35% Bandwith use improvement not enough for me

I believe the minimum speed, with the 35% reduction, to play a 5v5 game is 256kb/s up - I might be wrong though.

As far as I know you're correct. But I wasn't playing 5v5, I was playing 2v2. And from a previous post or journal I've read, the minimum for 2v2 is 128kbps after the patch. It's not made clear whether this minimum is 'advertised' or sync speed or actual throughput. ISPs might advertise 128kbps upstream but you normally get out about 50%-60% of that advertised speed.

128k actual speed.

Kryo, what's the minimum "actual speed" for 4v4 and 5v5 matches? If you do know...

Any plans for future reduction in DG bandwidth usage?

Since it is a p2p game, my shot in the dark would be

Up Speed needs to be >= 128k/3 * (Total Players - 1)

If my thinking is correct/close enough, then that should also be your minimum consistent downrate as well.

Thanks for the clarification kryo. I revisited an old post of Frogboy's where he discussed the bandwidth requirements and see that I've got my facts wrong. He suggested a 120kbps connection for 3v3. Could you pass comment on the accuracy of SetarcosNous' "shot in the dark" above as well as Dead Ghost's question regarding future plans?

Based on the actual evidence I have no reason to question your assessment. However, in Brad's May Demigod FAQ Frogboy says that 120kbps should be enough for 3v3 and 256kbps for 5v5. In fairness I rediscovered this information just now when I tried to find where Frogboy said 256kbps up would be enough for 5v5.

Using your equation that means that one needs 85.33kbps upstream for 2v2, which means my puny connection *just* doesn't make it. This makes some sense as the game runs fine for a few seconds and then lag spikes for a few seconds. The bad thing about the lag spikes is that sometimes they just make the game slower while other times it causes the game to stutter and stand still completely for a few seconds. Totally unbearable.

Oh well, single player and LAN for now, I guess. I truly hope Gas Powered Games introduce even further bandwidth usage reductions.

Actually, at 120k for a 3v3, it should look more like this (assuming my guesswork is close enough):

It's guesswork because:

• Data may need sent a little faster with more players because they will need more time to spare to handle/process/use the increased amount of data. By this reasoning, 2v2 might need less than 72k.
• There may be overhead not noticeable at 5v5 that is significant in a 2v2.

those requirements suck big time!

NO other game i know requires such high upload rates! really NO game and it doesnt matter how many people are playing it.

battlefield with 64 players + teamspeak = NO problem. but demigod, without teamspeak and with only 8 players has problems... you see what my point is?!

dawn of war: 8 players + teamspeak = No problem

supreme commander: 8 player games = no problem

etc. etc.

why the hell should demigod be that special, that there cant be something done about the netcode??

i live in germany and i´ve got one of the better connections there which has a maximum of 100kb/s upload! so i can only play 2on2 and without any voice chat?! seriously, you did something VERY wrong with the netcode. i would appreciate if you could fix this.

Battlefield is Client/Server. With team speak, thats a total of two connections you need and as such doesn't really fall into line with the way Demigod's multiplayer system works - each player is a seperate connection, meaning for a 5v5 you have 9 connections running. Now, this P2P methos is similar but not identical to the way that Dawn of War's multiplayer functions - however it is near identical to the way that Supreme Commander's operate which is why I think the inital netcode used - Raknet's code - was poorley optimised. Now that GPG and Stardock have their own code in place, thing should improve

Have said that, for many, myself included, 5v5 is the straw that broke the Camel's back - it's just that little bit too much for our connections to handle. I've recently purchased a new modem as I have a 256kb/s upload connection and yet my SpeedTest results are horrid. However thanks to me downloading a bunch of games off of Steam my connection's been capped this month so I have to wait and see next month how it's gone. It's not just your connection - bare-bones direct Peer 2 Peer is a horrible way of doing multiplayer in today's online world with a thousand different modem and router and gateway brands, ISPs and all the other junk with makes connecting a nightmare. Look into your hardware - I too was able to play Supreme Commander with no issues of any kind - and see if there is an information bottleneck somewhere. Best of luck.

@ZehDos: Good explanation of the difference between client/server and p2p.

Doesn't SupCom use basically the same networking principles as Demigod, i.e. fully peer-to-peer? I'd say P2P is the way of the future. Theoretically it's far more robust than client/server. Its biggest limitation is the size of the upstream pipe available to general consumers.

I only know 3 countries with low caps... South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. Where are you from?

Edit: Nevermind, I see your profile says you're from Ozzie.

And now I will further complicate this. 

http://forums.demigodthegame.com/353556

This is a thread I made on conection speed, that got ignored.  The numbers I lister have not been refuted, however Istari claimed that actual useage should be a bit lower than I list. 

Here are the basic numbers from the link.  Istari stated you need 4k upload per a connection.

For refrence: k=Kilobyte, kb=kilobit (used mostly by IPS to list speeds), and Mb=Megabit (used by speedtests)

So for 2v2 you need 3x4 k/s = 12 k/s  = 96kb/s = .094 Mb/s

3v3 needs               5x4 k/s = 20 k/s = 160kb/s = .16Mb/s

4v4 needs               7x4 k/s = 28 k/s = 224kb/s = .22Mb/s

5v5 needs               9x4 k/s = 36 k/s = 288kb/s = .28Mb

Please note this is befor the -35% patch, if it worked. 

if thats the case, almost noone in germany should be able to play 3v3 or more, cause i´ve got one of the biggest "normal" connections, which has a 100kb/s upload maximum!

i dont see ANY advantage in this p2p crap. until now i only see big disadvantages like lagging, connectivity issues and upload usage.

the only advantage i can image is the reduced costs to buy and maintain servers... but for the enduser thats not really an advantage, is it?

as for now, in my opinion, p2p is pure crap!

tperge is using figures for Kbits/sec, it sounds like you have 100kBYTES/sec, which would be 800kbits (I think).

Is your internet advertised as 1Mbit upload and you get around 100kbytes/sec upload on torrents etc?  That's how mine is, and it's easily enough for 5v5.  The problem is if even one of the other 9 players has insufficient upload, they lag the game for everyone.  And it's quite hard to stop people with small uploads joining games, especially if so many don't even understand what their upload is.

:edit: Maybe Stardock could implement a quick speedtest into the front end of the game, to find out everyone's upload speed.  This could then be displayed next to a player's name just like ping in the lobby.

I tried playing a 5v5 after the improved netcode and it still lagged, so did a 4v4.  Now I'm waiting for 1.1, at least the new local proxies will stop pings jumping by 200.

Alot of the confusion has to do with units of measurement, as I point out in the thread I linked. 

Most ISPs list speed in Kilobits, which is kb.  Speed tests (such as speakeasy) show speeds in Megabits, Mb.  K represents Kilobytes. 

Bits vs Bites makes a bid difference.  I have a lowish end DSL service (att) in the U.S., and I get about 1.5Mb down, and .3Mb up.  As a result I can play up to 4v4, and with the new patch I whould be able to reliably play 5v5.