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MGE Brazil server extremely poor performance

ampere

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ampere

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The brazilian MGE server of Blackwonder must be the worst performing server I've ever visited in my 8 years of TF2 and has been for many years, this would be the first time I reach for help about this. What I'm basically talking about is extremely jittery lag and stuttery movement all across the server, all day. I've played in several Brazilian servers before and not one of them has run as bad as this one. I would like to know if this complaint has been present before, and if you guys are aware of this. I'm open to providing more details and/or helping solve the issue, since I have vast experience setting up and running TF2 servers.
 

Chris TCC

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I've got a few questions:
Are you the only one experiencing this issue, or is it everyone on the server?
Is it only the MGE server, or any other in the BR region?
What is your latency?
Can you attach a Net_graph 4 of when the lag is at its worst?

I'll do my best to look into this, thanks.
 

ampere

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ampere

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I've been asking around people that regularly play on the server about it, and I can guarantee I'm not the only one that experiences it. It has been described to me as "getting laggier the longer I spend on it".

There are other several Blackwonder BR servers, and I recall having the same issues in the Hightower No Carts server.

My latency as reported by the console with the ping command is about 60-80, depends on server load.

Over these next days I'll gather more information about my net_graph reports, my performance in other BLW and non-BLW servers, perhaps with video footage included and bring it over to make the diagnosing job easier.
 

Lord Of Something

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I recently entered SV Hightower BR to test something on my pc, I thought it was my internet, but apparently it wasn't, because my ping wasn't very high(was 30 - 70) but I kept lagging and teleporting when I tried to move, so I left and went to do other things.
 

Chris TCC

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Over these next days I'll gather more information about my net_graph reports, my performance in other BLW and non-BLW servers, perhaps with video footage included and bring it over to make the diagnosing job easier.
That would really be helpful if you could do that, I appreciate it.
 

ampere

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Over the course of these 2 videos I switch to different brazilian servers and show their performance.
I really don't think there's anything of much value to be shown here, but I'll leave that judgement up to you.
What I really see is the typical behavior of a server that never gets restarted when stuck on a single map: jitteryness starts building up. Based on that what I can really recommend is setting mp_timelimit to something else than 0, so map changes are forced to occur in order for the server to stay fresh.
 

Chris TCC

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What I really see is the typical behavior of a server that never gets restarted when stuck on a single map: jitteryness starts building up.
We do restart our servers. they restart daily at 8am local time iirc.

I've never seen this "jitter" before. I'll see if I can look into it.
 

ampere

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We do restart our servers. they restart daily at 8am local time iirc.

I've never seen this "jitter" before. I'll see if I can look into it.
I have, and it's very noticeable when playing with 240hz. I know they restart daily but from my experience I've had to setup a 2-4h restart interval to avoid this situation.
 

puntero

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As a player who had rarely played MGE in Blackwonder's servers in the past, I can assure that the same jittery experience ampere is having happened to me as well. It really depends on the time of day I join, but it's always there even if it's slight. Just plain jitter and delayed events (even with 30-45ms of latency) that only happens on these specific MGE servers; sometimes respawning has a longer delay than usual, or damage registration, movement...
I've had to resort to different MGE servers either in Argentina, Chile or Brazil due to the sheer unplayability whenever my brain struck the nerve to play some MGE.

Honestly I can only guess without looking into it a little deeper that the reasoning behind this happening is just a lot of unnecesary plugins exploiting OnGameFrame or some heavy processing on every game frame, but like I said this is just all an assumption of mine.
 

Chris TCC

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Honestly I can only guess without looking into it a little deeper that the reasoning behind this happening is just a lot of unnecesary plugins exploiting OnGameFrame or some heavy processing on every game frame, but like I said this is just all an assumption of mine.
I doubt so, as far as I know, MGE has less plugins than other servers.
I've already notified Benedevil and he'll look into it as soon as possible.
 

ampere

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if you're not going to do something as basic and fundamental as configuring a simple mp_timelimit for the server to not build up to literally unplayable jitteryness can u guys at least not use an ancient MGE plugin and upgrade to the newest one
 

Deleted User 4826

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if you're not going to do something as basic and fundamental as configuring a simple mp_timelimit for the server to not build up to literally unplayable jitteryness can u guys at least not use an ancient MGE plugin and upgrade to the newest one
Its probably already in discussion. Stuff like this sometimes takes a fat minute due to internal discussion & stuff, just be patient
 

ampere

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Its probably already in discussion. Stuff like this sometimes takes a fat minute due to internal discussion & stuff, just be patient
It's been 4 months and it's something that literally anybody who runs a server knows that has to be done, the fact that someone from the staff is telling me they don't know what jitter buildup is is absolutely mindblowing to me.
 

