Things That Make Lag

[Mr.Cheese]

I haven't seen this addressed anywhere mostly because we cannot easily play custom maps in multiplayer. But the issue of lag in maps is going to come front and center. Unlike previous Blizzard games, there is no LAN option. Starcraft 2 maps *must* be lag-less due to it only being online play.

So I have been trying to figure out what does and what doesn't cause lag in Starcraft maps. I would like any help if you guys find any things that cause lag.

Of course, by lag, we are meaning things that cause spikes in 'frame rates' resulting in slowness during play. If Starcraft 2 tells you that you need to lower your graphic settings, the map has a big, big problem.

While everyone's computers are different and can handle different range of the below, there are definitely things that are spiking frame rates which we need to identify now before we mess up our maps with them.

Unlike Warcraft 3, I have found that many units do not lag maps (unless you have 20,000 zerglings due to a broken trigger but that is another issue). Warcraft 3 was very sensitive about how many units were in play which is why default Warcraft 3 had the 'upkeep' to continually pressure players to use smaller armies.

Some units will lag maps. While I need to do more tests, the biggest 'lag' maker I found was the Protoss Colossus. Maybe it is due to the turret or to the size, but many of these will begin to slightly slow maps.

The absolute biggest creator of lag are BIG DOODADS. These include the massive Tarsonis rocks to the giant buildings, wrecked or otherwise, from metropolis. It is insane how much these doodads will demand of the computer and makes me wonder why Blizzard allowed them in the editor in the first place.

Unlike Warcraft 3 where doodads seemed to have little effect, Starcraft 2's doodads appear to soak up memory. One map someone put on the Internet, which was good, was very CPU extensive. The map had tons of triggers and all. All I did was delete the massive Tarsonis rocks and viola, the map no longer lagged or was 'CPU intensive'.

As for leaks slowing down the game like Warcraft 3 did, I have found no leaks so far. However, this doesn't mean there aren't any.

If anyone has found things that 'lag', please list them here. Maybe we can round up the common causes and create a tutorial out of them.

 

[Dr Super Good]

haven't seen this addressed anywhere mostly because we cannot easily play custom maps in multiplayer. But the issue of lag in maps is going to come front and center. Unlike previous Blizzard games, there is no LAN option. Starcraft 2 maps *must* be lag-less due to it only being online play.

So I have been trying to figure out what does and what doesn't cause lag in Starcraft maps. I would like any help if you guys find any things that cause lag.

Of course, by lag, we are meaning things that cause spikes in 'frame rates' resulting in slowness during play. If Starcraft 2 tells you that you need to lower your graphic settings, the map has a big, big problem.

What you are talking about makes NO SENSE at all.

The lag you describe firstly is conection lag and latency. This in WC3 was a big problem cause battlenet had it set at 150 ms even though sub 100 would work perfectly. LAN did not suffer from such large numbers or atleast you were allowed to use third party apps on it to reduce this value. Eventually bots came which made battlenet as good as a WAN game via LAN feature. This lag is when your framerate is perfect but you stutter from time to time due to inconsistent connection with players and host. Often caused by dileup or high ping (stressed connections), it will result in orders taking seconds to register and will also mean the game will pause regually. This has nothing to do with computer specs, only connectivity and was the lag you described.

LAN and battlenet WC3 games are as performance intesnive as each other. They both have the same background processes running and use the same host engine and communication protocle between clients.

This sort of lag can be induced by issuing too many syncing commands and thus flooding bandwith (aka what happened with the one crash hack).

The lag you then went on to described is low FPS lag caused by overly demanding maps or poor hardware running the game.



All you have said has allowed me to reach the cold hard conclusion that you should turn your game settings down as you are playing the game at a setting your hardware is incapable of handling well with. If you want to have the good visuals you will have to put up with this kind of poor performance.

