spawn counter restarting

[Dresh]

Has anyone ever had the problem of the spawn counter restarting? My brother in law is having a lot of problems with gerky play and freezing when online, I know its not his system or his graphics card!  It must a connection issue??

when he respawns the counter counts down and then restarts the count again, sometimes a few times before he spawns, any idea?

[Master Zen]

This has happened a couple of times to me, but not often enough to be a problem. Usually I just quit and go back in, and I'm fine. If it's a recurring problem, the first step would probably be reinstalling the game. Sorry that's the only thing I can think of doing.

[MacGenius]

This has happened to me too. Usually it only happens one or 2 times in any game at most, and usually when I respawn right at "1" and it has already spawned.

This is because everyone spawns at the same time, picture this.

X=Players

X and X die at 2:30:24 and 2:30:25

The first death sees a respawn of 10
The 2nd sees a respawn of 9.

But if you were to die at 2:30:34 you may miss the resapwn at which point it goes back to 10 or 11 (occasionally higher)

[Dresh]

it happens way too many time to be a coincidence like that MacG...

It is much more likely to be ping spikes, probably a problem at the exchange more than anything wrong with the game/PC/Router.  I've got him to download a connectivity logger and I'll wait to see the results before getting him to call his ISP!

[Radical_Pi]

It probably is lag, although I've never experienced this issue, although there is one in SWBF2 where whenever someone glitches the spawn timer always stops at 1 and won't finish

Anyways, the problem is most likely your game gets the respawn signal but due to lag it doesn't confirm the respawn to the server fast enough, pushing it over to the next spawn cycle.

Either that or it's timing with the CP. The spawn might be right about when the CP is capped, not giving the server enough time to recalculate the CP to spawn at before the wave hits, so the server just pushes the spawn to the next cycle. T

he second one makes more sense to me since I've never had a spawn right when the CP is capped. It always is at least 2 seconds before or after.

[Dresh]

I know it isnt lag as his ping to my server sits about 20 and during gameplay rises to 80 tops!  It's not his graphics card as its 256meg with a duel core processor and 2gig ram.  I've not got any logger yet but I'm pretty sure I'll see dropped connections and packet loss...

The counter doesnt stop it counts down from, for example, 10 then as the screen changes to spawn it throws back onto the timer screen and start counting again!  It is more than this as he also gets a lag like delay in game and can time it to every 3 mins!  Sync isnt the issue either and from what I've read it should be a problem with the exchange as all his games do the same, and I assume his browser does it too when surfing but that would just look like a slow loading page so not as noticeable!

[-IAS- Jazz]

its like a disease. i get it to restart like 5 or 6 times before i get to play again.

[Dresh]

we found out what the issue was....every 2 mins, the exhange was dropping about 5 secs worth of packets...when I say 2 mins I mean it literally...every 120 seconds.  The broadband company is currently working on the issue! Something to do with instability of the line or something!

[-IAS- Jazz]

maybe thats what happened to me. we have very shaky internet, we had to wire to somebody's house across 3 streets to get connected cause there was a shortage of cable or something. Thats useful, Dresh, thanks.

[Dresh]

http://www.colasoft.com/ping_tool/

that was really useful!  It is free and it showed graphically the 'infinite' ping spikes! And they were extremely regular so we looked at the times and found they were every 2 mins!

This was happening not just in the game but constantly...even when just sitting idle at the desktop, not such an issue when browsing cos it looks like the page is slow to load given the pause!