All logos and trademarks are copyrights of their respective companies. This is a private non-profit personal site. This page was last modified on 10/12/08 .
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PREFACE: KALI is a program written by Jay Cotton that allows us to play IPX protocol network games over the Internet. There are versions for DOS, OS2, and WIN95. The program must be registered or you will suffer a time limit of 15 minutes of use each time you run it. Click here for a link to the KALI HOMEPAGE. HELP: The Internet suffers from BANDWIDTH, LAG and PACKET LOSS. These three issues are the cause of much frustration in the use of KALI. A game like DESCENT is much more playable over the Internet with KALI than a game like DOOM. DESCENT network play is programmed as asynchronous. DOOM network play is programmed as synchronous. An asynchronous network program means that packets of information regarding players actions do not have to be received in a certain order before the game continues. A synchronous network game program requires players actions to be received in a certain order before the game continues. For a synchronous game like DOOM, this translates into moving a few steps than stopping and waiting for confirmation from all the other players that you moved. This makes the game play very jerky, erratic, and slow. However, a synchronous game is virtually free of errors, if you shoot someone, they will be shot. In an asynchronous game, game play is smooth but if you shoot someone, they may not receive that packet of information in time (lag) or possibly not at all (packet loss). So you see, DON'T GET HYPER, they may not be CHEATING, until you verify the facts that prove they are deliberately trying to spoil the game, then it is time to GET HYPER. Bandwidth is the measure of how much electronic information can flow across the communications medium. For the Internet, this is measured in bits per second (bps). The rate that your modem connects to your ISP is the primary limiting factor. There are two rates associated with a modem, the rate that your computer sends information to the modem (known as Data Terminal Equipment DTE) and the rate that the modem sends information to the other modem (known as Data Communications Equipment DCE). These two rates can be different because of data compression and hardware handshaking. A 28800 bps DCE rate is associated with a 115200 bps DTE rate, a 9600 bps DCE rate is associated with a 38400 bps DTE rate. Notice the Factor of 4 difference. This assumes that the data being sent is perfectly compressable and can be compressed by a factor of 4. Hardware handshaking when properly implemented allows these two differing rates without loss of data. Therefore, the data Bandwidth can be somewhere between 28800 and 115200 bps depending on how well the data being sent can be compressed. This results in a widely fluctuating Bandwidth, this can cause instability in network game play. Setting the DTE rate to 57600 often results in more stable Bandwidth because the compression ratio drops from a factor of 4 to a factor of 2, assuming you have a 28800 DCE rate. If your phone lines only allow your DCE rate to be something between 19200 and 26400, select 57600 for the DTE. Lower than that, select 38400 for the DTE and consider not playing at all. Bandwidth at your ISP and on the Internet depends upon the equipment and the load. Here is a generalized example with rounded numbers: Suppose the ISP has a direct connect line to the internet backbone that can support over 3 mbps or 3,000,000 bps. Assuming everyone links up at about 30000 bps, that means the line can support 100 people all transmitting maximum bandwidth at the same time. If the ISP has such a line and allows more than 100 people to use that line (calling in and calling out) simultaneously, the bandwidth of everyone is reduced in proportion to the load. The same type of reasoning is also applicable to the internet backbone and all subsequent lines from the sender to the receiver. This is an unfortunate reality of a network. With more and more people connecting all the time, it can be difficult to keep up with installing more and faster Internet lines. Certain periods of the day are worse than others. Early morning hours are generally best. LAG: LAG is the amount of time it takes a network packet of information to travel across the Internet. KALI shows your ping time (a measure of LAG) to the KALI server and other players if you request it. DESCENT 2 has the ability to calculate ping time while playing. LAG is measured in milliseconds (ms) which are thousandths of a second. A typical LAG or ping time to the KALI Central Server through a dial-up Internet Service Provider (ISP) is 250ms, about ¼ second. Some ISP's are better and worse than this. I have seen some ping times as high as 5000ms or 5 whole long seconds. Also remember that your game information has to travel to all players, not just the server. The KALI server is a place for people to meet who want to play games. The server simply routes the necessary packets to all the correct players. So for two typical players on a KALI server, the ping time from one to another would be 2 X 250ms or 500ms, a half second. When playing a fast paced close quarters combat game like DESCENT, a half second is an eternity, the difference between shooting and being shot. You can adjust for this however, just ping the players and lead them by an appropriate amount. You can determine the amount of lead required by judging how far you travel in half a second or a second, then lead them by the same amount. LAG is a function of the electronic pathway from your computer to the other players computer. This involves your modem, your ISP, and how your ISP is connected to the Internet. Your modem takes less than one millisecond of LAG to get a packet to your ISP assuming you are making a local call to your ISP. The only solution to LAG is to change ISPs or obtain a direct connection yourself. I have seen ISDN direct connects with ping times to KALI Central in the 60ms range. Kali has a ping function built right into it. Several games like DESCENT and other chat applications provide for a ping command as well. The DESCENT command is F8 then PING PLAYERNAME. Kali 95 command is /ping playername. Packet Loss is the real killer in a multiplayer network game. I have played games with people where we shoot entire volleys of missiles (any one of which would be lethal) without the other player even knowing it. It is also manifested in players suddenly appearing in opposite ends of the playing field or remaining in one spot for a long period of time which is called