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Much like other Unreal engine
games,
America
’s Army features a network diagnostic tool which
provides you with connection information that can be used to adjust your
settings to optimize your network performance. To view this, at the
console (Press the Tab key) type in stat net & hit the Enter
key. The following should now display on your screen.
In general the information shown is
split into In & Out, with In being defined as
from the game server to you & Out from you to the game server.
Reading this information is simple enough with the more relevant
information being;
Ping
.
Ping
is a measure of how much time in ms (Milliseconds) it
takes to send a data packet to the server & then back to you.
Basically the lower this value is the less latency/lag you should
will notice while playing the game. Cable/DSL users will likely want to be
around 100 whereas Dial-up users may be around 300 (This may well be
lower/higher depending on a variety of circumstances).
Unordered.
This displays the number of packets received/sent in incorrect order, this
should constantly display as 0 lest there be connection problems,
in which cause you should change server.
PacketLoss.
This displays the percentage amount of packets which failed to be
received/sent. Similar to the previous item this should also constantly
display as 0 or you have connection problems, again change server
if it rises above 0 regularly.
Packets.
This displays the number of packets received/sent per second.
Bytes.
The number of bytes received/sent per second.
Speed.
The value displayed here reports the currently used Netspeed for your
connection.
Based on the information displayed
here you should be able to adjust your netspeed x value accordingly
(Much like the rate setting in Quake engine games). This can be done via
the console or using key bindings (Open the User.ini file in the System
directory. Simply add the appropriate command after an unused key, e.g. F7=netspeed
5000. This will then apply your preset netspeed with 1 keystroke in
the game). x determines the maximum number of bytes that the
game server can send to the client per second. On a basic level, the
greater your download bandwidth the higher you should be able to set this
value. Dial-up users should try set this to around 4000 whereas
Cable/DSL users should be able to set this to 10000 or perhaps more
without issue, don’t set it too high however as other players
need bandwidth also. Should you find latency or ping increasing/high
or have some Unordered packets or Packet loss occurring then lowering
this value by several hundred should help resolve it.
You should also take a look at our
Modem tweak guides for Windows
9x, Windows
Millennium Edition, Windows
2000 & Windows
XP or ISDN tweak guides for Windows
2000 & Windows
9x for how to optimize your Internet connection & thus further
improve network play in America’s Army.
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