My 275 GTX and core I7 run 125 colosuses + 500 other units in the background in the editor with only minor FPS reduction (still playable). Ingame I moved all 125 colosuses at the same time and watched them and the only FPS reduction that occured (slight stutter) was when panning the camera over them (barly noticable). FPS was max with a whole screen filled of colosus moving. This is with everything on Ultra. at 1680*1050 (32 bit duh).

What might have confused you with the lag types is that in WC3, the game would pause (appear to hang) in lag bursts waiting for the update packages to arrive and eventually come up with the waiting for player if it persisted long enough. This had nothing to do with the content of the map, the processor, memory or graphic card of the players.

My advice still stands, turn down your game settings or get better hardware. Atleast post the maps you complain about this huge resource damange in, so I can compare it to my performance.

Post your hardware specs. My specs are Intel core I7 (2.67GHz), 6 GB DDR3 (in tri channel mode ofcourse) and a single Geforce 275 GTX running windows 7 64 bit ultimate with lattest DX version and lattest drivers for the graphic card.

 

[mrzwach]

I run SC2 on medium settings and I didn't have any significant lag with 100+ colossi onscreen.

A ton of the Korhal buildings didn't have a noticable effect on my framerate either, dunno.

 

[Mr.Cheese]

What you are talking about makes NO SENSE at all.

Pardon me, Dr. Super Good, but your English is not very good, so I am going to assume your reply was based more on poor reading comprehension.

The lag you describe firstly is conection lag and latency. This in WC3 was a big problem cause battlenet had it set at 150 ms even though sub 100 would work perfectly. LAN did not suffer from such large numbers or atleast you were allowed to use third party apps on it to reduce this value. Eventually bots came which made battlenet as good as a WAN game via LAN feature. This lag is when your framerate is perfect but you stutter from time to time due to inconsistent connection with players and host. Often caused by dileup or high ping (stressed connections), it will result in orders taking seconds to register and will also mean the game will pause regually. This has nothing to do with computer specs, only connectivity and was the lag you described.

That is not what I described at all. I am referring to 'lag' in the way how most players refer to it as any sort of slowness. If a player is frustrated by any sort of slowness, no matter what is cause, they will call it 'lag'.

This is what I said:

Of course, by lag, we are meaning things that cause spikes in 'frame rates' resulting in slowness during play. If Starcraft 2 tells you that you need to lower your graphic settings, the map has a big, big problem.

While everyone's computers are different and can handle different range of the below, there are definitely things that are spiking frame rates which we need to identify now before we mess up our maps with them.

You either didn't read this well or you just read the first few lines mentioning Internet play and you decided to try to be the 'smartest guy in the room' by going on a technical sermon about the history of Blizzard games.

[

LAN and battlenet WC3 games are as performance intesnive as each other. They both have the same background processes running and use the same host engine and communication protocle between clients.

This sort of lag can be induced by issuing too many syncing commands and thus flooding bandwith (aka what happened with the one crash hack).

Thank you, Captain Obvious. I clearly defined what I meant by 'lag', and you know exactly that the average player defines 'lag' by anything that slows down in the game even framerate issues.

The lag you then went on to described is low FPS lag caused by overly demanding maps or poor hardware running the game.

Again, thank you Captain Obvious.

But do you know what is an 'overly demanding map'? No, you don't. The reason why you do not know what an 'overly demanding map' is because the Galaxy Editor has only been out for about a week.

What is an 'overly demanding map'? It is a map that causes 'lag' to many users. It doesn't matter if the map maker's hardware is better than their users. If many users have a poor experience with the map, they will properly blame you and not their hardware. It is the map makers' job to make sure maps are playable for most people, not for a few people with good hardware.

So it makes sense to figure out what causes 'lag'. What causes slowdown in many maps? Then we can avoid them or minimize them.

All you have said has allowed me to reach the cold hard conclusion that you should turn your game settings down as you are playing the game at a setting your hardware is incapable of handling well with. If you want to have the good visuals you will have to put up with this kind of poor performance.

