Well...in my experience, parallel and serial connections are very slow and eat CPU resources. Maybe that's the problem.

Given you are saying you are playing over a fast LAN, and the constraints of the time, DirectPlay was written in the era of modems and internet and single core. I've worked in code written around that, and it probably just assumed that there is a maximum theoretical framerate anyway over DirectPlay which won't be silky smooth, and dedicating only just a few more of those precious CPU cycles to network maintenance, which now throttles framerate. So whatever simple coding for this, and depending how much DPlay sucks, it's just sucky code to what we are used to seeing now. It's not like a serial modem that needs just a few K a second would be that much of a hit on XP era hardware. Unless it was a WinModem! ugh. Then again...

Dan9550 wrote on Yesterday, 12:56:

we have a bunch of near identical machines (ex business machines of the same model running Windows XP).

Of course, business machines in those days, weren't gaming PCs. So...

BTW Serious Sam 2 felt a bit laggy to me when it first came out. And again, C&C3, being an RTS, probably has the thing I'm hinting at above, it is really likely different in multiplayer.

Yeah I'm not sure really I would imagine games like SS2 where you can host a dedicated server on another machine. It would be best to do so which I'm yet to setup.

The machines are 2010 vintage thin clients with embedded CPUs, AMD GX-420 I believe. Modern CPUs but performance wise on a single core its more like a core 2 duo.

I thought Command & Conquer 3 would work but didn't get the performance expected. Maybe the network card uses more CPU cycles than on other machines but that's a bit more far fetched. Still not outside the realm of possibility I suppose.

IIRC Westwood's 3D RTSes impose a fixed low framerate.

leileilol wrote on Today, 04:23:

IIRC Westwood's 3D RTSes impose a fixed low framerate.

Yeah. Limited to 30fps.