Gigabit LAN on Red Alert 2, will it sort the lag?

[laberlaber]

Hello everyone,
My friends and me are going to have a little LAN party, and we usually play i.e. Red Alert 2 (Yuri’s revenge). We are suffering from some bad lag, even though we are only 3 players. This is probably because everyone builds as much units as just possible, it's fun even though it's not the idea of RA2. Right now we have a 100Mb LAN setup, but we were planning on buying a gigabit (1000Mb) system to get a little less lag. Do you guys think the 1000Mb system would help out to sort out the lag we have when playing RA2 with 500+ units in the same game?

Thanks in advance for any answers!

[RoscoPColtrane]

that game is made to run over the internet as well as lan parties. Ive played it over the net at times and it ran fine. I would be willing to say the lag is because of one of your computers not handeling the games load, especially with a million units. I would say your network speed has nothing to do with the lag and that kicking to a gig lan will not help. Considering that NET play would never hit 100 let alone a gig.....

what are the specs of the computers running it? Does it lag without a million units or is it all the time?

[laberlaber]

The lag starts when we start moving our units. We all have considerably fast computers compared against to what the recommended system requirements are. The slowest computer is an AMD Athlon XP 2400+ with 512 Mb of RAM. It has a quite slow gfx card, but that shouldn't really affect how well a 2D game like RA2 runs (nVidia 5600xt chipset with 256 Mb ram). The machine that usually works as a server has an Athlon XP 3000+ with 512 Mb of RAM.

[YARDofSTUF]

A gigabit card wouldnt help ya.

[laberlaber]

Okay :( What do you guys think the problem is then? Would more RAM help to sort it out?

[YARDofSTUF]

Okay :( What do you guys think the problem is then? Would more RAM help to sort it out?


If your playing on a lanits gotta be someone's pc, start running spyware scans and vrius scans.

[RoscoPColtrane]

If your playing on a lanits gotta be someone's pc, start running spyware scans and vrius scans.

I agree. Someones computer is slowing you down. Try to play with just two people. Then add the next until you find who is slowest. Also this game is the older RA2 so i dont' see why your system specs can't handle it. If you were playing Generals it could be a diff story, that game is the first C&C in 3d and can eat up system specs pretty easily.

Good luck.

[laberlaber]

Thanks for your help guys. We are all quite strict with spyware and viruses, and keep them away as much as just possible so that shouln't be a problem. (yes, we have tried to turn off all extra programs while playing :)) I will try that technique you suggested, Rosco. Hopefully it will sort the problem. The only things I ever though could have caused this was the speed of the LAN or the ammount of RAM, so I will check on our next LAN in the beginning of next year if it really eats up all the ram (I doubt it though, the slowest machine has 512Mb DDR 300)

[RoscoPColtrane]

i can't see red alert eating up more than 512 of ram. its too old for that i would think. hopefully it is just a problem with the slowest computer or something. Then again you never can have TOO much ram! :thumb: GOod luck

[joecool169]

My friends and I have the same thing happen. The lag always begins when we all have a lot of units, and when we try to move them. I don't think it is a problem with the computers or the lan. I think that the game engine in RA2 is just simply not designed for each of 3 players to build 1 million units and then start WW3. That is just my opinion but from the playing and changing we have done I think it's the engine.

[YARDofSTUF]

My friends and I have the same thing happen. The lag always begins when we all have a lot of units, and when we try to move them. I don't think it is a problem with the computers or the lan. I think that the game engine in RA2 is just simply not designed for each of 3 players to build 1 million units and then start WW3. That is just my opinion but from the playing and changing we have done I think it's the engine.


Thats very possible too.

[anthony_g4i]

Possible solution

red alert 2 playing with tcp/ ip protocol

http://www.understorm.net/cnc/lan/ts_ra2.php


.:: Information ::.

With this patch installed you are able to play Tiberian Sun, Tiberian Sun: Firestorm,
Red Alert 2 and Red Alert 2: Yuri's Revenge over network by using the UDP protocol instead of the IPX protocol.

This means that you no longer have to install/configure IPX to be able to play these games on the local network.
The patch also adds Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 support for LAN play
as these were broken because IPX is no longer supported on these platforms.