Clearly you are not reading to anything I have written.

Read my post again. Did I ever say that I HAD LAG problems? No. I am referring to a more general issue which no one has touched on yet.

My 275 GTX and core I7 run 125 colosuses + 500 other units in the background in the editor with only minor FPS reduction (still playable). Ingame I moved all 125 colosuses at the same time and watched them and the only FPS reduction that occured (slight stutter) was when panning the camera over them (barly noticable). FPS was max with a whole screen filled of colosus moving. This is with everything on Ultra. at 1680*1050 (32 bit duh).

What might have confused you with the lag types is that in WC3, the game would pause (appear to hang) in lag bursts waiting for the update packages to arrive and eventually come up with the waiting for player if it persisted long enough. This had nothing to do with the content of the map, the processor, memory or graphic card of the players.

Apparently what confuses you is English.

My advice still stands, turn down your game settings or get better hardware. Atleast post the maps you complain about this huge resource damange in, so I can compare it to my performance.

Post your hardware specs. My specs are Intel core I7 (2.67GHz), 6 GB DDR3 (in tri channel mode ofcourse) and a single Geforce 275 GTX running windows 7 64 bit ultimate with lattest DX version and lattest drivers for the graphic card.

Now it's my turn to give advice.

Stop ASSUMING a poster is saying something that is never said. You ASSUME that I am talking about lag because you ASSUME that I was having lag issues.

Then you TALK DOWN to the person, talk technical history that has no place in the thread (my God, you even talked about dial up), and gave unsolicited advice. This thread is not about your hardware or my hardware. This thread is about what spikes 'lag' up in general.

There is a reason why Mapster is meteorically rising and why the Hive is becoming a relic of the past. I suggest you re-examine your attitude, Dr. Super Feel Good. You are making people want to leave the Hive.

Here is an example of what I am talking about. In this thread of this Bnet map, the map maker warns of slow down and someone confirms that the map does chug their computer.

I found that curious. How can a smaller single player map, at this early stage with the Galaxy editor, already be making slow down? So I got my older computer and tried it out. The map worked fine, but it did chug. I suspected that the gigantic doodads filling the sides of the map were to blame. So I went in, deleted them all, and ran the map again. No 'lag' whatsoever.

In other words, by removing those doodads, the map maker would not have to warn of 'CPU intensive'. No one would complain of the map slowing down their computer. It is a simple manner.

Don't you think this is information map makers would want to know?

I sure do which is why I made this thread. I want to find out everything that causes 'spikes' that create lag. Then, we will be in a better shape to make maps accessible for more people.

One thing is for sure, I've never seen Warcraft 3 Blizzard doodads create lag on that type of scale before. Starcraft 2 is, indeed, a different beast.

I run SC2 on medium settings and I didn't have any significant lag with 100+ colossi onscreen.

A ton of the Korhal buildings didn't have a noticable effect on my framerate either, dunno.

1) This isn't about your hardware, it is about things that might lag the map down in general. For many people, they may not even detect it. Your hardware might be better than most.

You said you were running the game on medium settings. What if you put it on high? Things that might cause lag might become more detectable (and thus by isolating them, we can minimize them on our maps).

2) The gigantic doodads were the dramatic effect I saw in decrease in lag. The many Colossi were a guess but there were not just 100 Colossi sitting in a blank map. There were many other units going around battling (and the map was epic sized).

It is only a hypothesis at this time, but I was wondering whether the big 'size' was contributing to this or maybe the turrets. But I didn't see that much issue with the collosi. I need to test them more.

The thors are going to be next on my testing too. Blizzard, themselves, said they had some clipping issues with the thors.

Overall, I don't think the units lag at all unlike Warcraft 3. Starcraft 2 is truly designed to handle tons of units. So I am curious why it had problems with gigantic doodads. Is it their massive size? Is it because of all their moving parts? Something is causing it. And maybe it could tell us what limits the engine has.

