Online Gaming

I Participated in an online game with Master Hellish using my ASUS mini PC. I had never been on a live stream game before an ran into some connection issues and met with the limitations of my PC.

PC Limitations

It would seem that the main limitation I encountered was with the limited ‘shares’ RAM. I have a single 16 GB stick of DDR3 memory. That is fine for most of what I do as a desktop computer. It kept getting dropped by the server, reporting that my PC was too slow.

Playing an online game, especially one that has a 2k map and a large number of vehicles: roughly 500 aircraft, 900 ships, 3100 road vehicles, and 1900 trains! Three of us were also making changes simultaneously and streaming it out on YouTube.

That was OpenTTD Let’s Play Season 12 Part 1 End Save (Before the Y2k wipe) [S12 Map E21.sav] 9.7MB

I ran into issues connecting and staying connected, most likely because my CPU and GPU share the 16 GB of RAM. Since I was not sure what the issue actually was I Googled it. Its conclusion was that the PC just did not have the RAM to handle all that was going on.

Suggested Tweaks

Following is a summarized list of suggestions I received from Google that could help with my game play. Adding more memory was likely the cause but the following could be used to help as well.

Here is the complete, organized list of every tweak I could make for OpenTTD 15.3, categorized exactly by where it needs to be changed:

OpenTTD 15.3 In-Game Menus

These settings are easy to find using the regular Settings menu or by using keyboard shortcuts while inside a map.

• Lower Game Resolution: Drop your game resolution down to 1280×720 or 1024×768 in the Game Options. (This leaves more memory bandwidth for your CPU).
  
• Full Animation (Turn Off): Press Ctrl + X to open the Transparency menu, then click Full Animation so it turns red/disabled.
  
• Full Detail (Turn Off): In that same Ctrl + X menu, click Full Detail to turn it red/disabled.
  
• Loading Indicators (Turn Off): In the Advanced Settings menu, search for “loading indicators” and turn it off. (Stops floating cargo numbers from animating over stations).

In the openttd.cfg Text File

You must close the game completely before editing this file in Notepad. These override deep engine settings that the normal menus hide.

• blitter = "8bpp-optimized" (or "8bpp-simple"): Forces the game to use raw, low-overhead graphics processing instead of modern 32-bit heavy rendering.
  
• sprite_cache_size_px = 64 (or 128): Under the [misc] section, increase this number slightly. It allows your RAM to hold onto more game images at once so your CPU doesn’t have to keep reloading them.

PC’s System Settings (Outside OpenTTD)

These changes optimize how Windows feeds power and memory to your ASUS Mini PC.

• Windows Power Plan: Set your computer to High Performance mode in the Windows Control Panel.
  
• Task Manager Priority: While the game is running, open Task Manager, right-click openttd.exe under the Details tab, and set its priority to High.

Local Game Console (Before Joining a Server)

You can open this menu by pressing the tilde key (~) on your keyboard while sitting at the OpenTTD main menu. [1]

• setting network.frame_freq 3 (or 4): This tells your computer to wait just an extra millisecond or two between calculating game frames, which helps a single-channel RAM system keep up with intense multiplayer data packets.

Hosting Server (Master Hellish)

You cannot change these yourself, but you can check the server’s description or ask the moderators if they have them active. If a server does not use these, large multiplayer games will almost always crash weaker or single-channel RAM computers.

• Pause on Join: The server must have this setting turned on. It freezes the game clock for everyone for a few seconds while you download the map, preventing your client from getting immediately overwhelmed.
  
• network.max_join_time: The host must set this value high (e.g., 2000+). This determines how many seconds the server will wait for your slow computer to decompress the map before it assumes you timed out and kicks you.
  
• network.max_download_time: Similar to join time, the host must give players ample time to download massive maps over the internet without triggering an automatic disconnect.

Network Game (Using the Chat/Console)

When you are actively connected to a multiplayer server, your local console commands are heavily restricted to prevent cheating. However, you can use these tools to help your PC survive:

• !ping (In the public text chat): Type this into the standard multiplayer chat box. The server bot will usually reply with your current latency. If your ping is over 200ms–300ms, the disconnects are likely an internet connection issue rather than just your RAM.
  
• status (In the ~ developer console): Typing this while connected will show you your current frame rate and packet drop rate, helping you see if your computer is successfully catching up to the server. [1]

Conclusion

I have gone ahead and ordered another 16 GB Crucial DDR4 memory chip and when I get it I will do some more experiments. I wanted to document my experience so others can possibly reference it or learn from it.

Since this is a ‘living document’ on GitHub I will be updating it as I learn more. I invite you to add your input as well as I am no expert with networking games, that is for sure and I appreciate any feedback, pull requests or any other help I get from the GitHub and OpenTTD communities.