A Land Far Away

I guess not everyone knows and a DM said I should start a new topic to raise awareness. There is a serious problem with how NWN2 (and 1) handles the packets sent to the server and to other players when you move.

Movement causes packets to be sent to the server which are then processed by the CPU and are sent out to every player and DM in the area. Some methods of movement cause this to become a flood of packets being sent for every step you take which causes CPU strain on the server when multiple people do it and causes packet spam to all the players in the area as they get sent out causing timeouts and lag.

It only takes two people walking around the same area using WASD to cause a constant build up of packets that will start lagging and eventually crash a server if they do not stop!

Using the WASD keys, DMFI follow command and holding down the mouse in the direction you want to go all cause this.

The only safe way to walk without causing these problems is by clicking the mouse on your destination. This causes one walk path to be sent to the server which is distributed to everyone in the area instead of the constant stream of them. It sucks a lot but if we want stable servers we have to do this.

Obsidian mentioned they want to fix this so if you would like to voice a complaint to them please do and it may be fixed faster!

This is not always possible of course. There are a number of times that using WASD is the only way to navigate. The 2 that come to mind are walking onto the platform in the center of rivermoot (where the marshal is) since clicking will get your character 3/4 way up the stairs before they decide to walk back down and around to another set of stairs.

The other is navigating around the raised chairs and tables in the rivermoot tavern, seeing as the click to move pathing usually takes you through everyone that is sitting down, and often walks you down one side and up the other to move 3 feet in a direction.

There are some narrow spots in the hilly places that require WASD too.

Yeah, sometimes it just cannot be helped. This is more for the people who use WASD or follow to cross whole maps.

Only do it when absolutely necessary and not for long periods of time.

Using the WASD keys to get out of tight spaces is fine. But if you completely use it in place of the point and click movement, then it will cause problems in the long run.

Swift wrote:This is not always possible of course. There are a number of times that using WASD is the only way to navigate. The 2 that come to mind are walking onto the platform in the center of rivermoot (where the marshal is) since clicking will get your character 3/4 way up the stairs before they decide to walk back down and around to another set of stairs.

a tip - switch briefly to Strategy mode by pressing * and make sure your camera is over head high enough. The settings will stay the same even after you switch back to Player mode then back again to Strategy and it allows you to navigate up and down areas such as this easily with one click.

As far as the chairs....I still nudge myself in with WASD

Let's call it "tap, don't hold" with WASD, in terms of nudging your PC into the facing/past the bit you can't get to with the mouse.

I should say, though, that I don't believe the DMFI follow shares the same problem, having actually dug through all the code that makes it work. As opposed to the solid stream of data packets being sent to the host (and being passed along to all the other players and DMs as well) that comes from holding down the walk keys, DMFI assigns a single command to your PC (go to where player X is) every 3 seconds- so in terms of lag contribution, it's really just the equivalent of clicking on the ground next to the PC you're following, once every three seconds. Shouldn't deny the game engine the ability to optimize the walkpaths or cause super-frequent "course corrections" like WASD do. It's possible the PC Tools follow tool (which should be disabled currently on TSM) or earlier versions of DMFI follow were less optimized, but certainly the one we're running now should be fine.

Unless anyone has direct empirical evidence with regard to DMFI follow lagging out servers?