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Increase in ZS an ghosting over the last month

Posted: Mon Aug 15, 2016 8:19 pm
by Tenebris Vega
I don't know what's going on, my connection isn't the issue, I play other games smoothly but OB isn't stable. I am not alone in this, but I am creating this, started shortly after the DNAS was shut down and an "provisory" solution kicked in. I expect you guys take an look, playing OB is becoming nothing but an headache.

Re: Increase in ZS an ghosting over the last month

Posted: Tue Aug 16, 2016 3:43 am
by MartinMilk
Hmm, I almost never get zombie screen and I've been on this server for a long time now.

I assume you play on emulator? I am on PS2 myself and are not having any issues. And also 'I expect you guys' dosen't sound so nice. We should pretty much just be happy that this game is playable online at this point. All the work Fog and his crew has put in to this is more than enough. But it would be very nice of them to take a look on server stability and see if they can work on it. :mrgreen:

Re: Increase in ZS an ghosting over the last month

Posted: Tue Aug 16, 2016 4:47 am
by PauloRedfield
It happens to me as well, me and Tenebris own a PS2 FAT SCPH-50001 With internal HDD, we don't play through emulators, they just don't have the same reliability as the console itself.
Sometimes it happens to our friend OldSnakeFisher, but he plays on Slim PS2 through DVD, although we play PC games together and don't have that kind of problem, this just happens in Outbreak 1 and 2.

Re: Increase in ZS an ghosting over the last month

Posted: Tue Aug 16, 2016 5:44 am
by OldSnakeFisher
Hmm, I almost never get zombie screen and I've been on this server for a long time now.

I assume you play on emulator? I am on PS2 myself and are not having any issues. And also 'I expect you guys' dosen't sound so nice. We should pretty much just be happy that this game is playable online at this point. All the work Fog and his crew has put in to this is more than enough. But it would be very nice of them to take a look on server stability and see if they can work on it. :mrgreen:
We are not saying we're not happy that they brought the server back online. They did a hell of a fine job there, everybody agrees on this. It's just that we'd be happier if we could play a decent game on it now. OBSRV's servers have seen better days in my opinion. I started playing in this year's January, and I didn't have so many problems as I'm having now. And it isn't just me, since I told this so many times on the chat and there's other people too having the same problems.

The thing is that we are the minority, and the admins seems to think, "well, if the majority is playing, we can't do nothing about the minority." I'm not saying THEY ARE thinking this, but it just looks like from where I'm sitting.

Just to describe, me, PauloRedfield, and Tenebris Vega gets ZS almost every match. When it's not ZS, one of us gets ghosted (for those who don't know, it's when you die on some player's screen, often the host, but on your screen you're still alive, and seeing other players. When that happens, you are not able to interact with anyone or anything.)

This is just annoying. Everyone would be pissed if that happened to them as often as it happens to us. So all we are asking is that the admins, please, take a good look at the servers, and give us an answer, since we tried so many times to contact them, and they don't respond.

Just so you know, I play on a Slim Playstation 2, and I can guarantee that the connection problems I'm having have nothing to do with my internet, as people may assume.

Re: Increase in ZS an ghosting over the last month

Posted: Tue Aug 16, 2016 8:38 am
by the_fog
What you are describing is a typical phenomenon of the network clients running out of sync.

The biggest difference between modern games and this gem from over a decade ago is how data packets are routed. Most if not all modern games send their network packets directly between the participating players. In Outbreak every player sends his data to the server here at obsrv.org which then sends the data to all the other players. Now the packets sent to obsrv can take different routes through the internet and that depends on your location, the location of the obsrv server and the location of the other players. There can be immense ping times (the amount of time it takes for one packet from your machine to the other players) that can lead to lagging, desyncing and disconnections.

But there is more. Modern games use the UDP protocol instead of TCP for the game packets. In comparison udp has smaller packets but is less reliable. With TCP it is not possible to drop packets, they are received in the order they were sent. If packets get mixed because of the different routes, the network code will wait for missing data until it arrives. This of course might cause lagging, desyncing and disconnections again.

Long story short: It's old code, we cannot change it. Problems depend on your physical location, ISP, etc.pp. We're sorry if you experience problems but there's not much (nothing) we can do about it.

Besides, this has 100% nothing to do with DNAS. After the check is done there is no more traffic with the DNAS servers.

Re: Increase in ZS an ghosting over the last month

Posted: Tue Aug 16, 2016 5:25 pm
by Leny
It was weird because early 2015 I got 7 zs in just 1 week alone. After I start throwing fingers and started investigating it faded away. It could be a bad week on my connection but weird and a coincidence nonetheless. And during that same timeframe I played several games with Snake and he never zs not even once. And were both on ps2.

