Hi guys as I have posted before in Lan play is absolute CRAP post i
have had the chance this weekend to try the game a big gameing Lan
session I organised for playing Counter Strike. Anyway some of the
guys I play CS with are in to raceing games and in between CS sessions
we play GPL and Nascar 3 and at the last one played a 8 player F1 2000
race which went really well.
Well I have the wearz version of GP3 as well as my shop copy and I
took it along so I could test how well network play was in GP3, to
recap first, in my last post we didnt have much luck with 2 players in
the full style race where you can do the full race weekend and PO was
up over 140% on both machine, but in the M/P option where you go
straight to a race PO was down at Imola to about 90-110% which was
plyable.
Ok well on to the lan play report, first of we have been playing big
lan sessions for over 2 years now, we are all set up with dedicated
computers/switches/hubs for a 100 m/bit LAN we have 20 guys playing
CS and all the pings are never above 30 so our lan is very fast ok.
First of we played GPL & Nascar 3 for about 1 hour and it was smooth
there was no warping and every one got into the groove for some
driving, so next we set up GP3 on 10 computers and got everyone sorted
out in the game. I started the LAN test with me hosting on my computer
and others joining in a numbers build up to the expected 10 players.
My computer
Celeron P2 566 @ 925mhz
198 meg SDRAm
V3 3000
My Computer runs GP3 (Shop Copy) at 1024x768 with all textures on
but with only cars in the mirrors FPS is set at 25 and I get -50-90%
PO after the first corner mess at IMOLA. For the test I turned my
graphics down to 640x480 so as not to tax the host.
Ok set up a 2 or more players game and 1 person joined me, game ran
fine PO was at 90-120% most time on both computers with a full field
of cars. Next up was 3 players, conected ok went to the grid PO was up
a small bit 100-120% and again a full field of cars. Ok at this stage
gameplay was good fun and we enjoyed it very much, graphics look crap
at 640x480 though I must say after 1024x768 :), but back to the test,
ok 4 players next all conected ok and we got to the track, on the grid
PO was up to 130-150% so things were looking bad but we carried on
we started to race and PO never got below 140% on all machines. Ok we
skipped 5 players and went to 6, all players connected but it was
starting to get slower with the connects to the host computers and
some guys were takeing 1-2 mins to show up at the host screen, when
all players where there we clicked ready and some where dropped with a
msg the host wasnt responding, so we tried again and after 4 tries we
got all 6 playes on the grid witha full field of cars PO was up at
150% on all machine with some of the lower spec computers at -160-170%
the lights went green and we were off, well we thought we were thr was
a full and we were liked paused in limbo, then suddenly we all started
to move and we got 10 yards and then there was a pause, after about 2
seconds we got going again but once again after about 10 yards there
was big 2 second pause and whis carried on up to the first corner at
IMOLA, to get to this corner took 1min 25sec on a watch and we would
say there was about 20-30 stop start pauses. all the way with all the
computer cars pauseing as well. Anyway we didnt test past 6 as it just
didnt work.
Well I have to say that the M/P in GC GP3 is probly the worst we have
ever seen in game (allthough Super Karting 1 comes close) we have a
couple of network softwear/engineers play with us and they were quite
shocked and how bad GP3 networking is they monitored the network for
us while we were playing, they reported that when we all paused for
the 2 seconds data traffic on the network was going crazy at the same
time then it woould drop away to nothing and do it all agin when we
got the pauses so it seems that GC networking code is not very good.
Its a shame as the raceing would be great as GP3 is a real good game
for for average people to play who dont allways race cars sims as the
cars are very easy to drive, also from what I saw with 2 players
connected and raceing it was just great it was PURE fun and its just a
shame GC couldnt get his network play working like promised in the
read me, as for 22 players I wouldnt say you would even get connected
at the host screen.
Anyway there it is take from that what you want, its exactly how it is
written above, others have reported that there PO was fine, but I cany
honestley see how, all machine were a clean install of GP3 we didnt
use and FPS hacks on any machine, all computers were at the lan were
above P2 - 3 500 and all were running 128 meg ram or more with 3rd
generation video cards. I also deleted the wearz version form all
machine at the lan session when we finished.
Hotdog