 

[CEMEH_CEMEHbl4]

The absolute biggest creator of lag are BIG DOODADS. These include the massive Tarsonis rocks to the giant buildings, wrecked or otherwise, from metropolis. It is insane how much these doodads will demand of the computer and makes me wonder why Blizzard allowed them in the editor in the first place.

Unlike Warcraft 3 where doodads seemed to have little effect, Starcraft 2's doodads appear to soak up memory. One map someone put on the Internet, which was good, was very CPU extensive. The map had tons of triggers and all. All I did was delete the massive Tarsonis rocks and viola, the map no longer lagged or was 'CPU intensive'.

As for leaks slowing down the game like Warcraft 3 did, I have found no leaks so far. However, this doesn't mean there aren't any.

If anyone has found things that 'lag', please list them here. Maybe we can round up the common causes and create a tutorial out of them.

Wrong! all wrong
Tarsonis rocks and gigantic buildings, is only lag if u have set your Shadow Quality to maximum - Set it to medium!

Also remove foliage for a clean test.

 

[Dr Super Good]

You still discredited yourself with this line.

I haven't seen this addressed anywhere mostly because we cannot easily play custom maps in multiplayer. But the issue of lag in maps is going to come front and center. Unlike previous Blizzard games, there is no LAN option. Starcraft 2 maps *must* be lag-less due to it only being online play.

This underlined and bolded quote from you infact. It clearly shows you had no idea what lag meant so sorry if you did, but you clearly did not sound like it. Lag actually is the term given to net traffic delays. This eithor causes chugging (waiting for packets) or other connection related issues like low responsiveness.

In Freelancer, lag meant the ships in the game were flying around out of control due to low update rate. In Empire Earth and Empires Dawn of the Modern World, lag meant where suddenly your PC would fall behind and so orders could take over a minute to respond (might be CPU related, never found out). In FPS games lag means that characters are suddenly teleporting or you die out of nowhere. As you can see lag actually is a lack of responsiveness usually connection related although arguably CPU related if your CPU can not keep up (some games only).

For some reason people like you refer to lag as a reduction in frame rate caused by bottle knecks inside a computer. Although I am willing to axcept the use of lag in this term, it should actually be called poor performance or reduced framerate to prevent it being bundled and confused with the network related low responsivness.

I do agree that just because the lattest Direct X 11 hardware from nvidia and ATI can run an area at max FPS does not mean other people can and that the makers should be considerate and avoid stupid use of models, but down to what specs should map makers aim for?

Look at WC3 for example, I am sure you are aware that TKoK RPG lags the hell out of old computers (realitive to the game). Like wise many WC3 custom maps suffer horriable frame rate reductions like Green Circle TD (even this computer struggles with some versions). Logically this will happen in SC2 and the same guide lines will apply.

Also note that the tauren chieften and cinimatic models from WC3 were notourious of slow downs in some maps which spammed them for no reason.

Do not over use high poly models and effects. If you are going to spam units, use Zerglings and not the city buildings.
Do not over do the terrain if you are using long distance camera views. Yes realistic grass might look good but no computer can cope with it if there are millions of grass models viewable at once.
Instead of having millions of attacks, have fewer stronger attacks.
Do not unnescescarrilly run trigger code when not needed.

In the end people will not design maps for people running a under clocked P4 on a bare minimum graphic card. Although they should not needlessly spam demanding models they should not not use them just cause someone with a piece of recycling can not run it at 30+ FPS.

Until you submit a reasonable sujestion of what the bare minimum playable specs for a map should be and what frame rate they should expect, you are basically saying nothing.

My personal sujestions is at 2.2 GHz dual cores or 3.5 GHz mainstream single cores with geforce 7 performance graphic cards should be able to run the map on lowest with greater than 30 FPS. Like wise performance DX10 cards and multi core processors past the 2.5 GHz range should run the map at medium or better with 60+ FPS. RAM should not be a problem as all computers using SC2 should have 2 (XP)-4(vista or later) GB (all computers nowdays are sold with 4 GB or more).