WARPING. This situation is untenable, whereas with excessive LAG you can lead your opponent and make up for the difference, packet loss is unpredictable. When playing a game where there is high packet loss, it is a game of chance, maybe your shots will be registered, maybe they wont. KALI also gives a measure of packet loss for yourself and other players as well as LAG. When you notice the effects of packet loss, leave the game, return to KALI, and lookup the LAG and packet loss of yourself and the suspected player. Packet Loss is also a function of the electronic pathway between your computer and the other players. It differs in that it is more susceptible to BANDWIDTH limitations and therefore the players computers and modems and phone lines. WIN95 and KALI can be tuned for maximum stable BANDWIDTH. Your phone line connections should be checked for corrosion and replaced if necessary. These should be attempted first before suspecting your ISP. If you determine it is your ISP, talk to them about the problem. If they are not in a position in to help, the only answer is to change ISPs or obtain a direct connection yourself. Many of the people playing internet playable games with KALI get very upset and verbally attack others without knowing the facts. If they knew the facts, then they would know that it is not a personal matter and that they are just as likely suspect as the people they are attacking. Here is an example: While playing a game of gigadeath2 in Descent II, there were four people on line. The server we were playing on was in St. Louis. I was from Alabama, another from California, another from Rhode Island, and one from Texas. We all had pings in the 650ms range to the player from California. The player from Rhode Island and I had a ping of 350ms. The player from Texas and I had a ping of 1000ms. Do these numbers make sense geographically? Of course not. The point is, the path your connection takes to get to a KALI server is independent of geography. If we all had moved to another server, who knows what the pings would have been. Several others came and went during the game accusing us of being laggers and that we were ruining the game for everyone else. I tried to explain to them but the chat in games is very limited and they were not in the listening mood. They got very upset and accosted us harshly. The four of us were having no problems with each other and the game play was fun and the lag was acceptable. SO IF YOU FIND YOURSELF IN A GAME THAT YOU DO NOT LIKE, JUST ping and packet loss statistics. They were not to be found, strange isn't it? So I looked at my own and the other three and found that we had no packet loss and ping times in line with what we found in the game. So your best bet is to ignore these people. The same applies here as above. Before you accuse someone of cheating know your facts. Just because someone constantly kicks your butt may mean they are better than you. Know what the cheat utilities really do and what they work with. The primary cheat utility I have seen used with Descent I and Descent II is called Game Wizard or Gwhiz for short. This utility allows you to speed up the game play by faking the game clock. It also allows you to lock certain bytes in memory like shield strength, energy and missile numbers. So if you find someone that can flat outrun you all things being equal or they have an endless supply of missiles, they are using the utility. I also have been told that this utility does not work with WIN95. I have found people in DESCENT II that can flat outrun me, afterburner or no, taking into account warping and lag, they are way too fast. This may be due to a sped up processor or bus clock, a dangerous trick that some people do to their motherboards to turn a lower rated processor into a faster one like turning a 90MHz processor into a 100. This inevitably stresses the motherboard and CPU and it's lifetime is greatly reduced. Or it may have something to do with short or long packets or their connection, remember Descent is asynchronous. It may also be due to how fast their video cards are. In Descent II type in "frametime" to see your frame rate, the number of frames displayed each second. It may be due to something entirely different, I am not sure. But one thing is certain, cheating does ruin the game for those who are not cheating. If you suspect someone is cheating, ask them, don't get upset, just ask them a bunch of questions and learn as much as you can. IF YOU WANT TO CHEAT FIND OTHERS WHO WANT TO AS WELL. I really get hyper when someone changes their name. Below is a sample listing from the games option in KALI. The particular player EASY put a control character in front of their name. This effectively disables your ability to ping them or kick them out of a restricted game. Why do they do it? Because they are knowingly and willfully, deliberately, ruining the game for everyone else. Look at the listing, after an hour of play, I have 0% packet loss and a ping of 218 milliseconds. The player EASY has a 16% packet loss after only 14 minutes of play and a ping of 675 milliseconds. They do it exactly on purpose, because they know how crappy they're connection is and it's the only way they can play without people kicking them out. This player at least wasn't even ingenious enough to change their DESCENT player name to something besides their Kali name. Most usually put control characters in front of their DESCENT player name and change their Kali name to remain safely anonymous. I have not found a way yet to handle this easily, the best bet is to to tell them what you think of it, tell them you hate people that ruin the game for everyone else, and then leave. I also hate it when people don't put their email address in the Kali info file. If there is one addition I would like to see added to Kali is to check for correct info before allowing them to connect. Many times I have been deliberately kicked out of a game because I was beating them fair and square, no lag, no loss. I would really like to email those idiots the address to this page along with a copy of the Kali games listing as shown below that details the truth. I also wish Interplay would put a menu system in DESCENT for kicking peple instead of having to type commands, this would prevent a lot of the problems. 78 ENFORCER! 002836 207.120.51.55 2213 Kali95 64 218 0 81 Easy 049407 151.99.190.239 2213 DESCENT2 14 675 16 |
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All logos and trademarks are copyrights of their respective companies. This is a private non-profit personal site. This page was last modified on 10/12/08 .
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