
I found it, I'll have it up for a temp DL. Please post when you have grabbed it, my space is limited.

>Link deleted<

GaSplat

09-16-2003, 11:12 PM

Just want to say it is very cool to get direct developer participation. No one has a magic wand, but working together a lot more can be solved.

XP-Tritech

09-17-2003, 11:59 AM

Ok I got the file. I'll try and have a look at this as soon as I can. Thanks.

XP-Tritech

bystander

09-17-2003, 03:33 PM

I'm not 100% convinced the issue is always TOW-switch related. The stock TOW maps definitely are laggier than the other maps, but they're also much bigger, which obviously contributes to fps issues. As for Tractorworks, the author Slyk is working with us on an updated version including heavily reworked TOW scripting. I've alerted him to this thread so you may hear from him XP-Tritech. Thanks for offering to help.

As for my wish list, Duck covers many of my issues I'd love to see fixed (though unless I misunderstand your request Duck, #6 is already fixed in SH and BT. See the VSTR threads in the SH forum here). I'd prioritize his requests as :

1) anything positively affecting FPS. This is the major issue for us since we run mostly custom maps and getting good maps that perform well on full servers is a major issue. So Ducks #1, #2, #7 etc should all be addressed first.

2) Anything that helps reign in the blatant hacks to the game. So Duck's #4 and #8. Map glitches will always be there that let people off the map. The incentive to do so will go away as soon as they start dying upon leaving the map.

Some things I'd add:
=============
+ Remove the ability for people to use the player name "console" and have it appear exactly as if the true rcon console has sent the message.

+ Better logging. Players joining, leaving, switching names, map switches, IPs, console messages, team messages, etc. Make the file easily parseable (delimited in some fashion) for further downstream processing by people like us to develop. Log levels and what data gets logged should be customizable.

+ fix the spaces in name issue

Slyk

09-17-2003, 04:28 PM

Slyk here! Long time no hear Sitting_Duck! Nice site, by the way.

OK, about TOW maps... I've done a couple and created a modded style map using TOW principals. SD is right, Tractor Works really started to lag out once the switches went in. It was always intended to be a TOW map, but I started out with it as a TDM.... it was too huge for that, but worked great in TOW mode...except for the lag off some 25-30% in FPS loss.

I have totally reworked it and am working with the guys at 'After-hourz.com' in playtesting and trying to iron out the lag issues. It runs great up until 14-15 players and then lag sets in every time. It was reworked quite a bit and reduced in size by 20%. Still big, by most standards, comparable to 'Ardennes'.

The new mode I started to use is a 'push' or 'conquest' style play and is hugely successful in "Gun Assault", my first hybrid release of a TOW script playing as a TDM. I've completed Tractor Works 2 in the same style play, but have lag issues. I've done another large outdoor/city map, "Streets of Stalingrad -1" (due out any time now in map pack 5 from 'After-hourz'. SoS1 is great FPS wise and no apparent lag issues even with the five switches. What I have done in all maps is to disable the 'victory' check section of the script as it would end a map too early i.e. standard TOW style. But I don't see that as an issue. I'm far from a scripting expert, so there may be bad sections that do induce problems, but with the same basic script, it doesn't happen across all maps.

I would be happy to email all the .scr files to you for comparision if you're inclined to look. I've basically used the same format, just editing text/target names, etc. The "Gun Assault" pk3 can be found at 'After-hourz.com' on their main page and may be another one to compare to TW. Open to any input to make these maps better. Thanks!

XP-Tritech

09-17-2003, 05:15 PM

What I would be interested in and what I was going to try is taking the existing TOW map which I have run once so far but got sidetracked, it so run it in TOW mode go around and see how framerate is, then run it in TDM mode and see if there is a difference. But from what I'm gathering here is that it runs fine until you get x number of players in the game and then it starts to run poorly. If that is the case I believe we have fixed this in breakthrough. We have seen that happen when we get in the upper 20s of players on a LAN in SH. However we found a problem and fixed it this no longer occurs. We had 32 players in on all the old TOW maps and they ran great.