Benedevil

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I will have to see if the server has been restarting, as it should have every day.
The term jitter buildup, I have not heard of. I have tried to search this term, but cannot come up with any plausible results.
Could you perhaps explain the term in a technical sense?
 

ampere

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The problem the server is experimenting is related to the way the Source Engine stores the game time count, or tick count, as a float data type. If the server is kept running a single map for too long without restarting, this global timer will start losing accuracy in the order of a frame duration, which is enough for players to start noticing jitter in their movement and stuff that moves around them, since proper interpolation of entities running in the server relies on this timer's precision.

- This article explain this in a very detailed manner.
- This article helps understand the nature of floating point arithmetic and why this problem happens.
- This StackExchange answer explains the same thing.
- This Shounic video explains the problem as well.
- Also, this and this thread from the AlliedModders forum detail two people complaining about the same issue.

From the resources linked above you could think that restarting the server once a day might suffice but no, that is the exact reason why I started this thread in the first place, apparently restarting the server once a day is not enough because the server continues to perform horribly as more time passes since its last map change or restart.

I could continue posting videos comparing the performance of blw's MGE server versus the performance of my 4 servers all day long, but this problem is easily verifiable by anyone who has 5 minutes to enter the game and see by themselves.

I highly doubt receiving complaints of map restarts from users will be an issue for a server that apart from being so well-established by now, needs it in order to stop performing so badly.
 

zodtf

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The problem the server is experimenting is related to the way the Source Engine stores the game time count, or tick count, as a float data type. If the server is kept running a single map for too long without restarting, this global timer will start losing accuracy in the order of a frame duration, which is enough for players to start noticing jitter in their movement and stuff that moves around them, since proper interpolation of entities running in the server relies on this timer's precision.

- This article explain this in a very detailed manner.
- This article helps understand the nature of floating point arithmetic and why this problem happens.
- This StackExchange answer explains the same thing.
- This Shounic video explains the problem as well.
- Also, this and this thread from the AlliedModders forum detail two people complaining about the same issue.

From the resources linked above you could think that restarting the server once a day might suffice but no, that is the exact reason why I started this thread in the first place, apparently restarting the server once a day is not enough because the server continues to perform horribly as more time passes since its last map change or restart.

I could continue posting videos comparing the performance of blw's MGE server versus the performance of my 4 servers all day long, but this problem is easily verifiable by anyone who has 5 minutes to enter the game and see by themselves.

I highly doubt receiving complaints of map restarts from users will be an issue for a server that apart from being so well-established by now, needs it in order to stop performing so badly.
This is an excellent & helpful illustration and demonstration of an issue which this same user reported some four or more months ago. I run MGE servers too, and I don't really see why this valid criticism couldn't have been addressed with more tact. Sure, Ampere was rude, but really that's par for the course in this territory, and the criticism provided after the initial post makes it clear that he is simply irritated that a server he frequents is not acknowledging -- let alone fixing -- an issue he has been experiencing for some time.
 

Deleted User 4826

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It's been 4 months and it's something that literally anybody who runs a server knows that has to be done, the fact that someone from the staff is telling me they don't know what jitter buildup is is absolutely mindblowing to me.
Well I'm sorry, I hadn't realize its been 4 months since this thread first started. Blame that on my stupidity or whatnot if it makes you feel better since I understand its frustrating if coming from that prespective

This is an excellent & helpful illustration and demonstration of an issue which this same user reported some four or more months ago. I run MGE servers too, and I don't really see why this valid criticism couldn't have been addressed with more tact. Sure, Ampere was rude, but really that's par for the course in this territory, and the criticism provided after the initial post makes it clear that he is simply irritated that a server he frequents is not acknowledging -- let alone fixing -- an issue he has been experiencing for some time.
It probably wasn't because he was 'rude'. Eitherway he got Bene's attention now so it should be resolved eventually, maybe
 

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