Why does Quake 3 suck so much A$$ for modem players?

[SlickWilly]

Just curious. I find it annoying that Quake 3 runs like crap on the internet with my 28.8 connection, with a great ISP, while Quake 2 and Unreal Tournament run great. I've done all the tweaking I can possibly think of, and if you have any ideas, I've probably tried that too. I'd like to play this game which I bought way back when it first came out but it sucks too much a$$! Help!

 

[ltk007]

maybe because quake 3 requires more information to be sent back and forth between the computers.

 

[dennilfloss]

I have no problems playing with a 56k/v90 winmodem (ping ~150).

Funny How Time Slips Away (The Simpsons)

 

[ApacheXMD]

den: is that in game ping or server browser ping?

-patchy

 

[dennilfloss]

It's the average of the pings that showed when I exited a level to go to the next map on a given server.

Immortality (Pearl Jam)

 

[ApacheXMD]

wow, pretty darn good man

here i sit with a USR 56k like a sucker
hehe
j/k
/me apologizes to my USR. I still love you

-patchy

 

[OS]

For me, everything sucks ass on a modem. Of course, I'm spoiled by the fact that once I had a T1 line for a net connection.

 

[Balt]

Well, like you, I get decent pings in games like quake and HL (counter-strike). However, whenever I would try to play q3 it would just give me a constant 'connection interrupted'. Eventually I bumped down the resolution, and edited the config.cfg (even though it says "generated by quake, do not modify" and found where MAXFPS is set. Setting that lower than 85 (like 45 or lower) helped a lot.

 

[BiB]

Its cause QUake3 sucks !

 

[SlipperyFreudian]

seriously, in t his day and age, every online game that gets released is going to be more and more bandwidth intensive, in another 2 years, modems arent going to cut it at all! nearly 50% of the online gaming demographic uses cable, dsl, or t1 lines now. you are gonnahave to get on the bandwagon to be competitive.

 

[Shorty28]

BiB hit the nail on the head- the game just sucks
That's why I still play Quake1...

 

[snow patrol]

I'm on 56k and generally find Quake 3 to be not very playable online. To the best servers, I originally see pings of around 120ms. When I get in the game and am running around with no one else about, my ping might be around 160-200ms. However, once the action starts, my ping goes upto around 250-300ms and it's just not very playable

I find unreal tournament more playable (online and in single player )

However, ADSL soon so who knows

 

[VinY]

This worked for me when I had 56k...
In console, type /rate 4500. This got rid of the connection interrupted stuff for me and just lagged my shots.

 

[uncouth]

Q3, although excellent on cable or LAN, has many downfalls when played on modems. Remember that the maximum up/down speed of a 56 K modem is somewhere close to 8 Kps. My belief is that Quake 3 and other high quality games do not work to well with such limited speed. Quake 3 is an excellent multiplayer game, but it requires an excellent computer/internet connection, to get the full feeling of the game. Sorry that you are still on a modem... go cable

 

[bUnMaNGo]

slick: in console, try /com_maxfps 35... in q3 I think they tried making it so that your fps cap wouldn't affect your data rate, but I'm not quite sure... also type /rate in console and see what you get. If it's something like 30000 then that's the problem- type /rate 3500 or /rate 3000 and it should be fine... oh yea after those commands if your connect is still ass, try to /reconnect... playing q3 on a modem kinda sucks though... getting rails is near impossible and this is coming from someone who had a 100Mb resnet line at school (with several sub 20 pings), then moving back home to a 150+ ping hpb environment however in dos tracert's, I get several sub 100 pings with my USR 56k external... before that, I had a lucent winmodem, and the lowest pings I got in dos were high 90's low 100's

 

[Paul]

Yes it's true! Everything sucks so much A$$ for modem players! :Q

 

[Livin4Real]

I feel your pain.I live in BFE and the only fast service out her is isdn at 80 a month. NOT! I'm stuck with 28.8 UT runs ok but I could whomp seriuos @ss if I had a fast connection

 

[sandorski]

I've found that the only Q3 DM that I can stand with my 56k connection is Instagib. Regular DM's weapons are too weak to make it worthwhile, IMO. I don't DM much, mostly play CS online, but if I want to DM UT seems more fun on my 56k.

 

[erikiksaz]

i wonder how many kbits would actually need to be sent/received in order to have a smooth q3 game. anyone know? well, i'm sure that the number is greater than 6kdown/3up per sec, since the 56k cant send receive or send any more than that.

 

[Stifko]

Quake2 sucks on a 56k modem most of the time too. Eeven Rouge spear suck on 56k, I finally ordered DSL!!! There are times when no data comes accross my modem and the lag really sucks. Other times I can get a decent 200 ping, but it is inconsistant.

 

[ApacheXMD]

i'm on a good dsl connection during the school year and got 50ms pings to a bunch of q3 servers..
and incoming and outgoing throughput never got above 3kilobytes a second. 56k modems are more than capable of that.
like i've said in the past, it isn't the lack of bandwidth that makes 56k gaming suck. It's all about latency.

-patchy

edit: it said bits before.. doh

 

[bUnMaNGo]

exactly, Apache is correct- think about it- alotta people I play Quake online with have PacBell DSL- which has a 128k upstream and up to 1.1mb downstream- so that would mean the bottleneck is the 128k upstream- yet they still get 20-30 pings to many servers. However if you were uploading/downloading at the same time, I think that would be a different story. At school, I used to be able to be having a connection going at 100k/s, another going at 300k/s (uploads and downloads) and STILL have a 30 ping on a Quake server

 

[erikiksaz]

oh, so it's the latency. it's kinda funny though, there's this internet cafe sort of place near my house, a 8 hour lan party that's open 7 days a week. all 20 of their computers are networked, and of course it's always packed. one time while playing quake, i hear the damn kids bitching about thier ping of 20. damn kids, let's see them try to play quake with 190+ ping.