So I'd like to see if this is fixed with Breakthrough when it comes out. Your map should run in BT no problem though I'm not positive on that. I'll see if I can get the test dept to check this out.

XP-Tritech

Sitting_Duck

09-17-2003, 05:33 PM

Hey Slyk!
I'm glad to see you found this discussion, I hope you don't mind that I handed over the TOW you sent me way back when. Its better if you discuss the problems with the TOW map you created anyways.

As for the "fixing" of the TOW's.... I would like to believe the problem has been solved. But since day one of SH's release we the community have been pointing these problems out. Why can't the "fix" be a patch for SH instead of forcing us to buy BT? This is something we paid for and now have to buy another expansion to correct it? If its a matter of it being a large download, I don't have a problem with taking the time to do it.
I don't want to scare you away from these forums by bombarding you with these types of questions...so if you don't answer I will understand. Though I feel that basic question is a valid one.

XP-Tritech

09-17-2003, 06:16 PM

I don't really know if we will patch Spearhead or not. It's not something that's in my hands. First I would like to verify that we fixed it. We think we have in testing here but won't be certain until we get some feedback after release. I'll jump into some TOW servers and check this out once the game hits th shelves and some servers are up.

XP-Tritech

Slyk

09-17-2003, 06:17 PM

SD: I have no problem with you submitting that file or any others. I'm glad to have found you guys here. My only concern is that the NEW TW is MUCH MUCH better all around and would be preferable for review... although it isn't running in 'true' TOW mode. What I forgot about the original was that often times the Allied team would be locked out of respawning depending on the status of switches. I pretty much gave up on that map and went off to create the dynamic spawning TOW/TDM hybrids. Have you played 'Gun Assault'? Stop by after-hourz.com and check it out. It's gotten rave reviews on their servers and plays very intense, especially if you have teamspeak or wilco etc.

Keep me updated on the progress here or anything else. I'm always interested in helping out and learning more. I'd love to get back into the 'pure' TOW building mode, but it's tough when your maps hit the 'Lag-wall'. Thanks again!

XP-Tritech

09-17-2003, 07:36 PM

Also in the multiplayer options make sure you set your connection speed correctly. If it's set at 56k this will limit your data rate and cause all kinds of lag. I just jumped on a demo BT server with 30+ people in and it was VERY smooth.

XP-Tritech

Irksome

09-17-2003, 10:52 PM

I'd love to know which one? I'm running a 32 player BT demo server on a dual 2.8Ghz Xeon with 1.5Gb RAM ... ok so its running SH too, but its not peaking at over 60% cpu utilisation on any of the chips.

What I've noticed is when one player lags out there seems to be a bug, and the console reports looping round each client ... I'm afraid I can't be more specific at the moment as I'm not sitting in front of the server. Anyhow whenever the looping occurs, the server lags out for all clients including myself sitting on another PC on the LAN.

XP-Tritech

09-18-2003, 07:26 PM

I'm not sure what's happening with your lagout issue however the server I played on today that got over 30 people and no lag for me at least was:

artofwarcentral.com(Atlanta) IP: 216.52.202.102

Now remember if you set your rate too high things will go poorly. It's really one of those things that each user should play with to get the optimum setting.

XP-Tritech

Irksome

09-18-2003, 07:38 PM

Hmm ... so am I correct in my understanding from your post that you have not identified this as a bug? Its easily reproducable - fill a server up, have one player lag out and watch as the console loops and server CPU goes through the roof. I'm certain I've seen this reported here and elsewhere. Maybe its a W2K3 issue, but I doubt it.

Me senses that BT will be released with the bug, and that in 3 or 4 months we'll get a patch. Actually I guess it will be released with it 'cos BT went gold sometime ago?

Thanks for taking the time to interact with us btw, it is a relief to actually get to talk to someone 'on the inside'.

XP-Tritech

09-18-2003, 07:42 PM

I have not seen this happen and haven't seen it occur on any servers I've played on. So I am pretty sure it's not logged as a bug. I'll have test see if they can repro it though.

XP-Tritech

thecleaner

09-20-2003, 10:31 PM

Well i hope the infamous player disapper and then reappear is gone in BT and the weapons hit ratio is fixed too, it gets old playing and my gun is shooting blanks, but a pistol can kill me in 3 rounds....thanks for all the talks.

