Playing on laptop, need help

[nexbender]

At work I play Nexuiz on my work-issued (and docked, which may be important) laptop, running XP Pro (with SP2/current patches, current stable drivers). Laptop is a Core 2 T7400 @ 2.16 GHz, 2 GB RAM, ATI Mobility Radeon x1600 w/ 256MB RAM. Soundcard is one of those sorry on-board SoundMAX chipsets. Mouse and keyboard are on PS/2 from docking station.

The problem is input-lag. I am using the nexuiz.exe, not nexuiz-sdl.exe, because the -sdl appears to use directinput (which sounds right), which doesn't recognize the scroll wheel on my mouse (it does recognize the wheel button, though). I've confirmed directinput is the issue there, since starting nexuiz.exe with -dinput also results in no scroll wheel.

As I said, the issue is input-lag, or dropped input, or both. I am not sure how to diagnose it properly. Some input does get dropped entirely. Some input registers after some non-fixed time. And some input seems to get interpreted incorrectly, though that could just be a combination of the other symptoms.

I'll happily provide any information I can and try suggestions to resolve the problem. However, this is only going to happen during my work hours, since I am loathe to even touch the laptop except when I am being paid (ironic, I know).

And just so I'm perfectly clear about how mysterious this game config stuff is to me, I have no idea what dinput or any of the rest of this stuff is about!

[Urmel]

My english may not be enough to exactly understand what your problem is. But I'm quite experienced with the difference between playing in my company and playing at home.

I reccommend enableing the Netgraph by entering the console and command "shownetgraph 1" and look what's happening there.

[nexbender]

My english may not be enough to exactly understand what your problem is. But I'm quite experienced with the difference between playing in my company and playing at home.

I reccommend enableing the Netgraph by entering the console and command "shownetgraph 1" and look what's happening there.

Thank you much, Urmel. I'll turn on the netgraph tomorrow night at work and let you know the results.

[Psychcf]

heh, playing at work...

yeah your corporate firewall/filter is probably dropping a lot of packets...

[:)]

Doesn't sound like a net issue, more of a local, hardware issue.

[nexbender]

Doesn't sound like a net issue, more of a local, hardware issue.

Netgraph didn't look bad. A little spiky at times (the comb effect) but not *that* spiky. No red.

Sauerbraten doesn't exhibit any of this weird behavior - it's fast as hell, stable and responsive to input (and I mean with all eye-candy ON versus Nexuiz with zero eye-candy and everything reduced to junk). Tonight I'm going to give that game a shot under Linux on my home box - running an Nvidia card versus the laptop's ATI. I love Nexuiz but these problems are a killjoy. And someone just made a comment about Nex being graphics intensive, but FFS I've run UT04 and HL2, *those* are graphics intensive *and* responsive.

[Urmel]

Generally you can't compare Nexuiz with HL or UT, as those are commercial games that mainly use DirectX, while Nexuiz is relying on openGL. Nevertheless your hardware should be really strong enough (even though ATI sucks there in comparison to equally powered Nvidia cards).

Could you enable the fps display and tell us about the framerates?

Another thing: You haven't tried Nexuiz on other computers yet? Well, have you ever thought about a certain difference that Nexuiz has in movement physics?

[nexbender]

Generally you can't compare Nexuiz with HL or UT, as those are commercial games that mainly use DirectX, while Nexuiz is relying on openGL.

I understand the difference between DirectX and OpenGL rendering.

Could you enable the fps display and tell us about the framerates?

Framerate average on the laptop is, IIRC, 81 average, with all the effects off.

Another thing: You haven't tried Nexuiz on other computers yet?

Actually I run it from this home box as well. I've got another thread about that. 0_o Generally my experience has been, with both boxes, weird/dropped input that just doesn't compute.

Well, have you ever thought about a certain difference that Nexuiz has in movement physics?

Yes. I'm pretty savvy on the physics differences among a number of FPSs. Since I can't go romp around, FPSs are my funktionlust.

I just gave Sauerbraten (OpenGL) a go on the home box (Linux), and it's responsive and sane like it was on the Windows work laptop. I'm not trying to compare them as games (Sauerbraten's kinda neat, but they don't even have a CTF mode yet), just the engine/client bit. Oh, and I have run the OpenGL version of UT04 on the home box, and that ran sanely too.

Home box thread is here.

[leileilol]

ATI Mobility Radeon x1600 w/ 256MB RAM

No you don't!

[Urmel]

Now that leileilol posted this (which may not really help, as you don't seem to have Linux on that laptop): this video chip should be one with Hyper Memory (or whatever ATI calls that), which is a hybrid between small "native" video RAM and shared memory. Anyway, shouldn't be a problem.

Still I'm doing hard in understanding which problems exactly you're suffering. If I were you, I'd enable auto recording to take a look if those "lags" are still recognizable there. If yes, I'd take a look at the demo on another box, and maybe you could upload that demo for me/us so we can have a look ourselves.