It’s just you as far as thinking the connection is being lagged because spectators are watching, they only cause lag during connect/disconnect, once they are connected they have no effect on the connection.
Supercade feels “smoother” because it has more input lag, which is why everyone says it’s smoother. If you set the input delay to 3 or higher in GGPO (which you can in the options, default is ‘1’), you’d get the same “Smooth” gameplay everyone is talking about that they get with Supercade. As far as actual stability, supercade wins hands down, I don’t have random disconnects or crashes on supercade. Supercade also gets rid of a lot of the dumb UI headaches GGPO has.
Supercade is very very good, I like it and play there often. I’ve had no issues with random stuttering in the latest version, although supercade tends to stutter a lot more noticably than ggpo due to bandwidth issues, like if I open a webpage while playing someone during a game on GGPO, the game isn’t effected. On Supercade there is noticeable lag and stuttering. I only mention this because some people share their internet connection through out there house and it’s annoying playing people who have a brother web browsing you tube while playing, GGPO hides this very well. Supercade is still above and beyond everything out there except GGPO IMO.
I like GGPO because I set my input delay to ‘0’, so there is no input delay when I play on GGPO. I also don’t really care about the UI, because I mostly go to play or watch people play. I also like the lobby in GGPO because I don’t see a shitload of spam from different countries that I don’t wanna see and I can still chat while in game (I have no idea why Damdai says this causes strain on gameplay…lol)
Damdai…implement filters for only showing lobby text, only showing game text…etc…maybe let us contrl the input delay as well? I know the 3S guys would really appreciate that, because it’s terrible in it’s current form on Supercade =/.
If possible, you shouldn’t be using a wireless connection for GGPO. I would assume by Ponder’s explanation, the same holds for Supercade but maybe Damdai can comment on that.
wireless devices have a lot of bullshit steps to go through before sending anything to avoid frame collisions (look up csma/ca). they can’t send and recieve simultaneously, and requires an acknowledgement from the access point for every single frame it sends out, just to make sure it didn’t get garbled up in transit. wireless is fucking terrible for the application we’re trying to use it for.
i get lagged up by specs, not just when they join and leave. most of the time it’s cool, but when papercut used to join with his wal-mart internet my shit used to get bogged down.
I also get a lot of dropped inputs with Supercade. I and deathgun were talking about it yesterday. And suffering it first hand. With GGPO, laggy connections would make slower machines suffer while trying to run the game many times in the background or the like, and you could notice it due to the annoying sound thing. During those sound freezes, you knew your inputs were getting dropped. If there were no freakish sound things, the inputs were being considered. However, a laggy connection alone would not cause dropped frames, and I could notice this by playing him. Now lag could, of course, mess up a lot of things such as reversals, counter timing and stuff, but if you were not in some animation, you would get your move.
I am not sure if this might make it worse, but I could not open my port for Supercade, so I can only be player two. Anyway, the program is still a blessing: with GGPO, I depend on the old man not to be at his computer, so I can get rid of the router, while Supercade works with a shared connection, and if I am already playing when other people stop using their stations, I do not need to bother shutting everything down, plugging the modem directly in the PC and restarting the network: I can just keep playing.
Pasky, I am positive specs could cause lag. It was rare, but often one could notice a certain spec leaves the game, and all would get back to normal.
I’ve never had that issue…Weird. Even when I was playing Jodim with 29 specs, and Afro Legends with 30+, I never had spec lag except when they would connect/disconnect.
Yeah, I had seen that. If you do not believe me, ask Valle or Afro instead. I suppose there must be a bug in the code between the server and the players, as it is clear that each time a spec enters, players are affected, even if it is the second or third spec.
Actually, the specs lag is more related to each player’s bandwidth, My first year using GGPO, I was using a cable internet connection, specs would never lag my matches, recently(2 months ago), I changed to another ISP, this time its ADSL and there is a huge difference(for worse), any spec getting in or out would lag my matches, all the time.
Also, my ADSL conection has much more latency than my previous cable internet, a difference of 30 ms, I used to play vs European players with 180-190 ms, now I get 210 at least.
In short, Cable internet has a much better upload rate than ADSL, which has very very low upload rates, which affect somehow the specs lag:
I don’t think spec’s get their data from users, I think your inputs go through the the ggpo server and the specs download them from there, which is why they see the action a little later than when it actually happens. I think the lag during connects/disconnects is because the server is pausing for them to connect and resumes when they do.
I have only wireless, because my laptop’s ethernet port stopped working. It’s far too costly to buy a new computer or get this one fixed so that’s why I’m on wireless.
As to the specs thing, if the specs can affect the connection to begin with by spectating, how could that not possibly have any other effects as well?
I can only go by my own personal experience, but being the only user in my house, I don’t see any reason why my connection would fluctuate that badly, specifically during those specific events.
Don’t even care anymore, happy GGPO is back up and that’s where I’ll be. If you like Supercade and think GGPO has input lag, have fun playing the billions of Brazilians there.