XP-Tritech

09-22-2003, 03:43 PM

The player popping issues are fixed. There should be none of that in BT. Not sure what your referring to with the hit ratio. But try it out and let me know if you experience any problems there.

XP-Tritech

greensha

09-23-2003, 07:43 AM

The command that allows clients to restart the map is still there. I picked a random empty server and bam I could reload the map over and over. This needs addressed asap.

Irksome

09-23-2003, 10:17 PM

I have not seen this happen and haven't seen it occur on any servers I've played on. So I am pretty sure it's not logged as a bug. I'll have test see if they can repro it though.

XP-Tritech

I installed the full version tonight and set up the server ... found a small (unimportant really) bug in the server setup utility, but more significantly this lagging behaviour still exists. I'll try and remember to reproduce it and post the error message from the console at some point over the next couple of days.

thecleaner

09-24-2003, 02:46 PM

well our server is has alot of lag, and in sh of all games, it was not this bad....

UnDead

09-24-2003, 10:20 PM

Not sure about the lag issues... We ran a spearhead server and had little lag except for the transitions after winning etc. Our server has run pretty good with 15 people (3.0 GHZ. Hyperthreading, 1gig ram), but I am concerned that the Sharking from ladders hasn't been addressed.

I was testing server out and it was just me. A guy came in. He said come here let me show you something. Ok I said expecting to find a secret door or new sniper spot. And he walked up to ladder and jumped at it and became that 3 point shark flattened on the ground scurring on the ground.

Why hasn't this been fixed?? Is it difficult to fix this because it would require recoding all the ladder code etc? Thanks for any insight.

|OCG|UnDead

XP-Tritech

09-25-2003, 12:07 AM

I've been out of work yesterday and today. I'm going back in tomorrow. I'll have the map restart thing looked at ASAP. Also we did try to fix the landsharking in SH and thought we had fixed it. I will talk to the programmer who worked on it in SH when I get in tomorrow. Thanks guys.

XP-Tritech

Irksome

09-25-2003, 11:19 AM

I got sent this from one of my members Tritech ... apparently you are aware of the problem.

Originally Posted by TKO

We've been investigating this bug, and although we've got some actual
fixes in the works... there is a very simple work around; just minimize
the dedicated server console.

It turns out the majority of the extra-work that's done by the server
when this situation comes up is appending new lines to the console (and
the log, if you have logging turned on). The server will still exhibit
some slow down when it has pre-zombie clients connected to it, but you
should see a dramatic improvement in the work load when running
minimized.

XP-Tritech

09-25-2003, 02:10 PM

Thanks, I talked to someone this morning who verified we had someone working on it and we think we have it fixed.

XP-Tritech

F_K

09-25-2003, 03:17 PM

Hey Tritech good to see you around again. I have been running a server since the first days of MOHAA and talked with you via threads extensively when Spearhead came out so after taking a pounding by the community then it's nice to see you back again at least if it is for a while here.

I am in the process of switching my Spearhead server over to Breakthrough and after watching all the replies and comments here, especially some from the dev team it would be REAL nice if one of you guys would put together a quick and dirty text document with tips for server admins. I don't mean a dummy guide, I have been running a server for years but I mean an advanced tips guide with some of the info here and other curious things.

For example I did not know that minimumizing the server console would help with lag. I have had the following commands in my server script for a year and STILL don't know what they actually do or if they are necessary;

// AntiFlooding Setttings
seta sv_floodProtect "1"
seta sv_flood_waitdelay "10"
seta sv_flood_persecond "4"

// Server Config
seta com_hunkMegs "96"
seta com_zoneMegs "32"

Then I see some settings in the server launch utility that I would like to use in my start up script like; there is a check box for something called "optimize network traffic" Is there a cfg command I need to use here? What does it do? Or I notice you can select "ban weapon type" by individual weapon. Again is there a cfg command we can use for this?
Also can you talk to us briefly about using sv_pure? What exactly will it scan for, just pk3 files or does it also check dll's and other files? Does it check all 3 (main, mainta, maintt) diectories? Is there any switches we can use such as sv_pure 1/????