 

[Mr.Cheese]

Wrong! all wrong
Tarsonis rocks and gigantic buildings, is only lag if u have set your Shadow Quality to maximum - Set it to medium!

Also remove foliage for a clean test.

You're under the mistaken assumption that people are going to rearrange their settings specifically for your map. This is not so. And it should not be so.

You have to arrange the map for the settings most people use (which will be defined by how they put it on single player and multiplayer). You do not ask the user to rearrange their settings for your map.

If you do anything demanding out of the ordinary that causes "lag", people will blame *you*. They will not change their settings.

And besides, it is good practice to figure out what spikes up the frame rate and all so we can minimize it in maps.

It is all about the user experience.

 

[CEMEH_CEMEHbl4]

My personal sujestions is at 2.2 GHz dual cores or 3.5 GHz mainstream single cores with geforce 7 performance graphic cards should be able to run the map on lowest with greater than 30 FPS. Like wise performance DX10 cards and multi core processors past the 2.5 GHz range should run the map at medium or better with 60+ FPS. RAM should not be a problem as all computers using SC2 should have 2 (XP)-4(vista or later) GB (all computers nowdays are sold with 4 GB or more).

Lol take it easy... u are wrong...

i have 2.3 Ghz x 2 + 2 gb ram + win 7 + ATI 2600XT HD 512VRam

and play starcraft 2 on ULTRA Settings! Only Shaders is HIGH. (no difference anyway) And Fps is great.

so do not scare people...

If you do anything demanding out of the ordinary that causes "lag", people will blame *you*. They will not change their settings.

lol pretty funny logic , well its actually not my map who make fps lag, but users who trying to handle extreme shadow calculation and not just use default REAL TIME SHADOWS!
So yes people should try to lower their settings to defaults, if they have problems. Not me.

Also if u play gta4 and have major fps lag , will u call Rockstar and blame them "fucking rockstar your game shit, bla bla" or will u just try to lower your settings? Which action will be faster? Ok?

Of course, if u feel yourself lonely and just want "to speak" with the map maker:

"Hey mapmaker,your map shit, i have 4 fps fuck u, kill yourself, haha fuck u , your mother is a fag and u too haha, i am not gonna to lower my settings because i am retarded and will continue to run maps on EXTREME! Lets speak about your mother?"

The first variant is a way to go.

 

[mrzwach]

1) This isn't about your hardware, it is about things that might lag the map down in general. For many people, they may not even detect it. Your hardware might be better than most.

Seems somewhat hypocritical considering you started this thread with conjectures about what causes lag based on your hardware. But hey, whatever.

If you do anything demanding out of the ordinary that causes "lag", people will blame *you*. They will not change their settings.

So what, everyone will say "Hey, this game is lagging, someone else should fix it for me because I want EXTREME SHADOWS"? If the fix is really as simple as just changing one setting from extreme to medium, I don't think people will be against doing so.

 

[Dr Super Good]

i have 2.3 Ghz x 2 + 2 gb ram + win 7 + ATI 2600XT HD 512VRam

Your processor obviously is a multi core, which makes it fit into the minimum requirements I put. SC2 actually aint very visually intensive, most lag will be from the processor bottleknecking the game.

As long as people do not go over the top with models (1000 units which have an actor of the city buildings), there should be no problem with lag. As long as people with decent hardware can run the map on ultra at max FPS, nothing is wrong with it.

I do not want to see visually dull maps cause people running on sub standard computers can not max the game settings on that map.

For editing, I advise setting the editor to ultra, even if your computer lags just so you can provide the full experience to everyone, even if you play on low yourself ingame.

 

[Omniferous]

A remark directed at Mr. Cheese

Pardon me,

Captain Obvious.

