DescentBB

I have a strange problem with D3 for Linux that effectively prevents me from playing it online.

Depending on the framerate, it keeps sending way more packets per second than it's supposed to. I don't know what kinds of packets they are, position or what, but I suppose that's what they are as I don't need to be firing or anything, just floating around. It doesn't (seem to) happen all the time.

Even at 50 fps, the standard framecap, it keeps sending something like ~10 kB/s. At a comfortable 100 fps it sends so much that even if it'd be playable for me, I certainly don't want to push that much stuff to the server. If I uncap the framerate, it goes so high that my upstream pipe (512 kbps) isn't even close to enough, and my ping skyrockets, but that isn't really very important because I wouldn't play anyway if it means loading the server with unnecessary trash.

Again, this does not happen all the time - it varies, but it does happen in every game. Generally it happens always when the framerate gets really high.

It happens both with the default pps setting of seven and also if I edit the configuration file to get the pps to 9 (in the Linux version, it can't be set in a launcher or via a command-line parameter but it can be changed in the configuration file). I've tried with a clean installation with all configuration files I managed to find purged.

The system is as follows:
(*) I've also tested with the (probably) DRI-based driver that comes by default with Fedora. The result was the same. The proprietary ATI drivers I've tested include 3.2.5 (I think), 3.2.8 and 3.7.0.

(**) I've also tried a D-Link 10/100 card that uses the VIA Rhine-II chipset and thus a different driver, so I don't suppose it's a weird network driver issue either.

Mostly I use Gnome (2.4, also tried on 1.4) but have also tried it on IceWM and I think also some other window manager.

I've also tested it with the firewall disabled (all policies to 'accept' and all rules removed with iptables).

I haven't really tested this very much lately because I don't like testing it on people's real servers and I can't always get anyone to run one for my tests. When I used to test it more, though, I did some packet capturing with Ethereal. Here is a screenshot of the Ethereal summary - as you can see, kinda many packets were sent. I have a Finnish locale in use so the ',' characters are decimal separators, not thousand.

That summary doesn't show the worst situation and it was taken long ago so I have no idea what framerate I was using but if you look at the packet count and the time elapsed, you can see that something is not right.

Oh, and the Windows version works fine.

Any ideas? I'm beginning to run out.

That problem I never had, I had the reverese, where I was not sending/recieving enough packetts and got alot of complaints because I dropped so many. Can I ask what the name of the config is to change the pps though? I loved running the Linux distro it was just sooo much smoother.
BTW I run Mandrake 10.0 with kernel 2.6

Yep, it defaults to the '56k' setting, which is 7 pps.

The configuration file is $HOME/.loki/descent3/.Descent3Registry and it's basically a copy of what the Windows version stores in the registry, just changed to a configuration file form.

The setting for the connection speed (and type) doesn't exist by default so you need to add it to the file. I have a fresh configuration file without those settings in place right now so I can't check what the correct name for the setting is but it might be "ConnectionSpeed" or something like that. You can check what the Windows version has in the registry, it's exactly the same setting.

If I remember correctly, the different options are (omitting the ones lower than the default) "56K" (7 pps), "ISDN" (8 pps), "Cable" (9 pps) and "Fast" (12 pps or something, equal to the xDSL/T1/LAN setting of the Windows version). Since it's a string value, you'd add it like this:

"ConnectionSpeed"="Cable"

but like I said, check the names. Of course you can then check your success by taking a look at netgameinfo in the game.

The options are also exactly the same as in the Windows version, you can change them in the Windows version launcher and see how it changes in the registry.

I think it's also possible to have a setting for the connection type (LAN, dial-up, none) like in the Windows version but I don't know if that has any effect.

Back up your configuration file first and don't blame me if something goes wrong. I haven't tested it very much since I've obviously had much greater problems.