These and any other issues and optimization settings that will help us run our servers better would be really appreciated. My 2 cents...

SNYPE

09-25-2003, 04:45 PM

I agree with F_K. this game is based on the Quake engine yet certain commands/cvars appear to be disabled? com_hunkmegs is useful for allocating memory in Quake yet doesnt appear to be active in MOH.
There are many manuals full of Quake commands. It would certainly be useful to the admin community to know how to optimize these servers and not have to rely on old Quake manuals and "Trial and Error" methods.

F_K

09-26-2003, 08:13 AM

Here are some things I found in the sample start up scripts when I was making mine. Anyone have any insight in to these????

// Optimize Net Settings
set sv_netoptimize 0

// DF_ALLOW_OLDMAP_MINES (1 << 21) (this is in the dmflags section)

// Gravity
//set sv_gravity 800.000000 (I know what this does but what gravity setting is normal??)

set g_forceready 0
set g_forcespawn 0

Juice

09-26-2003, 10:00 AM

We have both SH and BT servers that run exceptionally well with the exception of the new map Kasserine. When it is either played as a TOW or TDM map the pings will go from the low 30's to the high 300's for me and the rest of our clan. Plus any other players on the server will also see this problem. We are not sure of what may be causing this as we have gotten some lag from the other TOW maps in SH but this is the worst we have seen yet. I have seen it happen with our 18 man server full and have seen it happen with only 4-6 players in the server. Any ideas on what we may do to fix this issue. I would be happy to recreate the problem for you msn me at JKremer@mchsi.com or email Juice@bigred1clan.com Our server IP is 66.225.196.65

Thanks for taking the time to help us with these issues.

Juice

XP-Tritech

09-26-2003, 05:10 PM

I'll see if I can get those commands cleared up for you. But for now I recommend leaving the netoptimize at 0. Putting this to 1 will bring the popping from SH back.

XP-Tritech

DV8R

10-02-2003, 02:31 AM

OK im going to give you my 2 cents on this whole SH versus AA and the recent release of Breakthrough and Ill keep it short.

Yes EA did a great job with AA and to say there will never be another AA is simply because COD is on the way and is going to blow it away. So I hope there wont be anyone trying to do another AA. Im not saying anything bad about AA I love the game ....almost too much..lol. My attitude about the spearhead expansion is well..... blah blah at best. I felt that EA left out alot of "player functionality" like prone position and crawling which I feel are a must for any war game. I was very surprised they didnt do the animations for these in spearhead and extremely surprised they didnt with breakthrough. WOW! I could not believe they didnt do it with Breakthrough! Holy Cow what a bunch of morons....lol. And you know those EA developers were playing the COD DEMO saying OH SHIT we just screwed this up big time.....lol. Any ways Breakthrough I feel is a better expansion altogether then Spearhed was by far with the exception of the various bugs and stuff which is to be expected from a first release. I cant really see this game going any further than this and will probably convert our spearhead server back to AA and just run 2 AA servers seeing I just dont really like spearhead and the popularity is still with AA which it should be. I do like Breakthrough simply because the new weapons and thats about it. The levels are very nice but just not right for AA. My opinion is they shoul dof just released a weapon expansion with some new skins and maybe a couple really great new maps that hold on to the original feel of AA. Then focused on server performance and rcon insted of a new single player game which nobody gives a crap about anyway. Why in the hell do they even keep making a single player its all about the MP dont they even understand this? Geez think of all the extra time they could of put into the MP game if they wouldnt of spent it on SP mode..... oh well.

Well im starting to rant a bit and it 3 in the morning so im feeling pretty insane so ill stop writing.

Overall Breakthrough is better than Spearhead but sucks the shlub compared to Allied Assault. Bring on the COD! woot! woot!

I tried to get EA to include my Mustard Gas mod everyone loves so much and they didnt even consider it.... hmmm I felt it would of been a great addition to the stock Breakthrough game seeing all the hardcore players that support this game seem to love it. Oh well.....

