It should be obvious really I suppose, but the usual problems associated with FPS games are more than evident in Tron2.0

The LightCycles in particular are essentially unplayable at 270ms. Why the online games use a version of the map that ensures people are going mach 8 is beyond me - it merely makes the lag issue worse.

It doesn't matter that the game pops up a big warning that "Lightcycles are only for LAN play" - it was a serious mistake making the online map so fast.

I've been playing at 270-300ms to evaluate the playability, and the speed of play is the major factor.

Playing in games with others as low as 60ms (plus a couple of sub100s and one at 150ms) demonstrates the craziness of the situation.

The speeds are so high that I get taken out by riders and trails that don't even appear on my screen. I crash into a trail and continue for 12 more units before exploding!

My DSL is pretty solid loss wise, and typically is stable ping wise, it's just that I'm 30,000 klicks from most servers.

Playing with an Aussie at 150ms was quite acceptable with Discs, but Lightcycles still felt lagged because of the speed.

I think the longest online lightcycle game I've been in -- and I've played about 100 or so now -- has lasted about 20 seconds. That's not long enough in my view.

If the turbo curse and green areas were left out of maps, then overall speeds would be much lower, and the game would be much more playable at higher ping times.

Plus, you'd get to actually USE some of the skills you develop in the Single Player. After all, the Lightcycle game is as much a strategy as an action game. By making the game so fast (brief!) you allow only tactics and ping to dominate the game.

I very much hope the trend in serving Lightcycles errs towards slower, rather than faster LightCycle speeds.

wow you guys are WAY lag tollerant!

i wont even consider a server that's over 200, but i preffer no more than 150ms.

and i wont play on anything more than 100 for lightcycles

same goes for all other games i play (bf1942, the UT family)


But i have a question, where are the 'tron sector servers'?

It's not a question of "tolerance" because there are no Tron servers closer to me than 30,000 kilometres of fibre away! :P

Given that the Lightcycles are a highly ping-dependent routine, it's not surprising that 250+ms sucks donkey nuts for online play!

However, the lag issue is not merely the ping time - this, because my Key Macros often specify a wait of 250ms in between turns.

The issue is the SPEED OF PLAY. If lightcycles were limited to normal speeds (i.e. Normal Turbo only) then the online game would be MUCH more playable. Even at Normal Turbo speeds, the distance travelled in 250ms is not that great.

However, on the green areas, and with the Turbo Curse, speeds are MUCH higher, and the distance travelled in 250ms is more than TWICE the distance travelled under normal speed. This makes the lag unplayable.

I think it's insane to place green areas and a Turbo Curse in an online game of Lightcycles: the gamesonly last for seconds, and there's no way to use the THINKING skills you develop in SP mode.

It's interesting to note that there's a Maximum ping time for lightcycles, but no MINIMUM. This is something the developers should have thought of: laggers who want to play together without LPBs pissing all over everything they do!

I'd love to play normal-speed Lightcycles against other HPBs, but only if I know peeps with 30ms aren't going to come in and dominate the game - regardless of their skill!

Of course, it may be that the boxes I've been playing on are of low quality, or their connects to the backbone may be lame, in which case, the lag issue may appear less pronounced on PROPER dedicated servers plugged directly into a backbone.

Still, getting slammed by opponents whose bikes and trails don't even appear on my screen makes me question the netcode...

SCSI I could not have said it any better than that. And I agree with you totally on that. Sometimes I think that the Internet is at one point or another a big black whole. (Not all the time. But one in a blue moon.