Re: Increase in ZS an ghosting over the last month

Posted: Tue Aug 16, 2016 6:04 pm
by Dchaps
Since the emulator and its networking plugins are someone's attempt at mimicking the ps2 networking behaviour it will be slightly flawed and I think the fog mentioned once the emulator sends irregular packet data in comparison to a ps2, so I imagine with the influx of emulator users and the lack of people using actual ps2 hardware (you know the way this game was designed to be played) , maybe it can take a knock at stability and call for more frequent restarts but nowdays we have wireless options aswell which is another work around that I would imagine doesn't sync well with old ps2 code that is designed with ethernet in mind (i could be wrong )

Re: Increase in ZS an ghosting over the last month

Posted: Tue Aug 16, 2016 6:28 pm
by OldSnakeFisher
What you are describing is a typical phenomenon of the network clients running out of sync.

The biggest difference between modern games and this gem from over a decade ago is how data packets are routed. Most if not all modern games send their network packets directly between the participating players. In Outbreak every player sends his data to the server here at obsrv.org which then sends the data to all the other players. Now the packets sent to obsrv can take different routes through the internet and that depends on your location, the location of the obsrv server and the location of the other players. There can be immense ping times (the amount of time it takes for one packet from your machine to the other players) that can lead to lagging, desyncing and disconnections.

But there is more. Modern games use the UDP protocol instead of TCP for the game packets. In comparison udp has smaller packets but is less reliable. With TCP it is not possible to drop packets, they are received in the order they were sent. If packets get mixed because of the different routes, the network code will wait for missing data until it arrives. This of course might cause lagging, desyncing and disconnections again.

Long story short: It's old code, we cannot change it. Problems depend on your physical location, ISP, etc.pp. We're sorry if you experience problems but there's not much (nothing) we can do about it.

Besides, this has 100% nothing to do with DNAS. After the check is done there is no more traffic with the DNAS servers.
Well, I thank you for your kind answer, and for being very clear.

But the thing is, as I described before, when we started playing we didn't experience this kind of problem as often as we do now. The three of us, Paulo Redfield, Tenebris Vega and I all live in Brazil, and when we started playing together early this year, we experienced a ZS like once in a month. Now it happens almost every match.

So that's why I was led to think it has something to do with obsrv's servers, maybe you guys changed something that could cause this, and asked if you could take a look into it. But well, I guess all we can do is wait for these "bad times" to pass.

Re: Increase in ZS an ghosting over the last month

Posted: Wed Aug 17, 2016 12:44 am
by Tenebris Vega
What you are describing is a typical phenomenon of the network clients running out of sync.

The biggest difference between modern games and this gem from over a decade ago is how data packets are routed. Most if not all modern games send their network packets directly between the participating players. In Outbreak every player sends his data to the server here at obsrv.org which then sends the data to all the other players. Now the packets sent to obsrv can take different routes through the internet and that depends on your location, the location of the obsrv server and the location of the other players. There can be immense ping times (the amount of time it takes for one packet from your machine to the other players) that can lead to lagging, desyncing and disconnections.

But there is more. Modern games use the UDP protocol instead of TCP for the game packets. In comparison udp has smaller packets but is less reliable. With TCP it is not possible to drop packets, they are received in the order they were sent. If packets get mixed because of the different routes, the network code will wait for missing data until it arrives. This of course might cause lagging, desyncing and disconnections again.

Long story short: It's old code, we cannot change it. Problems depend on your physical location, ISP, etc.pp. We're sorry if you experience problems but there's not much (nothing) we can do about it.

Besides, this has 100% nothing to do with DNAS. After the check is done there is no more traffic with the DNAS servers.
I appreciate you taking time to answer this the_fog, glad to know but it's unfortunate that there's nothing that can be done about it, that means this issue will remain, them the best I can do is play something else.

Re: Increase in ZS an ghosting over the last month

Posted: Wed Aug 17, 2016 1:45 am
by Vedita BR
Bye

Re: Increase in ZS an ghosting over the last month

Posted: Wed Aug 17, 2016 3:00 am
by Leny
Since the emulator and its networking plugins are someone's attempt at mimicking the ps2 networking behaviour it will be slightly flawed and I think the fog mentioned once the emulator sends irregular packet data in comparison to a ps2, so I imagine with the influx of emulator users and the lack of people using actual ps2 hardware (you know the way this game was designed to be played) , maybe it can take a knock at stability and call for more frequent restarts but nowdays we have wireless options aswell which is another work around that I would imagine doesn't sync well with old ps2 code that is designed with ethernet in mind (i could be wrong )
Well said I am with you 100%

Re: Increase in ZS an ghosting over the last month

Posted: Wed Aug 17, 2016 3:02 am
by Leny
What you are describing is a typical phenomenon of the network clients running out of sync.