DV8R
TEAM WARZONE

Oracleman

10-02-2003, 03:41 AM

Wow, are we letting off steam here :D

But, DV8R is right. Just check out the number of servers in Gamespy for AA, SH and BT. We switched from AA to SH mainly because of ballistic nades in AA and the added tactics possibilities in smoke nades.

SH didn't add any new OBJ maps, a major mistake. ToW lagged too much and DM is for kids ;) .

Lately many of us started getting tired of throwing nades at the same spot in Hunt and stalking out the same spots in V2. Still, after all this time the majority of net players haven't figured out (or dont bother) how to download and add custom maps. So we basically run stock maps and St. Lo/St. Renan. These two maps are the most used custom OBJ maps I think. And they are good too.

So to freshen up our gamer life a little we switched to running BT on our server. To our joy we find there are three new OBJ maps. Bologna sucks and appears to be a TDM map where they tossed an objective in. Castello and Palermo are quite nice with good design and the new objective characteristics. But, compared to stock maps and the two customs mentioned above, the new maps lag a lot.

And still:
No anticheat stuff that works
Weapons realism still sucks (buy a book on firing rates)
No proning

This expansion series is starting to look like The Sims to me. Give us something NEW. I don't believe many people buy SH and BT for the SP mode - but there's a sucker born every minute so....

I think you guys have to focus on the MP community or loose your business to CoD. They react to input, ie they have already promised a fix which will enable us to switch the kill-cam off at will.

XP-Tritech

10-02-2003, 12:30 PM

I understand your frustration guys but please enough with the insults. I come here and try to help out as much as possible and inform you as much as I can. I'm more than happy to carry on a discussion of things you feel are wrong and try to get these things addressed but I'm very much less inclined to do so when being called a moron. And we were not in the least bit suprised by COD. They did a great job. Comprisons from COD to BT are a bit unfair though as we are an expansion and they are a new game. Wait until Pacific Assault comes out then compare away.

Thanks.

XP-Tritech

bystander

10-02-2003, 12:47 PM

I agree. Many people were disappointed with BT, but I think their expectations were in many cases wrong to begin with. It's all quite simple to understand when you consider things from a strictly business sense. BT is a way to suck up the last bit of cash that will be available before COD and then MOH:PA hit the shelves. If EA didn't release BT now, there would be no chance to make any more dough from the original MOH release. EA is running a business people, and that business is to make money. BT was never intended to compete with COD, and any comparisons to that end are wrong to begin with. You're comparing 2 year old technology on it's last legs with the latest stuff.

It's perfectly reasonable to have issues with BT in respect to game and map performance, bugs, missing textures, etc. But saying BT should have MAJOR new features like integrated anticheat, prone, etc is misguided. It makes no business sense to spend the time and money to add those types of features into a product that is at the end of it's life cycle, especially when there's a new generation about to hit the shelves.

And thanks for your participation Tritech. I for one appreciate it. Such outreach from EA (either officially or unofficially) is certainly welcomed. Activision is starting to show a real responsiveness and focus on the community, and EA will need to match it to compete long-term when MOH:PA comes out. I'm glad COD is coming out not only because it looks like a fantastic game, but the game and Activision's (seemingly) proactive stance towards the community will push EA to do similiar things, and in the end that's what we the community want.

Oracleman

10-02-2003, 02:42 PM

I would never insult anyone over these things, but I am surprised so little has been done about things that server admins have complained about since the release of AA.

I appreciate your input too Tritech, I am in fact very happy to see you here this is the first contact we have with "insiders". At least I think so.

just my 2...

SNYPE

10-02-2003, 04:06 PM

To XP-Tritech we really appreciate your participation. I think the rants are directed at EA by disgruntled customers (server admins) that cant figure out why the same problems continue so please dont take it personally.

To SERVER ADMINS: please refrain from the insults and name calling. Lets try and be constructive here and find solutions.
If you wanna gripe--email EA so they can hear ya.
Tritech is here to help us.

I would like to interject that I bought the Full version last weekend and although I like the new weapons and maps I still found the game to be nearly unplayable in some maps with my fps's <10 at many points (Anzio especially, yet in SH I never go below 40). There is a definite difference between how SH and BT affects both clients and servers.