I am going to assume your reply was based more on

unsolicited advice.

my God

on high

Now it's my turn to give advice.

you decided to try to be the 'smartest guy in the room'

Then you TALK DOWN to the person

Stop ASSUMING a poster is saying something that is never said.

You are making people want to leave the Hive.

I suggest you re-examine your attitude

the dramatic effect I saw

was contributing to this

I am referring to a more general issue which no one has touched on yet.

This isn't about your

technical history

This thread is

about

advice.

slow down and

use

sense

Above, you will find a block of quotes that have been rearranged from one post by Mr. Cheese. They are not edited in any other way. This message is directed at one Mr. Cheese.

End Notes:

1. Quote 3: Logical declaration of assumption.
Quote 10: Assumptions declared undesirable.
Link Type: Transitive.
Conclusion: Post is undesirable.
2. Quote 9: Talking down is undesirable.
Entire Post: Talking down.
Link Type: Transitive.
Conclusion: Post is undesirable.
3. Entire Post: Talking down.
Quote 9: Talking down is undesirable.
Quote 12: [Linking Argument] Talking down is considered a bad attitude.
Quote 11: [Linking Argument] Bad attitudes make people want to leave Hive.
Conclusion: Post is making people leave Hive.

Works Cited:
Cheese, Mr. "Things That Make Lag". Unaffiliated. May 06, 2010 <http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/galaxy-editor-help-zone-647/things-make-lag-166012/#post1570190>.

Author's Notes:
The sole reason that this post has been written is because Dr. Super Good is far too nice of a guy to hammer Mr. Cheese like he should. Every aspect of that post was wrought with pretentious, self-righteous rhetoric. I will note for your benefit that all of these ARE accurate quotes, and they were all taken from the same post, re-arranged into a suitable order. None of the words are changed at all, with the exception of the word 'use', which is quoted out of the word 'cause'. I have an archived version of Mr. Cheese's post in case he tries to delete it to hide his foolishness.

 

[Tensor]

Wow, Mr. Cheese. This entire thread is wrong, useless, and complete garbage. All you have done is prove to everyone that you do know know what the word "lag" means!

First, you say that lag is an issue of concern because there is no LAN option. This means you know that "lag" refers to network latency.

Then you said "Of course, by lag, we are meaning things that cause spikes in 'frame rates.' "

That is not what lag is!! Your post is conflicting and useless. You do not even know the definition of what you are talking about. Are you talking about frame rate, or are you talking about lag? You cannot talk about them as if they are the same thing.

Let me explain this in terms you can understand:

FRAME RATE:
"Frame rate" is the number of times your computer can draw the picture on your screen per second. Your frame rate is the same in offline games and online games. That means a LAN option does NOT affect your frame rate. Your frame rate is affected by your computer's hardware, the number of units/models on the map, and the amount of code (triggers, ect) your map is executing.

- Frame rate is NOT affected by playing offline, on a LAN, online, or on Battle net.
- Frame rate is NOT affected by lag.
- Frame rate is independent of lag. Anything that causes lag does NOT cause a decrease in frame rate and vice versa.

LAG:
"Lag" typically refers to a spike in latency. Latency is the amount of time it takes a message to be sent from your computer to the server and back, in milliseconds. In a LAN setting, the computers are on the same network, which lowers lag. This means that a LAN game will have LESS LAG and the SAME FRAME RATE.

- Lag is NOT affected by your computer's hardware or spec's, except for network card.
- Lag is NOT affected by your computer's graphics card.
- Lag is NOT affected by the number of units, models, or triggers on your map in any way.
- Lag has nothing to do with frame rate.
- Lag is independent of frame rate. This means that anything that causes lag does NOT cause a decrease or increase of frame rate.

Conclusion: If you are talking about lag, then you are not talking about frame rate. If you are talking about issues that lower frame rate, then lan/internet does not matter. Please refer to lag and frame rate separately and do not refer to them as the same thing. Then your post will make a shred of sense. Thank you.