The biggest difference between modern games and this gem from over a decade ago is how data packets are routed. Most if not all modern games send their network packets directly between the participating players. In Outbreak every player sends his data to the server here at obsrv.org which then sends the data to all the other players. Now the packets sent to obsrv can take different routes through the internet and that depends on your location, the location of the obsrv server and the location of the other players. There can be immense ping times (the amount of time it takes for one packet from your machine to the other players) that can lead to lagging, desyncing and disconnections.

But there is more. Modern games use the UDP protocol instead of TCP for the game packets. In comparison udp has smaller packets but is less reliable. With TCP it is not possible to drop packets, they are received in the order they were sent. If packets get mixed because of the different routes, the network code will wait for missing data until it arrives. This of course might cause lagging, desyncing and disconnections again.

Long story short: It's old code, we cannot change it. Problems depend on your physical location, ISP, etc.pp. We're sorry if you experience problems but there's not much (nothing) we can do about it.

Besides, this has 100% nothing to do with DNAS. After the check is done there is no more traffic with the DNAS servers.
I appreciate you taking time to answer this the_fog, glad to know but it's unfortunate that there's nothing that can be done about it, that means this issue will remain, them the best I can do is play something else.
I am on ps2, you can start hunting down people who play this on console.

Re: Increase in ZS an ghosting over the last month

Posted: Wed Aug 17, 2016 5:03 am
by Tenebris Vega
Bye
people that play on normal and easy doesn't interest me. you're welcome to leave, so yeah bye.

Re: Increase in ZS an ghosting over the last month

Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2016 2:09 am
by samuk190
@The_Fog yes i know that udp is not much reliable, but even old games with UDP connection runs more smoother than somedays.
The server is very good for me in 5 of 7 days, no Disconnect, perfect ping(I live in brazil and i don't get issues with lag)
But sometimes, when the server get more than 30 people, it happens disconnect, high ping and zombie issues. I can guarantee its not my internet as you can see i can run the game smoothier.

my friends agreed with me, that in the past year the server was better than now. ( upload rate is slow as I studied this type of problem before)

I know that doesnt worth investing money in revival game, but you can ask for donations and people will sure help.

If you could share the source, people will can build great servers too... And maybe do something great? Features? idk.. My friend said that he can share his server that he pays (40$ monthly promotion) 500megabit upload in US with a good ping for building the server from source.
We just don't know how you did the reverse enginnering to find the connect methods... and the DNAS thing..

Thanks for you awesome work.
@update
seems after the update, the servers are much stable because the tap adapter got blocked by the servers.

Re: Increase in ZS an ghosting over the last month

Posted: Wed Dec 14, 2016 2:04 pm
by the_fog
my friends agreed with me, that in the past year the server was better than now. ( upload rate is slow as I studied this type of problem before)

I know that doesnt worth investing money in revival game, but you can ask for donations and people will sure help.

If you could share the source, people will can build great servers too... And maybe do something great? Features? idk.. My friend said that he can share his server that he pays (40$ monthly promotion) 500megabit upload in US with a good ping for building the server from source.
We just don't know how you did the reverse enginnering to find the connect methods... and the DNAS thing..

Thanks for you awesome work.
@update
seems after the update, the servers are much stable because the tap adapter got blocked by the servers.
It's interesting to read what people interpret in a multihour "update". The truth is, I totally f'ed up the server when renewing the SSL-certificate. This is usually an easy task but this time I ran into a partially faulty and in the result mixed up installation of the whole underlying OS. It was kind of a chain reaction. This took me some time to sort out. BUT no updates had been installed for the Outbreak lobbyserver or the Outbreak gameservers (those haven't been altered in the last 2 years or so). I don't know why out of a sudden TAP-devices don't work (can this be confirmed?), I don't see a concrete reason for that.

About UDP: The network code of Outbreak doesn't use UDP. We could however write kind of a proxy so that PS2 connects to your PC which connects to obsrv or participating parties (and translates TCP to UDP and vice versa). But I think people won't accept the additional obstacles. Not to mention the giant amount of questions in the forum about firewall problems, port forwarding, connection sharing etc. pp. If you want to try it out, have a look at the Gundam vs. Z-Gundam server (http://zdxsv.net). They have a proxy like this. Personally, I'll stuck with the traditional way of connecting. (japanese phat PS2, Sony HDD, all original)

We don't accept donations for a reason. We are not allowed to generate money from this project. Also, open sourcing has been discussed multiple times on this forum. It would likely split up the community and Outbreak would fade away. The only thing that will be made public (for the moment) is the DNAS server because it will help others in reviving dead online games.