Also I too am wondering why they spend all the effort developing the SP game when it takes only a few hours to play it through and then one is off playing MP for the next YEAR or two? I would think that more effort would be put into the MP product.

XP-Tritech

10-16-2003, 03:32 PM

Has anyone been able to try that map in BT yet? I'd like to know if we addressed the lag issue there.

XP-Tritech

helltamer

10-16-2003, 08:54 PM

I would love to help if I could find the maps running breakthrough tow server

Tractorworks 2
Streets of Stalingrad 2
Town Assault

dedicated windows 2003 server

post a link I will D/l and test

UnDead

10-17-2003, 11:03 AM

http://www.mohmaps.com/m/fr/sh_mp.htm

check there. Also search google and alliedassault.com

Cyan

10-19-2003, 10:58 PM

ok i am most definately not here to bash, i just want to put in my 2 cents, i enjoy playing the BT demo despite the lag but EA did not get my money for SH and they will not get it for BT, triteck are you an EA developer, or a MOH developer, one of the ones that stayed with EA? from what i understand COD is made by most of the developers of MOH:AA, i am with everyone else though, i am very disappointed to see that EA is more into getting every last cent they can from us gamers, than they are about fixing the probelms in the game, to tell you the truth that has put me over the edge with EA, and not to mention if i heard right MOH:PA and rising sun isnt even for PC, i enjoy playing on my PC more than i do on any system i have including the PS2 and the Gamecube, the PC is a lot more fun to me, EA has really dissapointed me with MOH:AA BT, this game was produced to suck money out of my pockets, if i hadnt gotten the demo and bought BT i would never buy an EA product again, so far MOH:AA is the best game i have played in a great while, and i have had the game for about 2 years, i still enjoy playing it and we have 2 servers up for it right now! if i am wrong and MOH:PA will be on PC please by all means correct me, b/c i will buy it lol, but with EA it seems they are moving out of the PC era and into the gaming consoles (PS2, GameCube) while COD is remaining in the PC generation, COD and MOH:PA will be 2 great games and if PA is on PC i will buy it but if not then COD will be getting my money, i cant wait for a newer game to come out so that i can see what all these developers have been doing with their time!

Oracleman

10-20-2003, 03:07 AM

Might be off-topic (if there has ever been a topic in this thread), but since we have Tritech's attention here...

What's up with all these false CD-key check problems ? I have several clanmembers and friends (once even myself) being locked out of our own server due to CD-key not being verified by Gamespy. How can you let these Gamespy people affect your products like this ? Is it OK by you that they cause so many problems, forcing us to figure out and block loads of IP ports, etc.

Please let us know what EA thinks about this. And please dont bother asking if we have legal CD-keys. We always support those who build good games.

XP-Tritech

10-20-2003, 01:10 PM

Couple of things. Cyan I'm sorry you feel this way. However, your not being very specific. I hear a lot of generalities when people complain, game sucks, we don't fix bugs, etc. I assure you we do fix bugs, we are fixing bugs, and we will continue to fix bugs. We did not make this game to be a "cash cow" we made the game to be fun and we hope people like it. Please realize this is a second expansion to an aging franchise. There is no way you can compare this expansion to COD and be fair.

I think we did a lot better with BT than we did with SH. I think we fixed some major issues. I've got a lot of the issues from here on the to fix list for the BT patch.

As for the CD key thing I'm not sure what's going on there. I'll get some people to investigate it. We are using the same mechanism we did for SH. I'm sorry people are getting locked out.

XP-Tritech

helltamer

10-20-2003, 02:52 PM

XP-Tritech Thanks for sticking with this thread and I for one am looking foreward not behind. I feel that COD will be a great game and I am looking forward to PA and any patches that BT may get. As for our clan and the people that play our servers we have 2 dedicated servers we have stopped running BT for the lack of anyone playing it. Both are now back to running SH on stock maps waiting for the realease of a game that the clan and players will get behind. I personally feel that BT is a better product than SH but the users are just not playing it. They bought it and went back to SH sosmne of the clan servers that I play BT on have started running the old maps for SH and AA instead of the BT maps. There seems to be more and more of this happening. If a patch is forecoming then it should be soon as the gamers are jumping ship and waiting on the next game. We have 15 games that can be played anytime on line and SH is still the most played..
So thanks again for working on the fixes and helping us out with input and information. I for one am looking forward to PA.....

Oracleman

10-20-2003, 03:38 PM

Thanks for looking into these thing Tritech.

We are also seing players drop off on our BT server. I ask them why and they always refer to lag problems. I don't have any of those myself so I'm not sure what the problem is. They might be confusing FPS with lag though. I had to lower my own settings from SH. I think it might be worthwhile to announce an upcoming patch on the official site, that might keep some of the dropouts hanging on a little bit longer.

XP-Tritech

10-20-2003, 03:53 PM

Yeah it might be good to announce it, but of course that's not in my hands. I don't even know the schedule for it. I just know it's being worked on. The lag problems are usually 1 of 2 things, fps, or bad rate setting. Believe it or not BT runs much better network wise than SH. FPS i'm not so sure about we did for the most part make smaller maps, but there easily could be some framerate issues.

XP-Tritech

SNYPE

10-20-2003, 04:03 PM

TriTech--I have read alot of complaints from various players about issues that appear to be smoothclient related.
Apparantly BT included some of the same fixes that were in the v2.15 patch for SH that made changes to the client cvar cg_smoothclients. Has something else changed on the server side (g_smoothclients) in BT? I read this on a Q3 website recently:

g_smoothclients:
"The implementation of this has changed. Previously, having g_smoothClients set to "1" would simply prepare for extrapolation on clients that set cg_smoothClients to "1". Having g_smoothClients enabled on the server and cg_smoothClients enabled on the client was supposed to smooth out other players who would otherwise skip around because of a laggy connection. (It didn't work.)
g_smoothClients now extrapolates player positions on the server, making cg_smoothClients unnecessary and reducing network bandwidth requirements somewhat. The only downside is a nearly unappreciable amount of CPU usage. For the sake of your clients who would actually like to hit a player who would otherwise be skipping around, please leave this enabled unless you are really strapped for CPU power. "

Have there been some changes made similarly that we need to be aware of. The main complaint is that if you had installed BT that its difficult to hit your target anymore, which is the same problem we had with the v2.15 patch before we discovered that cg_smoothclients was being set to "0" on a machine when the patch was installed.
Any insight on this?

XP-Tritech

10-20-2003, 04:06 PM

We didn't change the way smooth clients work. However in 2.15 the only change we made was to enable it by default. I'm not sure if this is still the case in BT. I will say though that I have not experienced this aiming problem in all my playing in 2.15 or in BT. However I have seen threads on this and have passed it on to be looked into.

XP-Tritech

Cyan

10-21-2003, 10:40 AM

tritech i know that this is a BT thread but i cant get an answer from anyone at EA so i will ask you, i get this error about 20 minutes now after playing mohaa the original patched game,

cl.snap.serverTime < cl.oldFrameServerTime

if you could please help!!!!!!!!!!!

also are you guys going to put any more moh games on the PC i really want PA for PC but it doesnt look like its going to happen.

bystander

10-21-2003, 01:45 PM

I would love to help if I could find the maps running breakthrough tow server

Tractorworks 2
Streets of Stalingrad 2
Town Assault

dedicated windows 2003 server

post a link I will D/l and test

Helltamer,

These maps have not been officially released by Slyk, the author. We are still working with Slyk beta testing them on our servers to work out final bugs. Sometimes people grab beta versions during our testing periods and actually use or worse post them, in direct violation of the authors wishes and the directions provided during the map tests. When these maps are officially released it will be announced on .map in the map releases forum, they will be running on our servers, and available for download from our site and the normal map download sites.

Also, realize that these maps are neither Breakthrough, or TOW. They use the dynamic-spawn "Conquest" mode Slyk developed, which is TOW-like but not true TOW. Also, the maps use a number of Spearhead textures that EA managed to leave out of the BT release. They will work for clients running BT, but there will be a number of missing textures since they were not included with the BT release.